Basement B3

Part 1

"Sarah!" exclaimed Tracy, "Of course, sit down. It's great to see you again. "How do you like your job in the LRU?"

"Love it. It was fun at the moonbase, but I think I prefer being back here with all you guys."

After a few minutes of small talk Sarah turned to Angie. "Angie have you ever had to go down to Basement Level 2?"

Angie's face turned serious. "B2? Yes, once a few weeks ago to put some files in storage. That place gives me the creeps. Next time I'm getting someone to go with me. Have you been down there?"

"Twice," Sarah replied, "I had Don with me each time from the LRU. We were storing geology samples. I know what you mean about it being creepy. I'm glad he was with me."

Tracy looked at them both. "Why is it creepy?" she asked, puzzled.

"It's hard to say," Sarah said, "It's just dead quiet, usually there's no one else in the entire level, and the air conditioning makes weird sounds."

"I've heard some of the staff say it's haunted down there," Angie added.

"Yeah, Don told me the same thing," Sarah said, "I thought he was having me on."

"I think I've been away too long," Tracy said, "I've never heard of B2 being haunted."

"Well," Angie said thoughtfully looking into her cup of coffee, "I've heard rumours it started about a year ago, and it has something to do with those two scientists who were working in B3 that died in a car crash ages ago."

"B3?" Sarah looked puzzled. "I thought B2 was the lowest level. I'm sure the buttons in the lifts don't have a B3 on them."

Angie leaned forward with a conspiratorial smile and said with a lowered voice, "That's because it's a secret floor, and when the building was first built that's where they conducted top secret experiments where unspeakable things were done to human test subjects. No one is supposed to know about it."

Sarah looked open mouthed and shocked at Angie, then at Tracy. "Is this true?" she gasped.

"Of course it isn't," Tracy laughed, "Angie is having you on."

Angie laughed too. "Well I embelished the rumours a little. No one knows what used to go on down there, unless you know, Tracy."

Angie and Sarah both looked at Tracy. "Well I don't really know much," she said, "I've never been down there. I know there are a couple of labs there, but they were closed off years ago after the accident, and as far as I know the entire floor hasn't been used since."

"I hadn't heard about the accident," Sarah looked at Tracy, "It must have been before my time. What happened?"

"Well," Tracy paused while thinking back to the past, "It would have been about sixteen years ago. I was so busy with all my Mars research work that I didn't pay a lot of attention to it at the time. Two scientists were killed one night in a car accident after they left the complex. Apparently the driver was speeding and drove off a bend into a tree. Later I found out they had been working in one of the labs down in B3 on some 'hush hush' project. I never found out what it was. Angie, what do people say about this so called 'haunting' in B2?"

"Well, a couple staff who have been down there claim they've heard sounds like someone screaming in the distance, and one of them swears she saw the figure of a man in a lab coat at the end of the passage by the door to the One A security section just disappear before her eyes. She got security to check the cameras to see if they picked up anything. There was one camera pointing directly at the spot where she saw the man, but it showed nothing, and the maintenance guys say the 'screaming' sounds are just noises from the air conditioning. Oh, and one woman was down there by herself and all the lights went off. She was there in pitch blackness for about twenty seconds. She was terrified. And the emergency exit lights didn't come on like they're supposed to in a power failure."

"I would have been terrified too," Sarah muttered, "I'm glad it didn't happen to me."

Tracy went back to her lab in the Mars Research Unit, but for the rest of the morning her mind was not on her job. She decided to investigate the 'haunting' in B2, and also find out exactly what the scientists had been working on before they met their demise.

LRU = Lunar Research Unit
MRU = Mars Research Unit

Author's Note
This is my first attempt at the paranormal genre. Hope you enjoyed it so far. Please vote and comment. I love to get comments and I will try to answer all comments :)