The mist

Red Mist Traced to Sunderland Hills Sanatorium

Every night the mist pours out of its windows and the ghouls walk out of its doors. Somebody has to board it up.

By the Rebel News county desk. Sunderland Hills, Wednesday 20 April 1994. 2 min read.

Night, through the dirty windscreen of a stopped car on a cracked road in the pines: a huge red brick sanatorium with a square crenellated tower in the middle fills the view behind a long fence of black iron bars and a shut iron gate, red mist pouring out of its ground-floor windows and doorways and rolling across the lawn and onto the road, a few upper windows glowing red, a crowd of pale hunched figures standing in the mist on the lawn facing the car, the sky dark red. — We got this close and turned the car round. Rebel News picture desk

SUNDERLAND HILLS. You know the smell by now. Wet pine, cold brick and something sweet gone off, riding in on the red. Every night the mist comes down over Knox Country, and every night you've stood at a window with a rifle wondering where the hell it comes from. We followed it home.

Upwind

Head out between Brandenburg and Riverside and into the pines. The mist gets thicker, then redder, and then the trees open up on red brick as far as you can see. The Sunderland Hills Sanatorium breathes the stuff out of its ground-floor windows like a smoker on a cold porch, and it keeps going until the sun comes up.

The guests

Those ghouls on your lawn every night check out of here. They're packed in behind the brick by the hundred, with the pale ghosts you hear wailing before you see them, and they don't wait to be visited. Leave the place open and they come out looking for company.

Walk up close and somebody switches the lights on for you. Red bulbs on every floor. I can't tell you who's paying for the power, and I didn't stay to ask.

Something bigger

Not everything in there is a ghoul. Some of it is bigger, harder to kill and very pleased to see you. If you hear something heavy coming down the hall, don't wait to find out which.

The cure

There is one, and it's honest work. Board it. Every window and every door on the ground floor of the main building, planks and nails, done properly. Seal the lot and the mist stops pouring out, and the things inside stop coming out for you. Upstairs doesn't count. Miss one window and you may as well have left the front door open.

The graves, by the way, close with a shovel. Not one of you has tried.

Bring more planks than you think you need, a friend who can swing a hammer and a friend who can shoot. Get there in daylight. The county has been breathing this long enough.