My best friend is an urban explorer. He does all sorts of wacky, crazy shit, like climbing cell towers deep in the forest and drinking a RedBull at the top, to exploring entire abandoned ghost towns that are surrounded by miles of fences and have 24/7 patrols of armed guards.
Safe to say, he’s pretty adventurous.
And stupid.
He’s had a couple close calls with dogs and the aforementioned guards, but always manages to slip away to see another day… and almost die exploring another crumbling building.
Yeah, not really my thing.
But, I love the guy. He always finds a way to make you smile, and can make you hold your breath in anticipation at his death-defying stories from his adventures, like that one time he saw a demon! (He didn’t, he later found out it was just a cat, but you didn’t hear that from me)
I was (and still am) an introvert. At school I wasn’t any good at keeping friends, so I always felt grateful that he wanted to hang out with me over all the other kids, and he still does. We’ve been best friends since Middle School, and even now in our early 20s, we still shoot the shit together.
We were sitting on lawn chairs in my backyard, sipping beers, and talking about nothing in particular, when Alex started talking about his next exploration. I rolled my eyes and sighed, but I was curious, interested to hear his next badass adventure. He sat forward with a look of determination in his eyes as he spoke.
“The asylum.” He said, dramatically, with a grin.
“The asylum?” I sat forward, “You mean-“
“The spooky, scary one at the edge of our crappy town where people have supposedly died? Yeah, that one. Going there tomorrow, actually.” He interrupted, grinning.
“Alex,” I said seriously, “Every single person that went to the spooky, scary asylum at the edge of our crappy town hasn’t returned. Not a single one”
“Pfff,” Alex sat back in his chair, “They were all too scared to actually go, so they didn’t talk about actually going, ergo, they didn’t die and just skipped town without telling anyone.” He seemed satisfied with his delusional answer.
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Yeah, well,” he replied, scrunching up the beer can, “but can you do this?”
He threw the crumpled, sad excuse of a beer can through the air at the filter next to my pool, which honestly, at first, looked promising, but then unceremoniously clattered to the ground, missing the hole, and splashing into my pool, and excruciatingly slowly sunk to the bottom as we both watched. I wasn’t impressed.
“Dude, you’re going to die. I think you might be going too far this time.” I said, breaking the silence that had settled as we watched the can. That asylum was no joke - it gave me the heebie-jeebies.
“John,” he turned to me, smiling a friendly smile, “There’s nothing to worry about. But, if I don’t return in a days’ time, you can come be my knight in shining armour, and rescue me. I’ll even scream like a damsel in distress.”
That was 2 days ago.
—
It was noon and the day was drab. It was pouring down outside, and it was darker than it should have been. I was at home, cooking in my kitchen, enjoying myself listening to the radio. Cooking was something that I always liked to do as a hobby, learning a new recipe every day, and systematically sucking at it - my food always tastes dry, like less edible beef jerky, if that’s even possible. Whatever, when you’re hungry anything’s edible, and it’s the thought that counts, right?
THUD!
The wooden spoon I was blowing on flew out of my hand and onto the counter as I jumped at the loud thudding noise, leaving an explosion of chilli on the counter (Anyone that’s cooked with pureed tomatoes knows how annoying they are when they stain). The thud sounded like something had fallen over in my room
Great, I thought as I looked at the bombshell left by the angry vegetable (tomatoes ARE vegetables, I will die on this hill). Well, might as well go check and see if I’m about to be murdered.
I grabbed the spoon and held it over my head as I got into the deadliest kung-fu pose I could think of and made my way as silently as possible to my bedroom. My house has some creaky floorboards which I would have heard if someone tried to jump me from behind, so as I tried to approach that someone, I tried to dodge them.
I tip-toed to my room, stepping on every single creaky floorboard in my house, slowly opening the door and looking inside.
