The Tooth Collector (and Other Tales of Terror) (12 page)

“Dude, what's wrong? You look like you saw
a—” Mark paused. A shit-eating grin spread over his face. “Don't
tell me you saw a ghost...” He teased his friend with a slight
shake of his head, chuckling softy.

“I'm out of here,” was Sam's only reply. He
turned and headed in the direction from which they'd come.

“But you can't! We're not done!”

“Oh, I'm done!” Sam was fuming. He stormed
down the corridor, camera in hand, determined to wait in the car.
Yes, he would wait there until Mark agreed to call it quits. Why?
Because there was no reasoning with Mark. Sam knew him well enough
to know that if he explained what had happened, if he described
what he saw, mockery and skepticism would be Mark's only reaction.
He didn't have time for that. He trusted his own sanity; he knew
what he'd seen was real, and he wasn't stupid enough to hang around
a haunted asylum for the sake of a college film project.

“Sam! Sam, wait!” Mark's hand was on his
shoulder. He eased around to block his path. “I'm sorry. I didn't
mean to piss you off. You saw something?”

“Not just something. I saw a fucking dead
girl, and she talked to me.” There was silence then, tension so
thick you could taste it in the air. Or maybe that was the dust and
mold spores.

“Look, I'm not saying you didn't see
something. This place is crawling with bad vibes. We'll get out of
here, bro... No problem.” Mark rubbed his chin as Sam waited for
the catch. “But we're so close. The film is nearly done. I just
need you to shoot one more clip. Then we'll leave... Together. We
need to stick together.”

Mark waited as Sam mulled this over. He
sighed, gesturing to Mark with the camcorder in his hand. “One
clip. No retakes. And you better talk fast. Because what I saw...”
He trembled. “I'm not crazy. You know this.”

“I do.” Mark smiled, patting his friend on
the back. “A few more minutes and we're out of here, I
promise.”

“We are now in the heart of Harper Mental
Hospital. This place grows darker the further in you go, but its
history is the darkest part of all. In this room on the second
floor, I've discovered what I believe to be an electric shock
treatment table. The electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT machines are
no longer here, but these restraints,” he pulled on one of the
leather straps, displaying it for the camera, “these were used to
hold the patient down at several parts of the body: head, wrists,
arms, torso, and ankles.”

“Imagine being strapped to this table, forced
to endure more than a hundred volts of electricity pumped straight
into the brain. Under the care of the callous Dr. Walters, this was
a harsh reality for many patients here.”

Sam followed Mark with the camera, holding
his hand as steady as possible despite his heightening anxiety. He
couldn't wait to be finished. He felt more like an idiot with every
passing second. Why hadn't he stood his ground and insisted that
they leave?

Mark strolled away from the wooden table with
the leather restraints, making his way to a straight jacket he'd
found hanging on the wall. Thick cobwebs covered its surface, the
fabric yellow with age. “When Harper Mental Hospital closed its
doors in 1942, stories began to surface. Personal accounts of
extreme cruelty within these walls. A few reports claim that
patients disappeared, that they checked in but never checked out.
None of these claims are supported by any solid evidence, and yet,
standing here in this torture chamber, it's not so hard to
believe.” He paused to throw the camera his very best dramatic
look. “Some patients were left in straitjackets for days on end,
unable to perform even the most basic human functions.”

As Mark delved into his narrative on the
history of straitjackets, Sam noticed a cold breeze touch the back
of his neck. Goosebumps formed there, causing the hair to stand on
end. He rubbed his free hand over the chilled skin, warming it.
Another draft whistled past his ear, cooling the side of his face.
He clenched his jaw to keep from fidgeting and tried to hold the
camera steady as an inexplicable breeze swirled around him.

An icy hand touched his forearm, and he
jumped to the side, jerking the camcorder. It ruined the shot, and
Mark stopped talking mid-sentence to furrow his brow. “What
now?”

“Something touched me.”

