Last time we were here it was hot out, and the people in the gardens all around took a break out of their coffee drinking and gossiping to watch our every move. Apparently we were the most interesting thing for miles, and keeping track of who's watching, while pretending not to care who's watching is even harder than it sounds. We had a look around the outside and left it at that.
This time we knew where the open windows were, so now we don't have to walk all the way around this abandoned nursing home and draw everyones attention. A quick look around most of the first floor shows that this place is mostly emptied, and a lot of what remains has been destroyed with undeniable intent. Shattered pieces of porcelain that were once toilets is to be found all around.
One thing we do find is a few intact examples of is some of those famously freakish bathtubs that I've wanted to see for myself. They're wholly benign pieces of interior of course, but they seem to be flooded by some kind of dark fantasy world. I have to admit they give me a sort of feeling of patients being cared for in a rather rationalized manor, according to standardized rutines and a precisely calculated schedule, but they have a much darker reputation than that around the dark corners of the web. When people come across these in abandoned asylums they tend to be a little more high on their own adrenalin then what is strictly advisable. This triggers the imagination like you wouldnt believe, and in the meeting between spiked up imagination and technical looking bathtub the electrification bathtub is born. Anyone who cares to read up even a little bit knows that the history of psychiatry is home to many sad stories, inhumane treatments and even cruelty. But this is just a bathtub... seriously. No one were fried in here.
As we find the stairs, I feel a little more uneasy. It's pitch black in here. The door is of the kind that closes itself, as though it has a will of it's own. I have to check to make sure it doesnt also lock while it's at it. I know it would be stupid to have that sort of door in this sort of place, but I have to...
"What the fuck is that smell?!"
We notice it almost immediately after entering. That funny, chemical, out of place smell. I get the feeling it's coming from the basement.
"Kind of smells like diesel I think... maybe there's a generator down there."
I look down the stairs, though I don't see much besides darkness.
Upstairs it's much the same as downstairs. More of those bathtubs, more smashed toilets and more emptied fire-extinguishers. More and more doors and empty rooms, but then there's something and I stop.
"Hello?"
I haven't heard anything, or seen anything move. There's an outline against the bright light of the outside world. The matrass is one thing, but on top of it is a sleepingbag piled up in such a way that it looks strikingly like whoever it belongs to just got up and stepped into the next room a moment ago. No reply though, no sounds. Ramona is looking at me funny, probably wondering who I'm talking to or if it has really gone so far that I'm trying to talk to still shadows and dead buildings.
"I think someone lives here..."
Ramona pops her head around the corner.
"Could be months and months since they left... I bet they only stay here in the winter"
She goes inside to have a look.
"Hey, maybe we should move on. If somebody lives her... it's kind of rude..."
We move on.
There's two more occupied rooms down the same hallway. At least this indicates that they're somewhat sociable and friendly and not mass murderers...
"Cause they 'live together'? Come on, they hardly live together..."
"They do kind of! There's a whole big building and they just happen to live in the same corridor? I can see all of their doors from here."
Ramona's not buying my theory, but I'm sticking with it.
Eventually we make it up into the attic. This is a cramped, dark place. If there's anyone here it would be nearly impossible to know. The shadows in here are so deep they'll swallow you up and maybe even dissolve you entirely.
A ladder and an open hatch is a welcome distraction. It lead straight out into the sun and onto the flat roof of the new section of the building. I climb out, keeping my head down. I haven't forgotten the neighbours eyeing us from across the street. Ramona decides to go for a walk. A walk... I can already feel hands reaching for phones around the neighbouring streets. Grumpy onlookers will never find a more opportune moment as long as their dealing with such harmless troublemakers as us.
"Well... have fun." I sit down, leaning on the adjacent old part of the roof. I can see the entire roof from here, and staying behind only cost me a few anxious sideways glances back at the open hatch. No peaks inside though, I know there's nothing for me to find in there but my own paranoia.
Once Ramona returns, and I am pleased to observe that I have not been abducted by any monsters, we head back down into the attic. We find another room where someone has also clearly spent noticable amounts of time. A pipe or something is hanging from a rope. I follow the rope up, up and then horizontally across the supporting beams under the ceiling. There's also a misplaces door up above, across those beams. A great camping spot, Ramona notes. I look back at the pipe or whatever it is.
"Kind of reminds me... you know how sometimes people make booby traps in abandoned buildings?"
"Well, it's not working very well, is it?"
