Lovers From Beyond Ep. 09

"What is happening now?" Julie asked.

Wellman was smiling. "The curse is about to be broken, Julie. We're all about to be released from this place. We're all about to go free, to wherever it is that we go next."

"But I didn't sense anything!" Julie countered.

"That's because you were busy, getting busy." The plump secretary chimed in.

"It's happening!" A new voice called out. "I can feel it happening right now!"

"I thought I would be here forever." Julie mentioned. To Bill, it almost sounded as if she was disappointed. "I can feel something happening to me!"

Bill felt his body being turned aside, and Julie went up on her tiptoes to kiss him. He kissed her, feeling her arms reach around his nude frame to grasp him fiercely, as if she refused to let him go.

Then, abruptly, Bill's reality shifted, distorted like a TV with a bad signal. Julie's sweet lips were on his, and a moment later they were gone. His arms that were formerly holding her tight against him now held nothing.

Bill turned toward where Doctor Wellman and the others had been standing, but they were gone, too. A sharp pain cried out in Bill's head. He felt as if somebody had put his head in a vise and was pressing it flat. A second after that, his stomach revolted. Bill clutched at it. The light from the windows darkened into blackness, and a lurch of vertigo made him feel as if the world had gone into a tumbler. Bill closed his eyes, but that wasn't enough to quell the commotion within and without his body.

Moments later, Bill dropped to the floor, unconscious.

"Bill!" Hank's strong voice cried out. "Bill!"

The beam from a sturdy flashlight poked in through a large hole in a door, where an opaque piece of glass was once mounted. The beam scanned across the wide room, exposing litter and a few old pieces of furniture. Finally, the light settled on a prone form lying way back and near the farthest wall.

"Bill!" Hank shouted one last time, using his free hand to reach through the open space to fumble with the door lock. "The lock is jammed!"

If you knew about Hank's proclivity to being a showman, you might find yourself questioning the sincerity of this last statement. Hank moved back suddenly, accidentally bumping into the cameraman, who'd been standing directly behind him.

"I'm kicking the fucking door open!" Hank shouted.

"You're on tape." Buttons informed him.

"Fuck the tape." Hank said, dramatically. "Bill's in there and I think he's hurt!"

Hank slammed his heavy, steel-toed shoe right under the doorknob, splintering wood and wrenching the cheap metal latch apart. With the strong shoulder of a former college football player, Hank shoved the door open and hurried through the room.

Buttons and the camera followed close behind.

"Bill!" Hank yelled one last time, before the cameraman focused in on their missing crewmember.

Curiously, their buddy lay there naked and not moving in that dark, decrepit room.

Hank crouched and checked the prone man's wrist. "He's still got a pulse." Next, he leaned in close to Bill's nostrils. "He's still breathing."

Vaguely recalling some high school medical class, Hank sat the unconscious man up. This kept Bill's head lifted aloft, and hopefully it also cleared his airwaves. Lightly, Hank began slapping at Bill's face.

"Bill, can you hear me?" Hank spoke out, extra loud for the camera's mike. "Bill, it's me, Hank! Can you hear me?"

Bill groaned.

"Don't say a word, Bill." Hank warned. "Just concentrate on getting your thoughts cleared up while we get you out of here. We'll have plenty of time to figure out what happened once we get the hell out of this place!"

Hank used his considerable strength to lift Bill into a standing position. In a clumsy fashion, both men staggered toward the door.

"I can't wait for you to explain what happened to your clothes." Hank shook his head, before he looked directly at the camera and gave it his hunky smile. "Normally, I wouldn't be caught within a mile of a naked man."

Buttons backtracked as they moved along, and expertly, quietly, he put an extra bright spotlight on the two men's faces.

It was a cue for Hank to start talking, and Hank took it. "Well, we have now found our missing technician, Bill. He was assigned to set up some thermal imaging devices, and to scan this end of the hospital with an EMF meter. We lost track of him with everything that was going on earlier. We found Bill knocked out, way up on the third floor, when he was supposed to be down on the first level. What happened to your clothes, Bill? What happened to you?"

By this time, Bill had wised up to what was going on. The show must go on and all that, right? "I don't know. I can't remember a thing."

"I'm sure some of it will come back to you, once we get you out of this crazy place." Hank nodded, before he turned back to the camera. "What a spectacular night we had here at the Dead Valley Hospital. We recorded some really spooky sounds and we got chased around the hospital by phantoms. Later, we found the site of an ancient demonic ritual, and we demolished it. We even thought we'd lost one of our crew! Whoo! That's what I'm talking about!"

Still woozy, Bill was just realizing that he'd been keeping his right hand clenched. The reason for that, he quickly understood, was because he had something in it. It felt like a piece of cloth. Bill wondered if he'd been savvy enough to latch onto an article of his clothing before he'd fallen unconscious. Perhaps he was holding onto his crumpled up boxers, he imagined. He grinned as he thought of Buttons filming Bill as he brought up the underwear to scrutinize it, if in fact that's what he was holding. It wouldn't ruin the take, he knew, since Hank was busy helping him down the stairs, and wasn't speaking at the moment.

Bill brought his hand up near his chest, discovering that he was not holding his boxers, as he'd first suspected. Instead, it was a nurse's cap. The item was fairly clean and in pretty good condition. Bill guessed it to be from the late sixties, and that once it had belonged to a certain, forty-five year old redhead he'd recently had the pleasure of bumping into. Or instead, had that been an eighty-five year old redhead?

The phrase made Bill chuckle, 'bumping into.' He'd bumped into her all right, and man, wouldn't he like to bump into her one more time.

He laughed out loud this time, briefly shocking Hank because the man hadn't been expecting it. Bill laughed like a man in dire need of an exorcist. Or better yet, he laughed like a patient who hadn't gotten his medication on time would have, in a mental institution like the Homestead Valley Hospital, back when the place was still open. He laughed like, well, you guessed it already...

Like a loon!