I wanted to find Insane Asylum because I had seen the pictures. It was at the ruins of an old asylum and the walls looked spooky, like they could tell stories people didn’t want to hear. It looked like the wind didn’t whisper through the empty widows, it screamed like a banshee, and when it was still you could hear ghost stories on the breezes as they stirred the ashes of some long forgotten time.
Bumping along in the van I was beginning to think the van had once belonged to a resident at the asylum. The zebra striped walls and the purple shag floor looked like someone had decorated it after a bad dream.
“Turn left in about half a mile,” I said to Twiggy.
“Who puts an insane asylum way out here in the sticks?” he asked.
“Somebody who doesn’t want the residents bothering the neighbors.”
“There haven’t been insane asylums in use for years.”
“That’s why there’s only ruins left.”
“I think you’re crazy to want to go here.”
“Okay. So leave me at the asylum,” I said. “I’ll find my way home.”
“Aw Gabby, I was just kidding. I wouldn’t leave you behind and I don’t think you’re crazy. So far you’ve done an amazing job of choosing good caches. You know they are not all this interesting. There are some that I won’t even stop at.”
“Like the lamp post ones?”
“And guardrail caches. Who wants to look for a geocache with cars zipping past at fifty miles an hour? Guardrails are there to keep drivers on the road. They are nice and unobtrusive. You add a geocacher to the scene and they just become a distraction.”
“I’ve never found a guardrail cache. Are they hard?”
“They are either very easy or very tricky. Frustrating either way.”
The road ran along a farmer’s field and then wandered away and over another creek. I had no idea the area I had spent four semesters in had so much running water. This bridge was sturdier than the last one we had seen. After it crossed the bridge, the road ascended the side of a hill and came out on top. A tall structure made the hill look bigger than it was. Twiggy checked his GPS.
“Still a tenth of a mile.”
However, a tenth of a mile brought us up behind the building. It looked like it was made of river rock and parts of the walls had fallen down over time. Cracks spider-webbed between the rocks looking like an accident waiting to happen.
“Caches are usually not placed inside ruins,” Twiggy said. “Too many muggles explore places like this and they could find it by accident.”
“Can we explore it just like the muggles do?” I asked.
“Sure. Let’s find the cache first.”
He parked the van next to the building and we carefully stepped around the debris that seems to be around any abandoned building.
“It sure is a pretty place to send crazy people,” I said.
“I doubt if most of them were crazy. Back then people were considered crazy if they were different. Some had physical problems, some mental, some were just hard to get along with. It was a place to send people to get rid of them.”
“That’s sad.”
“I know a few people I wouldn’t mind sending to an institution,” he said jokingly.
“So, where’s the cache?”
“I’ve had a few people overhear me talk geocaching and they think I’m crazy.”
“Only because it has its own vocabulary and they don’t understand what you’re talking about. Do you remember me asking you what you were talking about? That’s what prompted you to show me what geocaching was.”
“I do,” he said with a grin. “And you found your very first geocache that day.”
“After searching and being laughed at for half an hour.”
“I wasn’t laughing at you. I was laughing with you. It was just so fun sharing my hobby with someone new. I was so glad you enjoyed it.”
“It’s weird how something can be so frustrating and enjoyable at the same time.”
“It’s that aha! moment when you finally spot it. It just erases all the frustration.”
“Well, not all of it, but enough of it.”
“Here, you take the GPS. I want to see you walk like a duck again.”
“A duck? I walk like a duck?”
“Only when you’re trying to read the screen and look for a geocache at the same time. It’ll wear off with time.”
“That’s good. So what kind of a duck do I look like?”
“A peeking duck.”
“What kind is that?”
“The kind that peeks around looking for geocaches. But if you’re talking about a Peking Duck it’s the white ones.”
Once again we began poking around in brush and trees looking for any place that we thought a cache could be hidden in. The GPS led us to a copse of trees, then to the corner of the asylum, than back to the trees.
“Okay, you’re relying too heavily on the GPS. Time to let those excellent geosenses go to work.” He took the GPS back and said, “Look for a beacon.”
I looked around the ruins thinking he had seen the cache and was giving me a hint, while he followed the map deeper into the woods. I didn’t see any lights on the ruins and wondered if they even had electricity out here in the days when the asylum was operational.
“Where are you going?” I called out.
“Looking for beacons,” he said. “They usually signify a good hiding spot.”
“Way out there?” I asked. Then I remembered a beacon was anything that stood out, like a hollow tree or a pile of rocks. I felt a little silly looking for spotlights on the building. “Where have you looked already?”
“It doesn’t matter. I might have missed it.”
I followed Twiggy as he hunted for the cache. I probably looked in all the same places he already searched. I knew to look for piles of rocks or sticks, but what about piles of pinecones? I unpiled the pinecones to find… a bare spot amongst the ferns.
“I found it!” I heard from behind the brush ahead of me. When I got closer Twiggy said, “See if you can spot it.”