What I saw shocked me to my very core, and I’ll never forget what I witnessed…
Inside my room, everything was exactly how I left it, except a framed photograph lying on the floor. I walked over, sheathing my bloodthirsty wooden spoon, and picked up the frame. Oh man, I thought to myself. The glass was smashed.
The picture was of me and Alex on top of Mount Mitchell. Alex had his arms in the air, shouting “Wooo!” and looking very energetic, while I was mouth-breathing, looking exhausted as hell. Good times.
I walked over to the dresser where it had fallen from, and put it back. Strange… it shouldn’t have fallen off like that…
DING!
My phone got a message… From Alex. That’s serendipitous, I thought, walking into the kitchen. I opened the message, but there was nothing written in the speech bubble on our conversation. The radio turned from ABBA to static. I took no notice until I heard it say my name.
“…John…” The radio spoke my name in-between static.
“Fuck you.” I replied. This had happened before, and I wasn’t falling for anymore telemarketing.
“…John…” It was the same enunciation - a snippet of a song.
“Nope, fuck you, fuck off. Leave me alone.” I was starting to get annoyed, but it didn’t try to sell me any shampoo this time. Yet.
“…That’s… not… very… nice…”
“What is it? What do you want this time?”
The radio answered by sending a video through Alex’s message. The thumbnail was of a dark hallway with a flashlight illuminating a steel door at the end of it.
With nothing else to lose, I leaned against the counter and watched it.
—
The hallway was lined with steel doors on either side, only visible in the dark hallway when the shaking flashlight moved over them. The person behind the phone was running towards the door at the end, not trying to film where they were going. He was panting and breathing hard, desperately hard.
He barged through the door into a room filled with bunk beds, a single dingy light bulb hanging from a chord in the middle of the small room. The room was grimy, old, and looked like it had been abandoned for years and years. The phone shook around, as the person holding it whipped around, looking for something. The camera started to move again, and hit the ground as the cameraman ducked under one of the bunk beds. He breathed hard as he clicked the flashlight off. The camera pointed out at the dusty room. As the person slowly steadied their breathing, I began to think that Alex had sent me some kind of weird prank video from Facebook or something of some guy running from security while urban exploring. I was about to text him where he was, when I heard something from the video.
Footsteps.
They quickly got closer, slapping and stomping against the tile of the hallway.
BANG!
The door slammed open with force. I jumped at the crashing sound.
The silence was deafening as the person held their breath as best they could. The static from the radio got louder.
Click. Click. Click.
A sickening, organic click emanated from the speakers of my phone.
Click. Click. Click.
The person- no… The “thing” took slow, wet, deliberate steps as it searched the room. It came into view as it stepped into the phone’s view. It was dark, with only the flickering light bulb illuminating the back of the thing in the middle of the room. I put my face closer to the video to get a better look, and as I did, the static of the radio got louder.
Click. Click. Click.
Yellow boils and blisters covered its back and head, its arms shaking at its sides. One of them had been snapped off at the bone. It clicked as it jerked its head around, looking, searching, hunting. It shuffled over to a bed and turned it over with fucking force. What was I watching?
What the fuck, I said under my breath.
As I did, the creature snapped its head directly at the camera, as if it could hear me. A disgusting crunching and cracking coming from it as it did. My eyes widened and I held my breath. Its lower jaw was gone, ripped off, its eyes covered in yellow, bulging boils.
The light flickered off.
Silence. The radio had turned off. After 10 excruciatingly long seconds, footsteps.
They moved around the room, then away, and out of it, down the hallway.
The lights flickered on. Nothing. The room was empty.
The person still holding the phone sighed a sigh of relief.
“John,” The person whispered, his voice sounding desperate. It was Alex’s voice. “help me-”
Something sounded behind him.
Click. Click. Click.
The video ended.
—
I don’t know what the fuck I saw in that video but I do know one thing: my best friend’s in trouble, and I’m going to save him from whatever the fuck that thing was.
Hang in there, Alex.
I’m coming.