No dream lasted forever and few people ever saw the bottom rushing towards them.

  Big Pez was a merry captive of the rhythms of his simple existence. Born Marlon Wainwright to Brody (who drank himself into an early grave) and Marjorie (who bore her bruises in silence) Wainwright, he knew he was destined for better things. Still weary from the night before, Big Pez wore the same shirt under the same soiled Army jacket for the last three days. The "N" from his high top Nikes had peeled off his right shoe, so he scraped the left one off to match. He was the height of haute couture for the business of obliterating oneself. His ashy lips and sunken eye sockets gave evidence to the inescapable horror that he may need to ease up in his drug use. Beckley wasn't a town renowned for plentiful opportunity, however, an enterprising dope fiend could pursue his hunt for the perfect blast with minimum encumbrance.

  J-Clev sat next to him, sucking on a glass pipe. Born Jesse Cleveland to Sherry Cleveland and one of a series of one-night stands she had to make rent. A red and black flannel shirt drooped over his oversized jeans that rode low on his hips. Long hair trailed from the back of his camo ball cap which had been pulled low to shadow his heavy-lidded eyes with their wide pupils. His unkempt beard, the hairs of which turned at peculiar angles long untouched by any form of a comb, couldn't disguise his gaunt face and sallow complexion. Sores, shaped like the bloody lips of an infant, opened along his neck. 

  The headlights of a turning car illuminated the truck bed briefly, the sudden light causing them to wince with its interruption. The remaining shard of the broken window handle jabbed Big Pez in his side when he shifted. He jolted upwards, stirring the landfill of papers (mostly bills and collection notices), sausage McMuffin wrappers, and coffee cups filled with ground cigarette butts. The truck's blue vinyl interior, cracked and brittle, scraped his clothes. Big Pez closed his eyes and once again tilted at windmills, chasing the same, elusive high from his first blast. Tonight was different. Tonight he simply wanted a jump start so that he could go about his business. The plan was to break into Beckley Junior High School and steal lab supplies for their own lab. They had dreams of big time gangsta life down in Balmer, though part of them knew full well that they were going to pawn anything they could get their hands on to chase their next high. A couple of city goats trying to pretend that they weren't more than a couple of meth heads.

  Nudging J-Clev, Big Pez slowly opened his door and stretched slowly, his gangly form unfurling from the Chevy pick-up (originally blue, but now almost red with the rust which ate away at it like a pernicious lung cancer). Two students out for a campus stroll before their midnight classes. Definitely not two dropouts shipwrecked in life, their hopes dashed against the reefs of ignorance and hopelessness. 

  The school developed a terrible aspect at night, its architectural design reminiscent more of a penal institution than a learning one. The steps alone were a series of foreboding shadows leading to the recessed darkness of the entryway. Big Pez searched the retreating lot for any unwanted eyes, then squeezed between the chained doors.

  With eyes downcast, Big Pez walked past the office, part of him afraid the principal would charge out to have him wait in her office. School was something he endured as long as he could, with only the cold glare of his mother's disapproval awaiting him at home.

  "What about the guards?" J-Clev asked, sucking in his imagined gut as he slid through the mild gap between the chained doors. "Alarms?"

  "Ain't no security to speak of. You see how old this place is? Ain't no one pouring money into this joint for on-site security. Or fancy alarms. Way they see it, not much here worth stealing no ways. I guess they depend on the scary stories to keep folks away." "What scary stories?"

  "Beckley Junior High used to be a hospital during the Civil War," Big Pez said.

  "Thought that was Beckley-Stratton Junior High?"

  "Over on Grey Flats? Naw, it was built a few years back and there was never a hospital there. The building that had the hospital had long been demolished, but it was all right here." 

  "What's so scary about that?" J-Clev stroked the scraggily wisps of his mustache, a gesture he always did when calculating the risks of a potential score.

  "The way I hear it, there was a young woman named Hannah who worked as a nurse treating the wounded soldiers." At some point in the story, as best Big Pez could remember, some slaves got locked up in a room, but that part always con fused him so he picked up the story at the part he remembered best. "Hannah was killed and her moans and footsteps could be heard up and down the halls."

