A Heartbeat and a Dark Purple Light

As we sit, huddled near death in the darkness of the forest, I can hear it. A beating of a heart, but a great distance away. From the look in the others eyes, they’re hearing it as well. I don’t know what that means, but it can’t be good.

Seven minutes ago, everything was fine. I was staying comfortably at a rather large hotel right by the beach. Trying my best to relax, wasting away my severance package to get over the stress of being fired. All in all, a nice couple of days. It happened after dinner. I’d had a nice meal out, returning to the hotel for a long, hot bath followed by a longer, comfortable rest. When I arrived at the elevator doors, the button was already pressed, and a family was waiting, along with an elderly man. By the time the elevator finally arrived, there was only the one elevator running due to hotel maintenance, a few more people had joined us. Twelve in all got into that elevator. Twelve of us. We should have been well within the limits of the machine.

We pressed the floor buttons, none of the groups knew each other, and we weren’t on the same floors. The mother scolded her son about being rude when he asked the elderly man how old he was. Everything seemed perfectly standard for a hotel like this. People quietly and actively not getting involved with each others’ lives while the kids don’t give a crap about convention.

Then, it began. As the elevator ascended towards the third floor, where the elderly man was staying, it stopped. There was a sound not unlike snapping. A lurch. And a fall. A few of us got hurt badly. The elderly man broke a leg, there was an arm twisted in the wrong direction as well, and the mother seemed out cold. It took some effort, but those of us who were still able, and more importantly, had things we could use for leverage managed to get the doors open a crack, revealing the twilight of a forest. Katrina, a med school student here on break, introduced herself quickly and stated authoritatively that we’d need everyone who was able to get out, so there’d be space to treat and help all the obviously injured and check for the rest of us. So I worked with the other non-injured adults and college kids, and managed to open the elevator wide enough for us to exit one at a time without hitting either side.

So Katrina has been treating the college boy with the twisted arm, the elderly man with the broken leg, and the unconscious mom, while the rest of us are outside, in a cold forest while dressed for the beach, huddling together to hide from the darkness and keep warm. And now there’s this odd noise. This beating pulse. Quiet and far away.

“Just breathe,” one of us, a woman in her mid twenties, tells us, “We need to be calm.” She was waiting for the elevator with a slightly older man, who looks in his late twenties. He now looks very not-calm, seated beside her and holding on while his eyes dart around the treeline.

The beating heart in the distance remains present. Remains consistent to my ears. One of the college kids, the girl of the trio, looks at the rest of us and asks, “Alright, I’ve tried to be relaxed and even, but what the hell happened? Where are we?”

The kid chimes in. “The woods,” he very unhelpfully says.

I shake my head. “Don’t know,” I say, “Not too worried about it right now. Let’s focus on what the med student said. Did everyone check themselves for sore spots?” I’m not the most authoritative person, but I hope that just having an achievable and simple goal can help everyone calm down and focus.

Some look confused, some nod, but others start to run their hands over their bodies to feel for pain. A woman in her late thirties leans into me. “Smart play,” she says, “Are you hearing that drumbeat?”

“I don’t think it’s a drum,” I reply, “Not with that rhythm.”

She sighs out a chuckle. “Normally, I might disagree, but the forest at the bottom of the elevator shaft tells me something strange is going on.”

I smile, and nod. “Jackson,” I say, extending my hand, “And there isn’t an elevator shaft above the elevator.”

She shakes it. “Seleste,” she replies, “And mysterious teleporting elevator somehow feels more wrong.”

A moment later, Katrina comes out from the elevator. The college girl immediately stands up, asking, “You think Lyle’s going to be okay?”

Her friend, another of the trio of college students, guides her back down, “Alyson,” he insists, “Lyle’s fine, we need to stay calm, remember.”

“Shut up, Win,” Alyson spits back, “Let Katrina say so herself.”

Katrina shakes her head smiling. “Your friend’s arm is broken. I set it, put it in a sling, and when we find a hospital he’s going to need a cast, but he will recover.” Turning to the father, she adds, “Your wife is still out, but otherwise seems uninjured, I’ll keep checking in on her periodically to make sure she’s stable.” Then, to the group as a whole, she adds, “Does anyone out here have any injuries for me to look at?”

After a moment of silence and us looking at one another, the father gestures to his lower chest on the right. “A bit of a sore spot, probably just a bruised rib. Nothing to worry about.” he insists, then after a moment, adds, “I’ll tell you if it starts to get any worse.”

After that, the late twenties man admits, “My ankle feels a bit sore when I put pressure on it.”

Katrina walks over and looks at it, prodding and moving it around. “Not sure,” she says, “But it looks sprained. Not badly, but still I wouldn’t put weight on it and keep it elevated.”

I notice beside me that Seleste is taking notes. Copious notes. Why did she have a notepad in her purse, I can’t help but wonder. I start to think of the next achievable task I can tell people we need to do, but that is interrupted. The beating is getting louder. And faster. Still the same heartbeat-like pattern, but the intervals grow shorter and shorter.

“What’s with the drums?” Katrina asks.

