Sedentary Silence: Hopefield Point Novella, #1

Prologue

The Asylum,

Hopefield Point.

H arper......

As always, the voice came into her ear, a soft, whispery tone of pure menace and hate. It was a tone which described the utter terror that was behind those that spoke that set of words. It was the tone of her worst nightmares and fears, and the worst part of her reality given form, the soft voice that sung the song of madness, and the song of demise that the blackness buried deep inside of her used to talk to her.

"Harper....."

Never had she thought that she would be ever stuck in such a situation that she could hardly do anything about it. Never had she thought that she would ever be stuck in a situation that for her, there was no way out, and never had she thought that what had happened to her would ever actually occur. It was a nightmare, a nightmare that she had when she was young, a nightmare which always made her cry in the middle of the night, screaming for her mother so loud that the entire neighborhood would ask in concern over what had happened to her. But had she thought more about it, it would eerily be like as if she was having a vision of the future, which she clearly wasn’t.

In those nightmares she always died. Here, she didn’t. Here she lived, here she breathed, and here she walked, talked, ate, drank and slept. And that is why she hated this reality, in comparison to the nightmare for in the nightmare, when the eventual end would come, the voices would end, and all there would be to her would be the cold embrace of death. But here?

"Harper....." The voices would be loud and clear, calling her out, urging her to listen to her, urging her to listen to what they were saying, and urging her to follow them. And as every single day, she would listen to them, she would fall for the same trap again and again, knowing that there was something behind that voice that made her do all that she did. It was bad, it was evil, it was horrendous.

But it felt right.

"Harper.........." Her eyes opened up, dark and dreary with sleep and fatigue, bloodshot and red, looking as if she had just been possessed by Satan himself.

How close to the truth that was.

It would always start with the names, it would always, always be the soft, silky, menacingly seductive voice that would keep on calling out her name and it would always be the voice that would make her interested in whatever it was saying. At first it would be beautiful, and it would be something she thought would actually be real one day. But then the deaths would start, rivers of blood and bodies flowing through every single step she took, and her flesh burning as if her blood was on fire.

But this time, she had expected it. She knew what those voices entailed, and she knew what was coming. She had seen enough of the nightmare to know what was happening and what was about to happen, she had seen enough of heart shaking, terror inducing nightmares to know that it would always end up with her sweating more than she had on a hot summer’s afternoon with no source of cold, and more terrified then when there would be a lightning storm on an already spooky night. Combined with the torn down and rather abused walls of the asylum, she could easily predict what nightmare she was going to get. But this time she had woken up before it could start, and before her screams would start.

As usual the first thing she did was look over to the side, right across from her bed where her roommate slept in. Just like her bed, it was a Hospital bed, but not the modern one with the cool, new functions. Oh no, this bed was as if it was vintage, taken right from a mansion of the 18 th century if beds even existed during that time. And it had the feeling that someone had been killed brutally while sleeping on them, perhaps that is why it made her feel better. The thought that at least someone had found peace from this downright unfair brutal hell that was life on the very bed on which they slept at made her feel as if she herself would find some peace when her head hit the pillow.

But not for her. Everyone else would snore, sleep more deeper than they ever had, not wake up till the wee hours of the morning when the guards of the asylum would wake them up from their morning breakfasts. Oh no, for her, every single time her head hit the pillow, the voices would start, and the nightmares would continue, ruining sleep for her completely, and at times for Kelsey, her roommate.

But not this time. This time she was sleeping, snoring even. Kelsey didn’t even wake up when she moved on her squeaky, vintage bed, not even appearing bothered. For a moment Harper was very, very jealous of her.

‘How can she sleep like that?’ Harper wondered, as she looked at Kelsey for a few wondrous seconds before her attention turned elsewhere, like the presence that was slowly seeping into the room. At first, it was like the voice, soft, comforting, beautiful, addictive, but as time passed did Harper feel the truth behind the presence. Only as time passed did she feel the real reason why she was feeling the presence, the presence that basically dictated her doom, or would dictate her doom.

She looked around their room, looking at every single nook and cranny. The lights outside were rotating, keeping an eye out on the entire asylum, and the room in which she slept in was in the uppermost, easternmost part of the asylum, touching the high beams of lights, literally. Just looking outside at the night would make one feel as if the sun had decided to rise right from under their window, shining the bright light inside of their room. But not warm, it was anything but warm. As her room was made in such a way, it would mean that light would shine through their window all night, illuminating their room with unwanted light even with blinders pulled open.

