Hellingly

Alex Morris stretched as he climbed out of his battered car, shutting the door behind him and going to the back to fetch his camera. It was an overcast day, and the air was humid, however he didn’t mind. These old buildings were draughty as it was, and he didn’t want to spend the whole day shivering. The humid air was welcome, really. It meant that he would at least be warm and be able to relax as he took his photos. It didn’t occur to him that he already had hundreds of photos of this place. Something just kept bringing him back.

He yawned as he checked his camera’s battery, before turning to look at the crumbling building in front of him. This had always been a favourite place of his. There was just something about this particular abandoned building that kept him intrigued. He couldn’t explain what it was, but he thought it might be any combination of the qualities. Number one, Hellingly Mental Asylum was huge. Its corridors were a well-organised maze in its heyday, now they were broken by crumbling floors and collapsed roofs. Arson had destroyed some of the buildings, but one could still wander for hours around the old building. Number two was the amount of things that had been left behind. Alex had stumbled upon some of the more obvious artefacts on his first trips here, but since he had been coming back more and more and staying longer, he had discovered many new things, such as night reports from the thirties and forties. He had sat in the old office for hours reading through them all, ink imprinted from generations past. Last but not least was the graffiti. Usually, Alex didn’t condone graffiti in these places. He believed in leaving the place as you found it, but unfortunately he had come to discover that not all people shared the same respect for these abandoned and forgotten pieces of history that he did. However, the graffiti seemed to add to the morbid atmosphere of the building. The paintings were huge and detailed and well done, mad images in a mad world. Sometimes, Alex got the feeling that they weren’t quite of this world. He didn’t think anyone could capture such abnormality with a few cans of spray paint and a bit of daring.

The morning was fresh and cool, last night’s rain still sparkling on the grass in the early morning sun. As Alex approached the large building, he could hear the rainwater trickling through many of the gaps in the roof and falling onto the stone floors below. He looked up to where the floors would be wooden. They were the unsafe floors. He never knew when one would give way, and so he was always careful.

He went around to his usual point of entry, an empty hole where a window used to be. It was low down and Alex could easily jump in, and the ground was stone and sturdy beneath him when he landed. He wasn’t that surprised to come across someone climbing out of the window as he approached. This place was popular, and many a time Alex would come across other explorers or photographers. They rarely communicated with more than a polite nod, as the understanding between them would be strong enough for nothing else to have to be said. However, this time, Alex was slightly concerned. The other young man looked a little distressed, and judging by the time of the morning, Alex reckoned he had spent the entire night in there.

"You all right, mate?" he asked, as he reached the window. The other man looked up, looking as though he had forgotten that other people actually existed.

"You’re not actually going in there, are you?" he asked suddenly, and Alex rolled his eyes, leaning against the wall. The brick was rough and cold.

"I’ve been in here more times than I can count," Alex said. "I guess you’re new and someone’s played a joke on you, eh?"

The other young man shook his head.

"No, I’ve been here loads as well," he said. "You’ve seen me before, I think. But dude, I’m being serious. Something’s actually not right in that place lately. I don’t know what it is, but the last couple of times I’ve been here, it hasn’t felt normal. There’s like an unrest. It’s really creeping me out."

"That tends to happen when you spend all night in an abandoned building," Alex shrugged. He wasn’t easily scared, but even he would get a little creeped out if night fell and he was wandering around one of these lonely, forgotten buildings. It was only natural. The other young man shook his head furiously.

"I’m not trying to be all mysterious and scare you," he said. "But I’m telling you that something really isn’t right."

"Well, have you any proof, or are you just feeling skittish?"

"I have this," the other man held up what looked to be a small video recorder. "I usually bring it around with me, I prefer moving images to stills. Anyway, this is my baby. It’s reliable and the battery life is great, but last night it was giving me some serious grief. The more uneasy I felt, the more the camera would play up. Now, I know I wasn’t the only one in there last night. There was another guy who was filming his way around, but I only bumped into him a couple of times. Thing was, he was a weird looking fellow, and every time I got close to him, this happened."

