He rolled his eyes. “You're playing with fire, babe. You need to cut this shit out. Or... or maybe,” he continued, looking over at me briefly as if to enlist me in his cause, “we should just call it off. There are better ways for us to spend our break.”
“We've gone through this a million times,” spat Elizabeth. “If you don't want to come along, then get the hell out!” I'd agreed to let them eat in my car on the one condition that they not spill anything. Her Mountain Dew looked on the verge of spilling across the backseat as she leaned forward and ripped her boyfriend a new asshole. “Why are you always like this? This is important to me.”
Jake fell silent, recognizing this to be a battle he couldn't win. That he wasn't all that keen on visiting the asylum was crystal clear, but he was going to do it anyway because—aside from not wanting her to spend the night with me—he wanted to look after her.
I tried to speak up in his defense. “He just doesn't want you getting hurt, you know?” The resulting silence told me that my words had fallen on deaf ears, so I shoved a bit of fallen taco meat into my mouth and shut up.
After a while, Elizabeth gave a slightly more detailed reply to my question. “I'm going to try and capture an EVP with the recording device,” she said. “If I get a good one—something that has an indisputable connection to the asylum—then it'll be proof enough for me. You know, there's one person in particular I'm interested in reaching out to.”
Enid Lancaster. I cleansed my palate with a swig of soda and crunched an ice cube. “You want to make contact with the psycho killer, huh? I'll be honest, if there's any part of her still lingering in that place, I'm not too interested in making a connection. There must be some nicer, more peaceful spirits hanging out there, don't you think?”
That wasn't completely true, though; if my understanding of the natural sciences proved to be a sham and ghosts truly did exist, then I would have liked to reach out to the spirit of Enid to find out what had really happened leading up the Third Ward Incident. Knowing what had happened to her in life while under Dr. Corvine's care, what had led her to go on a killing spree, would answer some longstanding questions. And there was another question I wanted to ask her that went something like this: “Why have you been calling from a phone within the asylum? Who did you hope to get ahold of, and for what reason?”
Unwrapping my last taco, I shifted into drive and started for the main drag, leaving one hand on the wheel. “All right, guys. Next stop: Chaythe Asylum.” I waited to see if either would protest, if Elizabeth's enthusiasm hadn't been a long con up to this point. Jake sighed in resignation and ate in silence.
Beaming in the back seat, Elizabeth looked out the window like a dog on its way to the park. “This is it! I can't believe it's really happening.”
A few raindrops hit the windshield as I started for the entrance ramp. I shook my head as if to say, “I can't believe it, either.”
For better or for worse, we were on our way.
19
During my first visit to its gated exterior, I'd theorized that Chaythe Asylum would look less threatening by day than it did at night.
Well, it turns out I was wrong.
The building stuck out of the ground like a massive black stump, marring the horizon and rendering the surrounding land in a kind of shadow, like an oil spill. The rain had picked up over the course of our drive, and except for the rare slurp from cups that were running low on soda, there wasn't a noise to be heard in the car as we pulled up, for the second time, to that tall fence. Maybe it was just me, but the building commanded a sort of reverence. Even if I'd known nothing about it, about its history, the mere sight of the asylum would have still filled me with foreboding.
There was a white SUV parked on the other side of the fence, up near the gate, with a yellow light bar fastened to its roof. Inside, I could see a security guard slumped over his steering wheel, playing with his phone. I slowed to a stop, looking out through my rain-flecked window at the building. “Damn. It's about as welcoming as Castle Grayskull,” I said, chewing on the last of my ice.
“Castle what?” asked Jake, balling up all of his garbage.
I smirked. “Jesus, you don't know Castle Grayskull? I guess you're younger than I thought.” My grin didn't last long, because as I stared through the chain links at the compound that awaited us, I began to get cold feet all over again. Nothing good is going to come of this visit, I thought to myself. Anything waiting to be discovered within those walls is going to be bad news. Clearing my throat, I flashed my headlights, getting the guard's attention. “So, uh... I've never really done this before. Are we just supposed to walk up to the gate and ask 'mother may I?' or what?”
