Chapter 15 – Beyond the Painted Doors – Holly Hayfield

Sam and Lilith both stood in front of the red double doors. They were unsure who should go first. Naomi helped me limp up behind them. I handed her the flashlight back to make things easier for myself. The cut on my leg was going to take some getting used to. Lilith was the one who was most impatient. She stepped ahead of Sam and put her hands on the door handles.

She looked back at us, her eyes going from person to person. We all nodded our approval as she did. With a huff, she turned the door handles and pushed the doors open. The old doors creaked open. What was waiting for on us on the other side wasn’t what I had in mind.

I imagined that the other side would be something horrifyingly similar to the Discipline Hall, only with more torture devices. Instead, the hallway looked incredibly normal. They were too normal. Even the hallways in the main section of this school weren’t this normal. The main and most obvious difference was the generous width of the hallway.

The hallway was well lit, not minding the flickering electricity. The floor was nicely tiled just like in the elevator lobby room. The flooring was so clean that ceiling’s reflection was clearly visible. There were lockers against the hallway walls that glowed radiantly in the light. The place was so clean that I came to realize something about this.

“Someone has been down here recently.” Lilith said before I had the chance.

“What?” Sam asked as we all walked in.

“This place is too well-maintained,” I said, “There’s someone here at the school that’s taking care of it. Otherwise this place would look more like the Discipline Hall.”

“Isn’t this part of the Discipline Hall?” Naomi asked.

Lilith shrugged.

“Maybe it could’ve been before, but nothing makes sense. I’ve never heard of this school having a basement. Let alone an elevator to that basement. The Discipline Hall was locked up and considered off-limits. Why would this place be maintained? How could they have got in without the elevator?” Lilith asked.

“There must be another way in.” Sam said.

Naomi walked through the hallway ahead of us to look around. She pulled her cell phone out again to take more pictures.

“This place was must be a real secret if even Lilith doesn’t know about it. What’s down here that’s worth all this work?” Naomi asked as she snapped photos.

“That’s what I want to find out,” Lilith said and pointed at one of the doors in the hallway, “We’ll go from door-to-door just like we did in the Discipline Hall. We’ll start with this door on the left.”

Lilith marched off ahead of us. Naomi followed her closely, snapping pictures as she walked. I limped forward slowly. Sam came to my side and put her arm around me to help her out.

“Come on, we don’t want to slow down the Little Corporal.” Sam said with a smile.

I smiled back.

“I’ve never seen Lilith like this. Before today she was the aloof type. Now she’s absolutely glowing.”

“Maybe that whole ‘family curse’ she was talking about really got inside her head.”

“Maybe… Let’s just hope that curse doesn’t come true while we’re down here. We’ll need to keep an eye out for her.”

Sam smirked.

“You do that. I’ll keep an eye out for you.” Sam said.

I put one arm around her in return and gave her a slight hug. This warmth was something I needed badly. It was something I didn’t have since Ellie held me last school year. That felt like a lifetime ago. Now Sam could possibly become my new best friend. I wasn’t going to let things fall apart this time.

The suspicious classroom in the suspicious basement was hardly a classroom at all. It was more like a storage room. This school had a lot of those. This storage room was peculiar. Like everything in the hallway outside, everything had been maintained.

Only, this was slightly different. The mass of boxes in the middle of the room showed categorization. Some were open and pulled to the side like someone was looking through them. We looked inside them as we came closer. Lilith pulled out a drama mask.

“It’s all art stuff.” Sam noted.

“This is an interesting development,” Lilith said and looked back at me, “The Art and Theater club at this school shut down almost ten years ago due to management complications.”

“Management complications…?” Sam asked her.

“The details are sketchy. I heard it was the club manager that shut it down. Her name was Ms. Hoffman. I think she was a science teacher that managed the club. She changed schools shortly after shutting it down.”

“That’s not suspicious at all.” Sam said.

“Still,” I said, “That gives us a minimum date for the last time this stuff was in use. Between now and ten years ago this stuff was all above ground, outside of the Discipline Hall. I know someone who was a student here around that time.”

Lilith nodded.

“There are some staff members who went to school here around this time. Maybe we could ask them about this part of the school.” Lilith said.

Sam shrugged.

“Do you really think that’s such a good idea? It’s not like we were supposed to be down here. We discovered this by mistake. Whoever has been maintaining all this would probably be pissed to learn that we were snooping around, right?” Sam said.

