Alive

Conrad started screaming.

“They’re REAL!? Oh, GOD- they’re REAL? SHIT, shit, shit… Oh my god… oh my god, we’re gonna die…”

“Shut up!” Frankie hissed. She grabbed Mary. “The hell’d you do that for?”

“It’s not ghosts.”

“You go and say that now? After you called out to the dead like a frickin’ witch?” She felt exhausted. “Don’t worry, I believe you, but why—“

“They heard me. The culprit.”

“Huh?”

Mary was correct.

“Ghosts wouldn’t do that. That means a human did.”

“You aren’t making sense.”

“They thought they could trick me. I played them.”

“Played who?!”

“The murderer.”

Frankie looked around in the dark, gun drawn. She was slowly beginning to understand.

“Your reasoning… it’s that they’d try to throw us off like that if they thought they could convince us it was really just a ghost or something?”

“Yes.”

“So why did you disagree with me?” She grabbed the woman in red again, dropping her pistol in frenzied rage. “Doesn’t that prove it’s the owner messing with us from a camera room someplace?!”

“No.” Mary stated earnestly and without fear.

“Why the hell not?!”

“They couldn’t hear.”

“Huh?”

She pointed to the lobby’s only camera.

“There’s no mic…”

Indeed, the simple security device wasn’t supplied with any audio equipment.

“How did you notice that…”

“I’m always looking. Weren’t we all investigating? I thought that’s what were supposed to be doing.”

“I thought you were just staring at the walls…”

“Maybe I was.”

“Uh, guys?” Conrad shivered. “So if that's the case… h-how is this happening? How could anyone hear us from in here?”

The gun was right next to his hand, so it was easy to pick up without anyone even noticing in the shadowy panic.

“Trickery, maybe?” Frankie didn’t see him stand up from the ground until it was too late.

“FRANKIE!” Katie cried out as he aimed the pistol to her head.

The little sister whipped around to meet her coming end- the living dead, arisen from his untouched body- Jack, gun in hand, prepared to end her.