Part I

 

If anyone were to ask the local folk of Denbigh, North Wales whether the old asylum just four miles out of town could still be reached by that concealed and lonely country path, they would all no doubt scorn and mutter back coldly, ‘No’. Some would even insist that Denbigh Asylum was destroyed in a thunderstorm some time back in ’95 and that there’s nothing at the end of that darkened track anymore save for a pile of rubble, but they would all be lying.

It was still there and no one wanted any strangers exploring it for a very good reason. But, if one were to ignore the advice from those locals telling them not to venture down that path for their own good, if they indeed found themselves heading down it, towards the supposed location of the asylum, then they would soon come upon a claustrophobic and lonely stretch of the countryside and a vague feeling of dread would sink into them. The hidden path that started at Denbigh town was narrow, filled with ruts and muddy potholes, and the tall hedges either side of it blocked out any view of the rolling and strangely domed hills beyond. The hedges were all wild and unkempt; as if isolation and abandonment had strengthened their resolve to grow. And the weed-stricken stone walls underneath them seemed to close in uncomfortably the more someone headed down the shrouded forlorn lane towards the asylum. Only then would they realise they were on the right path, heading right towards it.

Most people now know to stay well away from the place because of what happened there, but one morning in December 2017, two teenagers ignored the locals’ advice, and what came after would change their lives forever. Will and Amy were heading down that lane. They were alone. It was just before sunrise when they’d left their hostel together. They had set off early so as not to alarm any of the townsfolk of their intentions to explore Denbigh Asylum. After all, everyone in the town had been watching them. People in the pub the night before had eyed them suspiciously as they trundled in with their backpacks full of gear.

At 8 am they came to the edge of the town and spotted the concealed pathway leading to the fabled asylum. Just after the grey-blue sun rose, they’d found themselves climbing over mouldering stiles and hopping across deep puddles; all while pushing head-high brambles and branches out of their faces. The chill of the night refused to leave them and the ancient Oak trees about loomed overhead and covered up what little sun there was during the depths of winter. They all seem too large, and they all swayed unnaturally in the biting winds.

The pair hiked down the lane and stopped to check the map at regular points. They each took sips of water and marched on together down the seemingly never-ending and ever-tightening passage. Will gripped his backpack and pulled it hard to his body to stop all the camera gear knocking around inside it. Amy panted lightly and wiped the sweat from her brow to stop it from spoiling her makeup. She only hoped that she wouldn’t be too sweaty for their photoshoot so Will would find her attractive. In her backpack were a few changes of black clothing that Will had requested she bring for his art project: a ripped black dress, a leather jacket, and a black t-shirt. The students hiked and talked casually and joked together about their eccentric college professors for the next hour or so. As Will talked passionately about photography and the art of ‘capturing beauty’, Amy would look up at him now and then and smile warmly.

Later, and a slope in the lane had brought them down to a rusted metal sign nailed to a dead tree that said ‘24 HOUR SECURITY. KEEP OUT.’

They both shuddered slightly at the aggressive wording and knew they were on track. Everyone in town said that there was nothing down there, but seeing the signs confirmed that there was. The next sign they came across a few minutes later read ‘GUARD DOGS ON-SITE.’

Amy looked at it and hesitated to take another step forward. Will smiled gently.

“Don’t worry. I highly doubt there are any ghastly mutts down here,” he said to her and they continued walking.

Will had only researched the asylum briefly the week previous. He’d Googled abandoned buildings in Wales and picked the nearest and most suitable setting to take photos for his gothic and baroque-themed portfolio. He had always found the decay of those long-since uninhabited spaces profoundly beautiful in a morbid kind of way. He liked the idea of the slow erosion of imperialism. He knew that Rome was not built in a day, but also knew it didn’t collapse in a day either. When he saw the images online of Denbigh Asylum, he was immediately enamoured by its bleak mouldering decadence. The rough stone walls and the large church-like windows all crumbling into ruin. He knew it was the perfect spot and immediately made plans with Amy to drive down to it the next weekend.

He didn’t bother looking into the history of the place. If he had done so, he would have read that the history of Denbigh Asylum was shrouded in mystery. And vague accusations of unspoken things like black magic, hauntings, and inhuman experimentation seemed to fall firmly and consistently at its doorstep. The place was built long ago. It all began with a controversial reform movement for the care of insane people that began sometime in the late 18th century. With the passing of that reform, Denbigh Asylum promptly opened in 1848.

