I spent the last few days looking through your comments and reading with my friends here in San Francisco. Thank you so much, you brilliant detectives! Apparently a place that closely resembles the town I explored is mentioned in a previous series of stories. After reading about what happened to Jess, Liz and Alan, I’m getting a bit worried. Here, I’ve linked them:
The thing is, I can’t take all your advice about not returning to Infected Town. I did all of this last week, before heading into California. I’m currently safe in San Francisco with no signs of moldiness.
When last we left off, our plucky heroine (yours truly) planned to spend the night in the motel and return to Creepyville in the morning to do a bit of true exploring.
I asked the gas station attendant about the ghost town up the road. He said he used to get a lot of regulars from up that way, but not for a while. Then the road got closed. There used to be a few more signs and some police tape, he said, and he’d seen a couple cop cars parked by the barriers. I asked him the name of the village, but he said he didn’t know. I thought that was really weird; why wouldn’t you know the name of a town half an hour away?
“There’s nothing up that way,” he said as I left. Oh good. My own personal Harbinger of Doom.
The next morning I got up and packed my backpack. Flashlights, extra batteries, gloves, an N95 respirator in case of mold or asbestos, some rope, a fuck ton of glow sticks, a few flares, a basic first aid kit and my Swiss Army knife. Plus bottled water. I also brought my handy-dandy crowbar. It was heavy but worth lugging around in the face of a stuck door or window.
Like an idiot, I’d left my camera at home. I’d mourned this since the night before, when I looked in my bag and found it missing. I was sure I’d packed it, having planned to explore a couple places my friend knew of in San Francisco, but it’s probably sitting on my bed at home, all lonely and sad. I took a couple pictures in the town with my phone, but none of them turned out. Terrible lighting, I guessed at the time.
So. The first exploration. That feeling of being watched returned immediately upon crossing the bridge into the village, and as I drove towards the buildings the scent of mold did, as well. Faint but eternally present.
My first stop was the police station.
I weighed the pros and cons of breaking into a government building, but not for long. I was too eager. The town was as empty as ever, after all. I parked in the lot behind the station, beside a few dusty squad cars.
I guess the building should be called more of a sheriff’s office than an actual police station. It’s a low, tan colored building with a ground floor and a basement. The windows in the back aren’t busted like the front, but they're grimy. Spots of black adorn the corners of most of them, which I soon discovered was some kind of mold. I’ve never seen mold like it, though.
I tried the front doors first, in case people were actually in the building, but they were locked. I swung around back where I’d seen a metal maintenance door when I parked. It had been firmly shut, I remembered, and I didn’t have much hope for it. Already planning to try to pry open a window, I came around the corner of the building.
The maintenance door was open. I blinked. Yes, there it was, open just a crack. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before, but brushed it off.
Breathing deeply, I pulled open the door and was met with the stifling smell of mold. I got the N95 out of my bag and affixed it to my face in case of spores. I stepped inside the building after wedging the door open with a heavy rock.
The hallway I stood in had a bathroom to my immediate right and a custodial supply closet to my left. It led into a large office area, with many doors and cubicles. There were three small jail cells in the northeast corner, and through a metal door to the east was the reception and waiting area. The place was dusty and sounds were muffled, like cloth pressed over the ears. The interior had a distinct look of decay - paint was peeling from the walls, all the light bulbs were broken, the carpet was pulling up at the corners.
The mold around the windows doesn’t have the usual spotty pattern I associate with mold. It grows in groups, usually in corners, in a big black mass, then spreads out in long, slender lines made up of tiny colonies. I’m not even sure it is mold. At times it looks like it. At other times it looks like some kind of plant life. It smells like mold, though. I avoided all physical contact.
The walls and ceilings of the building weren’t moldy, just the windows. I picked my way through the office area towards the holding cells. It looked eerily as though people had up and left in the middle of a work day. Photos and personal effects still sat on desks. Papers and files littered the ground, but were also stacked high on desks in In and Out trays. Rotting jackets were draped over rotting chairs.