The guard stirred, stepping out of his vehicle and pulling his black jacket tight. Elizabeth hopped out of the car soon thereafter, before I could even roll down my window. Waving frantically at the security guard, she all but ran into the gate. “Hello! We're here for a tour of the asylum. We're supposed to be meeting someone named Terrence—the groundskeeper? We were invited by Mr. Blake.” The rain wasn't slackening, and it left her damp and shivering, but for all Elizabeth cared it was a bright and sunny day. She was in another world completely.
“Yeah,” said the guard, pulling a keyring from his belt and moving to unlock the gate. “I was told to look out for you guys. The, uh... university group, right? Terrence is already here. He parked in the right-hand lot.” The gate gave way with a grating metallic groan, and Elizabeth hopped back into the car in double quick time. “Right this way—stay to the right side. Terrence will get you in there.” Keeping the bill of his hat low, the guard muscled the gate open and held it long enough for me to maneuver the Cavalier onto the winding drive.
I thanked the guard as we wheeled past his SUV and then rolled up my window. Then, in the rearview, I watched as he slammed the gate shut, hurriedly locking it. He was only doing his job, keeping the riff-raff out, but watching him do that gave me bad vibes. You're on the grounds now. Locked in.
“It's even spookier up-close,” said Elizabeth, her voice a near-whisper. Running her hands through her slick locks, she stared up at the building which loomed ahead, seldom blinking. “I've never seen anything like it.”
The drive leading up to the asylum was winding, but what I hadn't noticed from the other side of the gate was the state of utter disrepair it was in. The ruts—of which there were many—gave the suspension of my old beater a thorough workout. I kept my speed low, swerving now and then to keep to the least-crumbling sections, but the asphalt path was almost completely shot. A powerful gust of wind brought a veil of rain crashing against the windshield, and when the wipers had cleared it away the asylum seemed to draw much closer, as if it'd shambled towards the car on unseen legs.
Unsettling though it was, the building was undoubtedly striking. The windows were made of the dark, thick glass of another age. Behind that rust-stained exterior I pictured nurses in traditional white garb, cap included, ambling about the place on their rounds. It was a slice of the past that looked most out of place to my modern eyes; even in the 80's when it was still in operation it must have seemed anachronistic.
I passed the front entrance, a thing which was fronted by heavy metal doors and which had been fastened shut with several lengths of chain, and started around the building's right flank. The height and apparent thickness of the walls called to mind a medieval fortress. Windows were fewer, and where they did appear they featured bars of wrought iron across them not unlike one might find in a prison. The road never did improve; more than once I nearly drove into the muddy grass trying to keep the Cavalier on the straight and narrow.
As I'd suspected from the road, the asylum had been built as a sort of closed circuit, its overall shape appearing pentagonal. Following the hard angles that must have demarcated different wings, the road took a slight hook, beyond which I could make out the parking lot the security guard had alluded to.
It was a parking lot in name only.
A fe
lled streetlight adorned the entrance to said lot, which was made up of more of the same pulverized concrete. Lines marking out individual spaces were nowhere to be found, and so I drove slowly towards the form of a small, black pick-up truck in the distance. The grounds beyond the lot stretched on for what seemed like a mile, and were comprised mostly of overgrown grass, though where trees and other growths did pop up, they took on grotesque deformities. Gnarled trunks and limbs turned up here and there, as though the trees were fighting against the very soil they sprang from. Curious weeds, far taller and more exotic than one would expect for northwest Ohio, filled the semi-shaded spaces between the half-bald trees.
Jake, who'd held his tongue up to this point and merely focused his dark eyes upon the building, slumped back in his seat. Picking nervously at a tear across the knee of his jeans, he seemed to curse to himself. “Who could possibly recover after staying in a gloomy place like this?”
“I think it's kind of charming,” said Elizabeth, her breath fogging up the glass. “It's elegant.”
I chuckled. “Elegant? That's certainly one word you could use. Personally, I agree with your boy-toy here. Maybe it looked nicer, once, but if I were depressed or suicidal I don't think that this place would much cheer me up.”
