Chapter 1

Lorrie sank into the soft seat of her car with a heavy sigh, running her fingers through her long dark hair as she watched the realtor’s truck putter off down the cracked road, kicking up dry orange leaves that swirled in the brisk breeze of the calm Autumn afternoon. She was exhausted from a long day of going on property tours, having just completed the last one.

She could see the daunting, silent form of the run-down Deepwood Asylum behind her in the rearview mirror, its many brick towers all weathered and broken after decades of neglect. What was once an ugly structure in its prime was now little more than a moldering husk, its broken, looming windows gazing back at her through the mirror as if inviting her into that abyss.

The derelict building slept atop a quiet hill, hidden within the colorful foliage of the trees like a dark tumor jutting out from the landscape. No one had lived there for decades, and likely no one ever would again. That is, unless Lorrie and her husband Mike could close the deal on it.

They had pooled their savings for years to break into the real estate investing and flipping business, and were finally ready to pull the trigger now that they were in their early thirties; they just needed some good, cheap properties with potential to get started with, and few were as cheap per square foot than the Deepwood Asylum.

Several of the sites she had toured that day were solid options: old schools that could be turned into condos, single family houses that could easily be updated, and the asylum that could make an excellent hotel, especially with the added tourist appeal of allegedly being haunted, which might also explain why it had remained untouched on the market for so long.

It had been shuttered since the 1940’s after local authorities discovered dozens of cases of abuse and poor living conditions for the patients and inmates. The locals didn’t care much, as the prison-turned-asylum primarily treated criminals with violent sexual assault records and uncontrollable nymphomania, but that didn’t stop the city from closing it down and moving the patients to a “healthier environment”. Or at least, the inmates who remained.

Since then, there had been no shortage of stories circulating through the nearby town that suggested dozens, if not hundreds, of the patients had died from Doctor Kolben’s experimental treatments. Apparently, the head doctor had taken his own life during the police raid, and legend says you can see his ghost on certain nights, still stalking the halls alongside the spirits of his deceased subjects, eager to find new patients to continue his twisted work upon. Some said that in the darkest hours of the quietest nights, you could still hear horrific moans of pain ... or maybe pleasure ... echoing down those lightless halls.

That silly rumor was part of the reason why the current landowner was willing to sell it for cheap. Lorrie knew that the superstitious sort would be hesitant to buy such a dubious location, but if marketed towards adventurous tourists, it could be a real hot spot. It was already a popular hangout for local teenage delinquents, made evident by the fact that nearly every one of the cracked gray walls of the building’s interior had been covered several times over by a chaotic mess of graffiti.

The building’s poor condition was another reason why it was on the market for so cheap, but was also the issue weighing most heavily on Lorrie’s mind. If they were to renovate the building into a passable hotel, it would require substantial capital for repairs and updates, likely involving several loans, so who knew how long it would take to turn a profit?

The derelict rooms and maze-like hallways were all a mess of exposed, rusted pipes, broken medical equipment, and stained mattresses. Water could be heard dripping like a metronome in the dark recesses of the unlit passageways where the wiring had already failed long ago. The scent of mold filled the stale air, and the thick layer of dust covering nearly every surface was occasionally broken up by rotting refuse: empty beer bottles, empty food containers, cigarette butts, and the like.

Lorrie had been especially disgusted to spot what appeared to be used dildos – caked in dried juices – and discarded articles of clothing among the scattered piles of litter. Admittedly, there were certainly fewer places more private than these eroding halls for horny couples to take care of business. No doubt turning it into a hotel would do little to dissuade the same crowd.

Lorrie had a strong hunch that there were even more problems with the building, but the realtor showing her the property had dodged most of her questions and been in a rush to end the tour before sundown, as the lack of electricity in some areas would leave entire swaths of the building submerged in darkness behind boarded up windows, leaving only the thin string of light from their flashlights as a way to navigate the maze.

