The Old Hospital [Part 1]

The hospital grounds sat in the middle of the town like a bullseye. This was most likely a coincidence; the oldest parts of the town were closest to the river that formed the southern boundary and over time, the town had expanded North and East. The newest building, and the furthest North, was a medium-sized retail store that the town had fought to boycott. Towns that grow over a long period of time are devoid of any master plan, since people just add what they need when they need it. In this case, the evidence all over town could be found in the large expanses of forest and sand dunes that were left between one developed area of town and the next. If a place had been too costly to build on, it was skipped over.

After the "old" hospital, which it was still referred to, was closed in 1990, the small patches of forest around it took back the grounds in only a matter of months. The building itself fell to a different sort of wilderness. Being out of view from the street below, daring high-schoolers and vagrant meth addicts moved in. in only a few days, every one of the windows had been broken out. In a couple weeks, some had tried to burn it down. After more than 20 years, it looked like the place was about to fall down.

"The police don't really come up here any more," explained Ryan. "They just kind of drive through the parking lot and check to see if the place is still standing. If it isn't on fire or there isn't a car parked in the lot, they don't even check inside." From the passenger seat in Ryan's car, it was easy enough to see why it didn't require security to keep people out. Yellow caution tape was off-putting. The collapsed ceiling and dark, metal-screened windows were threatening. The place looked downright dangerous.

"Why doesn't someone just tear it down?" I wondered aloud.

"Money. There are always rumors that someone is going to buy it, but no one actually has." The reason for this was pretty simple. The town was dying off. People in other places had felt the "Great Recession" recession in 2008, but for the small towns along the coast, there hadn't been jobs or money for much of anyone in a generation. That was the main reason I left town five years ago.

"Well, are we going to do this?" Ryan killed the engine, casting the building in blue light from the one streetlamp over the gravel parking area. I took a sledge from the trunk I'd borrowed from Nicole's house. Ryan had brought a crowbar as well, but just in case we found anything serious in there, Ryan had brought his pistol. Guns usually make me nervous, but I counted having an armed, off-duty cop with me as a good thing.

"Now, that - " Ryan said, pointing to the chained set of double doors just to the right of a sign saying [Town] Medical Clinic, "- is the main entrance. There's no key anymore, but people have found other ways to get in." He took us around the left side of the building where we found a door propped crookedly in its frame. The nails of its hinges had pulled out of the soft, moldy wood. Once we were inside, we turned our our flashlights on and got our first look at the inside. Something about being in that place was really unsettling. Thick patches of green moss had grown over the floor and walls near the windows and  doors. Beneath the holes in the ceiling, huge ferns grew out of the dark, wet carpet. Under everything was a slimy layer of green mold. It smelled like a forest. A large beam had fallen from the ceiling across the room like a downed tree trunk, adding to the clutter and claustrophobia of the small room.

Have you ever seen the footage of scuba divers or those robotic submarines who sift through old shipwrecks and underwater buildings? That's what it reminded me of. Everything had something growing on it, and there was dust hanging in the air, unmoving. It was the silence that really drew the similarity; it was thick and oppressive, as if there were a thick, weighted blanket over everything.

That first room looked like a break room, or staff area. Against the left wall was a small kitchenette area, with cabinets along the floor and ceiling and a sink set into the counter top. Across from the door we'd just come through was a gaping black hole that had once been a doorway. Some long-ago fire had rounded its edges, leaving an oblong black portal. To the right, was a staff bathroom area, which had a couple of lockers, a shower and a toilet. We had to be careful walking across the floor. Shards of glass from the broken window and mirror in the bathroom were scattered across the carpet. Near the doorway, the fire had eaten through the floor, exposing the supports.

The next room was bigger, looking like it might have been a place to gather everyone at the hospital together at once. It had the most evidence that people had been living in it. Bottles, beer cans and black trash bags were in every corner and across the floor. A sleeping bag lay crumpled under the black, grated window against the far wall. Metal folding chairs were scattered about, casting long black shadows along the ground as Ryan and I shined our lights.

