The Last Winter

Saturday: Hitchwood Sanitarium (28)

"This place has been closed down to the public for decades. The lodge has been rented out to private parties for a few years, but not since 2004," Terrell informs me.

"Rented? Who owns it?"

"Ronnie."

There's a bad taste in my mouth. "I thought Ronnie was just a caretaker or something."

"He's been the owner for a long time."

"How do you know this?" I ask him breathlessly, trying to keep up with his fast pace.

Oriana struggles beside me, her breaths sharp and jagged.

"A couple was brutally murdered here back in 2004. The case went cold and the killer was never caught, and no one has been here since--at least, not to my knowledge. That is, except Ronnie.

"I was contacted by the dead wife's parents a few months ago. They've hired private investigators and even psychics, but they've never been able to figure out who killed the couple. Then they did a little research on the mountain..." he pauses to glance back at us. "That's when they started to ask different questions--not who killed them, but what. Turns out, there's a reason why the ski resort has been closed to the public for a while. The mountain has a history of people being killed."

I shake my head. "Terrell, why would they hire you to look into the deaths of the couple? I mean, you work at Walmart."

"I don't actually work there, Mini Bites. I met up with Jacob after the funeral."

I stop in my tracks. Oreo goes still and suddenly silent.

Jacob.

He wasn't there when Paul and Justin died. In fact, he had moved away a few years ago. We haven't seen him in a long time. Jacob and Terrell had been best friends before he moved and disappeared from our lives.

"Jacob?" Oriana repeats quietly.

Terrell nods, continuing up the path. "We always wanted to become ghost hunters back in high school. Now that we graduated, we decided to give it a go. We got some equipment, set up a YouTube channel, and hit the road. We only completed a few cases before the parents watched a few of our videos and...and reached out."

His voice dropped a notch on the last sentence. He was remembering something.

"Where's Jacob now?" Oriana whispers.

Terrell halts in his steps, his back turned to us.

"We paid Ronnie for one night at the lodge. That's all it took. Just one night."

His shoulders shake, and his voice sounds tortured.

"Terrell?" I say softly.

I exchange a look with Oriana.

"They took him," he replied, his voice just barely audible.

"They?" I ask.

"The howlers."

There's a crash in the trees, and we all freeze. Terrell whips his wand in the direction of the noise, but the woods are silent.

"Probably just the snow falling from a branch," he assures me quietly.

We continue to climb the hill.

"So Jacob is...dead?"

"You don't know that!" he snaps. "He's just missing. Probably hurt somewhere. I've been looking for him ever since."

"...Right. How long have you been looking for him?"

"It's been two weeks...or three. I'm not sure anymore." He glances at me. "I'm not leaving this mountain until I find him."

"I thought you said you'd help us leave!"

He shakes his head. "I'll show you the way, but I'm not leaving. Not yet."

"You can't stay here," I tell him. "It's not safe."

"The howlers--" he starts, but I cut him off.

"Ronnie's a psychopath. He's killed C-Man and Ralph...p-probably the others," I say, my voice cracking at the thought. "Oriana and I were trying to contact the Rangers with a radio in the watchtower when I think he cut the support wires. That's how we ended up in the mines--the tower fell over an opening or a sinkhole or something." I grab his arm so he's forced to look at me. "He tried to kill us, Terrell. I don't think he's going to stop."

"I haven't seen Ronnie since that first day we gave him the rent money," he tells me. "Me and Jacob went to his shack, but it looks like no one's lived there for a long time. He just...abandoned us."

"How do you know the howlers took Jacob? How do you know it wasn't--"

He pulls away from me. "I don't think Ronnie's...human," he confesses.

If this were different circumstances, I might have laughed in his face.

"What? You think he's a vampire or something?"

Terrell shakes his head. "Don't be stupid. This isn't Twilight."

I shoot him a glare.

"I don't know what he is, and I don't know what these howlers are. All I know, is--they come out at night."

I shudder.

"Is that why you want to wait until dawn?" I ask.

He nods. "They are creatures of the night. They like to dwell in the mines during the day. They're hard to kill because their skin is so thick. The only thing that seems to work is fire."

He shoves a hand in front of me to stop me from stepping forward.

"Ah," he says, reaching the top of the hill. Oriana and I hobble up after him. "Welcome to Hitchwood Sanitarium."

A looming monstrosity towers above the trees in the distance. If it was sunny out here, it would be casting a dark shadow over the woods, with its sharp arches, pikes, and leering gargoyles.

It doesn't look like a safe haven. It looks like a place where demons dwell.

.....................................
Next chapter: In the Chapel

There--poking its disgustingly wrinkled face out from the doorway from where we came--is the ghostly white creature of pure nightmare.