The Angels Fell - Halloween Scary Story

"No, it's just illegal," he answered.

"Liar."

"No, really. It's illegal," he said.

"Shut up," she laughed. "Come on. It'll be a rush."

"What..."

A tall guy in glasses walked into the room.

"You're late, Den," The football behemoth named Mike said. Mike stood up.

"Ok, are we all ready for this?" he said. "Nobody's been inside Cliffside for 40 years."

Cliffside was the abandoned mental institution that stood, like a titan, a mile away from the University. Cliffside Mental Hospital was where they were planning to break into tonight. They all had their jobs in this sadistic play. Mike was the one who had come up with the idea. Dennis was the one with the camcorder. Brian was the lookout. Mia was the amateur journalist. She was going to break the story. Jennifer was... well, Jennifer was just a thrill-seeker.

Fifteen minutes later, they were at the front gate of Cliffside. The bricks were blackened with dirt. Vines crawled their way up the sides of the building. It seemed to glare at them from its eternal resting place.

"Well, over the fence everyone," Mike said.

Once they were over the gate, Mike stepped up to the door, it seemed to be one of the few places not infested with vines. In fact, the door look strangely untouched, jet black double doors with silver handles, not a scratch on them. Mike handed out the flashlights.

It was Brian's job to call Mike, if anyone showed up snooping around outside. Mike called Jennifer. Jennifer called Mia. Mia called Dennis and they all met up and left. That was the plan. Brian had agreed to come only under the circumstances that he didn't go inside.

"Ok, let's get moving." Mike seemed to have a note of fear in his voice, and that was not something people heard from Mike Rudley. Mike reached to the handle, moving slowly. He grabbed it and...

"It's locked," he said.

"How do we get in?" Mia said.

"Relax... Den?" Dennis took out a small plastic box with two silver oddly-shaped rods in it.

"You have lock-picking set?" Jennifer asked.

"Yep, best on the market," he answered.

"Where'd you pick that up?" Brian asked him.

"eBay," he answered simply. Brian felt the urge to laugh, but couldn't seem to get it out. It had suddenly gotten a lot colder. There was a click and Dennis pulled the door open. Brian looked inside and was suddenly very glad that he had opted to stay outside. The doorway opened a view to a rotting staircase, behind a lobby desk. There was almost no light in here. They all switched on their lights at once.

They stepped in. Mike shined his light to his immediate right. The wall had a message scrawled in a dark reddish-brown substance that looked alarmingly like dried blood that read: "One by One, the angels fell, their room was surely marked in Hell."

"Everybody still in?" Mike said in a voice that was barely a whisper.

"You kids have fun," Brian said.

Dennis's camcorder came on with a whirring sound.

They all walked slowly up the stairs. A creak came from the darkness. Jennifer screamed. Mia and Jennifer immediately began to giggle and laugh.

"Shh...." from Dennis.

"Do we go left or right?" Mike asked. They were at the landing between the first two floors.

"Left," Dennis said immediately.

"Why?" Jen asked.

"That's the shock therapy ward," he said.

"You're kind of a sick guy, aren't you Den?" Mia asked.

So, they went left up the stairs, then down a hallway. Near the middle of the hallway was an empty rusted wheelchair turned on its side.

"Woah, I..." Dennis started but the words were trapped in his throat.

"It's just a wheelchair. It's nothing," Mike whispered.

They kept walking. The open rooms gave a full view of the windows that were covered in vines and ivy. In some rooms, light was completely gone from them, in most of them only small openings gave way to light. At the end of the hall, there were a pair of doors leading into a white-tiled room, with a bed sitting in the center. A table sat next to the bed with something that looked like a motor with wires leading to steel prongs. There was dried blood on the prongs and the bed.

"Oh my..." Jennifer said, her voice strangely high-pitched.

"What happened here?" Mike said.

"That's why this place was closed down," Dennis said. "Too many people were dying from unsafe practices. Most of the people died right here, in the electro-shock therapy room." He probably meant to sound like he was rattling off statistics like he usually did, but his voice cracked and broke in terror now.

Outside, Brian had lit up a cigarette and was staring at the moon. He had made a point to stand at the gate instead of the doorway. A car was coming slowly down the road. A squad car. The officers inside had flashlights shining onto the building and into the yard.