Denbigh Asylum was for all intents and purposes a privately operated care institution designed for people with psychiatric illnesses. It was also an institution of dubious merit. It was rumoured that most of the doctors there were not even qualified in their roles. Yet any such probes for evidence of qualifications were dismissed entirely. The place had always been a secretive and cut-off institute and relatives of the patients were never permitted on site. Bad things were said to occur there. Several former nurses in the late 1980s had come forward about the abuse of the patients, and the local papers ran a story for a few weeks, but it failed to gain any traction or attention.

In the article, Jenny Slater—the previous head nurse—had testified that the afflictions of patients were frequently dealt with by such methods as bloodletting and flagellation to disperse their ‘inner demons’, together with seclusion and manacling as a means of control if they posed a threat to themselves or others. She proclaimed that the treatment of those patients remained degrading, loosely monitored, and abysmal, right up until she was forced to leave in ’89.

She had tried to bring the institute to trial, claiming to have witnessed deaths at the hands of malpractice there, but no verdict was ever reached.

The jury had stopped believing her story when she went on to explain that the place was haunted and that she had seen the spirits of the dead patients navigating the hallways with her. She claimed that an ancient and evil presence was brought into the asylum long ago. When exactly it was she could not say. But, she said it had stowed away in a patient’s body and when that patient died, it was somehow released. And now that malevolent force lingered in the asylum’s very walls, hiding in every shadow, taunting the patients from behind every closed door, influencing people; corrupting their minds.

She was greeted with laughter and ridicule, and sadly, she never got to finish her prosecution of Denbigh Asylum. After her sudden unexplained death, the investigation was dismissed and any evidence of that so-called abuse had conveniently vanished by the time the institution had wound down into a healthcare facility. It finally closed in 1997 and was boarded up for good, never to be acknowledged again.

No one knew quite what was wrong with Denbigh Asylum, and in truth, no one wanted to know. Everyone instead chose to ignore it completely. There was a reason the locals chose to stay away from the place, and what it was none would say.

Will and Amy were the first people to set foot on its grounds in over twenty years and they had no idea what they were about to walk into.

 

Part II

 

It had begun to rain by midday. Drizzle fell from the iron-grey sky and the louring clouds sunk down lower to the earth, all laden with foreboding. The pair shivered and continued walking. The pitter-patter of the rain hit Amy’s rain jacket steadily as she dipped her head down to the floor. Will on the other hand kept his hood back and was more focused on his gear than anything else.

The irony was, if Will had not been so focused on protecting the camera in his backpack, then the pair could’ve easily walked right past the institution, for it was not easily found and remained very well camouflaged behind the trees. He’d stopped near a small thicket and set his pack down to cover it with the rain shield. After he had done so, he rose, put it back on and looked forward into that boscage, and there he saw Denbigh Asylum. Through the overgrown trees, he spotted the unmistakable aspects of a building in the distance. It was huge and dark and took on the form of a craggy and square cliff face jutting up from the damp green earth around it. The roofs of the place poked out over the tops of trees. Will raised his hand and pulled away some more of the branches.

“Bloody hell,” he said in awe. “It’s right here,” he then turned to Amy and chuckled. “We almost walked right past it! Good thing I stopped when I did.”

“Oh, you found it?” She asked quietly.

“It must be it. Look,” he said as he gestured into the bushes.

Amy trotted up next to him and followed his finger. Through the shadow of the darkly wooded expanse, she saw the place, all of it sleeping under always nearly grey skies and she suddenly felt trepidatious. “Wow,” she gawked.

“Come on,” Will winked. “Let’s do this!”

Amy nervously followed Will into the damp belt of trees and stepped over the squelching earth. They then crossed over into a wide-open space that made up the asylum grounds and were greeted by only silence. The mist rolled in from the hills above like gun smoke and the winds whispered all around.

Two large gardens circled the estate and both were now impossibly overgrown with 6-feet high weeds and grass that swayed in the fog. In the middle of the two gardens was Denbigh Asylum—vast and dirty and brooding. It took on the appearance of some gloomy stately home whereupon the owners had died long ago and left it all behind. It was built in the traditional Jacobean style of its time. All the arched Dormer windows were squarely orientated on each face and now completely devoid of glass. Instead, there were only wooden boards. They had been smashed in long ago and the brown weeds grew out of the windows and down to the eave brackets without apology.