Mark spread his arms wide in front of him,
gesturing around the room. “There's no one here but us, bro.”

Sam breathed deeply, trying to calm his
nerves, but the icy touch returned. Frigid fingers closed around
his hand that gripped the camera. Sam looked down and realized Mark
was partially right: There was nothing there. Nothing visible
anyway. But he felt it, the cold grip of death. There was something
foul in the sensation, an unnerving feeling that shocked Sam into a
motionless stupor.

He looked at his hand, frozen in terror,
unsure of how to react. One of the camera's buttons pressed down on
its own. The footage began to rewind. Squiggly lines filled the
viewfinder as the documentary rolled by in reverse.

“Okay, you're obviously spooked by this
place. Let's shoot the straitjacket bit again, then we can call it
a day.”

“Mark...”

“Yeah?”

“Shut up.”

The camera stopped rewinding in the middle of
the footage. The rewind button was released with a soft clicking
noise. The play button was pressed. Sam watched the video come to
life, not knowing what else he could do.

In the viewfinder of the camcorder, Mark was
walking the halls, narrating bits and pieces of information about
the hospital's history. The footage had been taken only thirty
minutes ago, but Sam's mind was so weary from his encounter with
the ghost, it felt like much, much longer. Mark prattled on,
practically walking backwards so that his face was the center of
attention at all times.

Mark took a break, resting to catch his
breath and wet his tongue as Sam poked the camera into random
rooms, allowing a glimpse inside. He liked the way the dust motes
swirled in the strips of light coming through each tiny window, the
corners of each room lost in shadows.

Sam continued to watch as the view panned
across one of the many rooms he'd filmed in that moment. The
footage paused. “He's here,” her voice whispered in his mind.

Sam gasped, nearly dropping the camera when
he realized where the film had stopped. On the paused screen of a
camera operated by unseen hands, a man's face leered at him. A
broad chin and bright, squinted eyes, pale against the blackness of
the shadows that hid him.

“We've got to go... now.”

“What? No. We need to finish this shot.”

Sam flipped the camera around so that Mark
could see the picture. “No, we don't. We've got company. And here's
proof.”

Sam put the camcorder inside the case he
carried over his shoulder. A furtive glance through the door
assured the hallway was clear. Their footsteps echoed through the
corridor, hearts thudding in their ears as they quickened their
pace with each stride. The overcast sky beyond the bars of the
narrow, high-set windows cast eerie shadows on the mildewed walls.
Sam felt as if those shadows were reaching for him, the memory of
the cold hand still fresh in his mind.

Rounding a corner, Sam and Mark reached the
stairwell and stopped. The girl was there. She waited for them at
the foot of the stairs, an ethereal beauty marred by death and
decay. Her knee-length dress resembled something a peasant would
wear: torn and filthy, thick, stiff fabric that didn't flatter her
curvy figure. But no attire could flatter her now. She was ghastly.
Her skin glowed morbidly in the dim stairwell— pale blue, as if
every particle of oxygen had been squeezed from her body. Purple
splotches riddled the flesh around her lips, which were cracked,
swollen, and perpetually sad. A mane of wild blonde hair flipped
and curled at impossible angles, floating about her face. Her eyes
were covered in a thick, white film, reminding Sam of a cadaver
beginning to rot. The slightest hint of silver-blue shined in those
eyes as she hovered there, gazing up at them.

“What do you want?” Sam screamed.

“He's here,” she whispered, but her lips
never moved. The haunting words echoed through their minds.

“Did you hear that?” Mark asked, his voice
higher than usual. Sam nodded slightly, though his eyes never
strayed from the dead girl at the foot the stairs. Her lips parted,
mouth hanging open to reveal the darkness inside of her mouth.
Soundlessly—without gagging or choking—her mouth began to leak. A
trickle of water at first, and then a steady torrent gushing from
her throat. She didn't clench her gut or double over in pain; she
didn't heave. She simply stood there, mouth agape, water spilling
from her like a spigot. It soaked her dress, slicked her skin as it
pooled beneath her on the floor.

