"Be quiet, idiot! Did you hear that...?"
Diana’s stern reprimand causes me to stop, my heart beating faster in my chest. My senses are heightened by the adrenaline as I turn around, scanning the treeline beyond the wild and overgrown garden of the ruined hospital.
The long shadows cast by the twilit sky dance with the gentle swaying of the trees, dried leaves scattering and being blown away by the subtropical wind. A twig snaps just out of sight within the dark woods, and an intense chill crawls down my spine despite the oppressive heat that had us covered in sweat.
We stand as still as humanly possible, our breathing quiet and shallow. When the wind stops blowing, the heavy silence that blankets the area feels so abnormal that it fills me with an overpowering sense of dread, an instinctive, physiological aversion to such uncanny quiescence. There's no sound of animals or insects, not even of the waves crashing on the shore of the island. Just an unnatural stillness, as if the entire world was holding its breath.
"Can you see anything...?" the tension unbearable after what felt like entire minutes of this, I break the silence, my voice barely above a whisper, while I absentmindedly tighten my grip on the camera I'm holding.
"No... maybe it was nothing, but... fuck! I told you guys these old creeps were up to no good, you didn't listen!"
"You still think it was them? Diana, those old men could barely walk, they must've been 80 or 90! I'm telling you, no human could have done... that, to Lucas."
"Then... then what?! Some sort of... evil spirit, really?!" her voice was tinged with both fear and exasperation, as we return to the discussion we were already having earlier. I inhale deeply. It will do us no good to lose our cool again in this situation. And while I want to think about this rationally, after all we've seen, I can't think of any reasonable way to explain-
Our discussion is cut short when an earsplitting scream suddenly comes not from the trees in front of us, but rather, from within the shadowy halls of the hospital, echoing hauntingly through the weathered walls. We both turn around so fast we bump into one another and nearly lose our balance, standing shoulder to shoulder.
"The... the fuck...? That voice, w-was that Arthur?" Diana's voice trembles as she glances at me, wide-eyed.
"I think so... damn, no, this is too much. Let's get out of here." making up my mind, I turn and start to head for the nearest exit I remembered. "We just, we get to the village, it should be safer, and then we can go to the fishermen-"
"Wait!" she grabs me by the arm. "We- we can't go, he... he needs our help, ${Name}! And, we still haven't found Kate too. We can't leave them like this... to die!"
I close my eyes, cursing under my breath. It's not like I felt good about trying to run away while leaving my friends behind in the first place, and she just had to make me second guess myself. Sighing, I nod and relent.
"Right... right, okay," I exhale softly "We should at least try. And strength in numbers too, if we find them and stick together it will be better. But if something bad happens, we need to be ready to run.” I look back at Diana, exchanging glances with her, and we nod for each other.
"... Yeah. Yeah, sounds good. Let's go then."
And with that, we get to running along the hallway, avoiding the old and rusted hospital equipment still left littering the corridors and rooms alike. The screams come again, louder, indicating we're getting closer to the source.
"How did it all get this messed up, ${Name}? This... this is insane..." she can't help but comment under her breath while we run, and her words make me reflect on everything that led to this.
It all began when we came to this accursed island, and the irony of the situation isn't lost on me. After all, the horrific tales about this place were precisely the reason why we came here. As paranormal investigators with a reputation to uphold - and an online audience to please - this was literally our thing, traveling the world to its darkest corners in order to document our findings.
We traveled to Brazil on the suggestion of some of our viewers, regarding the legends of an abandoned, haunted village located in this secluded island that is officially called the Ilha da Feitoria, but is better known among locals by its far sinister nickname, Ilha do Diabo, The Devil's Island. The tale goes that the village was once prosperous during the early 20th century, but during the military dictatorship of the 70s a facility was built here to imprison the most prolific political dissidents under the guise of being a hospital.
One historian we interviewed in the nearby town of São Lourenço do Sul said that the facility's director was a sick and cruel man called Dr. Santalucia, who took pleasure in torturing his "patients" with the absolute authority given to him by the government. And when he ran out of patients to experiment on, people from the village started disappearing. When the military regimen drew to an end and it was time for him to face justice for his crimes, he committed suicide, but by then the damage was already done. Today, the island only has two inhabitants, two half-crazed old men who live in fishing huts by the shore and warn all outsiders of entering the "dry and evil ground", that they'd leave if they could but they "have to keep the evil in".
Needless to say, this was just the kind of place our channel thrived on. And though the old fishermen did give us the creeps with their rambling stories and babbling about the "Corpo Seco", we chalked it up to them being senile. We had already heard this sort of thing several times over in the past. Enough times that, sadly, we were just hoping we could get some creepy sounds on tape and unexplained blurry footage we could pass off as supernatural for our viewers, and were ready for a long and dull night at the island. Maybe if we weren't so jaded to all of this by now, I'd have seen the red flags, the signs that this was different than usual.
But it's far too late for regrets right now.
We're trapped here, with whatever thing is hunting us. Our radio is busted, we have no phone signal, no internet, and the boat is only coming back for us in the morning. Kate is missing, who knows what happened to Arthur, and Lucas is... Lucas is fucking dead. Just remembering the sight of his body... how we found him in that... way... it makes me shudder.
I can only hope that we're able to leave this place and make the hours-long hike back to the fishermen's place, and, assuming they're not involved in this, get help from them. If we can't, I don't know what we'll do.
I'm forced to face the grim reality once again as we reach a turn in the corridor, and we not only find Arthur, but also catch a glimpse of the foul creature responsible for all of this.