The pair edged closer to it, walking down the only road leading to the front door of the asylum. The various Mansard-roofed turrets seemed to grow out of the structure like tumours. The wrought-iron railings along them were all rusted and jagged. In the middle of the building was the large hip roof with a deck and limestone clock tower probing up into the darkened sky like an antiquated antenna. All the doors were boarded up with plywood and the perimeter of the building was surrounded by a wall of Heras fencing.

There, the eerie quiet fell over the pair and both felt instinctively on edge. They stood motionless in the courtyard and gazed up at the towering mass of stone.

“Wow,” Will said in wonderment at the sight.

But Amy didn’t say anything. She suddenly regretted agreeing to come with Will to this shrouded part of Wales. She’d only taken the weekend off her waitressing job to be with Will, and now, she’d wished she never had. The moment she saw the place, she knew she didn’t like it. There was no singular thing that caused Amy to feel curiously scared at the sight of Denbigh asylum. It was everything about the scene combined that created this overbearing sense of dread in her stomach. The darkening clouds above, the crows squawking somewhere on the fringes of the estate, the persistent earthy rain, and that horrible building itself all mixed into a loathsome cocktail and made her skin crawl.

She couldn’t help but wonder how many souls had passed through its walls. It was a building that didn’t seem to have been created to offer any kind of sanctuary for the afflicted, instead only intended to shackle them forever. A place to hide them from society. Everything about its architecture suggested a prison. The thick limestone walls appeared austere, and the bars on all the windows had firmness that gave the impression that they would stand strong for millennia to come and house many more poor deranged souls.

“Told you there would be no guard dogs,” Will said but Amy didn’t hear him.

It doesn’t even look like it was built by humans, she thought. Every detail of the place was eloquently over-decorated yet conversely decaying. The coldness and the vacuousness of the derelict building made Amy wonder whether it was constructed out of pure hatred alone rather than the masonry of men; something that had sprouted up organically from the dirt, using only malevolence as compost.

“Wanna go in still?” Will asked her.

“Huh?” Amy replied, snapping out of her lucid daydream.

“Wanna go in? Get some arty pictures?”

“Definitely,” she said reluctantly.

Amy stood there in the courtyard in front of the gate and just stared at the whole thing. She thought the building was alive somehow; squatting there, chained to the ground like a great sedated animal before them, drawing in deep musky breaths from the damp countryside around it. Windows blinking open for the first time in years at their presence, attic doors widening its ears to their footsteps, the coiled muscles of the walls stretching out ready to pounce.

Will looked across at her. He could tell something was bothering her, yet he didn’t know what.

“Come on,” he said. “We’ll go to the pub once we’re done here.”

“… Okay,” Amy couldn’t help but say. As much as she knew she hated the place, the second she looked up at him, the anxiety dulled. She began to blush more and looked away again timidly. Every time his eyes met hers she felt her heart beat faster.

Will went ahead and the pair came to the wrought iron double swing gate, a massive padlocked thing that stretched over them, blocking the entrance to the asylum like a great dark bat. Looming up over them, crafted into the top of it were the cold harsh words, ‘DENBIGH ASYLUM’.

Will took the padlock in his hands and tugged it.

“Well, we’re not getting through this,” he said glibly.

He then looked down at the base of the gate and saw there was enough clearance for a person to shimmy under. He smiled and laid down on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Amy asked while grinning and watching him.

“Goin’ down under, mate. Get it?” Will said with a faux Australian accent. “Australia.”

Amy smiled as Will shuffled himself underneath it with ease. He then leapt up on the other side and cheered as he peered through the tangled iron bars of the gate back at Amy.

“That was easy,” he said. “Come on. You next. I’ll put my coat down so you don’t get mud on your bum.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, it’ll be fine,” Will said as he took off his coat and positioned it under the gate like a tarp. “You do have a lovely derrière by the way, so I wouldn’t want to ruin it.”

Amy giggled. “Thanks.”

She then hesitantly laid down on it and Will dragged her through.