After the tour was over, the realtor had locked a thick, rusted chain back over the entrance door, which was decorated with illegible graffiti, save for some messy text scrawled in red paint that read, “Get Fucked”. The realtor offered her a brief goodbye before dashing off to his car and driving away. Lorrie was not one to fancy herself with absurd tales of the supernatural, but she knew that the haggard man’s superstition was the reason for his absurdly low asking price, so she had held back her frustration at the time.

Once the jittery realtor’s truck disappeared from view, she quickly cracked her car door open and stepped back out into the cool air. Looking back over her shoulder as she went, she hurriedly walked back over to the derelict building, making her way around the side to a first floor window she had opened from the inside when the realtor wasn’t looking, it being one of the few that weren’t completely boarded up.

Her phone had full bars and a good amount of battery left to power the flashlight, and the sun still had a good hour or so before it set completely, so as long as she stuck to the areas on the west side of the building where light could still get in, she would be fine for a little “self-guided tour” to quickly inspect the walls for mold and water damage. The realtor had refused to take her to some of the rooms, and she assumed he was trying to hide blemishes that she could leverage to get an even better deal on the property.

She had some trouble getting up into the tall window, given that her heels and pantsuit weren’t exactly designed with climbing in mind, but with the help of a nearby ladder that had been left out for a long-forgotten painting job, she managed to alight on the musty floor of the asylum interior once again.

It was extremely eerie wandering the lonely corridors, her only company being the echoing clicks of her heels on the cracked tiles below her feet, but she continued her way through the drafty building nonetheless. The biting evening breeze that invaded from unseen cracks was like the chilling breath of some giant beast, stiffening her nipples beneath her coat and making her curse at herself for not thinking to bring the scarf from her car. A top priority would definitely be fixing the insulation, as losing money to heating costs would no doubt be the death of her.

Only twenty minutes had passed before she decided she had seen enough. The rooms near the lobby indeed had some issues that would be expensive to resolve, but nothing too out of budget given the absolute steal this property was for the size. She didn’t have the nerves to venture into the deeper areas of the dark building, fearing what would happen if she fell or ran into some hiding vagrant. She was no fool.

As she walked back down the silent hallway towards the entrance, she checked her phone for any message, her face illuminated by the ghosty glow of her screen. She was startled to see that her battery was close to dead, draining more in the last few minutes than she expected, so she sent a text to her husband telling him she would be home soon, before quickening her pace.

She breathed out a sigh of relief that she didn’t realize she had been holding in once she saw the familiar exit sign near the front lobby, knowing she was close to the open window. It was then that she heard a nearby sound rock through the stifling silence of the building, making her flinch in surprise. Around the corner of the hallway ahead, in the direction she needed to go, came an aggressive, rhythmic pattern of buzzes.

Lorrie stopped dead in her tracks, feeling her legs grow numb as an unseen paleness washed over her face that started to bead with a cold sweat. She frantically clasped her phone to her beating chest, smothering the flashlight in her cleavage to take refuge in the darkness. Someone was there. Was it the realtor? A guard? A vagrant? She did her best to stealthily hide in the cracked doorway of an adjacent room, muffling her shaky breathing while regretting her decision to come back into the building.

She kept her wide eyes glued on the crack of the door, the murky hallway beyond only faintly illuminated by the smallest strips of the sun’s very last rays that had managed to claw their way in through the rotting boards nailed to the tall windows.

After a few minutes of nothing happening, she carefully peeked around the door into the hall. The steady rhythm of the buzzing sound could still be heard, but there was nothing else. No sounds of a human, at least. Gathering her courage, she looked back down at her phone to text her husband again just in case, but was horrified to find that leaving the flashlight on had sapped the device of its remaining battery, only seeing her anxious face reflected back at her in the dark screen. She needed to move now before the sun completely set.

She stood on shaky legs, swallowing what little saliva remained in her dry mouth, before removing her loud heels, leaving her stockinged feet to press delicately against the cold hard floor. With a calming exhale, she crept to the corner of the hall and used her phone screen as a mirror to look around the corner, inching it closer to the edge through sheer willpower.

There was no one. She finally let herself breath normally again before stowing her phone. The source of the strange noise became clear when she bent down to put her shoes back on, a small blinking red light catching her eye from the shadows painting the floor ahead of her. When she saw what it was, she let out a relieved chuckle.