  The hallways stretched before them, spider web strands in wait. A few lights remained on, creating pools of shadow down each corridor. The artificial confidence provided by his meth had Big Pez sufficiently decisive, striding the hall with the giddy excitement of a kid embracing being locked in a toy store. His thoughts grew abrupt and fragmented. His hands balled into tight fists, hoping his instincts would navigate the labyrinthine halls to the science wing. Or a computer lab. Or the media room.

  The few fluorescent lights remaining on hummed then sputtered to lifelessness and the shadows slithered from their lairs. With each step, the darkness pulsed with a life of its own. The surrounding blackness created an envelope seal of obscurity. Big Pez moved as if in a separate world from J-Clev, his hands a blur in the abyssal night. Time stretched to disorienting flatness, each heartbeat a measured thud in his throat lasting a minute.

  "Did you hear that?" J-Clev stopped short, the wizened teeth of his fingers clamped onto Big Pez's arm. Drawing near, J-Clev wore the expression of irrational terror, his eyes widened, fueled by the unpredictable passions of his high. 

  "Nah, I didn't hear nothing." Big Pez extricated himself from the grip. "You know this shit'll make some folks paranoid." 

  The corridors branched in every direction, every sound coming at them from all sides with a gallows echo chamber. Staccato clicks, with the gasp of someone choking on coins, reverberated. Voices rushed with the ethereal hush of approaching whispers through a cornfield. The shadows shifted again, the corridors multiplying, a web of choices taking them further and further from where they wanted to be. 

  Big Pez took off running, without warning to J-Clev (who dutifully followed suit). With no destination in mind, he followed his instincts down the nearest hallway. The ceiling lit up under the occasional eruption of light coming from the failed emergency lighting. Above him, pipes – corroded veins originally for gas lighting – jutted from the ceiling. He thought he spied a door. Big Pez shuddered as he neared it. 

  The strong, dank smell of moist rot emanated from the door. Opening the door, he brushed through cobwebs and cemetery shadows. The dark smelled of spoiled potatoes, wood rot, and termite shit. The looming shadows coalesced into an image, an ancient movie projector focusing to life under the dreary pallor of light and the pall of mortality. Lanterns hung around the room revealing a procession of beds, crowded with moans. With forlorn and defeated faces, men hobbled about on crutches. The stench of gangrene clung to the air, smothering men buried beneath thick woolen blankets as if posed for their caskets. Emaciated and spiritless, locked in a fevered sleep, staring up at ceiling longingly with the steady gaze from bloodshot eyes, a death mask fixed on their faces.

  A woman, shapely as the black dress draped around her would reveal, got up from rolling bandages. Her white apron betrayed the severity of its scarlet stains as she drew closer. Strands of her hair frayed from the bun she had it tied into. The wounds of another patient needed tending as maggots crawled in his sloughing flesh. She scooped wine mixed with water and sugar, from a bucket.

  "Hannah!" A surgeon had his sleeves rolled up to the elbows, his bare arms and linen aprons smeared with blood. As he called for her, men lifted a wounded man onto the table, his shrieks of pain adding to the nightmare din. The surgeon quickly examined his wounds, knives clutched between his teeth. He snatched a knife, wiped it twice on bloody apron, and began cutting. Big Pez covered his ears to smother the sounds of the grating of the murderous knife.

  Hannah fixed a pillow beneath the man's head and stroked his sweat-soaked hair. She gently daubed water on his face and neck. The surgeon tossed the freed limb to the corner. Pools of blood radiated from the pile of discarded amputated arms and legs.

  "Next!" the surgeon yelled. Hysterical tears trailed down his face. His gaze locked on Big Pez and J-Clev.

  Hannah grasped J-Clev's arm, her fingers digging into it like shards of broken glass.

  Big Pez staggered out the door, almost stumbling as he turned to run. The door closed behind him, not quite muffling J-Clev's fading screams. He ran blindly until he found himself by the front office again. Hoping to hear J-Clev following him, he cocked his ears to the silence. The sure tapping of footfalls emanated from the trailing darkness. 

  "J?" he called out, little above a stage whisper.

  A chorus of whispers rose in response. The cries of the damned. "Doctor?" "Help." "God!"

  Big Pez's heart pounded, his hands trembling as he fumbled at the chained doors. He shook, almost too violently to squeeze back through door, but the icy brush of fingers scraping at him panicked him through.

  That night, huddled in a fetal ball of fear and drugs, he dreamt of shadows and blood.