The story of Lier, in engligh finally

I'm talking with Ramona about rugs. The sort of rugs that cover the entire floor and are glued to it. We both feel that these are the work of the devil and should be outlawed. It suddenly occurs to me that we are on the third floor of what is said to be one of Norway's most hunted buildings and we are talking about rugs... right. This is our third time in the abandoned buildings of Lier Psychiatric Hospital.

Earlier that day we were driving and driving some more. Our normal parking spot (it seems somewhat disturbing that this is an appropriate way to phrase it) was covered in snow so we had to continue along. It had taken us two hours longer then last time when we finally rounded a corner and a monstrous building straight out of the movies appeared when I had just been hoping for a sign.

Well, quite so monstrous I suppose it wasn't, it was just the strike of unexpected recognition that took me by surprise. Still, patients arrive here and if I suffered from, say severe anxiety, I feel the look of this place would not be helping in the least. I'll have to say it does look severely haunted. As though for effect, there is even steam coming out from somewhere just in front of the first decaying building you see. In my head, this moment belonged on the silver screen. Ramona on the other hand, felt nothing, being Ramona and all. Then we drove around some more looking for somewhere inconspicuous to park, and ended up looking pretty conspicuous in the process. It turned out our original route was way inconspicuous indeed, but only because it was mostly the wrong way to get there. That's Google Maps for you. Now we were all up in their faces which saved us some walking but eliminated the cleverness of it all. Eventually we made it in unseen though. This was important, not just because we would rather not get caught, but also because parts of the hospital is still in use and we had heard that this coming and going of thrill seekers, vandals, graffiti artists, photographers and all sorts of freaks like ourselves around the clock is not ideal for the treatment of minds in the next building over. Which I can quite frankly understand, as the horror look this hospital is sporting is probably weighting them down enough as it is.

The night before had left an additional 10 cm of fresh snow on top of any recent footprints, so ours were conspicuous to say the least, if not straight up incriminating, leading trough the woods, right through the fence right next to the sign that said “Keep out! Dangerous area.” and in through the open door. We looked around the first floor a little bit to observe the changes from last time. A few things had moved and new things had appeared. Signs of life like paper cups and a apple frozen solid on the windowsill, and then stranger things like a towel that was covering something and a window frame up against the wall, like someone was redecorating, or securing the place, who knows. There are rumors going around the underground community of urban explorers that this place has been stripped, and that seemed to be holding up. Aside from these few objects that were obviously from the outside, we saw only one chair (truthfully I only ever saw it in my own pix, not on the sight :P) and a rather ordain looking machine of sorts.

I had this funny feeling like something heavy came over me. I had read about people having similar experiences in this place before, so I attributed it to my imagination. My overly imaginative brain supplied the image of a heavy rug falling on me and weighting me down in an attempt to define this feeling. Later I came to believe it was due to the mold, which I absolutely cannot handle.

Further down the hall we saw the first mold too. I had a mask to protect me from this shit, but it was nicely stuffed away back home. Ingenious indeed. Later on I saw a shadow move and studied it for a moment until I became disturbed enough by it that I stepped into the next room and declared that I was seeing things. I was absolutely seeing things, and it must be all down to the mold, because I had no intention of thinking up any other explanation at that point. It would simply not serve any purpose. Come to think of it, I stepped into the next room to talk to Ramona, who I had naturally thought to be the owner of that shadow, which doesn’t make any sense at all. But this is how I went along. When I though I saw something disappear behind a door, I was also very much not having a supernatural experience I resolutely decided and tuned away. This is an acquired skill that comes in super handy. I can always speculate later.

The same skill compelled me to not have a closer look when, on the second floor, I took a picture that at first glimpse just wasn’t right. I thought of the rotten, wooden stairs we had just ascended, the weak point to a building that would otherwise hold up for a long time, it was absolutely a safer bet to hang around a ghost for a while, then to have a go at running back down, out of my mind with panic, I'd just rather not know about it, that's all. When I think about it real good, the panic is actually the worst possible outcome I can imagine here. I was saying to my good friend Janne the other day that “det er beire å vete enn å springe rundt som ei haudalaus høne” (it is better to know then to run around like a headless chicken) but this place requires some special tactics, which is non of the above. Not to know because this is a dangerous place to run around, like a headless chicken or otherwise. Once you're at the whims of a rotten staircase, you've best stay calm. I mean, I wouldn’t be so bold as to say 'bring it on', but what can a supposed ghost really do to me anyway? I have no concept of the power of the supernatural (if such things are even real) and don't know if it can do anything to me, but there are definitely several things a failing staircase and a multiple story drop can do to a person, non of which are pleasant. I try not to think this too loudly though, as not to challenge anyone in mental hearing shot. I find myself involuntarily weighing my words as one might do when in the presence of strangers, avoiding talk of “crazies” and “lunatics” and talk more in terms of “patients” and “inhabitants”. This is only polite after all, and I do feel genuinely sympathetic towards those who belonged in the long lost past of these rooms. I have read quite a bit on the history of this place, and it is a dark one. Also, I decide not to look at my pix at all till later, but I did non the less. The light is dim and difficult and I don’t want to use the flash more then needed (for fear of being caught) so I've locked the exposure time and constantly need to review if they need extra attention. Also my hands were trembling bad. From the cold or adrenalin or the combo, I do not know. This place is creepy as shit.

