Chapter 79
"Your friend still not picking up?” seeing that Jason put his phone back into his pocket in frustration, Tim asked.
"Yeah. Sounds like either her phone died or she’s somewhere with no signal.” Jason shook his head: "Now I am worried about her.”
"Well, at least she won’t have to appear on the stream.” Tim chuckled, then patted on Jason’s back after a short moment of silence: "Sorry Jason.”
"For what?”
"For not agreeing with you.” Tim looked at Branston and Adam, who were walking in front of them and telling the streaming audience about the history of this hospital, "The thing is, I understand your concern - about this not being consistent with our brand and dangerous. It’s just… we need a break, I need a break...”
"I understand. But this is still too dangerous. I actually care more about our safety and less about branding...”
"... just hear me out - you know I’ve been looking into the platform algorithm?” Tim shook his head: "We need a big break - the age of channel slow growth is pretty much over. If our channel still has not caught on a critical mass of viewers and subscribers after one year. The odds of our channel becoming profitable or even self-sustaining will become almost zero. And without a sudden surge of viewers, our channel’s gonna die in the gutter. I mean, if that happened, you can still do good because you are such an amazing animator. But for me - I don’t know if you know about the job market for video editors - it’s gonna be hard. Even in the bay, the job market for video editors is pretty saturated! ”
"I understand. Sorry.”
"Can you tell me what your reservation about this was?” Tim sighed and asked: "You seem very disturbed by the idea of coming here - and you didn’t explain exactly why. This is one of the reasons that I could not agree with you. Now that it’s only us, can you be honest with me?”
"The thing is...” Jason hesitated: "I can’t really get into it too much, but the thing that happened at the Prime Royals Hotel? Not as breezy as Branston and Brian made it out to be. If we didn’t bring over some enchanted item, we’d probably never make it out of there.”
"Holy shit… no wonder you are so spooked… what happened? ”
"Can’t...really explain...” Jason’s internal debate almost caused him to mumble nonsense: "... Okay, I can’t get into it too much, but imagine this: you found yourself in an empty and dark hallway, there is no end to either side...”
"Hey! Jason! Tim! Don’t be so careful! Let’s say hi to our audience!” Branston dragged Adam to Jason and Tim’s side and shoved his hand held camera to their faces: "And gang! Here we are, about to enter the North Wing of the Clearwater Municipal Hospital, and say hi to our new friend Tim, and the old friend who found the body in Prime Royals Hotel: Jason!”
"Hello, Branston Gang, happy to be on the show.” Tim put up a smile and said to the camera, and Jason kinda forced a smile to face the camera as well.
"The time is now! We are going to enter the famed haunted hospital - officially.” Branston swiftly brought the camera to his face and then Adam: "Adam, our dear researcher, tell us about the creepy and unexplained events that happened in this hospital!”
"Alright gang! The first unexplained event that happened in the hospital, was the mysterious mass hysteria in the early 1930s.” Adam started explaining his researched material to the camera: "We actually don’t know the exact time of this happening. In fact, on the official documentations it was never mentioned. The only thing that documented the incident was some old local newspapers, which I found through the city archive. The mass hysteria affected patients, nurses and even a lot of the doctors, which also led to a panic at the hospital.
"And the mass hysteria? Get this: for several days, people saw themselves or people around them differently in the mirrors whenever they were in the hospital. For example, one old lady who was just visiting her son in law in the hospital, said she saw herself with bandages on her arm and her head, just for a brief moment. The other example was a young man in his 20s, he saw that a young woman was standing beside him, holding his arm.
"If this sounded freaky to you, get this: the old woman I just mentioned? She was caught in a car accident a week later and injured her arm and head. And the young man? He met a girl shortly after and went into a relationship. And if you think he’s lucky, you won’t after you heard what happened to him later - about 3 months into the relationship, both the girl and him were burned alive in their apartment.”
"That sounded really bad.” Tim said to Jason.
"Not just bad.” Jason said: "We’ve been investigating what was going on in there, right? If people did alter the official documentations of things that happened. And the bad things did not technically happen IN the hospital, but AROUND the hospital, so your quick and simple research did not tell us anything worrisome.”
"Shit!” Tim frowned and cursed: "This is bad news.”
"... and one of the creepiest testimonies was from a young girl, whose diary got published some time after her untimely death. And she was a patient at the hospital due to a serious pneumonia infection when the mass hysteria happened. As you probably know, here was not much a young girl can do for fun when staying in a hospital - so she brought her diary with her. And in this particular diary, she clearly wrote down what she encountered: she noticed one morning from the reflection from the window by her bed that a figure of someone was curling in a corner of her room.
"She was quite curious about the figure, so she actually tried to communicate with it through the window and through passing notes. The figure did not respond to her initially. But for the following days, she started noticing that the figure was getting closer and closer to her in the reflection. And by the time she finally left the hospital, the figure was sitting on the floor beside her bed.”
"And what happened to her when she went home?” Jason asked loudly as he carefully avoided looking at the windows of the hallway they just entered and a small pool of water dripped from a broken pipe up above.
"Good question!” Branston excitedly turned back, pointed the camera at Jason and then turned to Adam again: "And what happened to the young girl?”
"Three years later, her home burned down, people found her parents’ bodies inside the house. And she and her younger sister went missing and were never found.” Adam finished the rest of his story.