Into the Beyond Books 1-3

After arriving at the emergency entrance to the hospital, Mr. Mays left Steph and Channie in an empty waiting room while he accompanied a still delirious Mrs. Davis on her way to get her head scanned.

Steph couldn’t sit still. She had spent far too many hours in waiting rooms during her father’s decline with cancer. Her fidgeting toes caused a tap in her foot against the linoleum floor. Channie shot her a dirty look to get her to stop making the noise. Steph frowned. “I’m going to find a vending machine,” she said as she hopped up to her feet.

“You have money?” asked Channie.

Steph’s frown deepened. “I was just gunna ask a nice nurse or doctor to pay for me.”

“That’s some next level privilege right there,” said Channie.

Steph glared back at her indignantly. “I’m sure someone would buy you something too, even if you are a bitch.”

Channie’s eyes bulged. “Oh, is that so? Well, for your information, I don’t need to beg for dollars like a stanky hoe—I got my mom’s purse.” She held up the dark blue on-brand clutch like it proved something. “You comin’ up in here callin’ me names? Who even invited you here with us?”

Steph scoffed. Her temper had gotten the better of her. “Technically I didn’t say you were a bitch, just that people would still buy you stuff regardless,” she said, backtracking. “And you started it, calling me privileged.”

“You are privileged,” said Channie.

“You don’t know anything about my life,” spat Steph.

Channie rolled her eyes. “You and your perfect blonde hair and blue eyes think you know something about struggle? Tell me, how many nights have you spent living out of a car down on that farm of yours?”

Steph, admittedly, had never been homeless, but she was still dealing with a profound loss. The subject of her father was not something she was willing to talk about with anyone. Especially not with Channie. She felt her face beginning to grow hot with a combination of anger and embarrassment. She turned on her heel and stormed off before it could get any worse.

Tears welled up in her eyes immediately. She didn’t want Channie to see her cry. She put as much distance as she could between them. She didn’t stop moving until she reached a bank of elevators. The cafeteria was one floor up, so she hit the ‘up’ button and attempted to settle her emotions while she waited.

A ding sounded as the elevator arrived. Steph rubbed her eyes with the back of her sleeve as she stepped in. She hit the button for the cafeteria, but the light inside the button didn’t stay on as the elevator started moving downwards instead.

Steph hit the cafeteria button repeatedly, but the elevator refused her input, continuing down below ground level despite a lack of any basement button options on the panel.

The lift bumped to a jarring stop.

An uneasy feeling gripped ahold of Steph’s stomach.

The back side of the elevator slid open revealing a dark hallway behind her. She didn’t notice at first, not realizing that the elevator could open on both sides. After slamming the cafeteria button several more times in despair, a sharp bang like a mop handle hitting the floor rang out from down the hallway behind her.

Steph jumped at the sound, turning around in fright. Construction signs partially blocked the dim corridor. It was Saturday—no one was around, but something had made the bang. She tried the ‘close door’ button, but it didn’t do anything.

A sign on the wall opposite the elevator opening labeled Steph’s current location as the morgue. The elevator wasn’t supposed to come here without a keycard presented by hospital staff. After the day she was having, Steph didn’t want anything to do with a creepy place like this.

The lights are literally flickering down here….

Another bang sounded in the distance—a slammed door this time.

Steph stayed on the elevator, trying the buttons again and again for every floor in turn. The doors stayed open. None of the button presses worked. The lights in the elevator began to flicker on and off along with the rest of the basement lights.

She decided to try a different elevator.

As soon as she stepped out, the door closed behind her. She searched for an ‘up’ button to hit, but found it required an ID card to access the elevators on this floor. The lights in the hallway flickered again. It seemed like the whole basement was having some sort of electrical disturbance.

Steph sighed. It was just one thing after another.

She began searching for some stairs, but the stairwell that resided next to the elevator bank on the first floor didn’t extend into the basement.

The signs on the wall indicated that the morgue was to the left, and the radiology department was to the right. Both directions were only sporadically lit. Steph wasn’t about to go anywhere near the morgue. She turned right and headed towards what would have been the radiology department if renovations hadn’t shut down the whole floor. Channie’s mom had been brought up to the fifth floor for her head scan instead.

Hospitals always creeped Steph out—she associated them with death—and that was when they were still full of people! She walked as quietly as she could through the empty basement searching for a way back up.

The magnetic hums and banging of an active MRI machine could be heard behind a closed door. Steph pushed the door open, hoping to find some hospital staff to help her. Inside was an empty observation room. A pane of glass separated the room filled with monitors from the large tube of the MRI machine.

She couldn’t see inside the machine from her angle, but bursts of light flashed eerily from the powered-up machine, coinciding with the flickering hallway lights.

I don’t think it’s supposed to be doing that….

No one was around as the imaging equipment whirred and clicked.

A strange shape on one of the monitors caught Steph’s attention. She narrowed her eyes as she took in the strange twisted form.

The door to the observation room banged shut as a shift in airflow occurred out in the hallway. It startled Steph, but it wasn’t until the shape on the screen began to uncoil that her heart really started racing.