First I try to stop our advance up from the second floor, thinking I might gain some leverage from the fact that I'm the one with a car and a driver's license, but I lose this one, as I'm not good at threatening people and Ramona wouldn’t think twice about tracking this entire building complex, at night, by her lonesome if she could only find the motivation to do so. Also, I'm just not going to stand around alone, or walk back down alone, or really, let her go alone where I think it's not good to go. So I tag along, while the wood work bend under my feet and I cringe as the setting gets darker and more rotten. I place my feet carefully as we climb the last staircase, but halfway up I see a picture in the making in stop to shoot, forgetting yet again the worries at hand.

We don’t go everywhere though. I have established in advance that we will not go into the basement under any circumstances... just cause. I further my list as we go along. I quickly change my approach though. As we find the attic and later a room that I harbored particularly bad feelings for, I plead and beg. It was apparently undignified enough that Ramona decided not to press me on it. I probably wouldn’t have freaked, but I was getting dangerously close. Just the look of the attic stairs gives me the creeps and I can barely stand just walking past the door, which is slightly ajar, revealing a steep, narrow staircase. I don’t know why this is, but some things I feel acutely bad about, and these stairs and that one specific room are two such places. The stair in this case looks strangely distorted. Like they had a spare room big enough for a latter but insisted on building a proper set of stairs in there. Real proper stairs compressed and forcefully fitted. The room in question sits in a section of the building half a level lower then the rest of it, and it's full of wooden closets. From the top of the short stairs, I watch it worryingly while I hastily snap a few shots of it, only reluctantly employing the flash. I feel as though I might disturb something and that I should get a move on, so I'm getting very frustrated and stressed up there with nothing suitable to bounce the flash off. Just cause I feel it is important to do things properly in such situations to avoid freaking out, I linger till I get something vaguely resembling a sensible shot of it from above. I guess standing still just generally upsets me though. As long as I'm moving along, it's all OK, but whenever we linger for a while, whether it is to work out a difficult shot or to work on my stop-motion-animation (an endlessly time consuming pursuit, let me tell you) I get nervous, maybe because I have to focus on something besides my surroundings, and the sound of our footsteps cease, and the conversation dies. And it all so unnerving.

The lack of a tripod makes everything more difficult too. I'd left it in the car for our mission to be less obvious to onlookers. There is just no way people would miss the fact that I had a big, silver tripod attached to my little black backpack, and with only one credible reason known to us to be wondering around this particular neighborhood with suck gear, well, it wasn’t exactly rocket science to connect the dots. While this had seemed completely sane on the outside, I now could hardly believe my own stupidity. We had taken care not to be seen from the hospital, and though anybody else might suspect what we were up to, the chance of them actually taking action against us is extremely slim. So mostly, this meant there would be additional quality time spent with a building suitable for nightmares and populated with little black things only visible to cameras (more on this later). Also, it is astonishing what a metal object of this size and shape in hand will do for your nerves. Even a pacifist like me might feel thankful for a make shift weapon, if only to discourage potential aggressors.

I'm somewhat relieved as I'm setting up one last stop-motion shoot with my little wooden toy just inside the front door, much to Ramona's dismay as she finds this pursuit incredibly frustrating and, I suspect, a bit dim. Also, this means she has to handle my stuff, either the camera or the homemade monster, which she seems incredibly reluctant to do. But I'm relaxed jet again and feel like I have all the time in the world. My jeans still has a few stains from whatever covered the stairs I was hunched down on and the plastic bag I sat my camera on collected a few flakes of paint from this creepy sight. I didn’t get much time though. A moment later we have slipped into the next room in a hurry and are straining our eyes and ears. At first, Ramona though I was imagining things again, but then she heard it too, and now we have both seen it: hikers out in the woods. The excess adrenalin as I'm calming down is making me all giddy and even Ramona is giggling now. Though only guilty of curiosity, we feel like a pair of criminals and it is surreal. Awesomely surreal. I cant help but hope that these people are not the likes of us though. I would feel really bad if they walked in here and spotted us first thing, that would have been an unpleasant surprise I think.

