January 15, 1996
I've been dreaming about Eery Asylum again.
The dreams start off normal, like a lot my dreams, it's just random images, things that I've seen, places I've been, scenes from TV shows and the occasional flight over my old home town.
But while I'm flying, staring out across the expanse of houses, schools, shops, and the maze of roads that connect them all, when my focus is drawn to the asylum.
And then everything takes a turn for the worst.
I'm inside the hospital, in the main hallway. The doors are closed behind me and everything is the same as when I visited. The paint is peeling off the walls, there is random pieces of debris scattered about. Pieces of plasterboard from the ceiling and the odd discarded needle or beer bottle.
The lights are all on, but most of the light bulbs have either been smashed or just won't work.
There's a flickering light bulb up ahead. I can see that there is someone beneath it, but whenever the light flicks on, the vanish. I recognise the silhouette, but I can't place it.
Then there is a sound behind me, and when I turn around, dozens of patients have appeared out of nowhere. They look like they never left the hospital when it closed twenty years ago. Their white cotton clothes and strait jackets are stained with dirt and blood. Their bodies are so frail that they look almost inhuman. Their eyes are all fixed on me, glowering and unblinking.
They start walking towards me. Slowly, I back away, but they just keep coming. Following me. I turn, the person under the light is gone, and I run.
I run through the halls, deeper into the maze of hallways and rooms.
They're carrying things now, needles, filled with strange-coloured liquids, some of them have scalpels and surgical scissors and implements. Some hold IV stands like clubs and swing them at me as I run. They've spread out, and they're closing in.
I turn another corner and run, through the darkness, its claws grabbing at me, trying to slow me down. And when I stumble into the light, I am caught by a familiar figure.
Brown eyes and sickly pale skin, it's him, the one that I couldn't save.
He grabs me, and drags me towards a room. It's stark and white. He holds he down while two others strap me to a table. The others have assembled a tray, of IV bags and knives and scissors and needles and probes and clips and surgical masks. They pull on the scrubs without ever breaking eye contact. And before they can set about their gruesome work, I wake up.
I wonder if this is a sign. That I need to put these ghosts to rest, that I need to Him. Or maybe it's just my guilty mind that conjured up this dream as a way to punish me, or maybe to give me hope of redemption. I'm not sure.
But I think that I need to go back to Eery Asylum.
January 17, 1996
I'm staying in Eery Hotel. Everything around here is named after the town. Given the choice between staying in a town called Smithville and a town called Eery, a tourist picked Eery. The novelty wore off before it even begun when you were born there.
But no one recognises me. I'm happy about that, I don't want anybody connection me to Amanda Rose. I used the name Anna York, because I think that everyone would get a bit suspicious. I still look like I did twenty years ago, just twenty years older, and I'm worried that using my own name might jog people's memories.
I don't want to be run out of town before I can get closure.
I decided that I wouldn't go up to the asylum today, I asked the owner of the hotel about the asylum. I told her that I was researching the asylum because I hoped to write a fictional horror story set around the hospital's past. She was a little reluctant at first, but upon realising how if the book became popular, it would bring more people to the town, she was quick to open up.
I've never looked into the history of the asylum much, I was too busy trying to bury those memories deep in my subconscious. But I did find out that Eery Asylum was commissioned to be built by Edward Eery, (the town's namesake) after his father fell ill. But Edward Eery used the asylum to conduct experiments of an unethical nature, he used the patients as guinea pigs for his more bizarre and unscientific practices.
The hospital continued to dabble with the occult and the paranormal after Eery went insane and was admitted to his own hospital.
But the legacy of Edward Eery ended when the entire hospital was examined after the death of a seemingly unimportant woman, whose daughter married into money and was able to use her new found power to look into the asylum's sketchy practices.
Most of the doctors were sent to prison for murder, and gross misconduct. And Amanda Rose, the Chief of Medicine, committed suicide rather than face the court.
The hotel owner, who I found out was called Maggie, said that the family of 'that bitch Rose' stayed in town for nearly thirteen years, but left after Amanda Rose's only child, the one named after Frankenstein's maker (I can only roll my eyes), was involved in the death of the Mayor's son.
I left at that point, I thanked her for her help, and went down the street to the town's oldest cafe. I ordered a coffee from the miserable looking teen behind the counter, who looked startlingly like Sarah McAllen, a girl that I used to go to school with. I sat in the booth for hours, and eventually, my suspicions were confirmed when a very tired looking Sarah took over from her son.
I decided to leave at that point. Sarah and I had been close friends up until I left, If anyone would recognise me, it was her.
I bought a map of the forest trails from the new agents and traced out the way up to the Asylum. The trail wasn't marked, but I still remembered where it split off the main trail and wound its way up to the main gates of the Aaylum.
I'm going to go tomorrow, I'll walk the trail to the hospital, and hopefully, I'll find Daniel, and leave. I'll finally have some kind of peace.
January 18, 1996
This was a mistake. I should never have come.
I never believed in ghosts, I thought that whatever the doctors were doing here, they were just doing it because it was fun, and they had been pressured into it by the other staff.
I was wrong.
That dream wasn't an invitation, it was bait.
I woke up early this morning, and I hiked up the trail, I found my way easily, I always used to like peeking through the gates, the eerie, gothic architecture was foreboding, it filled me with a terrifying fascination with the building. But I had never entered before. Not before that day.
When I entered, everything was like my dream. Except there were not patients waiting to dissect me, and no figure under the light.
I was relieved, for a while.
I wandered through the asylum, it still looked abandoned, and no one had any parties here. Everyone was too scared. I found that some brave souls have ventured up here to spray the walls with brightly coloured paints. But the deeper I went, the less tags there were. I eventually found something very disturbing (at least to me) a half finished tag, and a bottle of red spray paint on the ground. Even more worrying, there were deep marron splatters on the floor. It wasn't the paint, it was blood.
I decided then and there that this was a mistake, and I needed to leave. Right now.
But the asylum has other ideas.
When I got to the doors, for the first time in years, they were sealed shut.
And when I turned around, I saw something that filled me with dread.
The figure under light. Flickering in and out of sight with the light.
And when I turned around, I knew what I was going to see.
They were standing there, standing in a line in front of the doors. And in front of them, right behind me, was Daniel. His once warm brown eyes were dead and dull, there was no shine of life in them, just hatred. The expression seemed to be burnt into his face.
"You should never have come back,"
I did the only thing that I could. I turned, and I ran.
I ran until I couldn't run anymore, and whatever corner I turned, he was there.
I locked myself into one of the observation rooms, and I can feel him behind the glass, staring at me.
Oh my god, he's at the door!
He opened the door a few minutes ago. He's just standing there, staring at me. I can barely see for the tears.
I wanted closure, I died for closure, so I got it. I wiped the tears from my eyes and whispered that I was sorry. Daniel just looked at me, and a smile spread across his face. It was unsettling, not because of how insane it looked, but because of how much it looked like Daniel, the real Daniel, not this... apparition.
"I know, and you're going to make it up to me."
I don't think that Daniel ever died in this hospital. I think that whatever the doctors and my mother brought here, it kept him alive, and it turned him into something else.
And I think he wants to turn me into one too.
But please, if you find this, don't come looking for me. Please, Run, just run.