The underground corridor seemed endless, the beam of light from their torches swallowed by the darkness ahead of them. With their backpacks on their shoulders, torches in one hand and gun in the other, they walked, slowly, careful not to trigger any boobie traps Josh might have set for them, on the way.

"I wonder why he has made all the hints so obvious," whispered Castle at some point. "I mean, the diary becoming increasingly deranged, the note from Mike, the blood down the hatch, it all looks so… blatant!"

"You know, nine times out of ten, serial killers believe they're smarter than the cops unleashed to catch them. I guess Josh doesn't fall in that one out of ten," she replied. "He probably underestimated us and our ability to connect the dots."

"Or he had no idea the NYPD had Richard Castle at their service!" he chuckled. "And Richard Castle loves horror movies, and this guy grew up with horror and slasher, I can recognize the plot of one when I see it."

"You know that I watch horror movies too, and that I could have followed the clues myself?" inquired Kate.

"Oh I know perfectly well you love horror movies, I wasn't the one that dragged us down to the theater to see The Cabin In The Woods on the day it came out!"

"Come on Castle, that one is more a comedy than a horror!"

"Yes, and the combination worked perf…" He stopped in his tracks and pointed his flashlight to the wall at his left. "Hey, look here!"

There was a large brass plaque, with thick letters in bas-relief. It commemorated the opening of the mining complex and marked the very first shaft that was excavated, in 1851.

"Looks like you were right, Castle. I wonder what was built in place of the cabin, when the mines were open."

He shrugged his shoulders, but beneath the thick ski jacket and the heavy backpack he was carrying, she could barely notice it. "The barracks?" he proposed. "Or and administrative building, maybe? Or both. As much as I did research in a lot of different fields, coal mines aren't among them."

"I guess it doesn't matter anymore, considering it was demolished to make room for that lodge. By the way, how's your father's cabin?"

She snorted, trying to suppress a laugh. "Compared to that mansion, it's more like the toolshed," she explained. "On more normal means of comparison, it's a very classic mountain cabin, two floors, two bedrooms upstairs, one large room downstairs that serves both as kitchen and living room. It's simple, but cozy and warm."

"Next time you have a couple of days free, would you like to go there and erase the memories of this place?"

"Why not? Sounds like a good idea. It's great in this season. Come, let's go one. Let's see where this hallway leads, alright?"

In the end, the corridor turned out to be completely safe, no traps or tricks planted anywhere. Probably Josh hadn't found any place to hide, as the walls were smooth and there weren't nooks or other places to hide contraptions or stuff like that. The first shaft ever dug had been transformed in a service corridor to move miners back and forth, and about fifteen minutes since they had started walking they found themselves in front of a fork in the hallway. One way was walled, while the other, the path on the left, seemed to continue without issues. Out of curiosity, Kate checked the wall that blocked the path. It looked old and raised in haste, the bricks were damp and stained by mold and humidity. "You think they walled this path when they closed the mines, after the cannibalism case?" she asked him, running her torch all over the wall. There were cracks between the bricks, the craftsmanship was lacking and sticking the torch in one of the gaps she could see beyond the wall. "Uh, there's a lot of stuff behind this wall! Pickaxes, spades, gas masks hanging from the walls. It looks like a huge toolshed!"

She heard Castle walking back behind her. "It probably was, Kate. The original wall has a door, that's the latest part that was closed up. Here, you see?" He pointed that a faint but visible line at her side. "I guess this was the old access to the mine and was closed when the mines were. This path though," he pointed at the open one. "The only place it could lead is the sanatorium."

He pulled a folded map out of the back pocket of his pants and checked it. "Alright, if my sense of orientation isn't completely busted, we're heading here." He pressed his finger just below the marker of the old sanatorium. "But I have no idea if the hallway goes straight up, or if it turns around somewhere down the road and changes direction."

"Well, I guess we have to walk there to know."

In truth, they had no desire to walk anywhere but out of that damn hallway, but they had no choice. Unless Ryan and Esposito found a way to open the hatch, but there wasn't much hope about that. On the other side of the tunnel, there was a heavy wooden door, left ajar. A gust of cold air flowed in towards them. With the sun disappeared behind the mountains, the temperature had dropped ten good degrees. Kate shivered when she wrapped her ungloved hand around the door to pull it open.

"How long until dawn?" she asked.

"Nine hours and half, roughly. I wonder how long it will take us to go back to the lodge, in the dark and without the underground express tunnel."

"You want to go back right away? I thought you'd like to investigate a sanatorium with a creepy history on its back."

