Hell Night in Hopewell

By Wofford Lee Jones

The seven were just looking for a paranormal experience, but what they found was far worse than anything they could have ever imagined…

The Hopewell Sanatorium has plenty of history for a group of local actors to explore on their night off the stage. Once a nationally recognized tuberculosis hospital and then an asylum for the mentally unstable, Old Hopewell has long been a source of urban legends, and its spooky, abandoned hallways are perfect for the theatre group to get some Halloween thrills.

But what the seven friends don't know is that they've just encroached on someone else's territory. And he is ready for some Halloween fun of his own...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wofford Lee Jones
• Release date: Dec 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9780999092545

Book preview

ONE

Dusk: the time when the good go to sleep and the bad come out to play.

There was definitely something magical about the woods, but bordering more on the dark side of the spectrum. The forest was dismal, with just enough light to dimly see the ground and the surrounding trees; still, the gloom was such that flashlights were needed by the seven wanderers. The trees surrounding Hopewell Sanitarium felt ominous, creating a sense of unease in all of them as they trudged up the slight incline to their destination.

Shawn, excited to finally be nearing the structure, glanced over his shoulder and saw the bluish tinge of light coming from three different cell phones. His smile faded. He paused abruptly then turned, halting everyone’s movement.

C’mon, you fuckers, get off your phones! I thought we’d made a pact to leave them in the cars. Remember?

Are you crazy? Renee sneered. My phone goes everywhere with me.

No one goes anywhere these days unless they’re connected to social media in some way, Lacey chimed in.

I know, they’re your damned security blankets, Shawn shot back.

Or umbilical cords, you know, since you’re talking to the ladies, Kyle said. Get it. You know, ’cause—

I get it, Kyle, Shawn said.

Kyle Williams tried occasionally for the one-liner. Every now and then, he succeeded. This wasn’t one of those times; no one laughed.

Nathan narrated loudly as he pushed in closer to the group, his cell phone lighting up his face in a ghostly glow. And over here we have a few ass-hats trying to find their assholes, not knowing that if they would just look to their right… they would find it. He pushed in on Renee.

Renee turned to her right and shone her flashlight beam into Nathan’s face, cocking her head with knowing attitude. "I’m looking to my right. At you, dumbass, so yeah, I guess you can say I found the asshole of the group."

Ohhh-whoo-whoo-whoo, she got me, Nathan said, smiling as he glanced around the group, who laughed at the exchange.

Nathan!

Nathan turned his phone and video to Shawn.

Why the fuck are you Facebook Live narrating this shit? Shawn’s voice came out in an agitated whisper. This is our group’s little excursion. We don’t need the whole world nosing into our business about what we’re doing out here.

But we’re getting a lot of hits, Nathan argued. People are loving this.

Shawn glared at him. Nathan—and the watchers of the video—could tell he wasn’t happy in the least.

Nathan tried again. What if something happens to us in there? Shouldn’t we be connected to the outside world so somebody can—

No, God damnit! There are seven of us here. I think we can pretty much handle anything that comes our way. Get that outta my face, he added, slapping Nathan’s phone away. The phone, loosely held in Nathan’s hand, spun away into the darkness.

What the hell, man! Nathan exclaimed as he quickly darted to where he thought it had landed. He searched with his flashlight, raked his hands around in the dank foliage until he found it, then jerked it up and wiped it dry on the front of his shirt.

I hope I broke it.

Fuck you, dude.

I mean, is it alright? Shawn asked sarcastically.

Yeah, I guess. Just be more careful next time, dildo hole.

Nathan Lockwood was the one of this group who usually landed the lead comedic roles in the local community theater’s shows. A self-professed jester, he was forever telling jokes (the dirtier the better), making wisecracks, a full-time prankster, and making up creative curse words.

Well, quit shoving your phone in my face or I’m going to shove it up your ass. People out there in Facebookland would love that. Bet it would be your first video to go viral, huh? The other five chuckled at Shawn’s threat, but he was too wound up to join in. Moving away from the group and towards the opening in the trees at the top of a small incline, he threw his hands in the air and gave a little frustrated yell. Just put your phones away! You think any ghosts in Hopewell are going to scare us if you fucktards are screwing around with your goddamn phones?

I didn’t bring mine, like you suggested, Kyle said as he followed eagerly. I abided by the pact rules—you know, to make it scarier. And believe me, it’s working.

Lacey called after them. You guys are crazy if you think us ladies are ever going anywhere without our phones.

We have to stay connected, Renee agreed.

Jesus, what-the-fuck-ever, Shawn called back. Just put them away, at least while we do this! It will make it a lot spookier than having lit phones everywhere. It’s as bad as being in the movies with phones lighting up all over the place.

