Room 502:

Brady Spelling heard his girlfriend's laughter somewhere in the underground tunnel, but the black of midnight blocked her from sight. He clicked on his flashlight and shivered.

It was not cold.

The air was thick with damp Kentucky summer, and between the suffocating humidity and his claustrophobia, Brady was having trouble breathing. That's why, Brady told himself. Claustrophobia. That, and nothing else. Not where he was.

Eighty years ago, the Sanitarium had housed two hundred tuberculosis patients. Today, it was condemned, carrying with it the memory of death and a hefty fine for trespassing. No way he would normally be here. That damn notebook.

Two glasses of wine in, as they walked back from dinner, Kara had found a little Moleskine book tucked away in a tree knot on her property. Her and her stupid obsession with treasure. Its ivory pages were blank as baby elephant tusks, except for one creased and coffee-stained page. Scribbled haphazardly was the address of the Sanitarium and a note — Room 502 loose wall brick $20k. Convinced it was a sign and intoxicated with possibility, Kara insisted they drive the thirty miles to check it out. He said hell no.

And now here he was, walking through the long concrete tunnel below the earth where they used to take the corpses. For transport, he reminded himself. To protect the other patients from seeing death carried out the front door. This place should’ve been locked off, but of course, Kara found an area of the property fence that had been curled up with pliers. Another sign, she’d said.

“Bradyyyyy—” The voice jerked his feet off the ground. He swung his flashlight around to reveal his girlfriend's face, inches from his. “Gotcha!” she giggled.

“Jesus, Kara!” His voice echoed off the graffiti-stained walls, bouncing her name back.

Kara clicked Brady's flashlight off, curled her slender arms around his neck, and pressed her body against his. “Let's make love right here,” she murmured.

“You're impossible, you know that?”

“Yes,” she purred. He could feel her smile as they kissed in the blackness, their teeth touching before their tongues met.

Nearby, something scurried. A rat? Before he could consider what it might be, her hand crept downward like a snake slithering towards its meal, but he stopped her at the button of his jeans.

“The room,” he said.

“Suit yourself.” She skipped ahead, undaunted. He clicked on his flashlight and followed, lead-footed, but eager to please his girlfriend.

They’d met at a college bar off campus, famous for cheap beer and peanut shells on the floor. He had seen Kara swing through the doors, noticed her shiny black hair, and how it seemed to take flight with every sway of her hips— even before he saw the way her eyes ignited with excitement and spontaneity. She was exactly what he needed. Brady Spelling, ever the planner, the list maker, the Excel file guru.

He asked her out that night, and they were instantly inseparable.

It'd been a blissful four months, finding heart-shaped notes on his windshield, pre-made lunches on his hood. His reluctance for adventure never seemed to bother her; maybe she knew that any knots she tied in his stomach, she could untie in bed.

Right now, that thought of her wasn’t enough to steady his flashlight as it danced like a jittery strobe light against the walls. Instead, he thought of the stories—the nurses who committed suicide. The little boy with the bouncing ball. The doctor in the lab coat. He didn't believe any of it, though. Nobody did, really. It was just tales told late at night with friends and a good amount of weed.

Five hundred feet of hallway felt like a mile. He hated the unknown, the unplanned. Anything could happen here. This wasn't how he liked to live.

Kara, on the other hand, loved this. Her giggling, echoing, still pulling them forward.

“Come on, ‘fraidy Brady,” she said and laced her fingers into his, tugging him out of the hallway and into the basement. He shone his light in all four corners.

No.

The morgue, where they’d drain the bodies. His flashlight darted wildly to the slabs of concrete with dark stains on the floor.

Unperturbed, she motioned to the stairwell, veiled in darkness. “You ready?” She pinched his side, the way she would a baby's cheeks. “Race you!”

And she was gone.

His stomach revolted and he cursed with white-knuckled fists. He ran, no, sprinted up the stairs, brushing through cobwebs, his flashlight slamming against walls, scraping off flecks of paint. Her laughter was louder now, just above him.

“Bradyyyyy—”

He fought his breath, now coming in heaving gasps as he reached the fifth floor. Charging down the hallway, his heart thudding with every stomp of his foot, he caught her as they both plowed into Room 502.

They stopped.

Brady slowed his breathing to match the flapping plastic, once adhered to the open window frames, but torn from wind and age. Fragments of window glass littered the ground, mixed with coppery bits of broken beer bottles. Kara’s feet crunched softly, reverently, making her way across the wall, cracked with age and vandalism, to the—

“Look!” She shook the loose brick, pulled it out easily. She thrust a hand in—

“Kara, no!” he warned, but her eyes widened as she pulled out a fistful of cash.

“It’s here,” she whispered.

Twenty-thousand dollars. The notebook wasn’t lying.

Brady turned toward the open window. “This is where it happened,” he whispered.

“The nurse who committed suicide?”

