Chapter 7

I sat writing down everything that I could remember about the dream and even attempted to crudely draw some of the items I could remember. I looked through my notes and scoured my brain for any last remnants of the images I had witnessed. I was greeted with a blank slate aside from what I had managed to get there was nothing more available to me. I read over what I had gotten down and decided that I would read over it again in the morning and see if I could determine anything from what I had. I was woken up to the annoying buzz and beep of my alarm clock. It was 9.30 am. It was a Saturday so I didn’t need to be up fast this morning. Normally my sister Stacey wouldn’t be up until at least 11 am. I slowly got myself up and made my way to the bathroom. I went through my normal routine of getting ready and looked at myself in the mirror. I froze in horror as in my reflection I saw the same mark from my dream clear as day in a reddish black colour. I quickly looked from my reflection to my wrist only to see that it wasn’t there. I looked in the mirror and confirmed that in fact the mark was not there and must have been conjured up by my imagination and the fact I felt like I hadn’t really slept. I got myself showered, washed and dressed and headed down the stairs to get breakfast. I dropped Mick a text on the way down asking if he was still up for exploring the abandoned buildings today. About halfway through breakfast I got a text back. It was game on, we arranged to meet in the park and then go from there. I finished my breakfast and called out my goodbye to my mum as I grabbed my coat and headed out.

I headed down to the park and met up with mick. He was wearing his usual cross between jeans and a tracksuit top. He wasn’t really one for style and his large hulking frame often made buying him clothes very hard. He waved as I approached and greeted me in the usual

“Who goes there?”

I replied with my name and after a joking exchange we headed off to the abandoned houses. We walked for about 15 minutes through the estate before we came across the houses and buildings. Each one looked empty and almost hollow. They were all fenced off from the rest of the estate and had clearly fallen into disrepair. We found a way to climb through the fence and made our way into the first house. From the outside it looked pretty normal except it was missing its windows and doors. As we approached a small mouse ran out of the door and both Mick and I nearly pooped our pants. We stood for a second gathering our courage again as we went inside. I noticed that the whole inside of this house had seemed to collapse. The walls were pitch black and It looked like a long time ago this house had been burnt down. If this was the actual reason it was empty I didn’t know.

The second house we went into was much the same aside from the stairs in this one were still intact this led to us climbing them and realising that it was literally only the stairs left and neither one of us was brave enough to stand too close to the edge just in case it fell while we were on them. We looked around another 2 empty houses before we saw the huge structure in front of us. A sign on the outside said

“ rosewood mental health and wellbeing facility”

From this sign we gathered that it was an abandoned hospital facility. We slowly and cautiously made our way to the front doors which had long since been ripped out of place. All that greeted us as we neared closer to the door was a large corridor that was overgrown with plants and had parts of the wall and ceiling falling apart. We both turned to each other as if to rally our own courage before we hesitantly stepped inside. After about a minute and both of us realising that nothing had happened we felt a little braver and ventured deeper. We started on the bottom floor unsure if we wanted to venture upstairs just yet. As we explored the lower level we found a lot of rooms that looked like old bedrooms or sleeping quarters and a large room that we could only assume was a social room of some form. We also found a set of stairs leading down to a basement but neither of us were brave enough to even think about going down there just yet.

As we continued exploring we began to imagine we were our dungeons and dragons characters exploring an old ruin or cave system. Bolstered by this sense of bravery from our characters we decided to head upstairs. We came across a lot more bedrooms and another couple of social rooms. Each bedroom had fallen into disrepair and there was nothing left of the mattresses except some old springs. We assumed that they had either been burnt by other kids or that rats and mice had ripped them apart in places for a nest. We stopped in one room as Mick wanted to carve his name into the wall. As he was doing so I continued down the corridor. I was casually looking into each room when I noticed one of them was covered in writing that had been carved into the walls. I went inside and looked around. I don't know why but for some reason this room appealed to me. I took out my phone and took pictures of all the walls so I could see the writing. I called Mick for him to come and have a look. He walked in and was instantly taken aback by what he saw. He glanced over everything and instantly said