Hellingly

Hellingly’s dark, lonely walls were lit up with blue and red lights as the police car approached. Alex sat in the back, chewing on his thumb and wondering if he had made the right choice. It sounded stupid – the whole thing seemed stupid now that he thought back on everything, but he knew that something wasn’t right and he had to stop it before anyone got hurt.

The two police officers with him had been very helpful, and Alex felt slightly more relaxed knowing that they were taking him seriously. He had explained that he had been attacked, but he hadn’t mentioned the knife or the fact he could have sworn he had been badly injured.

"You were parked just around here?" one of the officers, Simon, asked Alex, and Alex nodded.

"Yeah, right there," he muttered. They parked up and got out, Alex more reluctantly, and the other officer, Leon, pulled the flashlights out of the back of the car. Alex took the lead, taking them up to the window he had entered through. Although the place was officially out of bounds, the police were well aware of the urban explorers that hung around. Depending on the policeman who was on duty, they would either turn a blind eye or make a fuss. Some of them just understood the attraction in such a building, and left everyone to it.

Within a couple of minutes, they were inside, Alex a little quicker than the officers, being more used to the crumbling walls and unstable floors.

"Have you ever been in here before?" Alex asked them.

"Not actually inside," Leon replied.

"Be careful, then. You never know when the roof could come in or the floor could give way. These places start to fall apart after a while."

"Do you really come here by yourself?" Simon asked, shining the torch around the darkened hallways.

"Yeah, I’ve never been scared of these places. Not until that crazy guy showed up tonight," Alex replied, shuddering. "He was acting really weird. He was on about the place getting to someone else’s head, and how everyone had left him, and how I didn’t understand. I think he’s gone mad."

"He’s been missing for several months," Simon replied. "Who knows what could have happened to the guy in that time?"

They walked in silence, hearing the steady drip from the water still finding its way through gaps and cracks, until Alex spotted something ahead. He stopped dead in his tracks, causing Simon to nearly walk into the back of him.

"You OK?" the officer asked, and Alex pointed.

"That’s him," he said quietly. He didn’t know why he was speaking so quietly, considering Adrian was staring right at him.

"Hi, Alex," he said cheerfully, and Alex wondered how the strange man knew his name. He couldn’t recall telling him. "Ah, I see you’ve brought company."

"Where?" Leon asked, sounding confused, and Alex could see that the beam from the torch was straight upon Adrian, but for some reason, Simon and Leon were looking as though Alex was the one who had gone mad. Adrian gave that unnerving smirk and turned away, heading off down a corridor to the right. Before he could stop himself, Alex took off after him, quickly leaving the security of the light from the torches. He stumbled up the corridor, using his hand to follow the wall and keep himself aware of where he was. He was more familiar with this area of the building, and so, although he could no longer see Adrian, he could hear his footsteps and work out where to go, despite visibility being practically zero.

"Adrian!" he suddenly yelled, frustration taking him over. His voice echoed off of the deserted walls and rebounded back to him, sounding strangely distorted. "Stop playing these stupid games! Where the Hell are you?"

"Right here," Adrian laughed, and Alex stopped to see Adrian leaning in a relaxed manner against the frame of an empty doorway. Behind him, in the small room, Alex recognised the remains of one of the padded cells, a place which had fascinated him from the first time he had set foot in the place. Adrian was watching him, but Alex’s eyes were on a dark mass on the ground. He was trying to work out what it was, and as light began to creep to him from the corridor as Simon and Leon approached, Alex began to be overcome with an overwhelming sense of pure dread.

"Jesus," came Leon’s voice, floating through the tense atmopshere. "What on Earth is that smell?"

Alex became aware of it then, and it stung his nostrils with its potent odour. He wrinkled his nose and glanced at Adrian, who was still leaning against the frame, arms folded, watching him calmly from under messy brown hair. He gave a small smile.

Alex glanced behind him as Simon and Leon approached.

"Can you not see him?" he asked hoarsely, almost desperately. "Can you really not see him?"

"I see him," Simon said suddenly, and for a brief second Alex felt hope flare up inside of him, but it vanished as soon as he saw the grim expression on Simon’s face, and the telltale fact that he wasn’t looking at where Adrian was standing.

Instead, Simon was pointing his torch down at the floor, to the dark lump that Alex had noticed seconds earlier. Alex reluctantly dragged his eyes towards it, and it took him a few further horrible seconds to realize what it was. It was, unmistakably, a body. A body that had been there, rotting, decomposing, for a substantial amount of time.

Its face was unrecognisable, but it was wearing what was left of a red coat.

"It’s you," Alex said softly, and Adrian nodded beside him.

"Murder," he said softly. "It’s a horrible thing. Do you understand now?"

"I understand," Alex muttered, and he could feel tears stinging his eyes. He was unaware of Simon and Leon watching him worriedly, if perhaps slightly afraid.

"Don't forget me," Adrian said, and then, quite suddenly, he was gone.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

"Of course, that was why he had been so distorted on the camera," Alex muttered, more to himself than anything else. "Ghosts didn’t sit well with video cameras. That’s why Adrian hadn’t been able to leave. That’s what he meant when he said the place had gotten to someone else’s head."

"Alex?" Leon asked. "Are you all right?"

"I saw him," Alex said, suddenly desperate to explain. "His ghost, I mean. That’s what I saw. He told me his name; he told me he was murdered."

Alex forced himself to look at the body again.

"Murdered?" Leon asked.

"He was stabbed," Alex said softly, sinking to the floor. "I’ll bet any money he was stabbed."

There was a long pause, and then Simon spoke up, getting back to his professional self.

"Call for backup," he told Leon. "Get the crime scene team down here, and the photographers. Get the area cordoned off and ..." he glanced at Alex, huddled on the floor. "You’d better get someone to see to him."

*

Alex had known what they had meant. He knew they thought he was mad. After years of therapy, he had started to believe it too. But looking back, he knew he couldn’t be insane. There were two main points of proof he clung to, so he could convince himself he wasn’t crazy.

The first was the cameraman’s footage. He had seen him too, and although Alex hadn’t seen him since, he knew that that somewhere out there, someone else had seen what he had seen.

The second, he hadn’t told anyone, because it still terrified him to this day. When he had been attacked, he had dropped his camera. He had found it lying where he had fallen unconscious when he had been lead out of the building. He hadn’t looked at the photos he had taken for months after the incident. When he finally did, he regretted it, for it proved without a doubt that this had all actually happened.

There, amongst all of the pictures of lonely, empty hallways and decaying memories of the past, was another picture. A picture of Alex.

A picture of Alex, lying unconscious on the ground, taken from above.

Although he knew deep down who had taken the photo, Alex didn’t want to think about it when he could help it. However, true to what Adrian had said to him, Alex couldn't forget him. He haunted Alex’s memory every hour of every day.