Has anyone heard of the Green Belt Sanatorium?
I encountered this place three years ago. At least, I think it’s a place. Anthony seems to think it’s a game, or an esoteric webseries — I’m not really sure which.
A Google search returns nothing relevant. But I’ve been there — or I’ve experienced it. So it’s very real. I’m convinced it’s very real.
But that was three years ago. Since then, I’ve never been able to find it again. And now that Anthony is gone, I’m not sure who to ask.
Does anyone else have a memory of this place?
— one —
“Hey, doesn’t that say Green Belt Sanatorium?”
Anthony was pointing out the car window. We were on hour four of the ten-hour drive home. I was at the wheel.
I glanced down at my phone, cradled in the holder. The way ahead was a thick red line: 90 minute delay, according to Google Maps. But out the windshield it looked clear enough, so I put my foot on the gas. It expedited our arrival to the traffic jam in question. Four lanes of interstate clogged with cars and delivery trucks.
I looked down again. 127 minute delay. There’d been an accident up front.
“Fuck,” I said.
I turned to Anthony. He had been staring over his shoulder this whole time, like a dog fixated on something out the window.
“Anthony. What are you looking at?”
“Green Belt Sanatorium.”
“What about it?”
“Don’t you remember that game? From like, seventh grade?”
I looked at the unmoving field of vehicles. “No. Playstation?”
“PC. It was one of those freeware games that, like, turned out to be amazing.”
My eyes narrowed at him. “Dude, you were the only one who played those games.”
“I kept recommending it! It’s not my fault everyone had bad taste.”
Anthony’s folks were religious, so they were religiously strict. No Xbox, no Playstation growing up. Also, the netbook he had then was weak as shit. Could barely play movies. All this guy could play were these shitty games he found for free on the net.
“Anyway,” he was saying, “that game’s set in a place called Green Belt Sanatorium.”
“Could be a coincidence.”
“I dunno. It’s a pretty weird name.”
“That it is.”
“The game’s great though, I can’t believe I almost forgot about it. It was like a procedurally -generated DOOM, with no shooting. So kinda like Ultima, but with more secrets. And it was backrooms before backrooms was cool…”
“Okay.” I was already searching for alternate routes. Anything was better than waiting two hours in this slog, with this conversational partner, on this conversational tangent. Anthony was a homie from the olden days, but if he went on another one of his four-hour rants about obscure media, I would probably crash the car.
Anthony had gone back to staring over his shoulder. I looked over and followed his gaze, but I couldn’t even see the place from here.
Guy was craning his neck looking at jack shit. He could be a weirdo sometimes.
—
“Oh look, it’s there, it’s right there! Look!”
I wasn’t looking. I was looking at Google Maps, which was showing a 45-minute detour through country roads. There were a lot of strange byroads one could miss. It was getting dark.
“My god, it’s just like in the game.”
As we passed it, I got a good eyeful. A squat but expansive slab of what they call brutalist architecture, topped with a low dome. A perimeter wall fenced in a surprisingly large front yard.
It seemed out of place, a landmark of this scale on a byroad in the middle of nowhere. Next town over was probably population: less than a thousand. A glance down at the screen showed empty space… Maybe it was new?
“Listen, man. We have to check it out.”
I looked at Anthony. “Are you serious?”
“Just real quick.”
“Tony,” — he hated when I called him Tony — “We’ve still got like seven hours to go, and I don’t wanna drive all night.”
“Come on, when’re we gonna be this way again? This is like a once in a lifetime opportunity.”
“It’s only seven hours away,” I said.
“Listen. If you drove by the Shire, would you stop?”
“This is your Shire?”
“This is my Shire,” he said. “And listen. I’ll drive, okay? The rest of the way.”
I sighed.
It was about six o’clock when we pulled into the parking lot on the front grounds. As far as I could tell, there was no activity outside the Green Belt Sanatorium. No caretakers keeping the lawn. No car in the lot other than ours.
We walked up the steps to the front of the building. A long teller window was recessed into the facade, along with the word RECEPTION. Doors on either side led into opposing wings.
Anthony tested one.
“Locked,” he said. “Try ringing the bell.”
After several moments, a middle-aged lady appeared on the other side of the plexiglass. She peered through her horn-rimmed glasses. First at me, then at Anthony.
She said, “Hello. Can I help you?”
“Hi there,” said Anthony. “We were just wondering if this was the — and I mean THE — Green Belt Sanatorium.”
“Sanitarium, yes. The one and only, as far as I know.”
“That’s so great.”
“Are you here to check in, or do you have an appointment?”
“Well, we’re more… curious about the place,” said Anthony. “Heard a lot of good things from a buddy of ours back home. We were in the neighborhood, so we decided to swing by and see if it’s the right choice for our friend here,” he cocked his head at me.