And then it began.

It was the sound of creaking that made her realize that this ‘presence’ was much more than a figment of her demented brain’s imagination. It was the sound of a door opening, loud and clear in the night that made her look at the door. Her heart was thumping and hammering in her chest, a sign of something that was wrong, and Harper had only one thought running through her head.

‘Oh shut up heart, I know something is wrong, I can bloody feel it in my bones! Stop hammering so much or whatever it is will come to us.’ She would think, hoping it would calm her heart down. But it was of no use. The voice only increased, sounding as if multiple doors were being opened at the same time. She noticed that their own door was one of them, and that surprised Harper.

As long as she remembered, in this Asylum, all inmates were locked in. For whatever reason it may be, they would be pushed in rooms willingly or unwillingly with or without partners and roommates and locked inside. Guards would patrol all night long to see and make sure no one got out of their rooms, and that is how the massive, big locks had started to go on their doors, trapping them in their rooms. At least they had bathrooms inside or it would have been a troublesome situation.

But that was not what she was worried about. At first it was the sound of every single door opening that made her wonder if hell had really frozen over for there was no way the guards were going to open all the rooms. But no, that wasn’t what worried her anymore.

As a room must have a door, so did their room. And the said door also had a doorknob. It was a round doorknob that would open when they twisted it to the right, and it would lock up when twisted towards the left. But what she was looking at currently...... was not their usual doorknob.

Their doorknob was made of metal, rusted, chipping metal, definitely not having ice on the surface. What she was looking had was actually freezing over with actual, thick ice appearing over the doorknob. Accompanied by the creepy sound of freezing ice that would usually be heard before the main character of any horror story went tumbling into the freezing river below, pulled down by dark hands into the clutches of whatever sinister and demented lurked in the deeps. But this time it was accompanied with the frost and ice forming on her doorknob.

And with a strange, black tint to it as well.

Oh she had read about ‘Black Ice’, or cursed Ice. In Fantasy it only appeared as a weapon used by those that had a black heart and nothing to lose, but she was not someone with a black heart. It was much more complicated than that. And this was not Black Ice. It was frost, not even Ice, now that Harper noticed it, frost forming on the doorknob, just being so cold it looked like thick Ice that formed when lakes froze over.

And the said frost had a strange, black colored thick tarry liquid over it. From the bed it looked as if she was looking at the blood of some alien, or some creature that shouldn’t have existed in real life. But she knew that the blood didn’t belong to an alien. It was no normal tar either, nor normal human blood. It was the source of the evil residing deep inside of her heart. Strange that she knew what it was but never had seen it before today.

‘What....’ Harper thought as she stared at the doorknob. She knew that what she was thinking wasn’t right, that she should simply jump on her bed and go to sleep, buried inside of her thin blanket and never think about this happening ever again. But no, her courage had to choose this very moment to rise up. ‘This is..... this is so wrong......’

And for once she hated herself as she accepted the rising courage within her’s call to arms, as she slipped her feet into her sandals, and got up. The first thing that went through her mind was ‘light’, and her hand shot out for her cellphone.

They were in an Asylum, there was obviously no coverage inside. But that was not the reason why she kept a cellphone. It was the torch that came attached to it that the phone became the most useful. The pure light that the beam shot out was brighter than the lights in the hallway, and it would be the source for her to walk on, and would illuminate the way her feet would take. The camera was an added benefit, so if she died, or if anything happened to her people would find her phone and know what had happened to her.

That would leave a simple chance, a hope of someone actually finding her. And with that thought Harper looked back at Kelsey to see if she was still sleeping or was she awake. But a simple snore answered her unasked question. Kelsey was sleeping, like a log, sprawled on her bed with her legs dangling over the side of her bed, outside of the blanket. Think of the cold feet that she must have had in the morning, Harper could never, ever sleep with a part of her body outside of her blanket, it was almost blasphemous to her.

But it wasn’t that blasphemy that concerned her. Knowing she didn’t have support, she firmed herself and looked at the open door, wondering if she should do this or not. Eventually she walked closer to the open door, and peered over the side, looking around for the source and reason why every single door of the Asylum’s inmates had just opened up. Perhaps there was a surprise check? Or someone was playing a prank? She wouldn’t know until she looked now, would she?

And it was a mistake as she could literally