Don't Open That Door - GoM 1

GiB - 8

Rob woke up lying on warm hay, wearing only his jeans with the fly down. He looked around, confused. The barn of the old sawmill? He tried to sort his blurry memories, but he couldn't recall how he'd gotten there. His last clear recollection was Lila. Her soft lips, her sweet breath.

Lila.

There she was, by his side on the hay, sleeping with a little smile on her lips still painted black. Her smell was all over him. It was like lying on a bed of flowers. Rob's lips curled up as he watched her. And he smiled wider when Lila's eyes fluttered open to meet his.

He leaned in to kiss her. Lila threw her arms around him and pulled him closer. Rob kissed her deeper, rolling on top of her. It didn't matter anymore how they'd gotten to the old sawmill. Nothing mattered, but Lila in his arms, her velvet skin, her lips against his, her little hands grasping his waist, her legs escaping the folds of her dress to entangle his. Rob broke the kiss to catch his breath, overwhelmed by an almost painful need. Lila caressed his face.

"Don't stop, Rob," she whispered. "I need you."

Her voice spoke directly to his body, for his hands to roll up her black dress.

At the hospital, the whole night shift helped to search the hospital, trying not to disturb the few patients. But all they found was Old Boe smoking in the bathroom of his room, and one of the orderlies cheating on his wife with a paramedic. No trace of Rob, though.

Claire didn't tell them the boy was long gone, most likely with a dead girl. Over the years, she'd learned her empathy usually upset people. So she let them to their search and sneaked into the security office, where she sat before the two screens to check the footage recorded over the last two hours. Lucky her, the cameras only recorded when their sensors detected movement.

She checked the hospital entrance camera first. Nobody had come in or out after Lou Thompson had left. However, something had activated the camera only thirty minutes earlier. But the screen showed only static. The image was restored after ten whole seconds of it, showing the empty hall for three more seconds before the lack of movement deactivated the camera. Claire replayed the static frame by frame.

"Gotcha," she murmured.

There she was. On the first frame after the static, the glass doors reflected somebody that had just walked in past the camera. A girl wearing a black gothic dress. Claire searched the footage of the hall outside Rob's room. The same static, but longer. Three whole minutes this time. And when the image was restored, Rob's bed was empty.

Back to the entrance footage, she found another interference. Once more, the first frame after the static held the key. She could only see the feet of two people just out the doors, walking away, but that was enough: a pair of small black boots and a pair of bare feet.

She went back to the lobby and joined the others, too worried and frustrated to notice her absence.

"Nothing!" Ollie snarled. "Can you believe it?"