Through some heroic means I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. I could feel the woman’s gaze barrel down on me in cold appraisal. That shameless look-over to diagnose exactly what’s wrong with you. I took it face on. Didn’t even blink.
She said, “You just missed visiting hours.”
“Ah, what a shame,” I said.
“Would you like to make an appointment?”
“No, we should probably be on our way,” I said, smiling.
Anthony leaned into the teller window. “Do you have any brochures or any kind of literature I could read? It’s just hard to find anything online…”
“Literature?” she said.
“Yeah. Like information?”
“We have books inside.”
“Inside?”
She pointed at the door on the left. “Library in the Open Wing. Admission’s three dollars each. Upkeep and maintenance and such. And no watches, wallets, or phones. You have to leave ‘em here.” She tapped a basket on her side of the glass.
Anthony looked at me.
I shook my head. No way.
—
It was a bad deal. I tried to explain this to Anthony, but he kept talking about our “duty as sentient beings”, and threw around stuff like, “Where’s your sense of adventure?” I countered that I wasn’t gonna pay three bucks to get inside — to which he countered that he’d pay for me. I proposed that we get in the car and make good time before it got too late. He proposed that we fly over the cuckoo’s nest, just the two of us, for the shits and giggles.
We couldn’t reach an accord, but I came out of negotiations with one of his cigarettes.
“Make it quick, okay?”
“Don’t worry. Fifteen minutes, max.”
“Make it five,” I said. But already I had that sinking feeling. Anthony was not a person known for making it quick. I should have never let him go in there alone.
He paid, checked his stuff in, and signed three forms. There was a large disclaimer above the feeder tray: the Sanitarium takes no liability in the case of any theft or loss. Something about the sign made me stare at it. Then Anthony was at the door on the left.
The woman buzzed him in. The thick, frosted glass swung shut behind him.
I went out by the car to light up, taking the opportunity to stretch my legs. The air tasted fresh. Felt good in my lungs. I supplemented it with nicotine tar. As I looked back at the building, I noticed the distinct figure of the woman at the window, watching me. The reception was a little bit away, so I couldn’t be sure where exactly she was looking. But her head was pointed my way.
I took another drag on the cigarette. She stayed awfully still. I kept her in the corner of my eye as I looked around. What else was there of interest in this landscape, except for the one vehicle and its driver? I put out the cigarette, making sure that it was extinguished. Then I looked at my watch.
It’d been ten minutes. Good enough.
I marched my way back up the stairs. As I got closer, I realized the reception window was empty. A reflection of the setting sun, and the encroaching shadow, had played some trick on my eyes. I pressed the bell.
When she finally reappeared, she almost startled me.
“Hi,” I said. “I’m looking for my friend who went inside. Just ten minutes ago?”
The woman frowned at me. “I’m afraid visiting hours are over. Do you have an appointment or would you like to be admitted into the Open Wing?”
“I’m just looking for my friend. He went to the library just ten minutes ago.” I pointed to the door on my left.
“That’s in the Open Wing. Three dollars, please. For safety reasons, your watch, wallet, and phone are prohibited items inside the Sanitarium.”
“Why’re they prohibited?”
“The Sanitarium is a semi-hermetic local environment. We have to control the presence of hyperobjects. For the research,” she said.
Whatever that meant.
“Hold on. Let me get some change from the car.”
I walked to the car, opened the glove box, got three dollars out. I put in my personal phone, closed it, slipped my credit cards and ID into my jacket pocket. I locked the car, walked back to reception. Then I checked in my cheap Casio, my wallet, and my work phone.
“Sign here, please. Here, and here.”
— two —
Waiting room.
That was the word I was looking for as I walked through the windowless halls of the Green Belt Sanatorium. Each room had no purpose but to lead on to the next room. Low ceilings, linoleum floors, soulless white walls. It was one continuous waiting room, and yet seating was surprisingly sparse.
I must have wandered ten minutes before encountering another soul.
An old man. Seated in an uncomfortable plastic chair the color of dried blood. A jacket and an umbrella were on the chair next to him, equally red and plastic. His eyes were fixed in the middle distance.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said.
He didn’t seem to hear me. I spoke louder.
“Excuse me, sir,” I said. “Do you know where the library is?”
He looked at me.
A slow smile crept across his face, and something like a glimmer came into his eyes.
He said something in Spanish.
“Donde esta la biblioteca!” he said, with glee. He cackled into his hands, then seemed to become self-aware. He froze and became silent again. Cast a glance down the corridor. Placed a trembling finger to his lips.
“Okay,” I said. “Sorry I bothered you.”
He put his hand in his pocket, and never looked up at me again.
I continued deeper into the building, taking turns at random. There seemed to be no signage anywhere, and the library was nowhere to be found. Fuckin’ Tony, man. All this for one man’s nostalgia trip. Knowing him, this place was probably what he’d hoped for.
