Haunted {Calum // 5SOS au}

{ ten }

"So is this like time travel?" Michael asked after his friends filled him in on what they had discovered while they were among the patients.

Calum shook his head. "I don't think so. I've heard the voice of Sarah, the woman I talked to, in the real world. I'm pretty sure the patients here are all dead."

Michael lifted a single eyebrow, giving Calum a strange look. How could the patients be dead? They seemed incredibly real to him.

"Or stuck," Riley added. "I saw someone who used to have their lip pierced. I'm pretty sure that's not something that happened in the 1940's."

Her revelation only seemed to confuse Michael more, and it was evident that his mind was working a mile a minute, trying to make sense of all the information he'd been presented with during their conversation.

"It looks like we're in the 1940's, but I don't think we actually are." Calum said as he noticed how his best friend was struggling to understand it all. He wasn't sure if what he was about to say was the truth, but it definitely seemed plausible to him. What other explanation could there be?

"The ghosts are manifesting themselves in the place they used to live in. Sarah mentioned that if you die here, you will never leave. It makes sense, right? If she's dead, she hasn't left. That's why we can see her."

"It does make sense, but what if that also applies to us? It did seem like she was trying to warn us. What if that's what happens when we die in this place?" Riley asked with a grave look on her face as the icy grip of fear crept up her spine.

They could almost see the gears grinding as Michael tried to figure it all out inside his own mind.

"Okay so let me get this straight. We're in a dimension where real life ghosts are stuck in their human form, in the same place they used to live in. Because they died in here, they've never left. And if we die in here or get stuck, we'll never leave either?"

The last part was more of a question than a conclusion. He still wasn't sure he'd understood everything correctly.

Calum and Riley nodded. That was exactly what they thought was going on. Although there was more. They hadn't yet told Michael about the conversation they'd overheard on their way back to him.

"We've also heard patients talk of fears about the experiments that apparently take place here."

"Like the lobotomy I saw?" Michael asked, interrupting Riley as she spoke. "And others I've talked about?"

She nodded briefly before she continued.

"They said they were bad. I think they mean that they're scared of the doctors performing those experiments on them. Maybe they're scared of the pain or losing their minds if they haven't already."

"And one of these patients knew we were listening in. So what if this applies to us, too? What if we get hurt? What if they experiment on us?" Calum asked, his voice trembling slightly as he thought about what it could mean.

Riley thought about what he was saying and she immediately was reminded of the frantic teenager she'd met. Had he been doing the same as they'd been, and been trapped here? Had the doctors done experiments on him when he couldn't escape, and that was the reason he was acting the way he was? She considered it for a moment and decided that she didn't like the outcome one bit.

"That's how you get stuck here," she said, rubbing her arms as the goosebumps spread across her skin. "Their experiments affect the patients' brains so much, that you stop fighting. You stop trying to escape. You know something is wrong, but you can't figure out what it is, and how you can fix it."