Alex watched as the other man opened up the little screen of the camera and pressed a few buttons, skipping through some of the footage that he had picked up that night. Alex recognised many of the winding corridors and mural spray painted onto the walls. The other man stopped fast forwarding and Alex watched as the camera showed him rounding a corner. At the end of the corridor, there was another man taking photos of an old, rusted wheelchair that had been left in the corridor. He finished taking the pictures and turned back up the corridor. As he approached the video camera, Alex noticed that the picture got a slight distortion to it, before it came back to normal.

"Evening," the photographer nodded, and Alex couldn’t make out the reply as the audio suddenly fizzled and screeched loudly, making him jump. The other man paused it.

"Look there," he said. Alex squinted at the photographer. His face was blurred and couldn’t be made out.

"That’s ..." Alex struggled to find the words. "... kind of weird."

"I wouldn’t have been suspicious if it had happened just once,” the cameraman replied. “I mean, this is an old camera, it’s bound to mess up soon. At first I wondered if there was perhaps a disturbance in the area – electricity or something may have caused the audio distortion. But then I saw him twice more, and would you believe it? Both bloody times, it happened again."

"Perhaps we was one of those ghost hunter people?" Alex suggested. "They have some weird equipment with them, it messes with magnetism and electricity in the air and all. Perhaps that could have messed your footage up?"

"Maybe," the cameraman replied. "But I’m seriously suspicious. Like I said, he was a strange fellow. That’s the only thing he said to me, and he seemed to just drift around. There was something kind of inhuman about him. He just didn’t seem right."

"Let’s be honest," Alex pointed out. "People like us, who enjoy wandering around creepy abandoned places in the dead of night, we’re probably not exactly what society would deems as normal, are we?"

"I guess we’re not," the cameraman managed a small smile. "Anyway, I won’t keep you. If you still want to go in there, I’m not jealous of you."

"I’m sure he’ll be long gone by now," Alex shrugged, and with a final goodbye, the cameraman headed away, shivering slightly, and Alex hoisted himself onto the windowsill and dropped down into the crumbling room inside.

Alex had always loved the way that the early morning sunlight filtered through the many gaps in the walls and roof. It cast little cylinders of bright light in all directions, illuminating things that usually wouldn’t be noticed. Alex liked to use his watch to reflect the light into all the tiny little nooks. He liked to cause light to go into places that it normally would never reach. It was like lighting up a whole new world.

He walked softly through the room, crunching over bits of fallen plaster and old dead leaves, through empty beer bottles and crisp packets, and out into the corridor. The old door hung off of its hinges, leaning against the wall the doorway was built into, and the corridor was quiet and peaceful. Alex moved as silently as he could, not wanting to disturb the peace. Something rustled slightly above him, and he looked up to see a pigeon glaring at him from its nest.

"Sorry," Alex muttered, moving on quickly. There were some bad-tempered birds in this place.

Alex turned the corner, and then stopped short. At the end of the corridor, there was a familiar figure standing, looking at nothing in particular. His back was to Alex and his hands were clasped behind him, but Alex recognized the red weather-proof jacket to be the one the strange man in the video had been wearing. Alex felt stupid, but he couldn’t help but shiver slightly. He leant quietly against the wall, looking at the man, wondering what it was about him that seemed so strange. He looked normal enough: warm clothes, sturdy boots, a couple of cameras, a map. He seemed to be just another explorer of the building.

He turned then, and if he spotted Alex, he gave no indication. He ambled slowly up the corridor, still with is hands clasped behind his back, and Alex wondered how he moved through all those leaves without making even the slightest rustle. He acknowledged Alex only as he walked past him.

"Good morning," he smiled, and then he turned around the corner and left Alex’s sight. Alex stood quite still for a second, the iciness of the man’s voice still making him shiver slightly. Finally, he shook his head, and told himself to snap out of it. It wouldn’t be the first time he had met a strange person here, after all.

The mad attract the mad, he thought to himself, and took a deep breath, ready to move on.