A Blast From the Past

Too Good To Be Forgotten

We waltzed into Target through the exit doors, like a bunch of pretentious assholes. Zoe and Sami's fingers were interlaced, and I was laughing internally, as I always did, at their difference in height. Sami was right around 5'2" while Zoe stood at about 5'8", 5'9". They had been dating right around 4 months now and Melina and I often acted as 3rd and 4th wheel. Zoe and Sami walked side by side to the clothing section while Melina and I trailed behind, single file. We quickly split up, the lovebirds shopping while the 3rd and 4th wheels dicked around and made bad jokes.

"Look, Alexis, I think you need this shirt," Melina called out to me, directing my attention to a shirt that said, "I'm allergic to Mondays".

"I'm allergic to every day except Saturday," I corrected

 "What about Sunday?"

 "I'm allergic to Jesus,"

 Melina died of laughter for a second before calling out to me once again with her signature "WOW". She did it quite often, it was a mixture of disappoint, "I can't believe that you just said that" and a few other things. It was truly a modern marvel of language, managing to combine about five different emotions into one word. I wish far off future linguistics good luck with deciphering our generations way of speaking.

We spent about 20 minutes inside the store, most of which involved Zoe actually shopping while Sami, Melina, and I "shopped"; This mostly consisted of Melina and Sami making fun of me while I tried to do things a normal member of society would. We paid for our stuff and made our way back out to the car parked in the parking lot. Melina and I climbed in the cab of my early 2000's, small, silver Mazda Truck, her in the passenger's seat, and me in the driver's, while Zoe and Sami climbed in the back under the shelter of the wrong, blue colored topper. I had bought a small mattress to put in the back end specifically for this trip.

"Where are we even going?" Sami asked through the open back window.

"To an amusement park," I replied simply.

"Yeah but where?"

 "Spring City, Pennsylvania," I answered vaguely.   

Fast Forward a day
  

"So, I'm starting to wish that I had looked this up earlier because it's too late to turn back now," Melina burst into mine, Sami's and Zoe's conversation about lamps about an hour into day number 2 of the road trip.

"Did you just realize that there is no actual amusement park in Spring City?" I asked.

"Yes, I did. Not only that, I learned that the only real monument there, would be the asylum that caught fire and was abandoned about 50 years ago,"

"That's an amusement park," I argued.

"NO, Its not!" Melina exclaimed in my ear.

"First of all, you're loud. Second of all, I never said it was a REAL amusement park. To me a janky, old, burned down, shell of an asylum counts as an amusement park."

"So essentially, you lied to us to get us to go on condemned, private grounds with you,"

"Yup. But like you said, it's too late too late to turn back now," I gloated.

"Well, I guess that explains the Ouija board," Zoe held up the board from the back of the truck. It was the same one that Sami and I used to summon a demon about a year ago. 

"Of fucking course," Melina sulked.

It was just after midnight when I pulled the truck into the decrepit parking lot of Pennhurst State School and Hospital. I parked in a place that hid the light-colored truck from view as much as possible. Sami handed me the Ouija Board and a few white candles as she and Zoe hopped out of the back end, slamming the tailgate shut behind them. We crawled into the old administration building through a hole that was most likely a window before the fire, the others following my lead. After wandering around for a short while, Melina questioning my desire to disturb mentally unstable spirits the entire way, I found an open doorway leading out onto one of the concrete walkways that connected some of the buildings.

"This place fascinates me," I started to fangirl about the old asylum. "These walkways only connect the buildings that are closest to the administration building. They were supposed to be fireproof, but the lack of maintenance done on the foliage around the asylum let the fire spread regardless. Almost the entire lower campus burned before they got it under control. The rest of the buildings are connected by a series of dirt pathways. The best part, though, is that the investigators, or whatever, couldn't find what started the fire," I finished.

"Is that the end of our history lesson?" Zoe joked. 

"I could go on, but I think I want to check where they think the fire started and talk to some spirits before I do anything else." I replied.

Sami jumped in, "Where's that?"

"See those three buildings?" I pointed to my left at three very decrepit looking brick cottages, the bricks painted black with soot and smoke damage and the roofs caved in. "Those buildings ended up burned the worst so that's where they suppose it started. Although, they can't exactly tell which building lit up first. The one closest to the road is Mayflower, the one right behind it is Philadelphia, and the one furthest away from us is Quaker. I think I want to set this shit up in Mayflower."

"Why Mayflower?" Melina questioned me.

"It's the closest to us and I don't feel like walking all that far just yet," I answered as we walked along the grey stained walkway.

"Since Zoe was complaining about the short history lesson," I joked "I'll tell you that Mayflower contained some of the severely mentally ill patients. It wasn't set up the way you may think. Instead of having all the cases of a particular illness housed in one place, they had it set up by the patients' physical health problems. Those who need the most medical assistance lived closer to the hospital, while those who lived far away needed little to no medical assistance, physically or mentally. It used to be really easy to get someone committed to one of these state asylum's, meaning many people in the asylum didn't really need to be there, and were simply unwanted by their family members."

"That's so sad," Sami ended my rant sarcastically, as we waltzed through the doorway into the Mayflower Cottage. The mess on the floor was almost horrifying. There was charred wood and moldy, decaying, insulation from the ceiling laying everywhere with plenty burned bricks that had fallen from their place in the walls that separated the rooms on either side of the main hallway.

"This place seems completely safe," Zoe declared, sarcasm clearly evident.

I ignored her and started making my way through the mess using a flashlight. I was looking for a spot that seemed semi clean, so I could light the candles without lighting up all the flammable material still laying around. I finally found a room that seemed fairly clean and I started setting up the fun. I placed the candles around the board and lit them with my epic Kurt Cobain, Bic lighter. 

"Aren't you supposed to put a silver coin or something on the board?" I could tell that Melina was not enjoying this in the slightest.

"You should, but I don't have one so we're gonna skip that step. Come on, let's do this." We all placed our fingers on the planchette, moving it so it circled around the board slowly. "1. 2. 3. 4," I counted out the cycles, one for each of us. We returned the planchette to the center of the board, so I could begin my questions. "Is there anyone else here?" I asked the most basic and boring question of all time. For about 30 seconds nothing happened. "Hello?" I called out once again to any spirits that may have wished to speak to us. I was about to give up and say goodbye, but then it started moving. A, U, S, T, Y, N.

"Austyn? Is that your name?" The planchette moved to "Yes". "Were you a nurse?" "NO. P, A, T..." "You were a patient then, huh." It was more of a statement, but I still got a "YES" out of it. "Ummm. Did you die in the fire?" T, G, 2, B, F.

"What the does that mean?" I looked up at everyone else, asking about the seemingly random characters.

"Too good to be forgotten," Zoe answered quietly.

"What's too good to be forgotten? I returned my gaze to the board. I,L,L,S,H,O,W,Y,O,U.