Through a larger door on the right-hand side of that room was a long hallway. This was the main leg of the hospital which consisted of five separate rooms with tattered, white curtains hanging in the doorways. I couldn't see all the way to the end of the hall. It looked like it just kept going and going. The wall on our left, opposite of the rooms, was made almost entirely out of metal-caged windows that looked out onto a small porch. During the daytime, you could have seen the trees and bushes beyond.

It was here that I began to have the feeling of being watched. The metal crosshatch pattern over the windows and abysmal blackness beyond made it impossible to see out. I imagined it was something like a one-way mirror. If someone had been standing outside, they could have been watching us like gerbils in a cage.

Ryan and I checked the first hospital room on our right. Everything had been stripped and removed, even the cupboard doors and drawers. A tiny slit of a window on the back wall of each room let in light from the one bluish streetlamp that illuminated the parking area outside.

Ryan went inside, and I stayed watch. Watching for what, I don't know, but I ended up staring into the blackness at the far end of the hall. Maybe it was my imagination or my anxiety, but I thought I heard something down there, a soft shuffle in the dark. There was no echo; being inside that place was like being in a vacuum. I turned off my light, and just looked and listened. My fear grew, as I focused on anything at the end of the hall. It was so dark, I could see the phosphene swirls I normally only see when I close my eyes. It was silent, but I was sure that there was someone there, at the end of the hall. My heart rate rose, I could feel it in my tense shoulders. Was that a sound? A whisper?

I was shaken out of my concentration by Ryan's hand grabbing my arm. "You okay?" I hadn't seen his flashlight illuminate the hall way around me.

"Yeah..." I didn't know whether to tell him that I'd heard something or whether I'd been just been daydreaming. "Let's split up, I'll check the front door and see what's at the end of the hallway."

"Sure," Ryan said, going into the second room. As quietly as I could, listening as I went, I went to the far end of the hall. The reason we hadn't been able to see anything at the end was that there was a wall made of strips of flat black rubber hanging from the ceiling. I parted them and shined my light through. The smell of mold invaded my sinuses. Past the curtain, the linoleum floor turned into finished, smooth cement. The hallway dropped off in a downward slope, ending in a pool of standing water.

Before the curtain, alongside the patients rooms, was a moderately-sized reception area. Light streamed in from the parking lot through the locked front doors. On the left was a tall reception desk built into the floor and wall. Behind that was a computer desk and some rusted-out file cabinets. The metal cabinets had signs of being pried open long ago. As was to be expected, nothing interesting was left. Whatever papers had been left behind had probably been burned, leaving more charred areas on the floor.

I turned to leave, but something behind the computer desk flashed, catching my eye. Fallen in the area between the desk and the wall was a glass frame of some sort. Mold had grown inside the glass, and water had damaged the printer paper inside, but you could still make out the words "visiting" near the top, and "unwanted" near the bottom right corner. Nothing with a doctor's name on it.

I left the reception area, expecting Ryan to be nearly done checking the patient rooms. I didn't see any light.

"Ryan?" I called weakly, moving back down the hall. The feeling of being watched was overwhelming and the hairs on my neck stood straight up. Ryan didn't answer. In the second room I found him standing stock-still, facing the wall, his dark flashlight in his right hand. He was staring at a broken mirror above a tiny porcelain sink. "Hey. Find something?" I asked cautiously, staying outside the doorway.

He turned his whole head ninety degrees to look at me, taking a full second to respond He shook his head like he was shaking off a dream, "No." He seemed to have snapped out of whatever trance he'd been in. "Fuck this place, man." At that moment, I was so glad to have Ryan with me. Who knows how long he or I would have sat there, staring off into space without the other there to pull them back to reality.

"Yeah. You get the feeling like we're being watched from out there?" I asked, gesturing outside the large, glassless windows.

"Now that you mention it, yeah. Thanks for that." He said with a sly smile, joining me in the hallway. "Only one place left to go." He pointed his light at the rubber curtain.

It occurs to me now that there was one more room we didn't check. The fifth patients room. We hadn't found anything in the other four, and it seemed like there was a slim chance we'd have better luck with the fifth. At least, that's what we thought at the time. Maybe that was where we went wrong.