File C909-2

File C909-2-1 The Lonely Prison

Government File: Class C909-2, administrative access only.

Code Name: The Lonely Prison

Investigative Impetus: Reported maltreatment of prisoners at the local jail located in [Redacted]. Account received through Major Graves B. Allans, current residence, New York Federal asylum for the insane.

A recording tape whirrs to life, and a man with a deep voice commands "Tell us your story." A slight pause ensues "It was the mist. I hated it the second I spied it. Roiling, dark, like a thick mucus born by the air. We were commissioned by Colonel Marcus C. Jones to investigate the possible maltreatment of prisoners within the town penitentiary of [Redacted]. Nearby residents had reported screaming sounds. It was nine in the morning but still dark for some reason, supposedly because of the mountains on the horizon blocking out those first precious rays of the sun. We had stopped for McDonalds on the road a few hours back. I was beginning to regret it. That place seemed to tie my stomach in knots, like a shadow reaching inside my bowels and groping around, stirring up my insides like a soup of organs. My partner was driving, I.. I can't quite remember her name. She's gone now.. " The man being recorded sobs and the recording cuts. "We arrived at the jail, it was clean, tight, and clinical, like any modern establishment. It smelled of lysol bleach and damned souls. At the front desk we were greeted by a man in khaki with a sallow face. Sunken eyes and a drooping mustache seemed to set his expression in a permanent frown. He waved us past the table. It had seemed to be made of wood, now that I was closer I could tell it was plastic.. Fake like everything there, a facade for a secret much worse. We walked through the jail, passing a number of checkpoints. There didn't seem to be anyone else there, which was odd. Jails don't tend to be a bustle of staff but they're never as opresingly empty as this one seemed to be. We walked by a number of jail cells, some empty, some inhabited. The prisoners had the usual, dejected, 'Why am I here,' look. Otherwise they seemed reasonably healthy. Passing each cell, the warden, his badge stating his name as Richard I. Pennings, explained the crimes and sentence of each prisoner. He had obviously either been there forever or had done some serious homework. Then he pointed to an empty cell. Mass murder he explained. For a moment we thought he was talking about someone else. Glancing around we found no nearby inhabited cells. Eventually we reached a dead end. We turned around and walked through the long hall of misery once again. As we exited we knew something was off. The warden, and the straight hall. Neither computed correctly in our minds. People who had obviously been there for many years, and yet he knew their cases and crimes like he had been there when they were brought in, cuffs and all. Then the hallway. The impossibly long track like the throat of some horrid beast. From what we saw of the jail, there shouldn't have been any way that such a hallway could have existed without bending around in multiple places. Assuming it could've existed, then what? Where were the other facilities, and what was in the rest of the prison? We checked into a local motel. It was surprisingly busy. The rooms were cheap and the continental breakfast came free. We slept an uneasy few hours and rose at three o'clock. The breakfast bar wasn't open yet. We crept out of the main lobby to our car and breakfasted at a 24 hour establishment, Waffle King or something. We arrived at the jail around 4 am. No appointment to keep this time and we hesitated. Finally we approached the front door. Getting in was easy enough, we had a copy of all the keys. To our surprise the warden was standing there, beside the door. 'Can I help you?' he inquired? We shrank away. In the dark there was a ghostly and hollow aspect to the man, like he was barely there. Darkness seemed to seep from his mouth and eyes. I nearly dropped the flashlight I had been carrying. My partner yanked her gun from its holster, holding it in quaking hands, pointed loosely at the face of the warden. She should've aimed for the chest. It's the bigger target. It's how she was trained. Don't suppose one could blame her though, ghosts don't tend to come up in training. The apparition took a step forwards. She fired. It exploded in a mass of what appeared to be dark ink, strewn through the air as tentacles of darkness. Before it touched the ground it had evaporated into a thick, cough inducing smoke that tasted like burnt pennies. We hacked and shivered for a few minutes, until our throats were worn raw." The man being recorded coughs in remembrance. "Finally, we stood up upon shaky legs. We forged onwards to the main office. We opened a filing cabinet. Records were kept of each prisoner held. Each case was just as the warden described. Each date however, was ancient, spanning from the seventeen to eighteen hundreds. I always forget which centuries those would be... Sixteenth and seventeenth? Eighteenth and Nineteenth? Forgive my ramblings... We looked through each file to