Sam had a point. While I was contemplating the correct way to go about this someone put their hand on my shoulder. I assumed it was Naomi because she was the only one out view. Then I saw that the hand on my shoulder wasn’t a normal hand. It was a skeleton hand.

I screamed so loud that it reverberated through the room. The shock nearly made me jump out of my skin. Sam and Lilith both jumped away at the sound of my scream. Naomi burst out laughing as she wheeled the model skeleton in front of us. I pushed it away as it came close to me.

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“You nearly gave me a heart attack.” I said with my hand over my heart.

“Haha! You should’ve seen the look on your face! That was great Holly. I’ve never heard someone scream like that. You could be in a horror movie.”

I rolled my eyes at her.

“Please don’t do that, not down here. I’m the injured one, remember?”

“Come on, that awesome, admit it. There’s no way Lilith or Sam would’ve screamed like that. This place is great, isn’t it? Check out all the theater props around here. There’s more like Mr. Skeleton here hanging up in the back.”

“Oh…? Let’s see it.” Sam said.

Sam and I followed Naomi to the far side of the room. Naomi wasn’t joking. There were several more human-size mannequins hanging up on rolling display stands. They were all dressed up in different historical costumes. They each looked like they were from separate eras.

One of them was a nineteenth-century businessman with an outlandishly overgrown mustache. He looked villianish, like a cartoon character. This model drew my attention because he had a folded sheet of paper in his pocket. I pulled it out and began unfolding it. Sam and Naomi crowded behind me as I opened it up.

“It looks like it was a note between friends. Two of the Art and Theater club members were passing this back and forth.” I said.

“What’s it say?” Sam asked.

“A lot of this is useless information about the class they were in. Some of this is related to the junk in this room though. They were talking about the club being shut down and what they’re going to do for the remainder of their senior year. They were both upset about it.” I said.

Naomi took the letter from my hand and let out a half-hearted laugh.

“Upset is putting it nicely. It says here that they were straight up planning to burn something down. That sounds like something I’d do if my hang out in the Old Science Wing was closed down.” Naomi said.

I took the letter back.

“That’s a good observation. It sounds like that was the sort of loss they were going through. The real question though is why this stuff ended up down here and not in one of the millions of other storage areas throughout the school.” I said.

“I doubt we’ll find the answer in their letter.” Sam said.

“No, but you might find it over here.” Lilith said.

Lilith was sitting near an open box. She was wading through documents spread out in front of her. Sam, Naomi, and I walked over to get a look at what Lilith was reading. She was holding student records. Lilith seemed to be looking for something, but I couldn’t say what.

Each member of the Art and Theater club had membership forms that were contained inside the box. At first I thought that Lilith was pulling out random forms to get an understanding of them. Then I recognized something in one of the forms she set aside on the ground. She was setting aside names of people she was familiar with. I noticed this because I was familiar with one.

“Hey! I know that person! That’s Ms. Logan from the history department. I was helping her grade tests on Monday.” I said.

Naomi picked up the the membership form.

“I didn’t know her first name was Abigail. Abigail Logan. It says here she was a sophomore when she joined the art club. I can’t imagine Ms. Logan taking part in something like this, with her jumpiness and all.” Naomi said.

“What, is she sick?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, you could say that.” Naomi said.

“Ms. Logan is on a lot of medication,” Lilith said, “She’s the last person we want to talk to about this. Some of these other people look like better candidates but they mostly work at other schools now. This other one still works here.” Lilith said.

Lilith handed me the membership form and I looked it over.

“Ms. Foster, are you kidding me? I never would’ve guessed she was a student here.” I said.

“Not for long apparently, check out the membership dates on that form.” Lilith said.

The membership form had a line for membership termination down near the bottom. Going by the membership acceptance date and termination date it was clear what Lilith wanted me to see.

“She was only a member for a week.” I said

“She might be a person we can ask about all this.” Lilith said.

“You think she knows about this?” Sam asked, “This looks like some long term member who just couldn’t let go of things. That’s the only reason I can imagine keeping this stuff secret.”

“Maybe,” I said, “Let’s check out the room across the hall. We might find more information there.”

While we were walking out of the room the lights flickered and then went off. Naomi lit up her flashlight again and shined it around.

“Which way did we come from?”

“There were two red-painted doors.” I said.