It was merely a vibrating dildo. She hadn’t noticed it on her first pass through the hall, but it was easy to guess that the old, faulty toy had likely sprung to life on its own due to the dying breaths of its battery, the vibrations of which no doubt enabled it to jitter out from whatever pile of garbage it had been in and onto the hallway floor.

It buzzed weakly between Lorrie and the open window. As she got closer, she could see that it was a decently fancy “bunny” vibrator, with two colorful and phallic appendages bouncing on the tiled floor, each with a spinning base of teasing nubs. It certainly put the simple toys she had a home to shame. She found her mind wandering to thoughts of purchasing one for herself as she went to move past it.

Just as her foot made contact with the floor beyond the dildo, the buzzing abruptly stopped, suddenly leaving the hallway quiet once again.

She was startled, but quickly came to realize that the nearby impact of her foot likely disrupted whatever fragile mechanisms had been maintaining the toy’s last wisps of life. Feeling foolish, she clicked her tongue with a scoff, kicking the annoying plastic penis down the hall to be swallowed up by the encroaching shadows.

She got up into the window just as the sun vanished behind the distant trees, leaving her to navigate back to her car by the milky light of the moon and the little lone lamp that still flickered through the darkness to illuminate the rusted iron sign on the main gate that proudly displayed the asylum’s tainted name. She didn’t bother to look behind her as she drove away, as nothing would greet her eyes other than silent, patient blackness.

Lorrie winced and massaged her brows as the garage doors loudly grinded closed behind her, creating a buffer between her and the chill of the night that swirled around the quiet suburb. Mike was a deep sleeper, but she still worried about waking him up, especially since he had been taking on more and longer shifts at work to help with their savings. She slid into the dark kitchen and gently placed her keys on a tray by the door while kicking off her heels.

She carefully tiptoed upstairs and found Mike already fused with the blankets on the bed, little more than an adorable mound that gave her a sleepy, welcoming grunt from the darkness.

“How’d i’ go, babe?” He groggily mumbled into the pillow, shifting his body to look over at Lorrie.

“Pretty good,” she replied with a whisper. “A lot of them seemed solid – especially that old asylum. The guy was kind of weird, but that price is just amazing. I think we could get him to come down on it more.”

“If it’s too good to be true, it probably is.” Mike yawned, but his eyes lit up in the shadows as he watched his wife begin to undress, sliding down her pants to reveal her lacy black panties and removing her shirt to expose her matching bra that held her large natural breasts. “Well, I guess some things can just be ‘good’.” He let out a tired chuckle. She sighed and playfully let the remainder of her clothing fall to the ground around her.

“I’m going to take a quick shower, but then maybe we can see just how ‘good’ I can be?” She giggled coyly as she stepped into the bathroom, knowing that Mike’s tired eyes were no doubt following her shapely bare ass before she closed the door.

She collected her thoughts in the hot water, weighing the pros and cons of each property she had seen that day and taking mental notes on what to follow up on and talk to Mike about in the morning. No doubt the horndog would be fast asleep by the time she was done. She got out of the shower and wrapped matching purple towels around her hair and body before going over to grab her toothbrush from a cup on the sink.

As she brushed her teeth, she wiped away the steam on the mirror to inspect her face, seeing her sharp gray eyes reflecting back at her. She frowned at the small scar on her cheek that she got from a gymnastics accident way back in middle school.

The steam behind her began to clear up as she bent over to spit out the toothpaste. When she looked back up, she dropped her toothbrush in shocked surprise. The mirror was no longer reflecting the cozy bathroom behind her but the yawning, hollow expanse of the asylum hallway from earlier that evening.

She abruptly spun around, making her head towel come undone and knocking over the sink cup. Her heart pounded in her chest as she confirmed that the bathroom was indeed just a bathroom still, rainbow shower curtain and all. She calmed herself and let out a tired laugh. The day had clearly been more stressful than she had realized. Sleep was what she needed now.