I sidled up to the black truck, nodding to its pensive-looking driver as I approached. He appeared a man of fifty or more years, with a tightly drawn expression. He had a big nose on him, big red ears, but the line of his mouth drooped into something very small. There was very little chin beneath. Like the security guard, he was wearing a ball cap—a sweat-stained Detroit Tigers cap—and the shade it afforded his already small eyes made his gaze as dark and beady as an animal's.
I rolled down my window. He did the same, leaning very slightly out of the truck.
“Hello, are you Terrence?” I asked.
He nodded. When he spoke it was with an airy southern drawl. “You the university folks? Uh...” He glanced at a paper in his lap. “Barlow?”
“That's me,” I replied. “I've brought two students with me.”
From his glove compartment, he drew out a few papers, which he then held out to me through his window. “Forms the owner wants you to sign.”
I reached out and took them, hitting the dome light. It was waiver stating that, in the event of bodily harm, we wouldn't hold Hugh Blake, Terrence McCullough or anyone affiliated with Chaythe Asylum accountable. There was some legal jargon there, which I took a few moments to process, before I finally passed out three of the waivers to my other passengers. “Sign 'em,” I said. “The short version is this: 'If you get killed in there, don't try and sue me.' Pretty standard stuff.” The three of us passed a pen around, autographing our forms, and then I stretched out the window, handing them over to the groundskeeper, who filed them back into his glove compartment.
Terrence nodded slowly, adjusted his hat. “So, you're the lot who's fixin' to go inside?” he asked, pointing at the building.
“Yessir,” I said.
“Why would you want to? I get paid to come around every now and then and I don't even want to be here. What is it y'all hope to find?” he asked.
Already unnerved by the scenery, the groundskeeper's words didn't sit well with me. I was about to ask him why he disliked coming around to the asylum, but the effect the dark building had on visitors was pretty obvious to me.
And anyway, Elizabeth beat me to it. Leaning forward between the seats so quickly that she nearly headbutted me, she asked Terrence, “Why do you say that? Why don't you like coming here? Have you experienced something in the building?”
Terrence killed the engine of his truck and wiped a bit of rain from the inside of his door. “This building ain't ever been kind to strangers, kiddo,” he replied. “Was never very kind to the people who stayed here, either.” With that, he stepped out of the truck and zipped up his jacket all the way to his stub of a chin, teasing a ring of worn keys from a breast pocket. He waited until the three of us stepped out of the car, and as soon as I'd locked up he was speeding across the pockmarked, rain-soaked lot.
Keeping our heads low, we followed him up onto a crumbling curb, through some tall grass, and then came to stand before a large, metal door not unlike the one I'd seen up front. This, I took it, was the back door to the asylum, and it'd been shut with only a single length of chain. Squatting down beneath an awning, he worked the lock deftly and had the chain wrapped neatly within the space of some few moments. The door opened with a keening squeal, and he stood at the threshold for some time, staring into the darkness within, before nodding and stepping aside to allow us passage.
Elizabeth ran in first. Jake followed at her heels. I was next.
Terrence shut the door behind us, and for a moment we were inundated in near total darkness. A window some two stories above, which showcased the last dregs of the rainy evening, was our only source of light until the groundskeeper broke out a flashlight. With this he hunted down a circuit breaker, and with the flipping of several switches the bulbs in numerous fixtures began glowing orange.
Wiping a few errant raindrops from his face, he looked around. “Welcome to Chaythe Asylum, folks.”
20
We were in a lobby of sorts.
The air within was clotted with dust, rarefied, and it took only a few breaths for my respiratory system to tire of it. Standing in the dimly-lit space, a large wooden counter to my left and a bank full of broken wheelchairs to my right, I found myself wanting to return to the rainy outdoors.
What this lobby might have looked like during the asylum's prime was impossible to say, but the effect it had on me as I took a few nervous paces inside was unwholesome. I hadn't expected things within a derelict facility such as this to have been terribly well-maintained, and so the discovery of several intact items scattered about the scene proved jarring. The room had the look of a place hastily vacated before a disaster. I spied old ballpoint pens scattered across the desk, a handful of papers and mottled phonebooks crammed into a hanging shelf. A sign dangled above the counter, more by spider's silk than by the wire it boasted, that read RECEPTION in boxy letters.