“See, piece of cake!” he said as he helped Amy onto her feet. She smiled at him warmly and thought now was the moment the friendship would shift into something else—after that compliment about her behind—she thought he was interested; but instead, he nodded casually, and turned back to the front door of the asylum. Amy looked back out longingly through the bars of the gate, back out at the mass of tall weeds on the other side, and strangely wished that she was back in them. But they’d had such good conversations on the long drive up the day before, even the night before. She knew they had a lot in common.

Keep trying, Amy, she thought to herself.

The pair stood together, looking up at the daunting edifice. Some crows had perched themselves up on the clock tower and had begun squawking at each other in the biting winds. It had started to rain harder now and it had started to seep down the back of Amy’s jacket.

She stood there and looked across and wanted so desperately to reach out for Will’s hand, even just for the comfort of reassurance, even just for the comfort of a familiar human touch. But she couldn’t blow her chances with him. Instead, she started humming her favourite song to comfort herself. Will had begun peering in through various holes in the walls to try and spy the other side. But, he noticed her voice. A sweet soft voice that was almost angelic in the falling rain.

“You always hum that song,” he said cheerily.

Amy went red. “Huh?”

“Linger by The Cranberries, right?” He said, looking across at her. “I like that song.”

“Oh. Yeah, it’s my…” Amy tried to say, but the words got caught up in her throat and she looked away. “I hum it when I’m nervous. It reminds me of…”

“Are you nervous?” Will asked gently.

Amy gazed down at her feet and then back to him. “… A little.”

Will smiled and nodded. “Don’t worry. There’s nothing in there. We’ll be in and out in an hour,” he said.

She looked up at him sheepishly. “Promise?”

“Of course,” Will said with an unmistakable warmth and looked into her eyes. Amy felt her heart flutter in her chest again. She raised her chin ever so slightly in preparation for the kiss to come—the first kiss they’d have had. The only reason Amy had agreed to come with Will to this gloomy part of Wales was because of deep feelings of lust for him. Ever since he’d come walking in through the classroom door on the first day of college, she knew she liked him. Like most boys Will’s age however, he was seemingly ignorant of her feelings. He acted like they were merely friends and people with mutual artistic interests; nothing more. Just as she began to lean in to meet his lips, he turned away and walked towards the building.

Amy, dejected, simply sighed and followed. There was so much she wanted to say to him, but she was terrified of what his response might be. She wondered whether he would snigger at her proposal, or if he’d mock her and tell all his friends that she loved him. The thought of that crushed her spirit. She was always a shy woman. She’d hoped that they might hook up during this weekend away and he would realise how much she cared for him. But instead, they were both standing in front of an abandoned asylum, ready to break into it. She wished she’d have the courage to sit him down one day and sing to him her favourite song just like she knew she could. Maybe then he’d see me? Her heart ached for him. God, why am I so shy? Why can’t I just tell him?

Amy sighed once more and they then climbed up the wet stone stairs, up to the porch, and together, they climbed through the broken window next to the boarded-up front door.

 

Part III

 

They came into what would have been the atrium. Will jumped down from the cill first and the floor crunched under his feet when he did. He stood up on glass and kicked all the smashed debris away from his feet. Amy climbed in behind him and he helped her down. Then the pair stood in nothing but the damp emptiness together.

“Whoa,” Will said and his voice echoed in the space. “I guess this is what twenty years of neglect does to a building, even one as grand as this…”

It was bare, save for the reception desk and a few broken waiting room chairs thrown into the corner. Twenty years earlier and it would have been filled with nurses and patients all shuffling around like bees. Now there was only yawning silence and the sound of the rain hammering against the leaking roof all around. The ceilings were high and lofty and the corners held the shadows. Will gazed up and around at the space. The air in the atrium was thick and moist and descended languidly from the rotting roof.

“Well, this is creepy,” was all Will could think to say to lighten the mood.

Amy rubbed her hands nervously and looked around at all the decay, noticing how there wasn’t a single piece of graffiti anywhere. Not one teenager nor junkie had left their sign in there at all. Strange. Strewn across the floor instead were ripped-up medical forms and posters on how to treat strokes. No one has been in here in twenty years? She thought.

