I always hate doing these interviews. The buzz of florescent lights. The rhythmic clop clop clop of boots on tile. The sterile smell, and the knowledge that on the other side of a heavy metal door, is someone who thinks they've survived something horrible. Really their ordeal has just begun. I'm going to have to make this poor person relive every moment of the nightmare they just escaped. But it's got to be done now, while it's still fresh on their brain. Before the trauma cover's up any more than it already has. But even worse they're gonna have to live with what happened for the rest of their lives. Wondering if they could have done something different. If they could have saved one of their loved ones. It's all a part of living here, Nowhere. That's literally the name of the town. But you won't find it on any map. Nobody comes here on purpose. And nobody that finds this place leaves any better than when they came here. I work with the Nowhere sheriff's department, special investigations unit. Nowhere has a problem. It's the epicenter of cryptid activity for the whole country. We're not really sure why. Some people speculate that it's where cryptids come to our world, like the space between dimensions is thinner here. Maybe there's just something that draws them here. It doesn't really matter that much to me. I'm just here to do my job, however depressing that may be. The special investigations unit was formed to catalog the different kinds of cryptids that call Nowhere home. Also to provide containment procedures so they don't end up just roaming the whole damn country and wreaking havoc. Every year there are a few out of towners that show up here by accident. A family on a road trip. A bus that took a wrong turn, full of teens on their way to the next big football game. No matter who it is or how they got here it always ends tragically. Sometimes, one of them will end up on the other side of that heavy metal door. Frantically trying to make sense of what's happened and waiting for me to take my seat on the other side of the table in that room.
The door closes behind me with an unnerving metal clunk. I take my seat on the other side of the desk and set down my tape recorder. The device makes a satisfying click when I press the record button. "Hello, I am detective Allen Stone, with the Nowhere special investigations unit." I say, to the justifiably nerve racked teenager across the table from me. "Umm... Hi... S-shure. Can... Can I call my parents? What? What was that? Where is-". "Hang on a second kid." I interrupt. "Just take a take a deep breath. I'm sure you've been through a lot, so take a second to organize yourself. State your name for the record and start from the beginning." After a few deep breaths the kid begins to steady himself. He has to have a strong will to have survived an encounter with anything out here, and it's showing now. "My name is James White." Another deep breath and a sigh comes as he settles himself into his seat. "My friends and I. Liv, Kent, and Lana. We have this YouTube channel. We're unban explorers. We find-." He stops himself as concern and regret fall over his face. "We used to find these creepy and abandoned places and we would go and film ourselves exploring them. It wasn't a big channel or anything. Only a few followers. Well, a couple months ago we started getting suggestions to go check out this abandoned mental hospital. But we couldn't find an address for it or any information about it anywhere. Then the messages started coming with directions on how to get there. It was weird because the instructions started from where we record. We all thought it was weird but didn't look into it because it's not like we hide our locations or anything. Anyway, we decided to follow the directions and go check it out. Once we got outside of town we started to realize that we were taking roads that none of us recognized, like none of us remembered them being there. None of it felt familiar at all, and it's not like we were super far away from town. We should have been able to recognize something. But we were all amazed when we finally got to the place. It was huge. The whole place was overgrown, including the fence that went around it. No way you could even see it from the road. We had to cut the lock off the front gate to get into the courtyard. Vines covered most of the place. It looked like it had been abandoned for a really long time, like in the 50's or something. We made our way through the courtyard filming all the statues and the big fountain in front and the big marble pillars on either side of the doors. Now that I think of it, the doors were the only thing outside that weren't covered in vines. They weren't locked either, they just opened. No creepy old building rusty hinges or anything. It was dark inside, but we expected that. We all had headlamps. We decided to split into two groups. Me and Kent stayed down stairs and the girls went up to the next floor. It was exactly what you'd expect for a while. Dusty shelves covered in moldy old medical textbooks, gurneys with squeaky wheels, old timey surgical stuff. Until we heard a blood curdling scream. Kent and I looked at each other wide eyed for a moment before we both realized, it was one of the girls. Without having to