NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:
Hi everyone, this is a story I've been wanting to write for a couple years now but just haven't gotten around to it with the desired timing being October. I'm taking a break from my usual tentacle stories to focus more on supernatural elements this time. This is just a one shot, and the content is a bit different from what you may know me for, but I hope you enjoy it nonetheless. Please give me feedback on what, if any, particular scenes you enjoyed (or didn't) so that I can begin to write other stories around these ideas in the future to branch out a bit more. As always, thanks for reading!
Once I graduate in December, I'll have much more free time for writing and be back to working on Tentacle Breeding Ground! Thanks for your patience!
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Lorrie sank into the soft seat of her car with a heavy sigh, running her fingers through her long dark hair as she watched the realtor's truck putter off down the cracked road, kicking up dry orange leaves that swirled in the brisk breeze of the calm Autumn afternoon. She was exhausted from a long day of going on property tours, having just completed the last one.
She could see the daunting, silent form of the run-down Deepwood Asylum behind her in the rearview mirror, its many brick towers all weathered and broken after decades of neglect. What was once an ugly structure in its prime was now little more than a moldering husk, its broken, looming windows gazing back at her through the mirror as if inviting her into that abyss.
The derelict building slept atop a quiet hill, hidden within the colorful foliage of the trees like a dark tumor jutting out from the landscape. No one had lived there for decades, and likely no one ever would again. That is, unless Lorrie and her husband Mike could close the deal on it.
They had pooled their savings for years to break into the real estate investing and flipping business, and were finally ready to pull the trigger now that they were in their early thirties; they just needed some good, cheap properties with potential to get started with, and few were as cheap per square foot than the Deepwood Asylum.
Several of the sites she had toured that day were solid options: old schools that could be turned into condos, single family houses that could easily be updated, and the asylum that could make an excellent hotel, especially with the added tourist appeal of allegedly being haunted, which might also explain why it had remained untouched on the market for so long.
It had been shuttered since the 1940's after local authorities discovered dozens of cases of abuse and poor living conditions for the patients and inmates. The locals didn't care much, as the prison-turned-asylum primarily treated criminals with violent sexual assault records and uncontrollable nymphomania, but that didn't stop the city from closing it down and moving the patients to a "healthier environment". Or at least, the inmates who remained.
Since then, there had been no shortage of stories circulating through the nearby town that suggested dozens, if not hundreds, of the patients had died from Doctor Kolben's experimental treatments. Apparently, the head doctor had taken his own life during the police raid, and legend says you can see his ghost on certain nights, still stalking the halls alongside the spirits of his deceased subjects, eager to find new patients to continue his twisted work upon. Some said that in the darkest hours of the quietest nights, you could still hear horrific moans of pain... or maybe pleasure... echoing down those lightless halls.
That silly rumor was part of the reason why the current landowner was willing to sell it for cheap. Lorrie knew that the superstitious sort would be hesitant to buy such a dubious location, but if marketed towards adventurous tourists, it could be a real hot spot. It was already a popular hangout for local teenage delinquents, made evident by the fact that nearly every one of the cracked gray walls of the building's interior had been covered several times over by a chaotic mess of graffiti.
The building's poor condition was another reason why it was on the market for so cheap, but was also the issue weighing most heavily on Lorrie's mind. If they were to renovate the building into a passable hotel, it would require substantial capital for repairs and updates, likely involving several loans, so who knew how long it would take to turn a profit?
The derelict rooms and maze-like hallways were all a mess of exposed, rusted pipes, broken medical equipment, and stained mattresses. Water could be heard dripping like a metronome in the dark recesses of the unlit passageways where the wiring had already failed long ago. The scent of mold filled the stale air, and the thick layer of dust covering nearly every surface was occasionally broken up by rotting refuse: empty beer bottles, empty food containers, cigarette butts, and the like.
Lorrie had been especially disgusted to spot what appeared to be used dildos -- caked in dried juices -- and discarded articles of clothing among the scattered piles of litter. Admittedly, there were certainly fewer places more private than these eroding halls for horny couples to take care of business. No doubt turning it into a hotel would do little to dissuade the same crowd.
