The dead zone.

The start; in the dark. Walls are dimly visible. The view pans around, but with only flashlights, it's hard to see anything. It's a tunnel and the walls are made of stone; there's white paint on the walls, something about a WARNING.

"-hah, holy shit, dude-"

"-the beer?"

"You know it!"

"-place is creepy. You guys smell that?"

Five minutes in; a glass door opens. It's like the waiting room of a hospital, but dirty and wrecked. Chairs tipped over, dust on everything, lights burnt and busted out. The view flips around to the face of some teenager, before he takes a drink of Natty light.

"Okay, so, check it. We're in the old facility, it's supposed to be haunted. Sounds like bullshit, though, there's nothing here."

"Bro, give me the camera."

An old, old computer; it looks like an Apple 2, a grey plastic box. Someone scratched a smiley face into the glass screen.

"...weird, man."

Ten minutes in, and more of the same. Corridors with no lights, no sound. Probably underground. The rooms are locked and there's wreckage throughout. Rusty stretchers, clipboards with paper splayed like birds with broken wings. Trash-cans of soda, old bags of chips, a torn condom wrapper.

"You guys hear that?"

"Dude, shut the fuck up."

"No, seriously! I heard something..."

Twenty minutes in. An amphitheater, like a lecture hall. Except lecture halls don't usually have tables covered in straps, generators that sit still and silent, or surgical tools scattered around the tile. Or what probably isn't old blood on the walls. Probably.

"Let's go. For real, guys, let's get the fuck out of here."

"Come on, man, quit being a pussy."

"There it is again! You hear it?"

Off camera, it sounds like machinery. A washing machine that's rocking very hard, maybe, or an engine rattling and trying to start. There's no more beers being opened; just silence as they listened hard in the gloom.

The camera shuts off at this point.

Forty minutes in; running. Hard breathing. Someone muttering "Fuck, man, fuck." Again and again. It sounds frightened.

"What the fuck was that, man?"

"Shut up, dude! We're getting out of here, right now. Fuck this. There's, uh..." The camera does another dizzying turn, looking at a frightened face. "There's something in here with us. Something big and pissed. This was a bad idea."

An hour in, back in the hospital waiting room. The camera is on the floor; someone must have dropped it. The silence stretches on until the footsteps come, and there's no mistaking them. They sound heavy and labored, like a refrigerator learned to walk. There's another sound, too, like a carpet of worms in the hollow of a stump, or Mercury being slowly sprayed through a blanket.

The camera goes up, and up, and up, until a new face appears.

It's a girl; her mouth is a blender stuffed with nails, the maw of a metal shark, but her eyes are timid and frightened. Her cheeks are dirty and her hair looks like it hasn't been washed in years.

"...He-hello." Her voice is a speak-and-spell stomped through by a boot, a text to speech program being read through cheap speakers. She sounds like this place looks.

"I hope they're gone. Those boys were scary. And they littttered. They yelled a lot when they saw me. I just wanted to be fr-I ends." She said. "...If you see this, please come back. You left your soda..."

Whoever found the camera at the entrance to this place would hopefully know to leave well enough alone in the future.