She finished up in the bathroom, turning off the light as she quietly shuffled towards the warm bed to join her husband who didn’t make a peep. It was strange, though – the bed was further away than she thought, taking her several more steps into the darkness than she had expected to reach it. That’s when she noticed that unlike the plush carpeting she knew their bedroom to have, her bare feet were pressed cold against hard tile.

Her eyes finally adjusted to the shadows, the nightlight on the sink behind her doing what little it could to reveal the space outside the bathroom. She blinked in surprise, then disbelief. Surely this was a dream, right? There was no way she could be back in the asylum. She turned back to see her bathroom, its door just one of many along the dark hallway that didn’t go away no matter how many times she closed and opened her eyes.

Her legs felt like jelly as she stumbled backwards towards the bathroom, the steam from which was quickly evaporating in the cold air that now gnawed at her practically naked body. Before she could make her way back through the door, it slammed closed in her face, causing her to let out a shrill scream of pure terror that echoed down the hallways which were now plunged entirely in blackness. She banged wildly on the locked door, calling out for Mike and pulling on the knob with all her strength.

“This can’t be real! This is a dream! You’re dreaming, Lorrie! Wake up!” She whimpered through chattering teeth. She tried to feel around the darkness for the door handle, desperately attempting to get back to where she had come from, but suddenly a sound met her ears.

A rhythmic, pulsating buzzing sound. One she knew all too well. She couldn’t help but slowly look over her shoulder towards the source of the noise, where she could see nothing but the blinking red light from within the dildo she had kicked earlier, only now it was no longer vibrating on the ground but miraculously floating in midair.

“What in the–?” She whispered hoarsely through dry lips, clasping her towel around herself. A moment later, more small red lights lit up in the darkness like hellish fireflies, a chorus of discordant buzzes reverberating all around her as several dozen more grungy dildos of all shapes and sizes sprang to life. All the sex toys were held aloft and brandished as if held by invisible hands. She didn’t need to be told twice to run when they began to move towards her.

She cried out in fear as her sore bare feet pattered down the abyssal hallway, having to feel her way along the walls through the sheer blackness in front of her. She stumbled over debris and frantically waved her head towel behind her as she ran as if it would do anything to deter the flying dildos that were pursuing her.

She could feel dozens of cold hands reaching out from all around her, trying to grab her legs, arms, hair, anything at all in order to pin her down. They managed to yank her towels from her, leaving her completely naked and allowing the ghostly digits to explore her tight, sweating body as she continued to bumble her way through the darkness. Her boobs and ass jiggled as she ran, both from the motions of her legs and from the unseen assailants slapping and spanking her tender exposed flesh. Lecherous, disturbing laughter joined the din of the vibrators, adding to her panic that lessened slightly as she saw the red glow of a distant exit sign.

She made a mad dash towards it, but ran headlong into a tall, dark shape that suddenly moved into her path. She hit what felt like mottled skin, falling backwards onto her butt with a shriek. She tried to get to her feet, but the cold, ghostly hands were already upon her now, holding her down and pressing her back to the dirty tiles with unnatural strength. She felt her legs and arms pried apart in a spread eagle position, and looked up to see the shadowy, humanoid shape moving towards her.

It was too dark to make out anything from the silhouette other than that it was certainly that of a man, given the inhumanly enormous cock and balls hanging down between oddly misshapen legs. Suddenly, the man, or creature, or whatever it was lurched towards her with a guttural groan, and she screamed as she felt that turgid phallus push up against her helpless cunt. She screamed louder as she felt the huge appendage plunge deep inside of her, the shaft oddly cold against her warm inner walls, and she screamed louder still as some of the ghostly hands began to pry her mouth open to welcome the dildos circling in the air above, while others madly fondled her tits and ass, seemingly grabbing at her supple flesh through the floor itself.

She could feel invisible mouths clamping around her hard nipples and swollen clit, sucking feverishly at the sensitive nubs as the fingers grasping her head almost felt as if they were pushing further into her cranium, causing her thoughts to become muddled and hazy with erotic sensations.