Castle nodded, visibly. "In other circumstances, without a deranged teen that really wants to emulate Michael Myers, I wouldn't mind. Better, I would be eager to explore every nook of it. With Josh running around? Nope, thank you."

"Can't say I disagree." And once the door was fully open, she felt the sudden urge to close it and barricade in the tunnel. In front of them they could see the battered, unattended lobby of the sanatorium. The ceiling had half crumbled over and the whole area looked unstable to say the least, not to mention the dust and the debris that made everything look like a sandstorm had created the havoc in front of them.

"And here I thought the cabin was creepy…" she muttered.

"This isn't creepy, this is terrifying. You're aware the Josh is probably hiding somewhere around here?"

"Yes, but I'm trying not to think about it. I bet this was his escape route, two years ago. He got out of the cabin, into the woods, down the mountain and back into civilization where he followed the case and stalked Sam until he convinced her to move to New York to speak with that professor at Columbia."

Castle took a step outside and carefully inspected the floor right outside the door, checking for boobietraps. "He probably stacked supplies for months, in order to being able to survive here. Detective Sanders told us they never checked the sanatorium because it's unstable and can crumble down anytime right? He knew they would never look for him here, that they'd search the woods because who in the right state of mind would stay here, no matter how desperate, so he camped up here for a while."

Careful not to stumble or trigger anything, Beckett moved inside the lobby too. "Crazy as it sounds, I think you're right. You think he rigged his own hideout?"

"Stupid, but he could have. This guy isn't exactly right in the head, is he?"

"Castle, depression and psychosis shouldn't be ridiculed like that. It's not a matter of being right in the head, it's a matter of mental health, and this guy evidently wasn't treated the right way. He wasn't probably diagnosed at all, if he got to this point!"

"Right, I'm sorry, it was stupid, I shouldn't have said that. Come on, let's see what we can find here."

What they found was a locked front door. Their preferred way out was a huge steel-reinforced wooden door that was locked and nailed shut. Even with a crowbar they had no chance to move that mammoth of a door. The hinges were probably frozen solid and rust covered every inch of the plaque of the lock. They wondered, even if they had the key, if it would be useful, or if the cylinders had turned to dust, after decades of neglect, and if they were kept together only by the ice.

They were forced to wander around the sanatorium longer than they had thought. The dark, moldy corridors seemed to close on them, pools of stagnant water made their steps resonate with loud splashes, the particulate floating in the air made the beams of light coming from their torches look like ghosts. Each shadow moving with the wind outside, each noise coming from the mountain behind the building made them flinch and pushed them more on edge than a moment before.

They walked around, mindful of every step they took. They found rooms that once housed patients recovering from tuberculosis, ancient machinery they had no idea what they were for, old rusty bed structures and wheelchairs abandoned around. Castle even dared to snoop around one of the offices and in the shelves. All the documents were still there, even those regarding the cannibals.

"Hey Beckett, look here. They still have all the documents! There's the full report of the eleven cannibals!"

"They didn't seize them when they closed this place?" she asked, checking the windows to see if they would budge. They were nailed shut too, with thick boards keeping light and intruders outside.

"Apparently they didn't. Shit, this is even worse than what I read in the book! They were aggressive and even assaulted one of the nurses once the disease set in and they tried to bite her. Shit, this place is… I don't even know what to say, if we weren't trapped in here, I'd say it's the best escape room ever!"

"I would agree too, if we weren't trapped here, if I wasn't freezing and if I wasn't starving. You have anything to eat in your backpack?"

"Oh, I stuffed yours as well. There's beef jerky, granola bars, a couple of chocolate bars… the usual. We can stop and eat, we still have nearly eight full hours to get back to the cabin and down the mountain."

She shook her head. "Nah, not now. Once we're back to the cabin, yes, but now? We can't stop to eat. Or read fifty years old medical documents."

Their search for an exit brought them to the morgue. A room that usually is creepy on its own, but what they found in that particular morgue scared the shit out of them.

"Is that… what I think it is?" Rick's voice was strangled and muffled.

Kate shivered at the sight in front of them. Two mummies, for lack of a better word, dressed in girly winter clothes, lay on two of the slabs of the unused refrigerating room, adorned with with looked like an attempt at making an altar for them. There were candle stumps, dried plants and mountain flowers and other forms of idols all around the slabs, surrounding the two bodies.

"Oh fuck he found their bodies!" she gasped.

"And he dragged them here, in his hideout, to take care of them in death like he wasn't able to do when they were alive."

She swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat. "Well Castle, meet Hannah and Beth Washington."