Terrence idled by the door as the three of us took our turns pacing through the room. Beyond the alcove full of broken and tangled wheelchairs was what must have once been a seating area. Wooden chairs were stacked up in neat rows like bricks in a wall, with a thick layer of dust acting as mortar. Across from us were metal double-doors, which had small panes of frosted glass centered within them at eye-level. The light fixtures throughout looked to be a mess; bulbs of different shapes and wattages had been thrust into the chandeliers and sconces, adding extra depth to already dark corners. I ran my hand against the wall; cool, smooth stone.
“Where do the doors lead?” asked Elizabeth, getting right to business. She had her backpack in her arms and was already rifling through it in search of her gear.
Terrence sighed, leaning his stick-thin frame against the wooden counter. The waistband of his sagging Dungarees gave way to a flash of plumber's crack, which he mercifully hid with a single tug. “Listen, here's the deal.” He looked around the room, scanned the ceiling with those little eyes of his as though he were speaking not only to the three of us, but to a room full of people. “I think I've made it real clear that I don't like hangin' around here. If y'all want to explore and look around, then that's your business. It ain't for me to try and dissuade ya. But here's the thing. There are rules you're gonna want to follow.” He held out a few fingers. “If any of you come across a door that's been blocked off with red tape, then you mustn't go through it. That's the biggest one.”
“Why's that?” asked Elizabeth. “What's behind the doors marked with red tape?”
Jake shot her a severe look. “Who cares? We aren't supposed to go inside them. Isn't that enough?”
Massaging his temples, Terrence replied, “Certain parts of this building have been sealed up for ages. Probably some spots that ain't been entered since it was shut down. They'v
e been deemed unsafe. The red tape is what they used to mark the closed-off areas. You wander in there, you might get hurt. And chances are, there ain't any lights there, either.”
“OK,” I said, “so where would you recommend we start our tour? Should we just follow you?”
The groundskeeper cocked his head to the side. “If you want. I don't mind, either way. Don't mess with nothin', don't break nothin', and you can do as you please. I've got some work to do myself—have to make a walk of the grounds, make sure the roof upstairs ain't sprung any leaks. Gonna test the power. It'll take me a few hours.”
“So, we can wander off on our own?” blurted Elizabeth.
Terrence spared me a concerned look and then said, “Young lady, I wouldn't recommend you go running off into this giant building, no. But then, I wouldn't have recommended you comin' here at all. Y'all signed the paper and got the blessing from the owner, so as long as you don't get in my way you can do as you please. If you're still insisting on staying when I'm through with my work, I'll wait outside for y'all in the truck. Mr. Blake's paying me overtime for this particular visit, so I'll stay as long as you need me to. But after dark, I'd much prefer to be outside the building, if that's all right with you.”
I thought to ask him why, but then decided against it. His dislike for the building was pretty self-explanatory. I myself didn't care to be shut up in the asylum at night, though judging by the stars Elizabeth had in her eyes just then she'd have liked nothing better. “All right, can you give us a general overview of the place? The lay of the land?”
Terrence nodded. “So, in case you didn't notice outside, the building is arranged in a sort of pentagon. Ya got five points, and for the most part this level, the ground floor, is accessible. Got a few rooms shut up, but if you stick to the main hallways you'll eventually make a complete circuit. Except for any doors with the red tape, everything should be unlocked. It's the second floor and the basement that are going to give you some trouble, though. About half of the upstairs is blocked off. You got some old offices there, and what were once the second and third wards. First ward is down here, around the first couple bends. The basement is a mess. Wouldn't go down there if I was you. No lights, and God knows what kinda vermin are hanging around. In all the time I've worked here I've never been able to get those lights working. Don't even know half of what's down there, truth be told. I've seen the blueprints, but for lack of a better term, it's uncharted territory.”
Asylum: The Afterlife investigations #1 Page 12