Will stepped through the puddles on the tiled floor and headed over to the reception desk sitting in the middle of the room like some awful coffin in the middle of a tomb. The dim light from the sky above shone onto it like a tableau. He pulled open one of the drawers and started flicking through the mouldering documents within. Wafts of dust spewed up from the files as he opened them one by one. They hadn’t been opened in years.

“Check it out, all the patient’s medical records are still here,” he said. “These must have been the last ones to leave before it closed down…”

Amy stood by the boarded-up window and looked across at him. “Will?” She asked impatiently.

“Yeah?” He replied while he giddily turned each page and read all the notes.

“Do you mind if we just take the pictures and go? I don’t really like it here,” she said.

He looked at her and his face softened. “…Yeah, of course. Sorry, got a bit carried away,” Will said as he closed the file and smiled. He could see she was on edge. “Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked.

“Yep,” Amy said and her voice cracked and he knew she wasn’t.

“Don’t worry. I’ll be right next to you the whole time. Okay?” Will said and held his hand out for her. It was the first touch she would have with him. She looked down at it and felt a surge of warmth course through her. It looked just like what her father’s hands used to look like. In fact, everything about Will looked and behaved like her father used to; and there was something incredibly reassuring about his presence. All of a sudden that slab of fear within melted away from her and she almost grinned to herself as she took hold of his smooth hand. Maybe that was the reason she liked Will so much. She would follow him anywhere just to be near him. She took his hand and he tugged her lightly.

“Come on. We’ll try to get some cool snaps in the hallways first?” He said as he led her further in.

Amy nodded timidly. It was as if she was with him all over again. She had to force herself not to smile.

They headed across the atrium and through the wooden revolving doors together. It squeaked as Will pushed it and the thing spun around like fairground turnstiles releasing them into a new section of a funfair. But then something else happened. Something Amy was not expecting. Amy followed Will, and as she passed through the wings of the revolving door, she thought she’d heard something behind her—she thought it sounded like a woman crying somewhere in the corner. She frowned and looked over her shoulder, back through the glass and to the desolate atrium, but saw nothing there. Did I hear that?

She soon shook her head and dismissed it, then followed Will into the east wing of Denbigh Asylum.

They came into a small and dark lobby. The maze of hallways stretched off out of sight in every direction, meandering off into the shadows. Dim tight tunnels all littered with broken wheelchairs and clipboards. Each room led into another by way of wide bricked arches for doorways. Struts and rafters from the ceiling had fallen sideways like felled trees, and the only light in the rooms was that which slanted its way through the broken floorboards above. The wooden spiral staircase at the back of the lobby was damp and rotted and only a few stairs were left. The rain continued outside and some of it dripped down from points in the ceiling.

It was the perfect scene for Will. The decay. The reclaiming of the wild. So gothic. All it needed now was a subject.

He set his backpack down and got the camera out. Then he asked Amy to sit at the base of the stairs with her chin in her hand and appear glum. She did and Will began taking pictures of her. She sat on the rotting stairs and looked down at the floor with the familiar detached look of defeat that sad and lost people often wear. It was an authentic pose. She truly felt like that. The grey light from the holes in the ceiling cascaded down onto her and illuminated her visage in that gloomy corner of the room, and Will realised he was capturing pure beauty with his photos. It was then that he noticed something.

He looked up from his camera lens and just admired her. Everything about her made him want to hug and kiss her. To tell her it would be alright. To make her feel better. She glowed like a precious angel or a rare species of bird in the centre of all that despair. The lonely soul wandering, waiting forever. Will soon realised that all those dismissed feelings he had were real. He did like her. He’d just been avoiding it because he refused to be distracted from his art. He’d denied his thoughts since the beginning of the semester. But sitting in front of him was his perfect partner. She was beautiful, angelic. Her pale face framed by her jet-black hair made her appear like a lost ghost with a pure heart. As he took the pictures, Will started to wonder when he should tell her. Maybe in the pub afterwards. Maybe they will sleep together later.

After an hour of photo-taking, they then went into one of the infirmaries further down the east wing. It was a prolonged and slim room with rows and rows of mouldering beds along one wall, most with their bedsheets still on. There were black specs of mildew across all of the duvets. Hanging from the fungus-ridden ceiling above each bed were rusty curtain railings that had no curtains on them anymore. The room smelt like mouldy clothes and fetid water, and something else—a thick earthy smell, like compost.

