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In Redding, California, a mental health facility was built. Supposedly, it would benefit the tri-city area, yet rumors ran their course. Most of the people taken there were either homeless or declared insane. In a town with little money or resources, no one kept track of what happened to them. After five years, they closed down without a word.
David told me this with a mischievous grin. He knew this kind of stuff was right up my alley. I tossed aside the survival magazine I bought from bookstore—I admit he had me curious. He didn’t have to ask when he extended his hand to bump fists. “It's been a whole month, and no one is coming back to check on the place. It's the edge of town, and we got nothing better to do on a Friday. You down?”
I grabbed all my best gear, which I had hoarded over years of larping as a Chernobyl explorer in Russia. I lent David my spares as he grabbed his camera equipment. With backpacks full of everything from MREs to water and gas masks, we were set for anything.
The trip was in a busted car I acquired from an exchange downtown. The wind tousled our hair from the rolled-down windows as we cruised on the I-5 with heavy metal blaring in blown speakers. As the sun began to set, we reached the edge of town. The funny thing about Northern California is that as soon as you leave a city's border, it changes instantly. Miles of tall dry grass and taller trees as far as the eye can see. In one of these thickets guarding a dirt road, we made our stop. A fence covered in keep out signs and warnings stood over a gate covered in padlocks. We couldn’t drive any further but the low gate wold be an easy climb. We could have broken the locks and drove yet truth be told, sneaking in felt cooler. Truth, be told my friends midsection could use the walk anyway.
I pulled out a smoke and offered one to David, who politely declined, and we made our Plan. “Alright, we go in, take a few pictures, and stay within thirty feet of each other. Flashlights on. As soon as the battery hits sixty percent on our phones, we roll out. I want a good amount in case things turn south. Any questions?”
David frowned as I took charge but shrugged and let it go. He knew stuff like this was my hobby, so he asked me to join him. David raised an eyebrow. “And if we run into a psycho down there to chop us up?”
I pulled out my Army surplus knife with an evil grin. “We chop back with these.” I tossed him my old machete, then sauntered toward the dirt road.
About mile and a half march in we arrived. The building was an ominous slab of concrete shaped into a cube, half-painted white with a red band inlaid around the top. It looked more like a giant hospital than an abandoned mental ward. Stories high, with a roof that could easily hold a helicopter.
“Hey David,” I tapped my friends shoulder. “Wasn’t this place supposed to just house some crazies?”
“That’s what I heard.” He shrugged but agreed with the insinuation. “Don’t know why it looks so big?” The building could have ate an apartment complex. With concrete slits for windows and the iron doors chained, it looked more like a castle.
We broke the chain on the front door with a pair of bolt cutters. Despite the chain’s removal, it remained locked, so I bent closer. The lock on the door was a cheap, same brand as on the dollar store counter. I rolled my eyes and muttered to myself. “They really spared no expense.”
As David kept watch, I whipped out my lock-picking set and got to work. Not five minutes later, I heard the click of the latch, and in we walked.
The entrance was as expected, dark and empty, spiderwebs clinging to abandoned office equipment. Graffiti lined the walls and what David and I assumed to be fake blood. Punk kids and squatters wasted no time. Neither of us were too worried until coming across some of the rooms. Beds and recliners lay in sterile rooms next to abandoned equipment. Wires with little pads hanging off the end showed that electroshock therapy was alive and well. I shuddered at the thought of being subjected to such misery. The dismal green of the walls and lack of light made it look more like a torture chamber.
We took our time to explore and gather photos. Venturing further in, we found a room full of filing cabinets. The thing was, we also found another door. This one going to a basement. Not only was it blocked by a gurney, but the pair of doors stood chained shut from either side with the biggest lock I’d seen in person. Much more expensive and definitely not worth picking in the dark.
We checked our batteries, and the percentage was 85. There was no excuse to pull out, though the find was unexpected. I eyed David and shrugged. “So what do you think?”
David cocked his head as a thoughtful expression crossed his face. “Can you get in?”
“That’s not the question.” I clacked the bolt cutters twice like Pac-Man. “All The tumblers in the world won't save you from iron teeth on a chain. Question is do we want to?”
David shrugged. “We came this far.” I nodded in agreement. After I snapped the chains, I pried the door open with my crowbar. David waved his flashlight beam around to shed some light inside. A stone set of stairs led further into darkness. I swallowed hard as I descended first to prove my bravery. Just above the door were the spray-painted words
“EMERGENCY KEEP OUT.”
The deeper in, the darker it got. Any charade of it being a mental health facility was gone within the first few rooms. The equipment was more technical than the trappings of a home for the troubled. The exception was lab coats and drawers full of tools that looked to be for surgery. A foul smell of ammonia filled the air followed by the undertone of copper. It was bad enough we decided to don our masks. Lord only knew what diseases we would catch in that hole but still, we traveled on. We found the opening of a rounded hallway that reeked of an old sewer line.
A low clicking echoed thick and throaty down one of the tunnels. Crazy enough, it reminded me of those giant birds on TV. If I remember right, they were called Shoebills. The sound seemed to come from behind us as well, yet it likely was the echo. I stooped low and listened for it to come again.
“Did you hear that?” I asked David as he crept beside me.
He nodded. “What do you think it was?”
The air filled with tension but it didn’t justify leaving. I guess neither of us wanted to chicken out.
We waited there for a minute or two until David broke the silence. “Do you see that? Over there.” David motioned with his finger. He then sprinted into an adjacent room.
I followed after, and as I stood in the doorway, the view shocked me to my core. Giant tubes of glass with pools of fluid stood shattered along the wall. A green glow emanated from a backup computer, which gave the fluid in the vats an ethereal glow. We stood in awe of what must have been some kind of biological housing case. The question was for what? We wandered around the room with jaws agape. I shone my flashlight to the wall beside us, and the fun subsided.
A man in a lab coat lay with his chest torn open. His face was chewed off and his ribs lay like a blooming onion. Entrails hung out of him as his limbs bore no trace of any scrap of meat save sinews dangling among bare threads of clothing. I choked back my revulsion while David hyperventilated behind me.
That low clicking reverberated, loud and baleful as it shook the room. A sudden chill snaked up my spine. The piercing shriek of my best friend tore through my ears, cut short by the sound of ripping flesh and the coppery smell of blood, a wet slop hitting the floor.
I’ll admit that I’m a coward. My gear and dreams of exploration amounted to nothing. I ran from that room and back in the dark from whence I came, leaving my friend behind. I never dared to look behind me, our weapons never even came to mind.
The gas mask came off as tears ran down my face. My breath gasping in every ounce of air, choking me like tar gurgling in my lungs. I tore down that hall as fast I could, praying to whatever God would listen I would make it out alive in sobs that never made a sentence.
I raced toward the tunnel to reach the stairs and the click echoed behind. Climbing the steps in darkness I fell. Pain splitting my jaw as my hand crashed into concrete, followed by my face. Turning over with the flashlight from my phone, I saw what killed my friend.
The creature’s skin was of a grey and bluish hue. A ring of feathers around its face and neck but Its jaws held teeth instead of a beak. Yellow eyes glimmering down at me in the light from my phone in hand. Its feathered arms had claws like knives yet were nothing compared to the blackened barbs as big as my arm, which comprised its feet.
It stepped once.
And again.
The clicking in its throat was now replaced by a screech, freezing me like a rabbit before a lion. Any sense of flight or fight escaped me as I stood stuck in terror. I shouldn’t have glanced back for a second. The last thought flashed in my mind was a memory from a children’s show and a single word explained how I was to die.
Velociraptor.