Ghost in the Walls.

[onlynothuman]

Two patients vanished in the wee hours of Friday morning. Later, careful review of the security cameras tells most of the story; Harvey Dent's murder of the orderly, releasing Simon Garoux, escorting him out of the maximum security wing. Simon fleeing him, vanishing into a staff bathroom. -Vanishing-. He didn't reappear until three minutes later,

Comments

[goshdarnniteowl]

He knows he should feel more. He should be horrified, sickened, furious. But all Daniel can summon up, even when he hears about the third death, is numb disappointment. Maybe if he'd seen the bodies, maybe if he'd known them better...

When he hears a scratching behind the walls, on his rounds that afternoon, he taps at it. Taptap.

[onlynothuman]

The response is a very silent silence, the silence of a young man holding his breath inside a wall.

[goshdarnniteowl]

Equal silence on the other side. The silence of a slightly less young man listening.

And then a sigh. And footsteps, fading.

[onlynothuman]

Simon follow the footsteps, silent, as far as he can until a wall or a doorway blocks him.

Silent except for once, his cast just barely scraping through between two pipes.

[hopeyrhappytoo]

Alex is not very happy about the escapes. Much less so about the murders. The bodies. The missing whatnot and etcetra. Those bits are more than a little disturbing to her.

So she spends most of her day making sure the rest of the patients are all right, for a relative definition of such. Making sure, in a round about way, that no one else has escaped.

But, eventually, she'll find herself in a therapy room. Alone and reading file. Eddie's, Harvey's, Simon's.

But...is that scratching at the walls? In the walls?

[onlynothuman]

It's not an on-purpose scratching. It's the sound of a trying-very-hard-to-be-silent young man trying to pull himself from under the floor up into the wall, around two water pipes and the duct for the central vacuuming.

[hopeyrhappytoo]

On-purpose scratching, not on-purpose scratching. Either way, Alex is thinking the place has rats now or something. And it very well might.

She'll press her ear against the wall and listen.

[onlynothuman]

His hand is only a few inches away from her head, really, on the opposite side of the gray wall, holding onto a joist. He swears quietly as a sticking-out nail tears his stolen pants and scratches his leg.

"ow, fuck..." Damn cheap construction.