Will and Amy set up the shots and talked about what they were trying to capture from the environment. Amy put on her black leather jacket and posed against the slimy plastic wall of the infirmary. Will started taking more pictures of the scene. Then he asked Amy to stand by one of the beds so he could take a few more with a background in them.

But as she stood at the foot of one of the beds, she heard something. At first, she thought it was a draft coming in from one of the many broken windows, but then, as she focused on the emanation of the sound, she heard it clearly. It sounded like a woman sobbing somewhere in a corner—the same woman’s voice she’d heard down in the lobby. Amy’s skin ran cold. What the hell was that?

“Okay, now, turn your head,” Will had said.

Amy frowned and snapped her head in the direction of the sound.

“No. The other way,” he said. “Look down at one of the beds.”

“Shhh,” Amy said and held her finger up to him. It had come from down the hallway to the infirmary.

Will took his eye away from the lens. “What?”

“Did you hear that?” Amy asked, her hand shaking in front of her.

“Hear what?” He said as he held his hand out to his side in bemusement.

Amy shook her head and looked back at Will. Her frown was even more pronounced now. Her face was pale and her eyes wide.

“I heard something. Sounded like… crying…”

“Crying? From where?”

“I don’t know. But I definitely heard it.”

Will then craned his ear to the silence and waited. “From who?” After a pause, he said, “I don’t hear anything.”

But Amy did. She heard it again—this strange and ghostly sobbing voice that echoed in the ambience, almost as if it were coming from behind the walls. It was so quiet that it was almost indistinguishable from the winds outside.

“There it is again,” Amy said.

“Amy, I don’t hear anything,” Will shrugged.

“But, I heard it as clear as I’m hearing your voice now. It sounded like…”

Will lowered his camera to his chest and sighed. “Let’s have some food, and then pick this up afterwards. Lunch?”

“But, I heard something.”

“Let’s just take a break for a bit…”

“Okay,” she replied obediently, too taken back by the noise to argue.

Amy stood by the bed for a pause, still not sure of what had just happened. But she’d heard it. She was sure of it: a crying voice somewhere further down, and it sounded exactly like her mother.

 

Part IV

 

They ate their packed lunches on a crumpled waiting room bench in one of the desolate hallways further down the east wing where all the cells were. The rooms were silent and echoing and neither one said anything for a while. The grand tiled hallway stretched off into the haze and the doors to those padded cells on either side were all open. Amy could hear the squawk of the crows somewhere outside.

“I did hear something, you know?” Amy mentioned, feeling like some scorned child.

“I didn’t,” Will replied.

“I’m not lying. It sounded like a woman crying. I heard the same thing in the lobby when we first came in…”

“I believe you,” Will said after a long pause and Amy knew that he didn’t.

“You don’t, do you?”

“… I’m just saying I didn’t hear anything.”

Amy sighed and looked down at her hands. It was almost two in the afternoon and Amy was tired of the whole thing. The voice sounded like a woman’s, someone familiar yet nameless. She knew it. It was so clear. That same awful crying that she’d listened to over and over the night her father had left them both.

Will noticed her unease and shuffled closer to her. His thigh barely brushed against her own. She glanced across at him inquisitively. His aqua-blue eyes twinkled as he looked at her. He decided now was the time.

“I do care, you know?” Will said quietly.

“Huh?… What do you mean?”

Will smiled lightly and looked down at the floor. “I care about you. I see what you’re going through. Most don’t, but I do. I know about your childhood, and I’m sorry. It hurts me to see someone like you so sad. I just want you to know that… I do care about you. I do… like you…”

“You do?” Amy asked and her heart swelled.

“Of course. You’re a sweet, beautiful, creative woman. I’m sorry I’m telling you this now, in the middle of a bloody asylum, but, I’ve always liked you. From the moment I met you. I’ve always felt…”

Amy grinned and kicked her feet giddily. “I like you too…”

Will looked away and let it sink in.

“Glad we cleared that up then,” he then joked.

“Shut up loser,” Amy smirked.

Will smiled back and nudged her with his shoulder. “What do you say we finish up here, then get back to the pub pronto?”

Amy smiled cheerfully. “Great idea.”

Will winked. “Okay. Let’s do this. One more shoot?”

“One more.”

