Fugitive or not, Terah felt the human urge to help someone in distress. Adrenaline kicked in and he bounded up the stairs. Past the two right angles, down the corridor into the central chamber. The scream came again. Upstairs. The octagonal pyramid took him to the second level. The sound was echoing wildly, so he had to use volume as his guide.
When he’d found the couple up here earlier—was it only this morning?—he’d not paid attention to the layout. The sex drive was strong that way. You could ignore just about everything when the call of nature refused to be ignored. Now he had to stand and await another report. The echoey interior didn’t help to locate stray sounds but he was certain it was from this level. Again! From the other side of the octagon. The central atrium was open here and he could see straight across into blinding sameness. Keeping his eye out for detritus, he ran. Isolated the corridor. Made his way back toward the rooms. This wasn’t the same wing with the copulating couple, or was it? He was seeking a woman in distress, not undress.
The fourth scream brought him to the room. He heard no sound of struggle but without hesitation he rushed in. He couldn’t believe what he saw.
An empty room. This was where the sound had originated. Terah was certain of it. Like the sex room, this one held a rusty bed and assorted abandoned junk. But no people. Neck hairs prickling, he was coming to believe Mich. This asylum was haunted. Now that he had an isolated place to settle through the winter, was he going to have to share it with ghosts?
Long years of being taught otherwise crashed up against his current experience. Was he going insane? That wasn’t a funny thought within an abandoned asylum. Now that he stood in this dark room, silence settled around him. Until his stomach rumbled, filling the expanding quiet. Stepping into the corridor he mused. All the doors seemed to be open. Like most people he’d never paid any attention to the many asylums that dotted the landscape. The whole point had been to put people with issues out of sight. The room detailing how mental deficients were turned away at Ellis Island had bothered him more than he could say, when he’d visited the monument. A nation determined to let only the fit and healthy in, not realizing that higher education and insanity were only inches apart.
Back in the central atrium he took time to look around. The octagonal stairway narrowed to a central platform that radiated eight walkways to this circuit around it. Although elegant with it’s concrete bannisters, it was surely dangerous to the imbalanced. Evenly spaced around the perimeter were eight staircases on the outside of the corridor, leading up to the third level. The clerestory was above that and he could plainly see the windows were out of reach. Back when operational, anyone needing to reach the glass would’ve had to have stood on a tall ladder. No such ladders were in evidence, as he made his way around. How the window had opened above him outside could not be answered here.
Vaguely he wondered if Mich had ever bothered to map this level or the one above. Once he reached the ground floor he’d have been able to follow the red trail. The question of how light had been provided now became clear as recessed, octagonal plates of glass appeared overhead, covering obvious light fixtures. The building had electricity at one time. This naturally suggested electroshock to Terah’s receptive mind. Right now, however, he hunger guided him.
He made his way back down, not certain of his direction. Time was curiously indifferent in the darkness but the insistence of his digestive tract strongly suggested it was after noon. When he found the red blaze his first inclination was to return to his food search. He grew curious, however, about the front door. If there really were ghosts, could they move material objects? Make the way clear for others? How could anyone take anything for certain when such variables were mixed in with rationality? Mich must’ve marked the exit in some way, but he hadn’t shown Terah how. Nobody as bright as the boy obviously had been would’ve trapped himself inside with such uncertainty. Trial and error led him to it. His barricade still stood.
Cold and hungry he made his way down to the modest fire and his search for sustenance. What a young man lived off of, of course, might not satisfy a man his age. The thought of pizza came to mind. It was a cruel thought.
If he were a guy like Mich, where would he have hidden things? To answer that, he considered the following: Mich would have wanted to keep his stash secure and hidden from uninvited visitors. He would then try to think like someone entering such a place for thrills. Where would they be likely not to look? In plain sight. If you wanted to hide a purloined letter, you left it where it could be plainly seen.
Warming his fingers a moment at the small fire, Terah thought about plain sight. In the flickering light of the fire, he began to trace the pipes overhead. One came down at the edge of his visual field into a dusty corner. It appeared to be oddly jointed. Leaving the flashlight to rest, he approached the pipe. Cans. A stack of cans with the labels removed. Clearly this wasn’t the whole stash, but cans strongly implied food. He reached for the top one and carried the naturally cooled metal to the fire. He had a pocket knife in his pack and he’d taught himself to open cans with it. Like most people of his generation the concept of how to use a can opener that didn’t have some kind of turning handle was initially foreign. He’d learned.
Eagerly he dug into the metal using the primitive tool. What would his next meal be? Baked beans. Predictable. He could warm them up next to the fire, but getting them out without an improvised hot mitt would be problematic. He dug a spoon from his pack and began shoveling.
The problem with beans, he realized when he’d finished, is the result to which they led. He would need to find a place to shit. Not only had Mich not got that far in his house rules, but presumably the guy had toilet paper of some kind there. And water to wash up, or at least some hand sanitizer. There would be time to figure that out later. Terah wandered off into one of the corridors and tried to find a place where odors wouldn’t make their way back. He found a corner and squatted. Thankfully he had half a roll of paper in his pack, but he was clearly going to have to find Mich’s restroom after this.
But first he was going to have to find his way back to the boiler room without compass or map. Terah quickly became lost in the dark passages.
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