“Fuck this!” yelled Mark. He bolted down the
staircase and dashed past the girl, nearly slipping. “Come on,
Sam!” he screamed over his shoulder.

Though he was horrified, Sam couldn't look
away. “Who's here?” he asked, descending the stairs. “What are you
trying to tell me?” The sound of Sam's voice seemed to pull her
from a daze. She closed her lips, turning, and pointed toward the
main door of the hospital. She stayed that way, levitating with her
toes inches from the floor, pointing the way for Sam, motionless
aside from her wild hair which seemed to have a life of its
own.

Sam's heart lurched as he slipped past her
and made his way for the door. The air around her was so cold it
made his muscles tense up, a chill jolting his spine. He maneuvered
himself swiftly around the massive puddle. He hated the idea of
putting his back to a ghost, but there was only one way out of this
place. The girl's dead eyes burned into his back as he retreated.
He looked to the stairwell as he swung open the door, but she had
disappeared. The puddle was gone, too.

He stepped into the daylight, flooded with
relief. Then he saw Mark standing near the car and knew their
troubles weren't over. Mark cursed at the top of his lungs, balling
his hands into fists. “God damn motherfucking shit!” he screamed.
He delivered a swift kick to the Nissan's frame, planting his hands
on the roof of the car and softly banging his head against the
metal.

“What's the matter?”

“The tires,” Mark mumbled without lifting his
head. Sam looked down, turning his attention to the wheels of the
car. His jaw dropped. The tires were completely flat, a jagged gash
through each rubbery ring.

“Did we hit something?”

Mark raised his head, shaking it. “No. It's
all four tires. Looks like the work of a knife.” He rubbed his
temples the way he always did when a headache was creeping up on
him. “And I don't think it was your ghost friend in there.”

“By the sound of it, I see you've met Anna.”
A stranger's voice caught the two friends off guard, and they
turned to see an old man saunter out from behind a patch of
sycamore trees. In his wrinkled, liver-spotted hands was a Smith
& Wesson revolver, aimed directly at Mark.

“Woah, woah! What's with the gun? What did I
do?” pleaded Mark.

“Who are you?” asked Sam, his voice
shaky.

“Me? I'm just an old man who has grown tired
of playing games with a ghost.”

Mark and Sam glanced at each other through
the corners of their eyes, quickly turning their attention back to
the old man who approached them with a shambling, hunched over
gait. “What games?” they asked in unison. This encounter was
becoming a game of Twenty Questions.

“Her games. Always trying to tell her sad
story and destroy my good name.”

Sam rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.
He scrunched his brow and bit down on his lip, thinking. “Are
you... Dr. Walters?”

A series of chuckles exploded from the old
man's withered throat. He looked to be around ninety years old, and
his entire body shook with the maniacal laughter. He wiped a tear
from his eye. “No, certainly not! Dr. Walters has been dead for
many years. The man was thirty years my senior, and just take a
look at me!” He smiled. “I'm the one nobody knows about. The
nameless assistant... the underling.” His lips curled into a look
of disgust. “And that's how I'd like it to stay.” He attempted to
steady the revolver in his shaky hands, aiming it back and forth
between the two younger men. “You shouldn't have come here.”

“I'm sorry, really I am,” Sam said, keeping
his tone as calm as possible. “Here.” He moved slowly, as to not
upset the wild-eyed geriatric. He reached down to unzip the camera
case.

“Stop moving!” the old man screamed.

“I'm just offering you my camera,” Sam said
in an act of desperation. He pulled it from the case, held it out
to the stranger. “All the footage I've taken... it's yours. Just
have it. My friend and I will drop the project. We'll never speak
of Harper Hill again. Whatever bad memories lurk in this place,
we'll leave them be. It's not our story to tell anyway.”

“I'm afraid that's not possible. You've
already seen my face. And you've already met dear Anna.”