Opposite them was an old filing room that still contained all the patient's medical histories and practitioner’s notes. Rows of heavy metal cabinets all tipped onto their sides. There was a faded wooden desk in the middle of the tight little room which would have been the archive accountant’s desk. On it was a sprawl of discarded sheets and notes that gave the impression the person behind the desk had left in a hurry. On a small metal stand in the corner was a beige plastic-backed television that had a thin sheen of dust across the screen. It had not been touched since the asylum had closed down.

The rain outside had mutated into a great thunderstorm which rumbled hungrily above the building like a giant beast in the sky. The last thing they wanted to do was walk back to the hostel in it. So Will decided to leave soon before it got any worse. He was eager to leave, but couldn’t finish until he’d captured all the photos he needed. The draught of the hallways persisted and Will felt the chill of it across his exposed skin. He’d felt it the moment he’d jumped down into the lobby. The whole building had a cold hostility to it.

The pair then stood up slowly and headed into the filing room. Broken glass crunched on the floor and it smelt of stagnant water in there. Amy reluctantly stood by the desk in the middle of the office, feigning enthusiasm. Will asked her to sit on it and look off into the corner of the room where the television was. He took more snaps and then asked her to read through one of the dusty folders from the cabinets.

She did and the camera clicked, taking endless pictures of her appearing sombre and melancholy on the desk. She turned the pages absently and posed Will’s photos. She didn’t have to act anymore. Everything about her just wanted to leave and it was coming through in them. But, as Amy glanced over the documents, a sudden jolt of panic caused her to stiffen and grip the file tight. She’d seen something else in it. Something she didn’t anticipate seeing. Amy’s face went white. Her eyes bulged open with terror and she gasped loudly.

“Oh my God!” Amy yelped. The folder fell from her suddenly weakened grip and onto the damp floor at her feet. She clasped her hand over her mouth in utter shock and backed away to the wall while she just stared down at the old folder there on the floor.

“Amy, what is it?” Will asked, moving closer to her, but Amy couldn’t reply. A single tear rolled down her face and she trembled, unable to do anything else but glare at it there on the ground and what had fallen out of it.

“Amy?” He asked. “What’s wrong?”

She was almost panting now. “There are pictures in there…” she was finally able to whisper.

“… Pictures of what?” Will asked, the confusion contorting his face.

He reached out to console her, but she didn’t acknowledge it. She simply stared down at the dirtied folder, as if too terrified to take her eyes off it. Will frowned and then reached down to pick up the file instead.

“Don’t look!” Amy shrieked. “Please…”

“Huh? Why?” He asked, half crouched on the ground, looking up at her, but again Amy didn’t reply. She sobbed quietly and couldn’t find the right words. She instead pointed at the pile of photographs that had fallen out of its side. Will turned and looked back down at them. Then he saw them too. He raised up ever so slightly in astonishment.

“Hoooly shit…” he uttered as an icy shiver scraped its way down his spine. “What the hell is this?” Will then said, as if almost intrigued by what Amy had found.

He reached down once more and picked them up. Will then held them loosely in his grip as he examined each photo for a few seconds at a time. Amy couldn’t bear it. She left the room and went and sobbed on the bench where they’d just had their lunch.

Amy was adamant about not going back in there. Those kinds of things, once seen, stay branded into your mind forever and she didn’t want to see another single thing from that room. The sight of that patient with his eyes pried open in confused terror while being lobotomised shocked her to her very core. The stake up his nose and the little clinking sound that the hammer must’ve made as it darted the probe up into the patient’s brain made her feel sick. She took a deep breath and tried to shake the image from her mind. Her hands were clammy and her heart pulsed steadily in her chest. She waited on the bench and suddenly thought of all those poor people who’d come through this institution and were subjected to those brutal acts. All of them were damaged and in need of help, and instead, they found only torture and pain. Amy sniffed and whipped away a tear as she thought of them all. Overwrought, she sank her head into her hands and snivelled.

But, as she did, she heard… something coming from one level above her. It sounded like floorboards creaking. A gentle rapping against hardwood floors. Only once or twice did she hear it, but it was enough to push her wholly into numbing panic. She craned her head upward to the ceiling and traced the moving noise.

Footsteps…

Suddenly, any notion of not entering that room again dissolved and was soon replaced by an even greater fear: that they were not alone in the asylum.