I shrug. “We’ve been hearing it softly for a bit. Not like this.”

“It’s been one of those ignore it and maybe it’ll go away type things,” the mid-twenties woman admits.

“Clearly not working,” Alyson states.

Before us, the air itself begins to glow a dark purple. A small crack begins to form and splinter out, as though the air was made of glass and this purple glow was a pressure trying to burst through. “That doesn’t look good,” the kid once again states unhelpfully.

“Everyone,” I try to be leaderly, “Back in the elevator?” My command probably sounds more like a question.

Fortunately, Katrina quickly agrees with me. “You two,” she says pointing to the college kids, “Help carry him,” she says gesturing towards the man with the sprained ankle. “Everyone else, let’s hurry back in for some relative safety.” When people are slow to get up, she firmly adds, “Now.”

That works. The father picks up his infant and his son and carries both into the elevator, ignoring his rib injury. Seleste follows, though she does wait at the doors watching what is happening. The man pushes his girlfriend to her feet and hurries her towards the door, so I head back and help the man get up before handing him off to the college kids. Finally, I meet up with Katrina and we rush back. As we do, I add quietly, “Thanks for taking charge like that.”

She smiles. “You tried your best,” she offers politely, “I just followed your lead.” As we make it to the doorway, the beat begins to grow even louder, near deafening. And there begins to be a new sound as well, a high pitched squeak, like something is starting to leak through rapidly. Which means the cracked-glass-air, whatever it is, might be on the verge of breaking.

“Does anyone know how to close the doors?” I ask as I start to pull open the side panel beside them. There is a moment pause as people look around at one another. Then they shake their heads. I sigh. The beating, and the squeak, grow louder. Stronger. Only so many options. Which of the chords looks the most like a close button. I honestly can’t tell. One of them has to be. Maybe if I just…

I don’t even finish making the decision to do something before there is a loud crashing sound. The dark purple light pours out from seemingly everywhere, though I was admittedly not watching the crack. If only I had managed to be a bit more forceful, more decisive. The force throws us across the elevator. I manage to grab onto a wire, though it just rips the wire out with me. The pressure is immense, and hot, and I can barely breathe. The wire feels like it is melting into me. Then, the elevator doors miraculously begin to close. The purple glow inside the elevator, but once the doors finish closing, the pressure begins to subside. And the glow fades with each breath we take.

“What the hell was that,” the elderly man in clear pain with a makeshift leg brace says what we’re all thinking.

“No idea,” I barely make out, each word requiring several breaths to form. We sit for a moment in silence. My skin is crawling. I look down, but the wire is gone, from the line on my wrist it seems to have melted into my hand. If that’s what closed the door, then maybe we’re safe. Then a darker thought occurred. If that’s what closed the door, then how will we get out?

The door begins to move slightly. A sliver of light begins to show. We brace ourselves for another blast, but this light is white, not purple. Fluorescent. A voice comes down. “The elevator’s car door seems jammed,” it says, “Just stay put and we’ll have you out in no time.”

We look confused at one another. “Did we just have some kind of weird hallucination?” Win asks us.

Seleste shakes her head, pulling a bit of grassy dirt off the bottom of her purse. “I don’t think so,” she says.

It takes another minute before the hatch at the top of the elevator is opened up and the firefighters start to pull us out, one by one. The EMTs on the scene rush the old man, Lyle accompanied by his two friends, and the whole family with the unconscious mother, to the nearest hospital, while the hotel manager stands by us apologizing profusely for the mechanical error that is in no way the hotel’s fault. I give him a tired glare, and he quickly offers to comp our stays due to the inconvenience. Shaking my head, I mutter, “I need a bath.”

Exhausted, and without any functioning elevators left, the five of us remaining begin to walk up the stairs. After the first flight of stairs, Katrina looks over at the couple. “You really shouldn’t be walking on that,” she insists.

The woman shakes her head. “Mikey really doesn’t like hospitals,” she says.

“That’s where people go to die,” he jokes, then shaking his head and being more serious, he adds, “I’m not going to go there wasting their time and my money on something as minor as a sprained ankle.”

I chuckle. The pair, fortunately, only have to climb to the fourth floor. The three of us continue up. Katrina asks us, “You think we should tell people what we saw?”

I smile. “We’d sound crazy,” I say. Then, I add, “Besides, what did we see?” I look curiously at Seleste.

“You mean besides the random forest, the impossible cracks, the heartbeat, and the weird light?” Katrina muses.

“Why are you looking at me?” Seleste asks.

I shake my head as we reach the sixth floor. “I’m just confused, that’s all. And I need to rest.”

“Enjoy your bath,” Seleste offers.

I smile as I head to my room. As I run the bath, I do a quick number crunch to figure out how much longer my severance will last now that the room is comped. I smile. Settling into the bathtub I begin to relax. My skin feels like it’s crawling. Like it’s holding back something powerful. But the hot bath helps. As I finish it, and wrap myself in the robe, I wipe the mirror clear to look at myself. Only then do I notice that, inside my pupils, there is a faint glow fading in and out. A dark purple light. Pulsing in an even rhythm. Almost like a heartbeat.