"I'm not saying that it is. And just because you can't tell how it's supposed to work, don't mean it doesn't."
Imagination is such a waste of space sometimes. I wish I would have turned my brain of and left it in a jar back home.
We walk back down through the old building, entering a part of the first floor that we had not yet seen. A few times I think I hear noises that are not made by us, but it might be just the building itself. Buildings make noises sometimes. Especially old ones that are not used to anyone walking their coridors or opening their doors.
There's more empty rooms and soon we're back by the doors that turned us back earlier. This part of the building seems to have been closed longer then the rest. The knob has been removed from the door, but it is mostly glas, and whoever broke it took care to removed enough of it from the frame to make a reasonably big hole. The walls and the ceiling on this side are engulfed in something that looks a bit like mould but is undoubtedly syntethic. Over by the doors it changes from white to a dark, muddy green though. We have a look around and find out that it's some sort of spray-on insulation. According to the info on the wrapping it was applied in the spring of 2012 at the earliest. We're thinking this place has been out of business since 2004 or 2005.
Eventually I'm reluctantly following Ramona down into the basement. This is when she does something strange. Suddenly she's whispering...
"Shhhhh... do you hear that sound?"
"What sound?"
There's that funny, unnatural smell again. Abandoned buildings have their smells, a wide assortment of smells, but they usually revolve around the same themes, mould, mildew, rot, and other organic causes. This is not one of them.
"There's a hissing sound, like a gas leak.... or maybe a spray can. Maybe there's someone here."
"No way. If we can hear them, they have to have heard us! Let's go back up."
We head back up. Ramona stops at the top of the stairs.
"I think there's someone down there... the sound just stopped. I could hear it up until now."
"Let's get out of here."
The straightest way to where we entered is closed. Being relatively long and flexible, I step through the broken glass easily, but Ramona doesnt like climbing or crawling or anything like that. She's going back upstairs the way we came.
"Fine!" I hop back to her side and walk resolutely towards the stairs.
"Did you hear that?!" I look back at her, but Ramona doesnt hear anything while walking apparently.
"What?"
"That sound... I think there's someone down there"
Upstairs I think I hear it once more and I can't really imagine what the fuck they're doing down there that I'm hearing two floors up if they know they're not alone. I always knew we might run into other people in here, but for some reason this is really starting to worry me, and it's really starting to ennoy me that I have to stop and wait for Ramona all the time. She doesnt seem worried in the slightest.
As we reach the stairs I can't help but thinking that this was the first place we smelled that funny smell, that this staircase go all the way down to the basement and that if someone went through the basement they would easily beat us back here. But it wouldn't help to worry about such things at that point and I remind myself that I have no real reason to be this worried. I turn on my flashlight to disrupt the stagnant darkness inside as I open the door.
We climb out a window, and back outside I'm immediately calm again, like we've passed through a magic portal and are back in the real world. The sun is shining and the street is just a few meters away with its cars and bikes and real, live people that I don't have to be afraid of. It might be that calm that is the reason I do this. That lovely feeling of returning to the real world after entering a different sort of place where you may expect different things from your surrounding and where you'd rather see and hear people before they see or hear you. A quiet, empty building, might suddenly feel more like a dark, magical maze if you smell trouble. This is where people come to break stuff, to do graffiti, to steal, to vandalize, to get high, and some unfortunate souls come to sleep. Unfailingly, someone brings a chainsaw to try and do some real damage. This happened here too, and I'd rather not run into one of those. That building might still be just a meter or so away, but that strange world and the dark basement with it's funny sounds and smells seemed miles away, and I was already making jokes about it.
"If it really was a gas leak, I wonder what kind of gas it might be.... wouldn't it be funny if in a few days from now we would read in the papers that someone had blown this place up, and all the neighbours had seen us come and go?!"
We both laugh.
I just can't quite stop wondering though. It's kind of a weakness with me.
"Do you really think there were people down there? And what do you recon they would need gas for in a place like that?"
After all, as my brother pointed out, this isnt like the US or something where they might cook with gas. What we do with gas here in Norway is mostly extract it, refine it and export it. I really can't think of a single purpose for it in a place like this. Ramona doesnt know. Neither does she care to know.
"People, or something else. But it definetly sounded like some kind of gas or fluid released under pressure."
We initially thought it could be garffiti artists, but in retrospect we both doubt it. We had not been particularly quiet, so it seemed unlikely that we would have gone unnoticed. Also, according to Ramona, the sound seemed too stable, like something fixed.
