thatjeffcarter was here: Twilight at Saint Gerald’s

   Judas the Hammer brings ruin to many!
   Judas the Hammer will capture the city!

   The growling vocals and throbbing, distorted guitars of This Corpse Alive shook the room. They were our favorite band back in 1987 and we listened to their albums whenever we got together, despite our parents objections to that ‘devil-music’ as they called it. We were at Dave’s place – in the upstairs unused half attic of the apartment – our usual spot. It was me, Dave, and Micah. And Allison

   “I appreciate that you’re here to do this, but aren’t you supposed to be at rehearsal, or something,” I asked, twisting my head to see her. I liked her cinnamon hair. And that her older sister, Beth – a senior while we were freshmen – would sometimes get us some pot. She was there to pierce my ear with a safety pin. My mom was going to be so cheesed.

   “Sit still,” she insisted and squeezed my ear with the ice cube to numb it. “Yeah,” she said. “Stupid Guys and Dolls.” She snorted. “They cast me as one of the Hot Box dancers. But it’s not like I can dance all that well. It’s just ‘cause I have boobs.” Micah, Dave, and I blushed and turned away from her and she laughed at us. I sneaked a look at her chest as she squeezed my ear again. Harder.

   “Hold still,” Allison said. “This is gonna’ hurt.”

   “I thought the ice…” I started to say and then she stabbed the pin through my lobe. I screamed, but it was done.“You’re such a puss,” she said and handed me a towel. “Wipe up the blood.”

   Micah brought me a small hand-held mirror and nodded in approval. “Cool,” he said.

   “Are you guys still into that Satan shit?” Allison asked as I preened in the mirror with my new punk rock jewelry.

   Micah shook his head back and forth, nearly dislodging his yarmulke. Dave laughed and said, “We’re not Satanists, you know. We just thought it’d be cool. Not that it worked or anything.”

   “Do you have anything else planned?” Allison asked as she sat down on the couch next to Micah.

   “We were just going to watch a movie. I think The Brides of Betrayal is on tonight,” I said.

     “So. Just another boring Friday night for the Three Investigators?” Allison said with a slightly sardonic grin. Now I almost regretted telling her about my childhood obsession with those books. Almost. She grinned at me and continued. “But what if I said I know how we can get into the old Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital.”

   The three of us stared at her as the This Corpse Alive album continued playing on the stereo.

   My heart is bewildered, a dread overwhelms
   The twilight I longed for has become my terror.

   The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital had been empty – abandoned since before any of us were born. None of us really knew why. There were stories, of course, each more outlandish than the last: human breeding experiments, Nazi doctors, you know the sort… Weekly World News kind of stuff. It was probably something entirely boring like taxes or insurance but the stories circulated. The city kept it pretty well boarded up so that it didn’t become a hobo camp and there was very little graffiti on the walls. A tall chain link fence cordoned off most of it.

   “Hellfire!” Dave shouted. “Let’s go!”

   “But how are we going to get there?” I asked. “It’s on the other side of town.”

   “I’ve got Beth’s car,” Allison said.

   “But no license, right?”

   “Are you coming or not?” She asked and followed Dave down the stairs. I looked at Micah. He just shrugged and followed along. We piled into Beth’s maroon and rust Ford Escort and Allison drove us across town to the Saint Gerald. Micah offered a cassette for the tape deck, but Allison refused it. “No more of that death metal crap tonight, boys. You’re going to hear some real music.” She played some synthesizer Euro pop. Micah just sulked in the back seat staring out the window.

   The Saint Gerald was boarded up and secure – except for one basement entrance that Allison knew about. The iron stairs down to the door were dangerously sloped and bounced uncertainly as we made our unsteady descent. I felt a wash of vertigo as I stepped down, but it passed. At the bottom she pulled away a band of yellow and black barricade tape and pulled on the door. It opened. Reluctantly, but it opened.

   We were ready to enter but Allison held out her arm. “Should we pray first, or something? For protection?”

   “Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s probably a good idea. Dave, what have you got in the way of protection prayers?”

   He looked sheepish and said, “I don’t know. I guess we could recite the Lord’s Prayer or Psalm Twenty-Three, maybe.”

   Micah held his hands in the air with his fingers spread like Mister Spock and began to pray: “Hashkivenu Adonai, Eloheinu l’shalom v’ha’amideinu shomreinu l’chaim. Ufros aleinu sukkat shlomecha v’takneinu b’eitzah tovah milfanecha v’hoshee’einu l’ma’an sh’mecha. V’hagen b’adeinu v’haseir mei’aleinu oyev, dever, v’cherev, v’ra’av, v’yagon, v’harcheik mimenu avon vafesha. U’v’tzeil kenafecha tastireinu ki el shomreinu umatzileinu atah ki el chanun v’rachum atah. Ushmor tzeiteinu u’vo’einu l’chaim u’l’shalom mei’atah v’ad olam. Baruch atah Adonai, shomer amo Yisrael.”

   “Amen,” we all agreed, though we didn’t know what he’d prayed.

   “Dude, was that from Star Trek?” Dave asked and Allison smacked him on the back of the head.

   “Hold up. Hold up,” Dave said rubbing his skull. “I’ve got something else. I’ve got these.” He pulled out a small wooden box from his jacket. He opened the lid and revealed three communion wafers. “I smuggled these out from Mass when we were getting ready for the summoning ritual.” He looked at Allison. “I didn’t know you’d be with us or I would have gotten more…”

   “Isn’t that blasphemy or something?” she asked.

   “No. We’re doing something dangerous here. We might encounter some evil spirit inside there. We need the holy presence to go with us.”

   “Still seems iffy to me,” I said. But we each took one. For protection.

   “I’ve got something too,” Allison said handing us a piece of chalk. She looked at me and said, “Just like The Three Investigators, right?” She smiled and I melted.

   “So we don’t get lost,” Allison explained and drew an arrow on the wall. She stepped through the door into the darkness and we followed after her.

   Inside it was stuffy and dark but not like a cave. When my family went to the State park caves near here for vacation, they smelled fresh and clean. Living even. Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital, abandoned for so long, smelled dead. I don’t know how better to say it. Our flashlights did little to illumine the facility. There was little to see. If we expected to find medical equipment and blood stained walls we were disappointed. It was just an empty building. Empty hallways. Empty rooms.

   But there was something, some nervous hesitation, some unexpressed unfamiliar dread. “Aren’t these places full of radon?

   “Radon?” Dave said. “What’s that?”

   “Radioactive gas that seeps up from the ground,” I explained.

   “Radioactive gas? You’re full of crap. You know that right?” Dave said.

   Maybe it wasn’t Radon, but there was something. I felt. We all felt it. And my newly pierced ear was throbbing. I think I saw interdimensional flashing lights. Fairy lights and there was …

   It’s here that I mostly have to end the story.

I don’t really remember what else happened. We woke up in the hospital – the actual functioning hospital, with doctors and nurses and everything. Our parents were there, sobbing and squeezing us until we were nearly crushed to death. Alternately laughing and crying and shouting at the doctors. It turns out that someone (we never learned who) made an anonymous phone call to 911 reporting a gas leak in the area of The Saint Gerald of Aurillac hospital. Police and Fire Department responded and found the four of us unconscious in the heating system of Saint Gerald’s. They followed our chalk marks, apparently. They flooded the room with fresh clean air and we were revived and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

   I still don’t know how we got into the heating system.

   And, what is more, Saint Gerald’s had been vacant for years, everything shut down. No power, no utilities. No gas. Who made the call? Why was there the smell of gas there? These things we never learned.