Witness and Worship | An Outlast Document

Chapter Five ❖ Getaways

We continue down the hall and away from the necrophiliac and his friends. Even the word makes me shudder, but I struggle to push it out of my mind. There are far more pressing things to worry about right now, and one of those is making sure my limbs are still attached to the rest of me by the time we get out of here. Something which seems to be increasingly unlikely as the night draws on.

"Hey!" someone hisses, and there's the rattle of a gate. "Hey! You - oh... I..."

Miles whips around, the camera already raised, but I can already hear whoever it is is running away. "Jesus, he thought we were a couple of patients," he whispers.

I watch him for a moment. "We really look that bad?"

He turns to look at me, shrugging. "We don't exactly look brilliant, I'll tell you that. I'm beat to all hell and you're covered in blood, we're scared shitless and probably look absolutely nuts."

I reach up and self consciously attempt to scrub away some of the blood from my face, but it's already dried. No use trying to clean myself until we find a sink.

Miles leads us toward the lit path. Stick to those areas instead of wasting precious battery life. There's another body spread-eagled on the floor, and though I hate to admit it, I'm already beginning to feel desensitized to the death in this place. Miles must find something, though, because he stoops to pick something up and pockets it.

"A battery," he says. "Like gold in here."

Batteries and bodies, the currency of the asylum.

The only way forward is through one of the cells, where the door has been left wide open. I'm not sure if it's been deliberately left open or if someone broke out, but I'm struggling to muster up the willpower to care about details like that.

We find ourselves standing at the edge of the floor above the previous inmates we encountered. They're still caught up in their own little worlds, still battering their brains out on concrete pillars, still waiting for their inevitable deaths. Now that they're no longer an immediate threat, watching them is almost miserable.

"I hope you have good balance," Miles murmurs. "We're going to have to use that ledge."

I follow his gaze to the edge of the floor, maybe fourteen inches wide, crumbling concrete all that remains. Way to go on the routine maintenance, Murkoff.

Miles begins edging his way across, then beckons for me to follow. I'm not hugely scared of heights, but I've been shivering ever since we got in here and the thought of slipping and falling onto the floor below isn't high on my bucket list. But it's the only way out of here, so I push aside my reservations and step gingerly onto the ledge. With my back pressed as firmly against the wall as I can manage, I slink across, focusing on my footing rather than the inmates below.

Miles grabs the sleeve of my coat to steady me as I reach the other side. "See? That wasn't so bad, was it?"

I'm about to reply when the gate behind him rattles, startling me. An inmate shakes the bars like an animal trapped in a cage, but he's smiling pleasantly.

"You, ah, didn't wait until I finished," he says. "But I saved some for you. Just wait." He nods enthusiastically, then skips down the stairs to the lower floor like an excited schoolboy. "Just wait... mm! Hmm!"

Miles watches after him for a second and turns to me with a perplexed look. "Nice of him."

The open hall behind us is the only way forward, and - joy of joys - the lights have completely failed. I'm not sure if it's a genuine power outage, a failed circuit somewhere, or Murkoff not keeping up on routine maintenance. But either way, I hate it.