“I promise.” I held out my pinky finger and she hooked it with hers.
She took in a deep breath and let it out through her nose. “All right. It’s…Dean.”
I’m not sure why my first instinct was to laugh, maybe because Dean was so totally not the person I was expecting. And it had nothing to do with the fact that Dean was black and Rebecca looked like Snow White. It was that Dean was Dex and Rebecca’s friend, not a lesbian and so totally not Rebecca’s type, even when you ignore the non-lesbian thing. Dean was a fucking awesome guy but he seemed really chill whereas Rebecca was well-manicured and slightly uptight.
“What. The. Fuck,” I said slowly, examining her face as if she were lying to me. “Dean?”
Rebecca nodded, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “Yeah. Dean.”
“Does he know?”
She shook her head and then looked at me with big eyes. “Please don’t tell him.”
I assured her I wouldn’t tell. It really was none of my business.
I sighed and told her, “Rebecca, whatever you and Dex did, it’s in the past. It’s a lot for me to handle but...I’m not mad. Let’s just forget about it and move on.”
“Are you sure? I never wanted to hurt you, Perry. I’m sorry.”
“I know,” I told her. I let go and straightened up, looking around the dimly lit room. “Weird how Dex isn’t back yet.”
She nodded and got up. We walked back into the hallway, looking up and down, but didn’t see anything unusual.
“Maybe he’s in the loo,” Rebecca offered with a shrug.
“Maybe,” I said as we went back the way we came. Suddenly, every single hair on my body was prickling. This wasn’t good. This was very, very bad.
And whatever it was…was right behind us.
“Rebecca,” I said carefully. “I know you’re the wrong person to ask. But. If you look over my shoulder, do you see anything?”
I watched her as she craned her elegant neck around and looked past me down the hall.
A small, breathy sound escaped from her lips. Her eyes grew wider. Her mouth gaped open. The delicate muscles in her neck stood out as every section of her skin grew tighter.
She was seeing something.
Holy fuck.
Rebecca was seeing something. I knew that terror like a second skin.
I slowly turned my head and followed her terrified gaze.
Down the hall, lit faintly by the light that was spilling in the windows, was the bad thing.
It was upside down, crawling on the ceiling, long arms stretching out in front of it, and coming straight for us. The weird crackling, skittering sound filled my ears as its razor-lined mouth snapped open and shut.
Somehow, I managed to tear my eyes away and look at Rebecca. She was paralyzed by the fear. I pushed back on her shoulder and yelled, “Move! Run!” in her face.
It took her a few seconds—terribly long seconds—to realize what I was saying. Then she wasted no time at all. She whipped around, her dark hair flinging in my face, and together we started sprinting down the hall. We ran so fast, so desperate to get away that we ran past the staircase and were halfway down the next wing before we realized our mistake.
We both ducked into a room, trying desperately to catch our breaths, and I poked my head around the doorway.
The bad thing was no longer on the ceiling—I couldn’t see it anywhere.
“I think it’s gone,” I told her, even though I had no idea how that could be. Like fear, it was never really gone, was it?
She cautiously stuck her head around the corner and looked to see for herself. She made a noise that I couldn’t decide was agreeable or not.
“Wait, hold up,” she cried out as I was about to turn away.
I looked back to see Dex running up the hallway at the other end, where we had been before, and start running down the stairs.
“Shit!” I cried out. “What the fuck is he running from?”
I pulled at Rebecca until she was running beside me, heading down the hall. We got to the stairs and I looked over the railing just in time to see him heading off on the third floor.
“Dex! Where the fuck are you going?” I yelled after him as I picked up speed and leaped down sets of stairs until I was on the third floor. I looked to my left and saw him running away, making a sharp left into a room.
I kept running while assuming that Rebecca was hot on my trail and ducked into the room that Dex disappeared into.
All it took was to see the faint metal glint of the operating light before I screeched to a halt.
Dex had led me into the room of blood.
And as the heavy door shut behind me, I realized that it hadn’t been Dex that led me in there.
Oh shit.
I spun around, completely taken over by the dark, and ran forward until I smacked against the door. I felt for the handle, trying desperately to get it to turn, while pounding on the door with my fist and yelling for Dex and Rebecca.
The door wouldn’t open. The thump of my fists died in the air.
I couldn’t hear anything on the other side. No sign of the howling wind. No sign that someone was yelling to me, trying to assure me everything was going to be okay, trying to help me escape, to let me out of that room.
The room of blood.
I breathed in deeply, trying to keep my senses focused, my mind sharp, my heart rate under control. I wasn’t going to cry. I wasn’t going to succumb to the black room that nipped at my back. I was going to hold it together and find a way out.
I turned around and faced the void of the unknown.
“Hello,” I cried out softly. “I’m here. Whatever you want with me, please, just show yourself.”
I sucked air into my lungs and waited for a voice to set me free, for a shape to show itself.
Nothing happened.
Except there was a noise, in the far corner of the room. The slick, sharp sound of metal on metal. I thought back to when I was peering into the room the other day and I couldn’t see anything in my mind’s eye except the three operating tables in the middle of the room.
I also remembered Oldman saying that the body chute opened up somewhere in the room. It was a long shot, and a fucking terrifying one, but if I could get to the chute and somehow get in it, it was at least a way out.
I swallowed hard, willing my eyes to adjust to the dark, but with the room having no windows and receiving no light from the outside, nothing happened. Everything in front of my eyes was just black on black on black.
I stepped away from the door and walked forward, taking slow, careful steps, my hands straight out in front of me in case I ran into something.
I walked in as much of a straight line as possible, trying to pull the layout of the room from my memory. I wished I had paid more attention at the time, but the truth was, even with Dex and Rebecca and Oldman at my side, I had been scared as hell. I would have done anything to have them at my side again.
And then there had been Dex, running away from me, the Dex who was never him at all. His doppelg?nger. I could only hope that neither the real Dex nor Rebecca would run into the doubles of themselves—apparently if you do, you’re supposed to die.
And I hope I don’t run into myself, I thought, trying to imagine how surreal that was. Of course, in some ways it had happened before. Back in Red Fox, the skinwalkers took the shape of me, trying to lure Dex in with a kiss. That was as fucking trippy as it could get, not to mention aggravating, since Dex’s first kiss with me wasn’t with me.
The thought of him though, the thought of New Mexico and how far we’d come since that episode, gave me a new kind of strength. I’d been through so much already. We’d both fought against death and won. Now it was the last shoot of our last episode, and all I needed was just to come out of it alive. Fuck having the best episode—I just wanted to keep living my life.
I walked forward, determined to make it out.
I didn’t make it far.
I walked straight into something cold and hard. I gasped from the pain, having hit my hands at an odd angle, and immediately felt along the chilled, slick surface, hoping it was a wall.
It wasn’t. It was the corner of the body cooler. I nearly walked myself right into the morgue. I shuddered, my heart racing, my legs threatening to give out on me. I had to keep going; I had to get out of there.
I walked more carefully now, feeling my way along the edge of the cooler, when I felt something banging against it from the inside, a dull metal thud. I shrieked, taking a step back, the blackness disorienting. There was someone inside the body coolers. For a second I thought it could have been Dex, for a second I thought maybe I should make my way back to the doors and fumble through the dark to open one of the drawers.
But all it took was to hear silence—silence punctuated by a click and the slow, metal groan of one of the body cooler doors opening by itself—to know it wasn’t Dex in there.
I waited, frozen on the spot, until I heard a dull slap. The sound of bare feet hitting the ground.
Someone coming out of the body cooler.
Someone dead.