Page 45 of Scaredy Cat
“I do.” The answer surprises me, and the woman grins. “You didn’t think I would,” she assumes, causing me to shrug my shoulders helplessly. She’s not wrong after all. “You think I wouldn’t work here if I thought this place was haunted.”
“Something like that.”
The woman grins, leading me into a small outbuilding and down a flight of concrete stairs. “I used to not believe. When I started, I was sure the stories about this place were just that, stories. I thought people ran wild with the facts and that the sanitarium was an easy target for making the occult seem real.”
She pushes the door open, and waits for me to go into a small supply room. While the appliances and lighting are up to date, I can’t help noticing how the floor and walls look just as old as the hospital itself.
“This is the maintenance building. It’s the only place on the premises with working bathrooms and power.” Heated air greets me the second we step into the larger room filled with long tables that remind me of something from a school cafeteria. Sure enough, a handful of other people are sitting at the tables, and I recognize a few of them as having platforms a lot like mine, with their own original spin on things.
One pair, at least, is from a group of ghost hunters I like much more thanSquad Ghouls,even though we’ve never met.
“Maybe tonight will change your mind,” the woman suggests. “Or it won’t. It’s all the same to me in the end. But you’ll be amazed at what your brain conjures up in the darkness inside. Trust me, you’ve never been in darkness like what’s in there with no power and no windows in some of those rooms.”
A shiver goes up my spine at her words, but before I can reply, she walks off to talk to another woman wearing an employee shirt, clearly done with our conversation as the two of them immediately start talking like they’d been in the middle of something. It leaves me hovering, feeling a little bit awkward about being in a room of other creators.
Before this week, I would’ve been more confident in putting on my Scaredy Cat persona and walking right up to them, with a fake smile on my face and conversation easy on my lips. But now, every person I look at seems like they might be friendswithSquad Ghouls,or like they follow Miscreant Manor’s social media pages enough to recognize me from the stupid post.
It’s a testament to how nervous I am that I stand there, drawing attention to myself, as my fingers tug on the hem of my hoodie instead of at least sitting down and making myself look busy.
A hand going up draws my attention, and when I look over at a group of four people, the man who’s got his arm raised meets my eyes with a smile. He gestures me over, and I take the invitation with a silent prayer that this doesn’t turn into something negative.
“Hey there,” he greets, a light, almost faded accent tinging his words. It’s light enough that I can’t quite tell what country it’s from, and I guess he’s been here a while for it to be this faint. “You’reScaredy Cat, right?”
I force myself to smile and sit at the table as well, placing my phone and flashlight on the table. One member of the group has an actual camera, and as I watch, she fiddles with the lenses strewn out in front of her.
“Yeah. You’re, uh…” I look between them, scanning my memory. “Zack Lawrence, yeah? You broke off fromSpook Squadwhat, four years ago now?”
His smile widens. “I didn’t think you’d know me. I don’t do quite as well as I used to now that I’m off on my own.”
“I like your content more now,” I counter, and my gaze sweeps over the table. I recognize one of the girls from a channel that’s existed as long as mine, though I’ve only watched a few of her urban legend and true-crime videos. She gives me an amicable grin as the man beside her leans forward on his elbows to survey my face.
“Seems you’re the flavor of the week after that livestream,” the guy I don’t know remarks. There’s a curious gleam in hiseyes rather than a malicious one, but I feel myself withdrawing anyway. “Unfortunately, not the flavor everyone wants.”
“Hey.” Zack’s warning tone cuts through the air and he raises his brows. “Don’t make me tell her about last year.Youwere certainly everyone’s least favorite flavor of the week after what you said live at that concert.”
The man grimaces and leans back. “I wasn’t being nasty,” he mumbles. “I was just being conversational.”
“You’re not interesting enough to be conversational,” the girl with the lenses mumbles. She looks up at me, giving me another quick smile. “Seriously, it’ll fade. If him being caught with his pants down, literally, faded after a few months, then you’ll be fine.”
“I didn’t even do anything,” I point out, breaking my rule about not letting myself get drawn into a conversation about this. I successfully fended off talking to Brynn and Mads about it whenever they broached the subject, but something feels different about opening up to this small group of content creators who have had similar things happen to them. “Miscreant Manor just likes to use me for advertising, since I won’t go to their haunt.Squad Ghoulsis…”
“Immature,” Zack supplies. “They’re a bunch of kids whose target audience is kids. They’re immature, and they always start shit. They’re not worth your time…you have a real name, don’t you? Feels weird to actually address you asScaredy Cat.”
My shoulders relax just a little bit more, and I unthaw around this group of strangers enough to say easily, “It’s Persephone. No joke, my mother was in her mythology phase when she named me. But I just go by Persy.”
“Any siblings?” the woman not messing with her camera asks.
“I do. A younger brother. But she was no longer fascinated with mythology by the time she had him, and our dad neverwould’ve let her name a boy something ‘weird.’” I grew up hearing my dad complain about my name, about how people would think my parents werehippiesorworse.When he said it with a shudder, I got the idea that there was nothing worse in this world than being a hippie.
Well, until I became a content creator and he discovered a new great evil in the world.
“Have you thought about just going to the manor? Just once?” The guy who brought it up in the first place eyes me expectantly, his light grey gaze making him look a little feverish and way too intense. “Not because you want to. Not because it’ll befun.”He makes a face. “But if you go, they can’t keep using you in their content. Their interest in you would die off.”
He…makes an excellent point. One I never really thought about before. If I give in and go, as long as I don’t do anything stupid like actually appear scared, then won’t they just get over themselves and find someone new to harass? While I don’t have any desire to go to a haunt that gets off on scaring people by actually hurting them or horrifying them to the point of someone needing to go to the ER for a panic attack, I also have confidence in myself to not bethatperson.
That, or I’m just arrogant, which is always a possibility.
The two women who work here make their way to the front of the room, and for the next ten minutes we go over all the same things that were in the emails we were sent. Photography and video are fine. No taking anything, obviously. No destruction of property, and no throwing ourselves off the roof. For tonight, all areas of the sanitarium are available to us, including the roof, the morgue, and the infamous body chute that goes to the bottom of the hill.