Shawn tromped the last few remaining feet through the brush and brambles to the edge of the broken tree-line at the top of the slope. The sight before him froze him in his tracks. He swallowed hard as he waited for the others to catch up; an eerie sensation came over him that this might not be the best idea he’d ever hatched. He’d been up here one other time, but it had been during the day and he hadn’t even ventured inside. He had just looked into the windows around the building and then got the hell out of there.

In the past months, since Shawn had become more interested in exploring abandoned places, he’d put together a few other excursions with some of his friends, usually just guys. They purposely drove around during the day, or sometimes at night, trying to find weird and exotic places to explore. It could be anything from old, abandoned warehouses to creepy houses people had moved out of recently. But the Hopewell Sanitarium had always been at the top of his list. Shawn considered it the Holy Grail of spooky places to explore around Greenville. If he was going to have any type of supernatural experience, whether real or just hallucinated, it would be at Hopewell.

He had desperately wanted to explore the sanitarium on Halloween, but he’d be damned if he was going in there alone, so he had enlisted six of his theater friends to come along. Safety in numbers, and all that shit.

The others halted at the edge of the property when they saw what Shawn was staring at. Seven flashlight beams—all of varying degrees of brightness—slashed out at different angles from the clustered group, but no one took a step forward. It was as if they all thought that just by stepping over the threshold onto the asylum’s grounds, they would instantly become insane, possessed, or traumatized. Hushed oohs and ahhs escaped open mouths at the deserted structure before them.

There it is. ‘The Devil’s Castle,’ Kyle said, peering over Shawn’s shoulder. Ah, damn, that’s fucking creepy.

Shawn glanced at Kyle and smiled. I know, right? I can’t believe we’re finally doing this. It’s going to be so awesome. His voice took on a bravado even he didn’t feel was convincing, but he went with it. After all, he’d been the one to rally these troops; he had to give off some semblance of being unafraid.

He looked back across the ocean of tall grass swaying in the chilly October breeze. The rundown remains of the Hopewell Sanitarium stood erect in the fading twilight. Old Hopewell had, at one time, been a nationally recognized hospital that treated patients with tuberculosis. Most people—mainly teens and young adults—just called it ‘the fucking insane asylum,’ because long after being a hospital, it had actually housed the city’s criminal crazies. Year after year, the massive structure had slowly deteriorated from its former glory. The establishment’s ruined look bred imaginative urban legends—horrific tales of medical abuse at the hands of mad doctors, using shock therapy treatment and gleaming scalpels to electrocute and cut the problems out of their patients. The chained doors and empty windows certainly didn’t give the impression that this place was a sanctuary of healing.

The long, two-story, monolithic shape grew darker as the sun receded behind a mass of the skeletal trees that surrounded the property. Many of the windows had long since been busted out by rocks, thrown by punk-ass kids passing the time before going elsewhere and getting into deeper trouble. A five-foot-tall belt of random, multicolored graffiti marked the building’s walls and wrapped all the way around the structure. Toward the back of the hospital, part of the roof had caved in. Strong winds in summer storms had ripped off the shingles, and the rains had waterlogged the framework over the years until it was too weak to support itself and had simply collapsed.

It’s bigger than I thought it would be, Lacey said.

Before anyone else could reply, Nathan piped up with, That’s what she said. That joke never got old with him. He gave a quick goofy laugh, and a few of the others joined in.

But standing in the structure’s elongating shadow, the joke died away quickly, and everyone became serious again. Trepidation continued to build in each of them as they focused their attention on the ancient relic once more. They knew they still had to cross the grounds and enter its infamous doors if they were actually going to have any kind of spooky Halloween experience.

TWO

Julie Parker was quieter than usual tonight. Other than the regular greetings and idle chit-chat with everyone when they had arrived at the theater, she hadn’t said much. She just moved along in a silent state, drawing solace from the constant bear hug in which she had wrapped herself. She shivered, but it was more from the creepiness of the woods and the fortress in front of her than the actual chill of the autumnal weather.

God, this sucks, she thought. Why did I agree to do this?

Julie didn’t want to be here. She had only come along because she didn’t like to be alone; she didn’t want to be alone, especially tonight. While the idea of whiling away the last day of October in her apartment watching TV or reading a good book was comforting, she wanted to be with her friends; no, she needed to be with them. Although there had been talk of spending the night locked in the theater after this little jaunt into these ruins, Renee and Lacey had suggested leaving the guys altogether and just going to Renee and Lacey’s house—they rented one together. Hanging out with her besties, listening to music and doing a few shots or drinking some wine sounded a lot better to Julie than this bullshit, not to mention the lock-in at the theater. But Renee and Lacey had wanted to come here at least for a little while. Lacey thought it might be an interesting trip with some scares, and Renee—being a horror buff and loving the lore of this area—just couldn’t wait.

