Factory in the dark

I'd been walking for about 45 minutes when I first spotted it. I'd heard the rumours online earlier that day. So when I got home from school, I changed into something warmer and started walking, walking and walking, for 45 minutes alone in the dark. There was a comforting distance between the street lights out here, and the fog had settled for the night. I spotted a sign I'd been looking for sooner then I'd expected. The camping spot by the lake. In 2006, the neighbours had complained about the terrible smell from the factory that had been shut down 11 years prior to that. This is how I'd known where to find it. Soon, a tall fence emerges from the fog along the road. In the dark I can only see the fence, but my breath slowly becomes uneven, weather it was from seeing something I'd previously only read about online or from the anticipation of the hideous smell of rotting animals that had plagued the neighbourhood after the abandonment of the building. I continue along, past the gate. I see a woman outside one of the nearby houses, smoking. I keep walking past and continue till I get to a church. I stop at the parking lot, idly studying it while activating the GPS on my phone. I walk back to the gate, pass it, turn, pass it, turn, until finally I see no more headlights in the fog, in either direction. I feel real conspicuous by now. I'd checked the location (needlessly, unless I'd be struck by a serious case of amnesia), and now I bounce clumsily through the frozen slush to have a look at the gate. My eyes had not failed me, it is actually open. I happily walk away. I will definitely be back.

A few hours later it's gone, demolished. Oh well, it had been demolished more then a year ago, but to me it had only been gone since just now. I had been too eager to find it to actually finish reading the full thread of comments on the topic online. There I found it. Right at the end. The foggy dark nothingness had actually been nothing but nothingness stuffed with fog and framed by barbed wire. This is what you get when scouting in the dark. Factories that only exists at night and only to those who don't know otherwise.