Her gasps and screams echoed down the uncaring halls, heard by no one, before slowly beginning to melt into lustful moans, even as her voice faded away as if swallowed up by the hungry shadows that filled the now deathly quiet asylum.

Back in their bed, Mike rolled over to wrap himself in more comfortable blankets, waiting for his sexy wife to hop in next to him, hoping that if he pretended to be asleep, she would reach down and run a long nail up his shaft the way he liked it to tease him awake. He was unaware that every part of his lover’s nubile body – those plump lips, firm ass, plush breasts, and slender fingers – were now eternally in the service of forces more sinister than he could ever imagine.

~Three Years Later~

“What is UP, everyone? It’s your girl, the hostess with the ghostest: Callie Crow! Let’s get this season two finale started!” The young, slender woman finished her speech with an excited exhale, fixing her chestnut brown hair into a ponytail under her pink baseball cap, which was emblazoned with a cartoony logo of a ghost with plush lips above the text, “Ghost Girls”. “How was that? Do you need me to run it again?”

“Nah, you nailed it, babe,” said Jake, checking the recording playback on the fancy camera strapped to his chest. A year of lugging around heavy equipment for the Youtube channel had toned his tall body, and his well-kempt beard and long dark hair tied up in a manbun completed the hipster look. “Let’s do the intro sequence next.”

“Are we sure we don’t just want to use the pre-edited one?” asked Phil, their producer. He adjusted his glasses that had started to fog up in the cold evening air while standing on his tiptoes to check the footage over Jake’s thick arm, being considerably stouter than the muscular cameraman. “It’ll save time and money.” Phil tugged his hoodie closed for warmth despite wearing the same khaki cargo shorts he always did.

“Eh, I still think it’s worth doing something special for the finale,” Callie replied with a shrug. “Besides, Jake already got all the B-roll footage we’d need for it.”

“So be it,” Phil sighed dramatically, doing his best to exude an air of authority. “In the meantime, I’ll go let Mr. Nelson know we’re just about ready for the interview.” He walked across the tall grass of the asylum lawn towards the overgrown parking area, where a vintage car had recently pulled up to park next to their “Ghost Girls” van. Despite the chilly autumn air, he still wore shorts as always, which always seemed odd to Callie.

“Ok, everyone go stand right over there next to the fountain,” Jake instructed, ushering the rest of the team closer towards the crumbling asylum building. “I can get a great shot of the creepy exterior behind you while we do the intros.”

“Oooh, good call!” Callie grinned back at her boyfriend, making her freckled nose wrinkle in the way that Jake always thought was adorable. “C’mon, ladies, let’s get this done!” Callie and the rest of the Ghost Girls: Amy, Camilla, and Alex, all lined up next to the large round fountain standing in front of the entrance. It hadn’t functioned for decades, now only filled with soggy dead leaves and the corpses of bugs drowned in the shallow, slimy stagnant water that had collected in the fountain’s base from all the recent storms.

Callie looked around at her best friends, who were already practicing what poses they would take for the scene. They had all started the Youtube channel as college roommates, with Phil joining in the last year since graduation now that they were trying to make the gig into their full time jobs. What had begun as a simple school club activity was now really starting to rake in the views – and money – with their 300,000 subscribers eagerly awaiting and voting on new locations for the girls to visit in videos that regularly grew in production value. Sure, the team was confident in their entertainment skills and editing, but they knew that having some tits on display didn’t hurt their view counts, hence the bolder members wearing more form-fitting attire.

Jake adjusted some settings on his camera and gave the girls a signal to start, slowly moving in towards Callie as she took the lead.

“We ... are the Ghost Girls,” Callie began, her voice shifting to a more serious, almost conspiratorial tone as she squinted her eyes slightly at the camera that Jake was slowly moving around her and the others. “We take you along with us to hunt for the supernatural in some of the most haunted sites in the US, ready to capture chilling evidence of the world beyond our own.” She gestured towards the building behind her as Jake pulled the camera back to get all of them in the shot. “This is the abandoned Deepwood Asylum in Massachusetts, submitted by Patreon supporter, ComeForWard57, and voted on by all of you! I’m joined once again by my crack team of paranormal investigators to delve ‘deep’ into its secrets.”