So, after they had both assaulted her with pleas to come along, Julie had reluctantly agreed. She was going to hold them to their half-assed agreement for a night at their house as soon after this shit-show was over.

To be completely honest, Julie would rather have been on stage tonight in the middle of their version of Dracula, but sadly they had the night off.

What theater does that? she thought as she stared vacantly across the field. Books Dracula for the October/November slot but doesn’t plan a Halloween performance? It’s okay, though—we’ll be back up there tomorrow night and it will be amazing, like all the shows we’ve done so far. For a brief moment she reveled in one of her favorite moments from the show and almost felt the stage lights warming her, but a burst of wind brought her back to this drab place as it buffeted her face and squirmed down inside her half-zipped jacket, chilling her upper body. She shuddered again.

The sun slipped behind the ridges and sucked the remaining warmth of the Halloween day along with it. Night had officially fallen.

Julie’s eyebrows knitted in concern. She had always looked at day and night differently than others, probably due to the imaginative and scary stories her Uncle Junior had told her as a kid. One of his less spooky tales was what had her in a quandary. Her uncle had claimed that the sunlight and darkness were always in a constant battle, and even though the sun was more powerful, it always lost the war against the darkness. The sun’s only weakness was that it was locked on an eternal and fixed axis; it couldn’t move up, down, diagonally, or backward in the sky to light the ground it had just passed over. The sun had to forever keep moving in that single forward direction, but the darkness moved along out in front of the light. It was always a slow but steady chase, the sun forcing the darkness away as it lit a new area of the world. But in all the places the sun had just left behind, the darkness always crept in, took over, and possessed them completely.

Julie had always thought, but never suggested, that the darkness might be the more powerful one, and that it was chasing the sun away, not the other way around.

I guess, for whatever reason, she thought, he wanted to put a positive spin on that story. Especially since all his other tales were far darker.

As she looked ahead, she felt that it was happening now. With the sunlight gone and her overactive imagination firing up, she saw the darkness as a real and living thing—flowing in around them, filling up the asylum grounds, scurrying through the tall grass, oozing in under the doors and squeezing through the cracks of the structure in front of them, trickling in the broken windows, and slowly possessing the hushed space as it banished any light from its cursed rooms and dim hallways.

Oh yeah. Darkness reigns supreme when the sunlight isn’t around.

This was the main reason Julie didn’t watch horror movies. She’d had far too many nightmares as a kid.

Something scurried up the back of her leg. She yelped, jumped and moved away in an awkward, silly-looking hop as she raised her leg and slapped at the side of her ankle to get whatever-the-fuck-that-was off.

Nathan laughed his ridiculous owl-hooting laugh: Whooo-whoo-whoo-whoo-whoo. It was as though he’d been stifling his laughter for so long that when it finally burst from him, his mouth couldn’t keep up with his hysterics. Julie saw the long, thin stick he held in his hand—the one he’d slid up the back of her leg to spook her. Again.

"You. Are. An. Asshole! Julie exclaimed. Quit doing that!"

Third time tonight, Nathan chortled proudly.

You’re the biggest dick!

He’d gotten her good. She knew her mannerisms looked ridiculously funny. She shook her head, then started giggling in spite of herself.

*

Myles frowned at Nathan’s stupid idea of a joke.

Cut it out, he snapped, hoping his no-nonsense tone would warn Nathan to back off.

There was a pause, the rest of Nathan’s laughter dying quickly, then he shot back, What, are you her boyfriend?

No, but I wouldn’t mind being, Myles thought. To try and cover the awkward silence, he hurriedly replied, "No. But I know her well enough to know she really doesn’t like this stuff. Just lay off her. This place will be enough for her as it is without any additional props from you."

Whatever, dude. Just having some fun. Nathan stepped away to the other side of the group to put some distance between them. As he did so, he added, Wish you two would just get together and do each other. Just get it over with.

Excuse me? Myles demanded, unable to believe that Nathan had just dropped that bomb—especially on Julie, who was very much in earshot. Sure, Myles knew Julie knew he liked her; hell, he’d even stepped up to the plate and struck out in a royally embarrassing fashion by asking her out. But saying it out loud and right now in front of her… it just didn’t sit well with him.

You heard me, Nathan said with a shrug. I, as well as everyone else, would like to know when you two are just going to get together.

A geyser of embarrassment and dread—just like the time he had asked Julie out and she’d pretty much turned him down without any consideration—flooded over Myles’s body and locked him down. He quickly glanced around at each person in the group. Everyone stared back with shocked curiosity, obviously wondering what Myles was going to say.

A flood of anger replaced the initial embarrassment. He wanted to lash out and hurt Nathan, embarrass him in the exact same manner. His mind raced. Before he even realized it, his thoughts latched onto an idea that he knew had been rolling around in all their minds. He was speaking before he could process what was actually coming out of