PLAYHOUSE Chapter 1/10

So Sufyan took the job because he had to.

That's the honest version. The other version is that he took it because it seemed fine, sixty bucks to walk around an old building for a few hours, but really he took it because Omar had pulled him aside the week before and said the words "reassessment of your position" and Sufyan had said okay, yeah, I'll take the next one. And the next one was this.

Holloway House. Children's therapy center, closed 1994. Some company wanted to knock it down and build condos. Sufyan's job was to go in, take photos, write down what was broken, leave. Four hours. Maybe less.

He drove forty minutes outside the city and pulled onto a gravel path and parked and just sat there for a minute looking at the building through his windshield.

Big house. Two floors. Red brick that had gone kind of dark and brownish with age. The window frames were this peeling yellow paint, most of it gone, strips of it hanging off. The garden was a mess — grass and thorns had taken over everything, you couldn't even tell where the paths used to be. And above the front door there was a sign, faded, that said HOLLOWAY HOUSE — WHERE FEELINGS FIND A FRIEND.

He took a photo of the sign from his car. It felt like the right thing to document.

Inside smelled like old wood and something sweet he couldn't identify. Very quiet. Dead quiet, the kind that empty buildings have where it doesn't feel peaceful, it just feels like nobody's been here in a long time. The entrance hall had this cracked reception desk, a phone that obviously hadn't worked in decades, and a big mural on the wall behind the desk. Painted figures, sort of round and soft, like illustrations from a children's book. Four of them. A big round one in a colorful knitted sweater. A tall thin one in a white coat. A small one he couldn't make out the face on. And a fourth one that looked like a mirror with arms, which is a strange thing to paint but there it was.

He photographed the mural. Wrote it down. Kept moving.

He went through the ground floor. Waiting room with these tiny chairs that made him feel sad in a way he didn't want to look at too closely. Two therapy rooms. A staff room. A supply closet. And then at the end of the hall, a door that was open a little, and inside it: six monitors on the wall.

He went in.

The monitors were off. But under them, the security terminal thing had this small green light blinking on it. Still running off some backup battery after thirty years, apparently. He pressed a key and the monitors came on. Six camera feeds, all black and white, grainy, but working. He could see the upstairs hall, the back garden, a couple of rooms he hadn't been in yet. And on one camera — east wing, looked like — an old service elevator. Metal cage door. He hadn't noticed it on the way in.

He wrote: security system working, cameras cover most of building, service elevator east wing.

He turned to leave.

The door had swung shut.

He pushed it. Nothing. He tried the handle both ways, knocked on it, could see light under the bottom gap so it wasn't stuck. Something was holding it from outside.

He checked his phone. No signal.

He went back to the monitors. Camera one, the front entrance — and there it was. A metal bolt had slid across the front door from inside. He had not done that. He hadn't even seen a bolt on the door when he came in.

He sat down in the old chair in front of the screens and breathed for a second.

Okay. Problem. Solve it.

He looked at all six feeds again. Empty, empty, empty. Basement stairs with darkness at the bottom. Garden. Upper hallway —

Something was in the upper hallway.

It was slow and heavy and round-shouldered and it crossed the camera frame from one side to the other and every step made the image blur a little from the weight of it. It was the big round figure from the mural. Not a painting. A real solid thing, moving.

He leaned forward until his nose almost touched the monitor.

It disappeared off the right edge of the frame.

He sat back.

He noticed the rack of VHS tapes in the corner of the room that he somehow hadn't seen until right now. Top tape said: ENDWELL THERAPEUTICS — STAFF ORIENTATION — WATCH FIRST.

He put it in.

He watched the whole thing.

By the end he understood what the building used to do, what was in it now, and why the tape cut out right before it was going to say where the exit key was kept.

He also understood he needed to stop making noise.

He stood up, looked at the monitors one more time, and started figuring out how to get out of this.