Jake moved the camera over towards each of the other three young women who stood around the fountain, their arms crossed in stoic poses as Callie continued to record voice over audio.

“Alex Thomas, our techie,” Callie continued, with Jake getting a dynamic low angle of the chubby but curvy young woman. Alex looked down at the camera, tilting her ghost-themed glasses in a knowing fashion while flicking back her shoulder-length pink hair with a small handheld machine covered in rapidly blinking lights. “If there’s anything supernatural around us, her devices make sure it’s documented.” As the camera moved past her, Alex quickly adjusted her pink skirt that was blowing in the breeze. Even though she was wearing black leggings beneath it, she still tried to maintain a modest appearance, enhanced by the thick, cozy, colorful sweater that hid the thick body she was rather self-conscious about despite her large chest and rear.

“Camilla Rodriguez, our lead investigator.” Jake circled around to get Camilla’s profile as the young latino woman stroked her narrow chin thoughtfully and puffed out her modest chest while her long, dark hair billowed dramatically in a perfectly-timed breeze. Her sporty faux-leather jacket and tight black jeans gave her a commanding appearance despite her slim figure. “Her expansive knowledge of the paranormal has gotten us out of more than a few dangerous encounters in the past, while also helping us find more.”

“And finally, Amy, ‘Amythyst’ Clarke, our resident spirit medium.” Jake zoomed out from Amy as she held two pale fingers to her pale temple that was obscured by her curly red hair, her emerald eyes gazing past the camera with a piercing stare as if trying hard to comprehend some new, untold truth from within her dark mascara. Her large earrings and many layers of necklaces jingled softly in the wind, which swept up around her long, floral-patterned sundress, showing off her voluptuous curves, “Her psychic abilities can sense and communicate with any wayward soul.”

“And once again, I’m your host, Callie Crow,” Callie added some energy to her voice as Jake swung the camera back around to get a group shot of all four young women, now standing back to back in a circle of dramatic poses. Callie’s tight yoga pants and “Ghost Girls” hoodie both accented and hid her athletic body, and together the group cut a rather striking set of dramatic figures surrounded by swirling dry leaves and the shadows cast by the asylum’s tall brick towers and jagged, angular roofs.

“Tonight, we’re staying inside this infamous haunted asylum until dawn, determined to get to the bottom of the rumors of supernatural happenings all centered on this troubled location.” Callie began to walk around the perimeter of the building with Jake, talking into the camera to explain Deepwood’s history as a mental hospital for sexual predators, the scandal of the illegal experiments, and the reports of unexplainable sights and disappearances around the property. They finished recording just in time for them all to see Phil returning with a hunched old man in tow.

“Everyone, this is Mr. Nelson,” Phil announced, gesturing towards the elderly man. “Mr. Nelson, this is Callie, Amy, Alex, Camilla, and Jake.” He introduced everyone as they went up to shake the man’s frail hand.

“It’s nice to finally put a face to a voice,” Callie replied, firmly shaking Mr. Nelson’s hand. “Thank you so much for agreeing to this and for taking the time to meet for an interview; I know it’s a bit out of the way.”

“Oh, not at all,” Mr. Nelson replied with a slightly warbly voice, smiling through his bushy mustache. “It’s always nice to get these old bones out and about when the weather has a few rare spots of clarity!” He chuckled warmly but his eyes appeared forlorn as they looked over Callie’s shoulder at the imposing asylum. “So, where are we doing this? Where do you want me?”

Callie spent the next several minutes in front of the camera talking with Mr. Nelson. He described how he had purchased the building only a few months before the downfall of Dr. Kolben, which plummeted its value, making the property a thorn in his side for decades now. He’d been trying to sell it for a while, but it didn’t help that the locals told all sorts of horrible stories about hauntings and whatnot. He’d never personally encountered any “spookums” during his many inspections of the building over the years. He assured Callie that all of those ghastly tales were just silly superstitions – the results of old pipes, drafty windows, poor wiring, and macabre imaginations.