Their car crawled up the hill at around 20 miles per hour, the third and last in the caravan on its way to the abandoned building. The atmosphere was silent, uncomfortable, and tense. Pam watched the scenery crawl by from the passenger seat and ignored the occasional sounds of irritation coming from Roy. The cars ahead of them tapped their brakes and Roy followed suit.
“This is even worse than bowling,” Oscar commented quietly from the backseat and Pam grinned over her shoulder in agreement, glancing at Meredith sleeping squished in between Oscar and Creed. The only office employee not in attendance was Angela because she claimed the excursion was against her religious principles. Pam wished she’d thought of that excuse.
“How late do you think we’ll have to stay here?” she wondered as the car started moving again and Creed adjusted the hood of his gray sweatshirt, unconcerned with whether his movements would jostle Meredith out of her slumber.
“All night,” he assured her, his voice tinged with a foreboding kind of knowledge. “You always have to stay until sunrise so you don’t miss anything.”
She glanced at Roy and frowned.
This just kept getting worse and worse, she thought petulantly, and even when she thought it couldn't get worse than it already was, it did.
As if on cue the car jerked and she felt the tires give beneath her, sliding in a way she was only used to in February. The air left her lungs while Roy’s hands gripped the wheel tight to correct the fishtailing that their car was suddenly doing, his mouth muttering expletives and his eyes squinting hard as he struggled to somehow miraculously get them back on track. They veered toward the trees to their right and she felt her hand lift to her mouth on reflex, holding in a gasp, her forearm pressed tight against her seatbelt. And just as they hit grass, his foot came down on the break a little bit harder, his hands pulling the wheel and finally righting them back against the pavement.
She watched him in surprise and he looked over at her, obviously confused.
“Must’ve gotten some rain up here,” he muttered, a little out of breath, “the roads must be slick.” She nodded, sort of convinced, and they all tried silently to regroup, the breathing in the car heavy and audible.
Their inhaling and exhaling was suddenly drowned out by the radio in the truck blaring to life, loudly broadcasting a signal from a country station that Roy liked to listen to sometimes. Pressing a hand to her chest Pam reached over fast and turned it off, confused and jostled.
“Did you bump that?” Oscar asked her and she shrugged.
“Maybe…”
“What the hell?” Meredith suddenly wondered, her eyes slits in the green half-light of the dashboard, “Are we there or something? What’s with the music?”
Pam mumbled an apology, explaining that she must’ve accidentally hit the button and they were almost there. Meredith grumbled a half-response about wasting money on a babysitter to go looking for spooks in the woods, before closing her eyes again and drifting off to what Pam assumed was an alcohol induced sleep. She returned her attention to Roy who offered her a tight lipped smile that she didn’t return.
“This is weird,” she confessed quietly and she honestly wasn’t sure what she was talking about: the outing, the two of them, the three clowns in the back seat…there were too many choices. He hummed an answer and just as she started to settle into the slow and steady pace of things again her walkie-talkie crackled to life in her lap, making her jump nervously and fumble to turn it down.
“Vince to Pam, come in Pam,” their leader’s voice echoed into their car and she sighed, pressing the orange button on the side of the device.
“This is Pam,” she mumbled, embarrassed to be using the thing, feeling like an eight year old boy playing cops and robbers.
“I thought you all were gonna run right off the road back there, did your tires slip? Over,” he wondered and Pam sighed out something like relief to know this drill-sergeant-wanna-be was keeping track of them at all times. For some reason she found comfort in that.
“Yeah, we figure there must have been some rain up here,” she answered and waited patiently for a response. There was silence until she realized he thought she wasn’t finished. “Over,” she offered sheepishly.
“Roger that. There wasn’t any rain,” he told them, “Sometimes there’s electronic failure right around the 20 mile mark on this road that can't be explained. Hope you were paying attention because you might’ve just had our first paranormal experience of the night. Over.”
She inhaled and looked over at Roy who stared back at her for a moment, motionless, the car crawling to a stop at the urging of his boot against the brakes.
“What did he say?” Oscar asked, shaken. Pam turned to glance at him over her shoulder and shook her head because it was pretty much the only response she could muster. Oscar leaned over Meredith and pinned Creed with a hard stare. “What did that guy just say?” he asked again. Creed just smiled as Roy hit the gas, shaking his head and huffing out a heavy breath.
“This is a bunch of crap,” he grumbled. “I’m gonna kill Michael Scott.”
Pam silently agreed, warily eyeing their surroundings and suddenly seeing more in the shadows than was really there. That wasn't electronic failure, she reasoned with herself, their car just slipped. This was an old road and they were out in the middle of nowhere, so...that didn't make her feel any better, actually. She sighed. Her walkie-talkie crackled again and she held her breath, expecting someone to report seeing mist or a floating light or something.
“Jim to Dwight, over.”
She felt herself start to grin at the voice coming through, glad they’d all agreed to tune to the same channel so everybody could communicate.
“This is Wolf Hunter, over.”
There was silence on the device and Pam’s grin spread to a full out smile.
“Jim to DWIGHT, over,” Jim repeated.
“This is Dwight K. Shrute, aka the Wolf Hunter, over,” Dwight expanded and Pam heard Jim clear his throat into the radio.
“Yeah, Wolf Hunter, there’s a hitchhiker up ahead here and since you guys don’t have any room in your car, I was thinking I’d pick him up. Thoughts? Over,” he finished. Roy sighed, annoyed, and glared at Pam’s amused expression before turning back to the road and passive aggressively inching up toward the bumper of Jim’s car.
“JIM HALPERT, LISTEN CAREFULLY. DO NOT PICK UP THE HITCHHIKER. HE WILL MURDER YOU AND DISPOSE OF YOUR BODY IN THE WOODS. I REPEAT DO NOT PICK UP THE HITCHHIKER,” Dwight shouted, his voice tinged with genuine worry and Pam imagined that Jim was completely satisfied in the driver’s seat of his car, despite the too-close headlights of Roy behind him. “Over,” Dwight finished firmly.
“Pick up the hitch-hiker,” Jim answered, “Copy that. Over and out,” and Pam figured for as irritating as this night was going to be at least every once in a while she could forget about Roy and Katy and laugh with Jim. At least there was Jim.
She chuckled as Dwight protested into the walkie-talkie and Jim was stubbornly silent, and she let herself be entertained, laughing and smiling over her shoulder at Oscar until his expression suddenly dropped and Pam was forced to turn around and look out the windshield.
The building was large, gray and unfriendly, draped half in shadow in the way old buildings sometimes were. Huge sections were pitch black and charred from fires that had been set by kids in the 90's and she could've sworn she saw a bat swoop in the air above the roof. She swallowed.
The half-burned Sanitarium loomed in front of them, rising up out of the mountain top like smoke. Her laughter died and Dwight's voice on the radio went silent.
There was nothing funny about this. At all.
