1906 [h.s.]

one

I used to live in a small city, you know, the kind of place where almost everyone knows everyone. I had moved there when I was about seven and from the moment the first box was put down on the floor of my room, I had always heard the same things: curfew at ten, stay on the streets, don't say hi to people you don't know. But most importantly, don't go there.

There was said to be an old asylum, somewhere into the woods. Since it had been abandoned, weird voices had started to go around about it.

"I've heard that during the night all the ghosts of the people who have been killed there come out to seek revenge."

"It's just an asylum Jake, nobody was killed there!"

"Why does nobody want to get near it then?"

I turned around to my two friends. "You really believe everything they say, don't you?"

Jake looked at me. "Why, Emma? Don't you think that there could be something, I don't know, a little off about the way it was abandoned? I've heard that over a night, the whole building was left empty, and all the people were gone."

"It all happened in the first years of the 20th century, they probably forgot how it even happened" I replied rolling my eyes.

"It happened on the night of December 31st, 1909. Is there nothing sketchy for you about this?"

"Okay, I admit it, that's kind of creepy" said the red haired girl sitting next to him, cuddling a bit closer into his shoulder.

"When the guys that had been called to fix the windows came in the first morning of 1910, the place was completely empty, and the road had been partially closed by the plants outside. I've heard it's haunted" he added.

"Can we stop talking about this? It's not really pleasant, I'd like to sleep tonight" the girl said.

"Don't tell me that you actually believe him? Come on Mia, it's just a bunch of stories to scare the children away" I replied hopping down the little wall.

"I don't know if you understood, but nobody dares to go there anymore. No one has dared to do that for the past 100 years at least. There has to be something weird about it" Jake said. "If it's all good, then why does the 10pm curfew exist? We're in a small town, why would it not be safe to go around during the night if the asylum was okay?"

"You can't know that nobody has gone there" I replied shrugging.

"Yeah, you're right, I can't. But I know that if someone had been there, we would all know, it would be some kind of scoop. If they went there, they didn't come back."

"Jake, I'm scared. Can you stop?" Mia said, touching his leg to get his attention.

He ignored her, and kept talking. "And let's not even start talking about the kind of people that were held there! I've heard it was the worst of the worst. Murderers, serial killers... And darling, they did kill people there. Or so I've heard. Some patients would just... Disappear. But everyone could see the loose dirt on the ground behind the building."

"I'd like to know where you heard that" I said snickering, "It seems to me that you've been watching a bit too many horror movies. It's just an empty building."

"It is a building" he replied, "But empty? I don't think so. I've heard everything was left inside, exactly in the same position it was before they all went away. They only took the documents, or so I've heard."

"You are seriously so easily impressionable" I said, "I bet that not even half of the things you said is true. And now, I really have to go home, so bye."

I walked away from the wall they were sitting on, checking my phone for any messages.

"You can say whatever you want, but not even you would dare to go there. You're clearly too scared to do that" I heard him shout behind me.

Really, Jake? Okay then. Challenge accepted.

• • •

The night has a strange power, or so I've always believed. When the darkness comes around like a cold blanket, and hides everything in the deepest shadows, the same things we've felt as homey during the daylight, somehow become monsters lurking in the obscurity, waiting for us to look away to make their move. A blind room grows a thousand eyes, a silent wardrobe starts speaking its own strange language.
If the past has taught us to fear it, the present lets us know that its negativity is only based on superstition and so, unreal. What I hadn't considered, though, was that these rules only apply to our world. What would've happened, if I had entered another?

But these thoughts weren't in my mind as I made my way down the mildly warm road, the only sound being the quiet chirping of the crickets hidden between the stems of the flowers at its sides.

I reached the place where a hundred years ago stood the massive gates. One of the columns they were attached to was nowhere to be found, somehow thrown to the ground in a mess of scattered rocks by the unforgiving passing of time, and the rusty door had fallen to the ground, and was now trapped by roots and plants. The other door hung half broken by only one hinge, slowly but inexorably pulling down its own column, on which the battered plate telling in a swirling font "Eastmount Psychiatric Hospital" still pulled through.

I walked in, careful not to hurt myself on the broken parts of the metallic gate at my feet, gripping with my left hand the other gate for better stability. The main road to the asylum was blocked by plants, as all the tales had always shared. I made my way through, not realising that, even though the green surrounded me, the air had gone completely silent. All of sudden there was a clearing of brown-grey ground, and there stood the building, looking as if it could've fallen down at any second. How hard I wished I had listened to the tale carefully for at least once, as the structure of the building was to me unknown, the only thing I could make out being the two floors.

I moved some hesitant strides up the three steps that brought to the big glass door. I pulled down the handle, but the door didn't budge. I sighed, I wasn't about to be dissuaded from my resolution by a blocked door. I shook the handle, the glass of the door rattling, before trying to open it again, pushing it with my shoulder as well for added pressure. A sinister creek was heard throughout the clearing and empty halls, and the door opened. I walked in, a shiver running down my spine at the severe change of temperature. It was as if the building wasn't even part of the world, the warmth of the late summer lost to a fresh air. I left the door half open, and moved a few steps in. A sound was heard behind me, and I turned around fast.

A cold breeze had shut the door. I walked back to it and pulled down the handle multiple times, but it didn't move. I put my feet on the side of the of the wall right next to the door, pulling the handle down and towards me as hard as I could, but there was no use, it was as if it had been locked with an invisible key while I wasn't looking.

The door was closed, and I was stuck inside.