“Two,” he corrected. “One by hanging. The other, jumping out of this window. Five years apart, both for the same reason.” Reciting facts calmed him. “According to reports, after caring for patients, on March 2, 1923, the first nurse contracted consumption, and she—” A child's ball rolled from the corner of the room, stopping at Brady’s feet. He gulped air, squinted at the darkness, but the sliver of the moon hid what he was sure to be the ghost of a boy. “Come away from the window,” Brady said.

“That was just the wind.”

“Come away!” he shouted. “Now!”

Slowly, she walked toward him. “Hey,” she said soothingly, her slender fingers caressing his shaking shoulders. “'Fraidy Brady,” she whispered. “It's not real. None of it's real. Just energy.” She reached again for the button of his jeans. “Let's make our own energy here.”

“There's glass.”

“Who said anything about lying down?” And just like that, she could disarm him. He relented, his tense shoulders slackening before he parenthesized her face with his hands.

“Show me the view,” he murmured. She flashed her most seductive smile as she took him to the window's edge, tall enough to be a doorway, wide enough to allow the wind to whip through and —

“See?” she said, interlocking fingers. “It's enough to do that” — she motioned to the ball rolling between piles of glass — “It’s just the wind.” The ball moved hypnotically, a circular pendulum to calm his anxiety. He turned to the view, taking in the dark outlines of the Kentucky treetops, black cauliflower clouds. She wedged herself between him and the window, facing him, her heels against the edge, daring him to trust her, to fight his fear of heights and dark places. Moonlight formed a halo around the edges of her dark hair, reminding him of her unquenchable beauty. His hand caressed her pale neck downward to a breast. She threw her head back, eyes closed as he moved to the other breast. She moaned as he found the direct spot between the two, tracing her sternum with the delicacy of one finger before extending his hand so his whole palm rested there. “Mmm,” she cooed.

With a swift push and great force, he shoved her backwards, and she actually lifted up before soaring out through the window frame. Her eyes, wide as he’d ever seen them, looked confused, not betrayed, before she began her downward descent. She didn't scream, which Brady attributed to her fearless nature rather than her not having enough time for horror to set in. He heard a soft, padded thud below.

His knees weakened and gave out, and he fell onto a carpet of glass both cushioning and cutting his landing. Kara was everything to him, and he was immediately racked with sobs. Dr. Wittemore in his article, Stages of Grief, writes that one first experiences shock or denial before grief sets in. Well, Dr. Wittemore had obviously not loved someone with the passion that Brady had for Kara, once again proving the medical community below his genius. He shook and shook, cried out at the universe for this atrocity, cursed Dr. Wittemore for not adequately preparing him for this moment. Through tears, he crawled out on his stomach, elbow by elbow, his legs limp, to hang his neck over the window sill, wishing it were a guillotine to cut off his head, relieve his grief. He looked down. She was shadowed, but he could still make out her shape, arms splayed and ready to make snow angels.

He couldn't believe he actually did something so spontaneous, unplanned, reckless. Kara would’ve been impressed. “Well played, ‘fraidy Brady,” he could picture her saying.

But there was nothing unplanned. He knew the knot hole of the tree she always grazed her fingers across as she walked to her house. Knew how she loved mystery shows, hunted for treasure on those online sites. It was easy to withdraw the cash, open the fence with a pair of pliers, leave a clue in a little black notebook. The coffee stain was a nice touch.

Kara was too much life, the kind that suffocated your own and made you lose equilibrium. At first she was the dreams to his reality, the fun to his practicality. But there was too much. He winced when he recalled the lunches on his car. Spontaneous gestures of love. These were dangerous. Too much is never a good thing.

But he would still protect her honor. He wouldn't dare taint her name by letting everyone know she deserved it. No, he loved her, and love protects. She’d want it to be a suicide, he was sure of that. Kara had always chosen her fate. Why would this be any different? How horrible would it be if the world thought she accidentally fell? If her final act on earth was a blunder? She was spontaneous, but she wasn't stupid. He would never have dated her if she were stupid.

He looked down from the window one last time. She was beautiful, and though he could only make out her outline, he was impressed that she could still arouse him against the glass-strewn concrete underneath him. He would miss the sex. No one would ever satisfy him the way Kara and her wicked lust for life did. But quantity could satisfy lack of quality, and he knew his good looks would bring more to him.

He stood like a deer learning to walk, and in a way, it was like that. New life from death. He wiped the glass from his shirt and pants, a tiny shard lodging into his thumb. He sucked it out while he retrieved the cash, then sighed. He felt okay. He wasn't quite ready to host a party, but he felt peace amidst his suffering. He spit the dislodged piece of glass out of his mouth, mixed with blood, and ran down, two steps at a time, as quickly as his feet could carry him to get help. He didn't go back through the god-awful tunnel of death, but rather out the front entrance and towards the fence. He leapt over his dead girlfriend's body with exuberance, not looking down once. She wouldn't want to be remembered that way, and he’d always been faithful to Kara. Surely he could offer this one last selfless act. She would be so proud.