It was the first project of which Trish had been in charge. The Consortium was bidding for the Lorne Park site to be used for luxury apartments and on Monday morning Trish would meet the contractors and surveyors at the site to decide if they could convert the old building or if they needed to demolish and build from scratch.
She had collected the keys from the agent on Friday afternoon and now, on Saturday morning, she could not resist the chance to go to the site alone and do a tour so that when the meeting happened on Monday everyone would be impressed by how well she knew the project. That was why she was here with her shiny black Audi idling behind her as she unlocked the huge rusty padlock on the high iron gates. The thick chain fell away noisily and Trish returned to her car and purred up the winding drive. There was grass growing up through the tarmac and trees and greenery were intruding into the drive. When the building came into view it was like the setting for a horror film. To make things worse heavy dark clouds hung overhead and the feeling of neglect and decay was deepened by the tangled mass of out of control vegetation which seemed to be creeping up the front steps like a monster which was gradually dragging the place back to complete jungle.
The building itself was two storeys with windows set into the sloping roof showing that there were rooms in the attics. The chimneys were tall and one of them had collapsed. The whole thing was grim Victorian red brick. It had been built as a reformatory for girls and then later it had been a girl's boarding school which had been shut down after some trouble. The details were unclear.
As Trish locked her car and slowly walked to the oak front door she wondered what had run through the minds of those unfortunate Victorian girls who had been brought here. Being set in its own grounds the place was completely isolated from the outside world and the thought came into Trish's mind that any indignity and horror could have been imposed on the inmates of this place and no-one outside would ever know.
The front door key was huge and made of black iron like the key to an old church and it took some effort to turn the key in the long disused lock. Trish deliberately left the door open as she slowly made her way into the musty smelling entrance hall and a pigeon flapped somewhere overhead disturbed at the sound of the door being opened. Of course the electricity had been cut off long ago but daylight came into the place through the tall, dirty windows.
In the course of her work Trish had been into many abandoned buildings but in this one she had to make a concentrated effort to think like a professional instead of a frightened little girl. She had crossed the entrance hall now and passed through a wide doorway under heavy wood carving into another high and wide space. Perhaps this had been a dining room or an assembly hall. The floor was dusty bare boards and the windows were all at first floor level. It had been Trish's intention to make a detailed study of the place with a view to deciding whether to favour conversion or demolition but she was disappointed in herself that she had already, intuitively, formed the very strong impression that this place was evil and must be totally destroyed.
By this time she was in the centre of the large space and suddenly the whole building was filled with the sound of a huge crash like a cannon shot which caused Trish's heart to stop for a second. However as the squawking of the birds died down she told herself that the wind had caught the front door which she had left open and blown it shut. Just as she was recovering her breath she heard a door slam somewhere else nearby then what could only be male footsteps very close to her.