When I had walked around and around it without finding it he added. “It’s about two feet long, an inch and a half around and brown.”
I began noticing there was a bush made up of many small branches clustered together and I assumed the cache was one of them. When he saw that I had the right idea he reached into the bush and pulled one of the “branches” out. It was a piece of plastic pipe with caps on both ends. We sat in the grass while he unscrewed the cap and dumped out the contents. I snapped up the log book to sign it, noticing several pieces of sidewalk chalk.
“What’s all that for?” I asked as I opened the log. The front page of the log book had a picture. It showed the floor of the asylum and the floor was littered with chalk outlines of people.
“Add yours to the asylum,” said a note in the log book.
I showed the picture to Twiggy.
“Cool! I wonder how many outlines there are in there now.”
I signed the log book and we packaged up the cache and replaced it, then took one of the pieces of chalk with us as we explored the ruins.
“And so we enter the dreaded asylum of DOOOMMMMM!” Twiggy said in an evil voice as we stepped through the doorway.
Light streamed through the broken windows illuminating three chalk outlines on the floor. There had been many more in the past, but the roof was missing and water had filtered through cracks and washed away many of the chalk outlines. Some of the outlines looked more like chalky pools. Geocachers had become creative and outlined different poses. It reminded me a little of a movie I had to watch in history class of the erupting of Pompeii and how they found people in the act of doing some very typical things when they met their demise.
“Let’s do one of two people handing a geocache to each other,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll trace you and you can trace me,” he said.
Hmm, I wasn’t sure I wanted to be traced but there was no polite way to refuse. I handed him the chalk and sat on the floor.
“Lie down and put your arms out like you’re handing your sister a present on Christmas day,” he said. “On your side might work better. Feet apart so we get more of an outline.” He positioned my hand so a geocache could be drawn in it. “There, that’s good. Stay like that.” He began tracing around me and I tried not to be too uncomfortable when he reached sensitive areas. That reminded me that I was going to have to trace around him next. He might have taken a little longer to trace around some spots but he was polite. After I got up we drew a box in my chalk drawing hand and Twiggy put a GX symbol on the side of the box.
“It looks like a first aid kit now,” I said.
“Okay, let’s see,” he said as he attempted to position himself correctly in relation to where my chalk outline was.
“Right hand a little bit up,” I instructed. “Okay. Now you can do whatever you want.”
I started at his hand and worked my way around trying not to smear any of the other chalk outlines.
“I wonder if this makes us residents,” he joked. “If you outline somebody in an asylum, does it steal a little bit of their soul?”
“That’s silly.”
“I need to sneeze.”
“No don’t sneeze! You might mess up the lin…” BAM! Splat!
Twiggy was on top of me in an instant shielding me from harm.
“Where are you… CRAZY PEOPLE? Whar the tarnation are you hiding? Good for nothin’ trespassers!”
“We’re not trespassers!” Twiggy yelled “We’re just exploring the ruins!”
“Damn people think they can go anywhere they please. This is MY land!”
“Sir… Uh… if you’ll put the gun down we’ll be out of here.” BAM! “He’s not putting the gun down,” he muttered to me.
Little pieces of the ceiling rained down on the chalk outlines. It must have been a shotgun.
“He’s not shooting at us. Maybe he’s just trying to scare us away.”
“It’s working, except I’m too scared to move.”
An old man prowled the ruins. He seemed to feel his way forward and he walked bleary eyed.
“He can’t see well,” I whispered.
“Then what’s he doing carting a gun around?!” Twiggy whispered into my ear.
“Shotguns are good for people who can’t see well. It sprays out so you hit a wide area.”
“How did you learn about shotguns?”
“I watch the History Channel. Get off me. Let’s run for the stairs. He might not even know we’re moving until we’re out of range.”
“No. A shot gun can shoot a long ways. They use them for hunting birds! We’re bigger than birds and closer, too.”
“But he’s mostly shooting up. He’ll miss.”
The man was following the wall like he needed a reference point muttering about trespassers and crazy people and the government spying on innocent citizens. I began to think he had lived too close to the asylum for too long. Twiggy watched him.
“Okay. I think you’re right,” he barely whispered as he slid off of me. “On the count of three.” He waited while I got ready to run. “One, two…” he stole a glance to make sure the old man was still acting feeble. “Three!”
We dashed to the stairs and when we reached them we realized only half of them still existed.
“Wow,” I whispered as I carefully picked my way up the broken steps. “I should major in geocaching. So far I’ve really moved up in the world while geocaching.”
“Shhh.”
“Watch towers, asylums… what will it be next?”
“Quick! He’s coming!” he whispered.
We reached the landing and peeked over the wall to the floor below.
“Harhar, har,” the old man laughed grimly as he followed the wall toward the stairs.
“He can’t see us when he gets close to the stairway,” I said. “So when he disappears from view make a run for it.”