A few minutes later we are hurrying across the yard in the window of time that could be just a few seconds or hours and hours. Ramona is cursing me for securing the fence when we went in, but I refuse to apologize as I still feel this was the right thing to do. Less conspicuous, and no one really wants kids and animals to find their way in here by accident. We find our way back and decide to walk back down the easy way. On our way out a car pulls up to us. I think to myself that we are just out for a hike, nothing weird about that. But they just want to ask for directions. “See, that's how at home we look” Ramona giggles as they drive off.

Mission accomplished, we finally wind up at Eidsvoll Station waiting for a train, and this is when we finally have a look at the previously mention picture that was just a wee bit off. It still isn’t right when I can compare it to the pictures that came before and after in close succession. Hadn’t I had like a million pix of that same room for my stop-motion-animation I would have just dismissed this as nothing, but something is definitely out of place here. Something small, shapeless and pitch black appears to be flying past just a meter or so in front of us. There is just no way we could have missed it in complete silence while both of us were looking in that direction. It's not a person, a bird, an animal or curtains moving in the wind. If it could be the works of my worn out camera, I do not know, but it looks very strange.

One of them days

<< Fiction >>

I looked down into a black hole, at the fancy looking diesel engine who runs all smooth and soft and seemingly perfect and currently only has one disturbance: me. My fingers were frozen solid and I was frowning and cussing, shivering from the tremendous cold. Suddanly I hear someone snorth. I look up. There was a man walking by. He looked at me as though he thought I might be trying to give the engine a manicure. For a moment I saw myself reflected in his eyes. Though helplessly tom-boy-ish, I am of the sort that will never pass for a guy, ever. Kiss-mouth, like a baby, knees locked together and helplessly facing each other as though in constant acknowledgment of their shortcomings, and my facial expressions ranging from scared to looking like I want to cry. I probably looked like an idiot, like a dog trying to walk on his hind legs and failing miserably. Up until it actually manages it's not merely a pioneer, it makes people sad and angry and embarrassed and frustrated. I sighed and slammed the hood down hard, too hard, audibly like an idiot now. I step around the car to get in. I knew how to drive at least, reverse all good even. Some guy I didn’t know even looked all starry eyed and waved once when I pulled a complicated maneuver reversing and skipping between cars to get out of an overcrowded gas station. But just now I'm feeling so stupid, so empty.

But what is it to be whole, and what is it to be empty or incomplete? After all, as far as I could tell, I still had all my body parts with me. Nobody had taken them from me, I'm almost certain I would have noticed. It would have registered on the scale if nothing else I figured. So this funny feeling of emptiness must be a hoax, a fraud, a trick that someone is playing on me. But who? The spirit of the times I should think... I've heard talk of it and it sounds awfully scary to me! I look around hastily, worried at this point! But how could I tell were it was so I could chase it off with a stick?! Man, does it play dirty. It's probably here, right next to me in the car, whispering to me, planting ideas in my head that I can barely register, not until they've grown and intertwined and mixed with my own at least. When they've grown into dark, live shadows that tint my every thought and poison my perceptions with their phony illusions of truth and reality. Someone is out to get me, and it's that stupid thing I cant even see. Where is that stick now, cause I really feel like something to grab onto. This whole situation had taken on the feeling of a scary movie and I could have been running around like a headless monkey by now, trying to outrun my own mind. But there is one thing that is absolutely crucial to remember in such times of despair, and it is that though we might be seemingly at the whim of the forces of our minds, we are in the end the only creator and master of our own inner world and we need to kick out any fools that think they're entitled to pulling our strings.

Come to think of it, if one were to measure my head, it would be evident that it is in fact massive. Though you might rightfully argue that this would not stop me being an airhead, I once hit my head real hard, and when I stumbled into the doctors office, going on 5 days in a mindless haze, he said I had a concussion, also known as mild “traumatic brain injury”. See? There is the magical B-word! Right in the middle even. I do believe one needs to have a brain to actually injure it.. Also, I would argue that it is a clear indication of dimness to assume you are right to pass judgment on anyone's thinking machine without even having a proper look at it. Anyone would be out of their capacity there.

I smiled and suddenly an idea struck as I spotted my purse beside me, where the supposed mental spectrum had be present just a second ago. I looked out the window and spotted the man from before across the lot. I narrowed my eyes. What had I been thinking? He looked downright harmless now. Surely he wouldn't jump me or anything, so long as I didn’t hassle him. I reached into my purse and I pulled out my multitool and opened the hood again. By help of pliers and sheer force, I finally managed to wedge the reluctant cap off so I could empty a bottle of windshield liquid into it. That wasn’t too hard, was it? I'm not helpless in the least after all. I know nobody can tell, but I put these tires on the car myself, and they even went on the right way, cause I'm not an idiot, and contrary to popular belief, no given set of body parts are required to do this job, besides maybe your hands.