make sure. Various patterns emerged. There were no cases of assaults, only murders. Each murder case was extreme in its nature. The descriptions of the scenes and victims were brutal. Men and women ripped to shreds, eviscerated, torn in half. Every aspect and disgusting detail recorded in clean concise text. Some were missing though, from the jail. We hadn't seen anyone incarcerated within the past 75 years during our tour. Each prisoner also had a black and white mugshot, despite the lack of cameras at the time of their imprisonment. The longer we stared at the pictures the ghastlier they appeared. The center of their eyes began to appear white, and their outlines began to blur. We quickly shoved the files back into their case. It wouldn't close all the way. Hurriedly we ran down the hallway where the prisoners were kept. Weak white lights had turned on without us touching any switches. They blinked and shuttered on and off spasmodically. The prisoners appeared to be wearing jumpsuits the color of tombstones. Their skin appeared the same color as in the black and white photographs. Their eyes glowed like white orbs of condensed mist. They stayed passive as long as we kept moving. We made the mistake of stopping to gawk at the horror. It looked up from its dejected position, shrieked and lunged at us, passing through through the bars of its cell. We moved out of the way and kept running as fast as we could. At the end of the hall was a rotted wooden door which hadn't been there before. There was only one key on the ring. Without thought of how it had gotten there, and what had become of the other keys, I jammed it into the keyhole presented to me, ripped open the door, and slammed it behind me once my partner had come through. No sooner had we closed the door than a banging sound resounded through the walls as some... thing, impacted the door. There was a moment's silence followed by feverish scratching from the other side. I hadn't noticed, but my flashlight had been on the entire time. Its light barely pierced the intrusive darkness. It emitted less of a beam and more of a sickly glow. We advanced forwards, not as if we could've gone back. Not with the prisoners.. Or whatever they were, waiting. More practically there was no sign of the door which we had passed through. We were thoroughly entrenched within the jail. What we saw next was... Its.. Painful to describe. Rows and rows of tables. Upon the first there was a man, he had no arms or legs and thrashed about in his restraints foaming at the mouth and screaming through lips stitched shut. We fumbled back through the darkness. My hand pressed into something soft and disgustingly wet. A man in the middle of what looked like open heart surgery, his eyes wide open, his mouth also sewn shut. He let loose a silent scream of agony. We ran again. I can't remember how long. I don't want to remember. Bodies upon bodies. Cadavers at various stages of undeath, each wishing for the release into the peaceful black void beyond this horrid existence. This was the place where the shadows from nightmares trickled down to form the machine that is fear. If hell had a physical place, it would've been here. No, hell would've been a release from this, a place of burning heat, infinite yes, though unchanging in its tortures, not like the sadistic wardens of this place. A man in a white, doctor's robe appeared from the darkness. He seemed to glow. Was this our savior? These thoughts were soon smothered beneath the hand he placed over my face. He was suffocating me. I stared into the stark white glasses that should've been his eyes. I could see nothing behind them. His lower face was covered with a mask. My partner hit him, hard, across the back of the head with the but of her gun. He crumpled, momentarily, a second of false hope to be crushed by the misery of that place. He rose, like a cadaver from its grave, and grabbed my partner by the throat, slamming her down on an empty table, and raising his other hand threateningly for who knows what purpose. I- I fled. I couldn't watch.. I couldn't even draw my gun" A fist slams down on the table in the recording room, with a resounding bang. The drip of hot tears can be heard faintly. "If only I'd stayed... But I ran... Like a coward..." The recorded man is gasping between sobs, slowly stuttering out the last leg of his recountment. "I ran and ran and ran. They were hunters and I was their prey. It felt like forever, an endless hall of madness, like a funhouse possessed. The things I saw... Her face.. It was everywhere, ripped off and on the walls, upon a mangled body that might have been her own." The man regains his composure slightly "I didn't notice when I escaped.. I'm not sure I have.." He barks out a slightly mad laugh. The sound of a man who's soul of glass has been shattered down the middle. "I found myself in the woods, surrounding by the mist. It began with the mist and ended there. The mist.. The mist.." The man degenerates to incomprehensible ramblings. He is heard being removed from the room. Before he leaves his eyes widen and he whimpers, "The dog, its here". The recorder clicks off.