Lorrie had a strong hunch that there were even more problems with the building, but the realtor showing her the property had dodged most of her questions and been in a rush to end the tour before sundown, as the lack of electricity in some areas would leave entire swaths of the building submerged in darkness behind boarded up windows, leaving only the thin string of light from their flashlights as a way to navigate the maze.
After the tour was over, the realtor had locked a thick, rusted chain back over the entrance door, which was decorated with illegible graffiti, save for some messy text scrawled in red paint that read, "Get Fucked". The realtor offered her a brief goodbye before dashing off to his car and driving away. Lorrie was not one to fancy herself with absurd tales of the supernatural, but she knew that the haggard man's superstition was the reason for his absurdly low asking price, so she had held back her frustration at the time.
Once the jittery realtor's truck disappeared from view, she quickly cracked her car door open and stepped back out into the cool air. Looking back over her shoulder as she went, she hurriedly walked back over to the derelict building, making her way around the side to a first floor window she had opened from the inside when the realtor wasn't looking, it being one of the few that weren't completely boarded up.
Her phone had full bars and a good amount of battery left to power the flashlight, and the sun still had a good hour or so before it set completely, so as long as she stuck to the areas on the west side of the building where light could still get in, she would be fine for a little "self-guided tour" to quickly inspect the walls for mold and water damage. The realtor had refused to take her to some of the rooms, and she assumed he was trying to hide blemishes that she could leverage to get an even better deal on the property.
She had some trouble getting up into the tall window, given that her heels and pantsuit weren't exactly designed with climbing in mind, but with the help of a nearby ladder that had been left out for a long-forgotten painting job, she managed to alight on the musty floor of the asylum interior once again.
It was extremely eerie wandering the lonely corridors, her only company being the echoing clicks of her heels on the cracked tiles below her feet, but she continued her way through the drafty building nonetheless. The biting evening breeze that invaded from unseen cracks was like the chilling breath of some giant beast, stiffening her nipples beneath her coat and making her curse at herself for not thinking to bring the scarf from her car. A top priority would definitely be fixing the insulation, as losing money to heating costs would no doubt be the death of her.
Only twenty minutes had passed before she decided she had seen enough. The rooms near the lobby indeed had some issues that would be expensive to resolve, but nothing too out of budget given the absolute steal this property was for the size. She didn't have the nerves to venture into the deeper areas of the dark building, fearing what would happen if she fell or ran into some hiding vagrant. She was no fool.
As she walked back down the silent hallway towards the entrance, she checked her phone for any message, her face illuminated by the ghosty glow of her screen. She was startled to see that her battery was close to dead, draining more in the last few minutes than she expected, so she sent a text to her husband telling him she would be home soon, before quickening her pace.
She breathed out a sigh of relief that she didn't realize she had been holding in once she saw the familiar exit sign near the front lobby, knowing she was close to the open window. It was then that she heard a nearby sound rock through the stifling silence of the building, making her flinch in surprise. Around the corner of the hallway ahead, in the direction she needed to go, came an aggressive, rhythmic pattern of buzzes.
Lorrie stopped dead in her tracks, feeling her legs grow numb as an unseen paleness washed over her face that started to bead with a cold sweat. She frantically clasped her phone to her beating chest, smothering the flashlight in her cleavage to take refuge in the darkness. Someone was there. Was it the realtor? A guard? A vagrant? She did her best to stealthily hide in the cracked doorway of an adjacent room, muffling her shaky breathing while regretting her decision to come back into the building.
She kept her wide eyes glued on the crack of the door, the murky hallway beyond only faintly illuminated by the smallest strips of the sun's very last rays that had managed to claw their way in through the rotting boards nailed to the tall windows.
After a few minutes of nothing happening, she carefully peeked around the door into the hall. The steady rhythm of the buzzing sound could still be heard, but there was nothing else. No sounds of a human, at least. Gathering her courage, she looked back down at her phone to text her husband again just in case, but was horrified to find that leaving the flashlight on had sapped the device of its remaining battery, only seeing her anxious face reflected back at her in the dark screen. She needed to move now before the sun completely set.