“Okay… ready?”
We couldn’t run because some of the stairs were so deteriorated we could see through them. We had to find the most stable boards we could. The second floor was almost as bad as the stairs. Pools of water had rotted the floor and caused it to sag. There were gaping holes giving us glimpses into the spidery world of the floor boards. We had to inch along the edges of the walls.
“Gabby! There are no stairs at the end of the hall!” Twiggy said.
“Who builds an asylum without emergency exits?” I whispered urgently.
“It was built before building codes,” he said. “And they didn’t want people to be able to get out.”
“Well, we want to get out!”
Thunk… thunk…
“He’s reached the stairs!” I whispered.
“Quick! This way! There are too many rooms for him to search. We’ll find one at the end and buy some time.”
“He’ll never make it down this hall,” I said. “He’ll fall through!”
“I have a hunch he’s done this many times.”
“Then where does he stash his victims?”
“This way, we can do this.”
“I know you’re in here CRAZY PEOPLE! QUIT haunting my property!”
“He’s nuts,” I whispered.
“Appropriate, huh?”
“I don’t want to find the next geocache,” I whispered.
“Why?”
“It’s called Snake Pit.”
“Watch out for exposed nails,” he said as he led the way down the hall. He turned at a doorway and we entered a small room. The window was broken out and iron bars dangled from a single bolt. We went back to the hall and entered the next room. It didn’t have a window. The next one had a window but no glass and no iron bars.
Thunk… thunk…
“I say we climb out the window and use the iron bars to get us closer to the ground and drop from there,” I said.
“You’re crazy!”
“Do you have a better idea?” I asked.
“No.”
We went back to the room with the iron hanging down. If we could hang on, it would give us an added three feet. I thought I could dangle and drop from a second story window. It was going to hurt but I thought I could make it down and then run to the van.
“Do you want to go first?” I asked.
“And leave you up here with the crazy man? No way!”
“So you want me to go first?”
“And have you fall to your doom? No way!”
“Well, one of us has to go first,” I pointed out. “The man is slow. You go ahead.”
“Oh shoot, oh shoot,” he said.
“We don’t want to think about shooting. Just go!”
He put a leg through the window. He stomped on the iron bars a few times to make sure they were stable enough to support his weight, then he felt his way out onto the iron frame and looked down. He let his legs down and grasped the iron bars tightly.
Thunk… thunk… went the old man’s steps on the hollow floor. Creeeeak… Thump….
I watched as he used his hands to work his way to the end of the iron bars. Crack!
“Twiggy! The sill is breaking! Let go! Let go! Find a place to land and…”
The wood split and I couldn’t look as the iron bars peeled loose. Then there was a mighty clannnngg as the bars hit the ground below.
“Twiggy! Are you okay?” I shouted out the window.
There was no answer so I stuck my head out the window. The iron bars were not on top of Twiggy, of that I could be thankful, but he sat there trying to figure out if he had survived.
“Now how am I going to get down?” I asked.
Going out the window didn’t look safe anymore. I rushed to the doorway and looked down the hall. The old man was going door to door. He still had the gun. I waited. I knew all the rooms we had gone into could be inspected with just a glance, but maybe the rooms on the other side of the hall were different. The man was dressed in ragged jeans and old shoes. His shirt was worn thin and only half tucked in. His hair was in disarray and his beard was a week old. His eyes looked cloudy, and he walked with an unsteady step. I examined the path I would have to take to get past him.
“Gabby!” Twiggy called from outside.
I rushed to the window.
“I’m okay,” I said. “I’m planning a way out. Wait for me by the door.”
I went back to the doorway and glanced down the hall to find the old man. When he stuck his head into a room I dashed to the next room and ducked inside. Doorway to doorway I snuck down the hall. I thought I had made it when I was caught. The man turned suddenly and said, “Thar you are! I don’t take kindly to people thinkin’ they can go wherever they please.”
I ran toward the stairs and stumbled all the way to the landing with the thunk, thunk of the man’s steps following quicker than I thought possible.
“Come back here! Trespasser!” BAM!
I found my feet and stumbled down the bottom half of the stairs. I sprinted to the doors right over all the chalk outlines. Twiggy waited for me like I told him to, but he clasped me in a hug. I was so scared all I could do was hug him back.
“Oh, Gabby, please don’t scare me like that again,” he said as he clasped me tightly. “I didn’t know what you could do. I wanted to go back…”
“It’s okay. I’m glad you didn’t. Are you okay?”
“I think so. But if I wasn’t it wouldn’t matter. When I thought of you trapped in there I forgot all about any scrapes or bruises I might have picked up. Are you okay?”
“Yeah, not even scrapes or bruises.”
“Can you walk okay?”
“Yeah, how about you?”
“Let’s get out of here. The crazy man can keep his asylum.”
As we started up the van we could see the old man leaning out an upstairs window yelling something out across the hillside.