Deeper in the building, the rooms stopped conforming to rectangular shapes. Odd corners and enclaves jutted every which way, sometimes hiding an unused lamp or a chair. I’d lost all sense of orientation minutes ago. Then I smelled it.
The acrid stench of smoke, plastered to the walls. I followed it to a long, narrow corridor with two vertical turnstiles — like the revolving doors in the old NYC subways.
Beyond was another waiting room. This one was lined with plastic chairs. On top of each was a glassy-eyed geriatric like the one I’d seen before. Many had their heads buried in a book, but some just sat there smoking. Staring at a spot on the whitewall across. Ash dripping from their unmoving fingers, collecting in piles on the floor.
It wasn’t just the elderly, I realized. They were adults of a wide age range, but they were all hunched over, as if they’d been sitting for years. In their hands were different books, all with the same green binding.
I pushed through the turnstiles. The fumes, trapped in that low room, made me cough. No one seemed to notice my arrival.
As I walked, each waiting room of people gave way to another waiting room of people. I counted what must have been fifty heads when I looked ahead to see no end in sight. There must have been a hundred people or more — all equally silent. I thought about the empty parking lot outside.
Where did they come from? How did they get here? And how will they return?
—
“Tony!” I called.
My voice carried down the hall, echoing unnaturally loudly in the dead air.
I had found the library. It was a section of the building indistinguishable from the previous rooms, but for the floor-to-low-ceiling shelves of books. Each book had the same dull green binding, as if someone had ripped off every cover to replace it with something more nondescript.
I wandered through a few rooms, dismayed to find it equally devoid of life and logic. No building should have this amount of disjointed, windowless corridors. It was a safety hazard.
Anthony was nowhere to be found. It was hard to tell how much time I’d spent looking for him, but my internal clock told me it was somewhere round the twenty minute mark.
“Anthony!” I shouted. I didn’t care if I was in a library. It was time to get out of there.
“Anthony!”
My voice echoed. My footsteps quickened down the xerox halls.
I blindly turned a corner and walked into a narrow corridor. It was different — no books here. It was dark, and it seemed to get narrower and narrower. I squeezed myself through the gap and found myself —
At the beginning.
To my right was the frosted glass door that led outside. I was back where I came in. The narrow corridor behind me was hidden in a corner I hadn’t noticed when I’d first entered. With a confused sigh of relief, I pressed the button to unlock the door.
What happened next I can’t explain.
I pushed the door open to the cool night air. It was dark — the sun must have set while I was inside. The grounds were as abandoned as ever.
I walked to reception and rang the bell. Someone appeared on the other side of the plexiglass. The same receptionist, or someone who looked like her. Through the darkness, I could see her horn-rimmed glasses.
“Hello. Can I help you?”
“Yes. I’m looking for my friend, Anthony.”
“Your friend, Anthony,” she said. “Your friend has already checked out.”
“Checked out?” I looked at the parking lot. Our rental was still there. I had the keys, jangling in my pocket. “Do you know where he went?”
“I’m not at liberty to say, sir.”
“What do you mean?”
“We can’t give out that information, sir. In-patient or out.”
“No, we’re not patients here. We’re just visiting. I’m his ride.”
“I see,” she said, helpfully. Nothing else forthcoming.
I asked, “Can I have my stuff back?”
“Would you like to check out, sir?”
“Yes. I would like to check out.”
Checking out meant two signatures — one on the visitor’s ledger and one on the receipt for my personal effects. In the ledger I could see Anthony’s name. Check-in: 18:20. Check-out: 18:50.
I pocketed my wallet and work phone. Fiddled with the clasp on the Casio. I looked at the time.
It was a little bit after one.
I froze. Pulled out my work phone and activated the screen. It read 1:12.
One hour and twelve minutes after midnight.
I looked back at the reception window, but the woman was already gone.
—
I got in the rental and slammed the door behind me. The interior light flicked off. I flicked it back on and opened the glove box. Pulled out my personal phone. The time on the lock screen concurred with the others. Almost a quarter past one.
There was no way.
There was no way I spent more than twenty minutes in there. Thirty minutes, max.
There was absolutely no way I spent more than six hours inside the Sanatorium.
I had several missed calls. Most of them were from Anthony. I immediately hit redial. It went straight to voicemail. Didn’t even ring.
Shit.
I scrolled through his last messages.
Anthony [19:07]: where are you??
Anthony [19:23]: hey pick up. u ok?
Anthony [19:47]: dude!!!
Anthony [20:25]: bro I don't know where you went but im getting hungry. I'm gonna try to get to midway, u can find it on maps. please call me when you see this
Anthony [21:43]: yo my phone is dying. still walking to midway
I opened up Maps and zoomed out. There was a small town called Midway, thirteen miles away. I calculated the route. It was almost a five hour walk.
With the car, I’d be there in thirty minutes.