even say anything we both sprinted back into the main hall and up the stairs to the next floor, taking the steps two at a time. We made it to the next landing and took off from what direction we thought the scream may have come from. Quickly we came to a round room that didn't have any doors. Liv was in the floor crying with her knees pulled to her chest, and Lana was next to her trying her best to comfort her. I asked what happened and Lana just pointed towards the center of the room. There in the middle of the floor, was a body. It was grotesque. Parts of the man were missing. It looked like an arm was wrenched off of him and his stomach was torn open. I felt my stomach turn and lost whatever was in it. Then I heard Kent say, "what the fuck is that?". I looked up to see that there were rows of mannequins posed around the room, all looking toward the center, toward the man. Kent had made his way through them to one in particular. It was slightly taller, faceless like the rest, but different. The proportions were all wrong. The arms and fingers were uneven and too long. The fingers ended in sharp boney protrusions. It made me feel ill to look at it directly so I focused on Kent. "Kent no, we have to leave now!" I said with as much forcefulness as I could muster. Kent poked it in its oddly fleshy chest. "Oh shit!" He said, as he turned back towards me. As soon as his gaze broke from the thing , it jerked to life. Its movements were jerky and interrupted but lightning fast. In an instant and with one motion it's long boney fingers were wrapped around Kent's middle, pinning his arms at his sides. It's face had split open down the middle and had already begun digging rows of sharp needle-like teeth into Kent's head. I was horrified. But while I was looking directly at it, it had stopped all movement. Both girls began screaming. I could feel hot tears rolling down my face. I knew I couldn't hold my gaze on it for much longer. Looking directly at it seemed to stop it from moving but went from making me feel ill to feeling like daggers being pushed into my eyes. I yelled at the girls. Telling them to run, they have to run. Kent must have realized what was about to happen. He began pleading with me. Telling me that I can't do this to him, that I was killing him. I knew that I was, but I couldn't hold out any longer. Once I heard the girls footsteps clear the doorway, I told Kent I'm sorry and turned to run. As soon as I turned to run away I heard Kent scream, but it was cut off by a sickening snap that I could feel in my chest and the wet slapping sounds of flesh being torn apart. I rounded the corner of the room to see the girls already at the landing to the top of the stairs. They both jumped back from the stairs and screamed again. They turned to run deeper into the hospital. I had no choice but to follow. As I passed the top of the stairs I stole a look down. I regretted it. About halfway up the stairs were two more of the creatures. Frozen in their jilted movements, by me looking at them. I could see flashes of movement from the corners of my eyes as I broke line of sight, and felt as if I hadn't already emptied my stomach I'd do so again. Looking ahead, the girls were gone. I didn't have time to think about it I just had to keep moving. A hand reached out from one of the rooms along the hallway and pulled me in. The door was quickly yet quietly closed behind me and I heard a lock gently being set. I looked up to see my savior. It was Liv, but looking around, I didn't see Lana. Still gasping for air I asked where Lana was. Liv said she didn't know. That she had dove in the room we were in but Lana didn't follow. She started to say something but she was interrupted by the uneven sound of staggering footsteps outside the door. They crept closer and closer. I'm sure they were right outside when one of them let out a guttural growl. My heart felt like it was going to explode out of my chest when the knob started to turn. It turned right, then left, then the creature made a frustrated growling noise. It stomped off in the direction that Lana must have gone. We both stared at the door for what must have been several minutes. It could have been hours or even days for all I could have told. It was Liv that finally broke the silence when she stammered out, "what the hell was that?". We came to the same conclusions on how they operate, and that we don't know anything else. The real difference in opinion was on what to do next. I wanted to get us out and to the door. Right now, with all the attention on Lana could be the only opportunity we have to get out. Liv wanted to go find Lana. I pleaded with her, told her Lana was probably already dead, that we didn't have a way to fight those things, and that this may be our only opportunity to get help. In the end it didn't matter. She was going, and it didn't matter if I came with her or not. I couldn't let her go alone. So I convinced her that we needed to be careful about it. We worked some legs free from a table in the room. They were sturdy and wooden, and each had a couple of bolts sticking out of one end. We had no way of knowing if it would help, but it couldn't hurt. We slowly made our way back into the hallway. It was so dark and I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. Rounding