Most of the doors were locked. The cells were locked, too, and empty. I was a bit disappointed by the building so far.
I found out why the front window was shattered when I went into the lobby. Bullet holes peppered the plaster on either side of it, and bullet casings littered the floor. A smear of what looked like dried brown blood painted the wall under the window. What had happened here? There were no bodies. Maybe it was an old crime scene, which was actually pretty cool. I tried taking pictures, but like I said, they didn’t turn out. They just looked black, or really blurry sepia tones.
Something moved to my left. I couldn’t see it, but I heard the shifting of papers and something sliding across the carpet. I froze, pointed my light in its direction, and yelled, “Anyone in here?” No response. Heart rate quickening, I asked again and was again met with only rustling.
The noises came from behind the tall reception desk. I got up on my tiptoes and shone my light behind it. The noises stopped. I saw nothing - just a swivel chair and a knocked over phone. I couldn’t see under the desk, and the door to the right that led into the reception area was locked.
At this point I assumed an animal was in there, maybe a raccoon. Raccoons freak me out. They’re vicious little shits, don’t let their adorable faces fool you. In any case, I decided to leave well enough alone and check out the basement.
I’ve mentioned several times that this town made me feel watched. Upon stepping down those creaky wooden stairs and letting the door swing shut behind me, the feeling intensified tenfold. I figured at the time that it was because it was pitch black, and I only had my flashlight to see by.
The decay down there was particularly bad. The entire ceiling was covered in black, as well as the ventilation ducts. The mold oozed halfway down the wall, which dripped brackish water.
Along one wall hung three headless human figures, brown and rotting. They made me jump violently when my light landed on them, but a second look told me that they were actually old hazmat suits that seemed to be covered in filth. The helmets lay at their feet.
Someone had set up a makeshift lab down here, between filing cabinets and cardboard boxes. The rotting counters on the opposite wall held a microscope, a bunch of dirty test tubes and glassware, and a 2013 Mac desktop, which looked just as moldy as the rest of the place. That gave me pause. I’d never seen this level of decay in such a modern building. The computer looked like it had been there for thirty years, not one.
A pile of papers sat next to the microscope, mildewed and barely legible but dense with type. I remember a few phrases from when I glanced at it, like “signs of accelerated growth” and “stage one symptoms” that caught my attention. I was about to start flipping through the file, but before I could even touch it the door at the top of the stairs behind me slammed open. I yelped, and spun around.
“GET UP HERE!” someone screamed from upstairs.
It was a male voice, ragged and breaking. Though the tone was aggressive, he didn’t sound angry so much as panicked. It set my heart thudding. The beam of my flashlight didn’t reach the top of the stairs, so I couldn’t see who was calling to me.
No one was at the top of the stairs when I got closer. Eager by now to get out of the building, I took them two at a time. The main floor hallway was empty, too, which both relieved and perplexed me. Where had the man gone?
Didn’t matter. I decided to try to escape any form of trouble and made my way quickly towards the maintenance door I’d entered the building by. It had shut behind me, I noticed immediately, which meant someone else was definitely in the building.
I raced towards it, though nothing was chasing me, almost expecting it to be locked. But it opened quite easily, and I spilled out into the sunlight. I tripped over the heavy rock I’d used to prop the door open, which had been purposely moved, picked myself up and found sanctuary in my car.
I probably should have left town then. The experience with the screaming man had set me on edge, and I hadn’t really enjoyed exploring the police station. Even seeing the old crime scene in the lobby had failed to really pique my enthusiasm, prodding instead at my underlying fears. But what happened there? Was the bloodstain connected to the lab in the basement? I wasn't done looking around town.
I’ll save the exploration of the apartment building for next time. It was the creepiest place I’ve ever been in terms of atmosphere. It deserves its own update.
Thanks again for all your help, Nosleep!
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Credits
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