Naomi scanned her flashlight up and down the hallway.

“There are two sets of doors like that.” Sam noted.

It was true. There were red-painted double doors on both ends of the hall. Lilith immediately began to gravitate in the direction of the red-painted doors furthest from us.

“I don’t think that’s the way we came from Lilith.” I said.

“I know. I just want to look inside.” Lilith said.

Sam grabbed Lilith by the arm to stop her.

“Hold on. Shouldn’t we check that lever in the lobby first? If we turn it off and on the electricity might come back.” Sam said.

Lilith pulled her arm away.

“You three can go do that. I still want to look around.”

“There’s no way we’re leaving you alone down here.” I said.

“Then don’t slow me down.” Lilith said as she made her way to the door.

Naomi, Sam, and I looked at each other. Sam shrugged and followed Lilith. Naomi smirked and handed me her flashlight. She pulled her smartphone back out to take more pictures, I assumed. The first thing she did was turn on her smartphone light to give us a second light source. I had serious reservations about following the three of them into the unknown. In the end I kept pace close behind them because I was too scared of being left alone in the darkness.

The first thing we all noticed when we walked into this room was the smell. The smell was harsh, like bleach that seemed to fill the entire room. It was so bad that my eyes began to water. It wasn’t just me. The other three were having this same struggle. We spun our lights around to try looking for a source. This room, unlike the other, was less organized. There were papers on the floor, boxes thrown over, theater props in general disarray. We could hardly walk without stumbling into things.

“Where’s it coming from?” Naomi said with her nose covered by her hand.

“It’s probably something over here. You see that door over there? Holly, shine the light in this direction.” Lilith said.

“Are you sure about this?” Sam asked, “Do you really want to keep going? We should go back before this smell gets to us.”

“No.” Lilith protested, “Not yet. This room is the strangest thing we’ve seen so far. Look at this stuff over here near this closet door. What the hell is all this?” Lilith asked.

I shined the light at the floor of the large closet door. There were letters, candles, flowers, roses, and several other affections surrounding the front part of the closet door. It looked like a donation center, or a shrine of some sort.

“It’s a memorial.” I realized.

“What sort of memorial?” Sam asked.

“A memorial similar to the one a few blocks away where that drunk driver hit someone at the traffic stop.” I said.

“I think you’re right.” Lilith said. “Let’s look inside. Holly, keep the light on me.”

“I don’t think this is a good idea. Whoever has been doing the upkeep around here probably doesn’t want us to see this.” Sam said.

“That’s exactly why we need to see this.” Lilith said.

Lilith opened the closet doors, revealing a large ornate wooden crate. The shipping crate was decorated as if to be turned into a casket. Was this another theater prop? We all looked at each other. Sam started to reach out for Lilith, but was stopped by Naomi. Without consulting us, Lilith lifted the crate open, revealing a female body in a dark dress holding a small bouquet of white roses. There was a small scream and Naomi nearly fell over, her smartphone dropping to the ground. Naomi picked it back up.

“Geez, Holly, don’t jump on me like that. You scared the hell out of me. Is this revenge for earlier?” Naomi said.

“I’m over here.” I said, waving the flashlight.

“Sorry… That was me.” Sam said.

“Oh? If you wanted to cuddle up all you needed to do was say so, transfer-girl.” Naomi said playfully.

“That’s not what I was going for.” Sam said, “It’s just that the dummy surprised me. That’s an incredibly well-made mannequin.”

“I know, she’s like the bride of the dead or something.” Naomi said.

Looking at it further, it was eerie for a prop. The doll had no eyes. It had long dark hair. Her skin had been bleached paper white, which explained the smell. She was holding a bouquet of flowers as she lay on her back. She’d be a beautiful mannequin if not for the corpse-bride theme.

The weirdest thing about this prop though was that her mouth was sewn shut. Why? What was the artist trying to illustrate with that? What would’ve passed for a well-made creepy Halloween decoration was turned into something nightmarish by that simple fact. It was no surprise that the Art and Theater club was shut down considering they had such a dark sense of humor.

Lilith kneeled down in front of it to get a closer look.

“Why isn’t this mannequin with the others in the room next door?” I wondered.

“Because it isn’t…” Lilith said.

“What?” Sam asked.

“Because this isn’t a mannequin,” Lilith said and looked back at us, “This corpse is real.”