"Oh, no," he whispered.

He took out his cell phone, it was dead.

"Oh, no." He held the phone up in the air, still nothing. He knew what he was going to have to do. He sprinted into the house, and looked to the message on his right. He read it out loud.

"One by One, the angels fell, their room was surely marked in Hell." Behind him, the front doors slammed shut.

"Oh, no."

Upstairs, in the shock therapy room, the fluorescent lights flicked on. Mia and Jennifer ran from the room. Dennis turned to run, but ran into Mike who stood like a wall. Mike was staring at the bed. Dennis turned around to look and saw it.

A bald man in a torn and tattered gray medical scrubs stood at the bedside. Where the man's eyes should have been were empty holes that seemed to hold Mike in place. Dennis got up and ran screaming from the room.

Mike still stared. The man was suddenly at Mike's side. Now, he was holding Mike down on the table. Now, Mike was strapped in and trapped. Finally, Mike screamed.

Outside of the room, Dennis was sprinting but came to a wall that hadn't been there before. He ran instead into a room, knowing that he could not stop. There were no vines on these windows, but there were bars over them. He realized that all the windows would have been barred. Dennis went back to the door. But, it slammed shut before he could get there. A deep, loud voice full of rage roared at him.
"NOOOO!!!! YOUR ROOM IS HERE!"

He screamed and fell to the floor crawling back into a corner, now in tears. A shadow began to form in the corner opposite him. It grew and grew, until it had engulfed the entire room. The windows were covered again. A large figure rose against the darkness. A beast, slouched over. He couldn't see it clearly. He couldn't speak. The dark figure fell on him.

Brian stared at the doors that had closed. He ran to them but, they were locked again. He turned around and ran up the stairs. He ran left towards the end of the hall. A woman stepped out of one of the side rooms. She had wiry black hair and a snow white face. She was draped in a white hospital gown that moved as if there was wind, though Brian felt none. She screamed at him, an ear-splitting banshee wail. Then, she sprinted straight at him, a bloodthirsty scowl across her face.

He turned back and tripped on the stairs. His head hit the stairs on the first flip, then he rolled again hit the landing. Before everything went to blackness, he heard a shrieking laughter and saw the gowned figure at the top of the stairs, now with a skull-face pointing at him and laughing. The blood flowing from his head warmed his cheek for a moment and then he simply faded away.

Mia ran down the hall and was now in a twisting maze of halls and rooms that seemed to never end. Each room she passed was fully lighted. There were people in them staring out at her.

"You can't leave," they chanted at her. "You can't leave." "You can never leave."

She found an empty office at the end of a hall. The windows weren't barred. She ran to the window. There was an army of spiders crawling around the base of the window. She fell back. She took a notebook from the table and tried brush them aside, but they landed from the notebook to her arms. She could feel them biting her arms, and crawling all up her legs and back. Her arms and neck, swarming her, surrounding her, but she was so close to escaping, so close. All of her body began to burn with the venom of millions of spiders, spiders of all different sizes. She fell to the ground. They crawled over her eyes and she could see no more.

Jennifer had run down the halls, and seen so many rooms of people. She felt as if she had run forever, but she turned a corner, and ran into a room. The door slammed behind her, and she pounded on it. She turned around and stared. There was a balcony behind a glass door. She ran to it, but there was no handle on this door. She turned to look around the room.

Behind her, were 3 figures followed by an army of giant spiders. There was a bald doctor with blood soaked metal prongs; a wiry, black-haired woman with a skull-face and a smile of pure malice; and a giant black beast, saliva dripping from its fangs. They were surrounding her. She couldn't move. She was petrified. No, it couldn't end like this. She turned back to the glass door. She took a step back and felt a cold wet hand close on her shoulder. She sprinted forward and leapt at the window.

The window shattered and she tumbled from the second story off the balcony and down to the ground. She had narrowly missed the gate and landed just outside of the Asylum grounds on the grass. A squad car rolled up and a flashlight shined down at her. She was covered in blood from the glass. The cop in the driver's seat, stepped out and looked at her.

"She's alive, call an ambulance," he said. "What happened to you, kid?"

She stared up at him, and wheezed, "One by One, the angels fell, their rooms were surely marked in Hell."