a corner I saw one standing in a doorway to a room with a heavy metal door. I jumped back around the corner and as soon as I broke line of sight it began growling. I knew that somehow, it knew that I had seen it. I did the only thing I could do. I charged back around the corner focusing my vision directly on it and it froze in place. Thankfully, it didn't have time to move much. It had only just gotten turned around in the doorway. It's grotesque face, still split open mid growl. I came right up in front of it and with all the force I could muster, I kicked it square in it's mid section. The thing fell backwards into the room. I grabbed the door, slammed it closed and set the lock on the outside of the door as fast as I could. No sooner than the lock was set, it began growling and scratching at the door. I fell to the ground and dry heaved. Liv placed her hand on my back, trying to comfort me. She asked why the door locked from the outside. The only thing I could think of was it was an isolation room for mental patients. Our conversation was cut off by a scream. It was Lana, it had to be. We sprinted in the direction of the scream, coming to what seemed to be a large storage room of some kind. Lana was pinned to the floor by one of the creatures. We both ran towards her trying to stare at the creature to keep it from hurting Lana, but I was side lined by another one. I managed to put the table leg between me and it. When I was able to focus on it, it had its teeth already sunk into the wood. I was pinned down to the floor, nothing I could do but try and watch it to keep it from advancing. Every cell in my body screamed at me to look away. Every time I blinked it would press harder on me and the table leg would splinter a little more. Until I couldn't handle it anymore. I accepted my fate and closed my eyes. Just as my eyes shut there was a crack and a spray of warm liquid over my face and the monster fell off of me. I looked to see Liv standing over me with a blood soaked table leg. She had saved me. The head of the creature that was on top of me was a mangled mess of blood and gore. The creature that had attacked Lana had suffered a similar fate, but Lana was still on the ground. Blood bloomed from a wound in her abdomen. I moved to her and tried to get her up, but she was too weak. Her chest heaved and her eyes fluttered. Soon her chest stopped moving and her form went limp. I could feel hot tears once again running down my now bloodied face, when I heard the all too familiar, sickly, wet, snap from behind me. I spun around to see another creature had come up behind Liv without her noticing. It had its mouth wrapped around her head and had wrenched her neck at a sharp angle. Her body hung lifelessly from her neck. I stared at it, freezing the creature in place like a macabre statue. My whole body protested looking at it but was too filled with rage to stop. Locked in a fatal staring contest with this thing that had killed all of my friends, my fingers probed the floor around me until they found the table leg. Raising the leg over my shoulder like a bat I hoped that the creature could feel emotion. So it could feel just as hopeless as each of us had. When the makeshift club made contact with the side of the creature's head it dropped Liv and tumbled to the floor. I continued beating it until it was entirely unrecognizable. There was only one thing left to do. Returning to the room where one of the creatures locked inside, I could hear it still scratching at the door. Standing to one side with the table leg cocked over my shoulder, I slapped open the lock with the other hand. The creature came barreling out of the door only to get clotheslined by the hard wooden table leg. Over head strikes rained down on it while I kept my eyes closed. I wanted to know it was feeling every blow. It growled in protest. The growls became a gurgle and the gurgles became silence. I made my way out of the hospital. Only when I saw the vehicle we brought here did I realize that Kent had the keys when we went in. I was not going back in to get them. Even if there weren't any more of those things, I couldn't bear the thought of seeing Kent's corpse. So, I just started walking. After a while a police officer saw me and brought me here."
"I'm sorry you had to go through all that." I say to the kid. "I know you probably don't believe any of it, but I swear, all of it happened. Just like I told you." He pleads with me. "Deciding what to believe or not believing isn't part of what I do here. I listen to you and I make a report." I explain. "I'm going to have a deputy take you home. There's going to be some men in suits that come by your house to speak to you about this some more. They'll have my report so you won't have to explain the whole thing again, but it is very important that you don't talk to anyone else about this. Not your parents, nobody. Understand?" "Yeah, I got it." As I leave the room I stop and make a final statement. "One last thing, and I know I probably don't have to tell you this, but, never try to find this place again." I don't wait for a response. I close the door and file one more report for one more poor soul that will never be the same again, because they stumbled across Nowhere.