Whatever was in the tube was certainly not human. It unfolded slowly like a contortionist out of a suitcase. Steph backed away from the window. A pale hand extended out from the opening of the MRI tube. Jagged nails gripped the side of the machine as the creature began to pull itself free.

Steph didn’t wait around.

She threw open the door and sprinted out into the hallway, back towards the elevators. Glass shattered behind her as whatever had been in the tube smashed through into the observation room. Steph bounded past the closed elevators in the only direction available to her: Towards the morgue.

She dared only a single glance behind her as the hallway took an abrupt left turn. A ceiling-tall corpse-white figure slumped out of the observation room. It had to hunch its naked body to fit through the doorway. Before Steph’s attention returned to what lay ahead, the lanky monster dropped its humanoid form down to all fours and pounced after her like an alien wolf chasing a rabbit.

Steph didn’t immediately realize she was shrieking with terror. She only became aware of her screams when she had to stop to take a breath. She ceased her cries immediately, but already was on the verge of panting for air. She needed to hide somewhere, and fast! There would be no out-running the horrific entity at her back.

The hallway felt more like a tunnel. A door-less stretch plunged her into shadow. The lighting was almost entirely burned out or missing apart from a single flickering halogen tube directly above the opening to the morgue. There was nowhere else to go.

The galloping stride of the naked horror behind her put a frantic pace to her own sprint. The slaps of her shoes against the linoleum floor rang out as a loud chorus of confusion. She rushed into the morgue, spotted an empty corpse drawer, jumped up and shuffled in feet first without hesitation. Several of the other drawers that covered the wall were also in various open positions allowing minimal light into the refrigerated compartment behind the wall. She closed the metal hatch in front of her slab.

There was an occupied body bag on the slab to her left.

None of these hatches should have been left open….

Steph eyed the bulging bag anxiously as she tried to get her heavy breathing under better control. The black plastic crinkled slightly in the disturbed air. The hatch one slab beyond the body bag was halfway open. The light changed in the compartment as the slender monstrosity pursuing her moved silently across the morgue outside, bypassing the corpse storage.

Steph held her breath, attempting to be completely silent, but more rustling sounds emanated from the body bag beside her. Her attention and concern returned to the black plastic at once. She had not disturbed the bag this time, but it continued to crinkle and shift as if its inhabitant was not quite yet dead.

The bag suddenly lurched upright, bending into an L-shape as the body inside sat up. Steph covered her mouth with her hands, stifling her panicked gasps. The open hatches took on a terrible new explanation in Steph’s mind: The corpses had risen from the dead and left the hatches open as they crawled out!

The zipper on the body bag began a shift steadily open.

A clatter of jostled equipment sounded from deeper in the morgue offices as the slender monster continued its search for her. Steph shoved open the hatch and used both arms to pull her whole slab out. The metal drawer clanged as it fully extended.

Steph threw herself from the slab. She landed hard on her hands and feet simultaneously. A screech from the morgue offices told her the tall monster was coming for her again.

She scampered up to her feet and sprinted back down the dark hallway in a pure panic.

She had nowhere to go.

She turned the corner as the monster reached the hallway and once again dropped down to all-fours to mount its pursuit. Steph was moving too fast. She skidded into the wall at the turn, barely managing to keep up her pace as she pushed onward. She soared down the hallway on desperate legs towards the elevator bank.

She had a split second to make a decision when she realized one of the elevators was waiting on her floor, doors open. If the buttons still weren’t working, she would be a sitting duck, but venturing back into the abandoned radiology department was hardly a better option.

She pivoted at the opening, swinging herself inside, and then slammed the ‘ground floor’ and ‘close door’ buttons simultaneously with the palm of her hand. The light inside the ‘ground floor’ button stayed lit this time.

She could hear the galloping slaps of the monster’s hands and feet growing imminently closer. For a moment before the doors began to slide shut, she thought she had made the wrong decision by getting on the elevator. The creature reached the doors while they were only inches apart. Its pale face snarled at her through the remaining crack. Its eyes were black dots, fixated on her. Its angular face wasn’t human, but its anger was still obvious to Steph.

The doors finished closing and the elevator began its slow rise back out of the depths of despair.

Close call on that one, don’t ya think? There was a bit too much left up to chance for poor little Steph, at least for my personal comfort. It has always been about a 50/50 chances that the elevator doors close in time to save her from that nasty Agares during previous attempts at this journey. On timelines where Steph doesn’t make it, the Agares rips her apart… very gruesome. He doesn’t Erase her like they usually try to do because his coil was fried by the MRI machine’s extreme magnetism. It sucked it right off his arm and into the tube! That’s why that dope was in there to begin with, all twisted up like that—he was trying to pry it from the wall of the MRI machine! The MRI takes out the coil every time, like clockwork. I’ll give you one guess as to who turned it on. The sound of the mop handle hitting the floor that Steph thought she heard when she first reached the basement was actually the sound of my portal disintegrating upon my departure. You’re welcome. When Steph doesn’t make it, she doesn’t end up saving Jerry, and without Jerry, the future has a little less goat in it. Never underestimate the power of the randomness of a goat for throwing a wrench in the works of the Agares contingent.

Keep vigilant,

-Mr. Gray