Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-26705150-20151015024029

  Author's note: I've rewritten this a few times, so I hope this is a little closer to publishable. Any extra feedback would be appreciated, thank you.

I tried to tune out the sounds of rain clashing against glass and thundering skies while I watched TV on the little 12 inch screen. I had pulled my office chair back and my feet were up on top of the surface which was cluttered with the books and food remains from over the past few weeks. This is where and what I spent most of my time doing when I wasn’t working as a freelance detective. It was all spent waiting for a new offer, from a new client, with the hopes that the next one would have good pay and be as interesting as the last, if not more so.

Normally, it was just your average case like investigating a secret affair between two lovers, trying to find evidence of business fraud, and the like. I never got emotionally involved with any of these cases and I was just happy to get my promised money by the end of it all.

But the following offer, from the phone call that I had just received, was unlike any of my prior cases and it sounded far too strange to dismiss.

   “Hello?”

“Hello, is this private detective James O Riley?,” a woman said.

“Yes ma’am it is. What do you need?”

She let out a deep breath and I could the stress in her voice.

“I was wondering if you could investigate an island and a mental institution there.”

“So you want me to focus on places.”

“Look, there’s something very strange going on at these places and my brother is a part of it somehow. I just want to know what’s going on and the police don’t even think there’s anything to it.”

“First of all, what do you mean by strange and how is your brother involved exactly?”

“My brother went to seek help for some issues he was having at the Strongloch Institution. It was the only place he could go to within a reasonable distance, as he lived in a small town not far from it but they didn’t have anything there. Anyways, they haven’t let me speak to him there and I haven’t seen him since I last spoke to him.”

“Which was?”

“A few weeks ago”

“So you suspect something is amiss there and you want me to find evidence supporting that, right?”

<p class="MsoNormal">The answer of course was a resounding yes and I decided to accept the offer. It was undoubtedly very strange yet that only served to push me towards it. It only took me a few days to book a trip to the same very small town where the woman’s brother lived. The island itself was a separate town altogether and it was several miles away from there. But it was the nearest place with an airport so I went there and got a rental car to drive the long country road out to the island.

<p class="MsoNormal">The drive felt a little eerie considering the whole area was desolate in population and there was only the wilderness to surround me. The only different thing that I passed was a mansion at the end of a small country road which branched off slightly from the main one. But other than that it was it was just a straight shot to and back from Strongloch Island for several miles.

<p class="MsoNormal">After about 30-45 minutes into the drive, I finally managed to get close enough that I could see the town of Strongloch from a distance. Most of it was hidden behind large and luscious trees, as well as a fence that surrounded the entire place. But I could definitely see the peaks and tips of the building rooftops which gave a small indication that both the town and the buildings were quite large.

<p class="MsoNormal">   The only way onto the island was a long, wide bridge which I drove across to get to the gated community. Once inside, I realized just how larger than life everything was. The buildings looked like that of a 19th century town and they loomed over the narrow roads which criss-crossed in different directions. However, I saw no cars or any people walking about outside and there wasn’t any noise either.

<p class="MsoNormal">I tried to head through the area while looking for a hotel to stay at, as well as the Strongloch institution. I found both after several minutes of looking and I booked a room for myself. I kept a mental note of where the institution was and I got some sleep that night in the hotel.

<p class="MsoNormal">The next morning was the starting point of my private investigation and I started asking people around town about the island. I had hoped to maybe learn a little bit more about the history of the place and if there was anything particularly out of the ordinary. But everybody that I spoke to was very dodgy and some just outright refused to answer any of my questions.

<p class="MsoNormal">I was forced to consider my next option which was to do surveillance on the institution itself. It didn’t seem likely that I would get very far by asking them any questions and there was a chance they’d get too suspicious of my presence. So I decided that for the next few nights, I’d keep my eyes on the place inside my car for a while.

<p class="MsoNormal">I had hoped to see where people went and who people were after they left the building. But during those first few nights, I only saw one person ever leave the building. Since he was the only one I could ever see leaving and it looked like he probably knew something about the island, I decided to follow him on one of those nights.

<p class="MsoNormal">I waited in my car right outside when he came out and got into his own. Once he started his car and took off I quickly followed behind. He didn’t stay on the island and we drove down that same country road for a couple of minutes until he turned into the mansion driveway, which I had passed upon my arrival to Strongloch. I waited outside at a distance and I watched him go inside the mansion for the night. Under the assumption that he lived there and he probably wouldn’t leave the premises until the following day, I set up a camera to record the home for the next several hours. I set it up inside my car and then I fell asleep, with the hopes that he wouldn’t later take notice.

<p class="MsoNormal">The next morning I woke up and checked the footage. I fast forwarded until I saw his car leaving the mansion driveway and then I set out to search to the area. Keep in mind that what I was doing was definitely illegal but I always had different methods you could say. Besides it seemed unlikely that I would get caught considering the isolation and it seemed like something was very off about the whole place.

<p class="MsoNormal">I looked all around the exterior of the mansion but didn’t find any indication of anything out of the ordinary. However, I took notice of the 19th century style of architecture and I figured it had probably been built around the same time as Strongloch.

<p class="MsoNormal">Since I wasn’t finding anything of any real value outside, I decided to try to lock pick the front door. Fortunately I was able to pull off that quite well and I was inside in just a few minutes. The whole downstairs area was lined with what looked to be high quality furniture. Of course I’m not expert in that but this was definitely the kind of the place I wouldn’t mind living in.

<p class="MsoNormal">Besides the tables, the chairs, and the other basic things of the home, there was also so many bookshelves lined with information regarding physics, psychology, conspiracy, and even the paranormal. The topics were obviously quite diverse in their grand, yet strange ideas and I wondered if this person had gone too far into the Kool-Aid pool. With that in mind, it became all the more disconcerting when I thought about the fact that he worked at the Strongloch institution. I could only hope that things were not as nearly as bad as they seemed.

<p class="MsoNormal">When I finished I searched the rest of the home upstairs and there I found the jackpot inside two different rooms across from each other. The rest of everything else looked about the same but these two rooms were far more important than anything else I had come across in the entire investigation.

<p class="MsoNormal">In one there were several more bookshelves lined with video tapes. They were all labeled with the word subject followed by a number and there must have been dozens of those. In the corner of the room there was a small TV, about the same size as my own, on top of a little wooden table. I assumed this was what was used to watch the tapes and from what I gathered this couldn’t have been good.

<p class="MsoNormal">If the man who lived worked at the institution, I figured he’d probably be there for another couple of hours. So I decided to be a little more thorough than just speeding through the whole place and that meant watching those tapes. I started with the first few tapes and I sat down to watch them on the little TV.

<p class="MsoNormal">Each one consisted of a different person strapped down to a hospital bed with a machine hooked up to their head and body. Their eyes were closed, their bodies were ever so still, and nothing else appeared to be going on in the room. But then somebody would speak over what sounded like an intercom speaker.

<p class="MsoNormal">   “This is subject #1. All signs are good. The test is ready to go.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Then there would be a beep.

<p class="MsoNormal">“The test is starting now.”

<p class="MsoNormal">Those still and silent moments would fade as the subject would begin convulsing. It would be just a little bit at first and then their arms would flair and their bodies would twitch violently. It would last several more moments and then they’d be all the more still again.

<p class="MsoNormal">The first time I heard the following message my stomach dropped and so did my jaw. I couldn’t believe my eyes or ears, but there it was.

<p class="MsoNormal">“Subject #1 is dead. No contact to the other side has been made.”

<p class="MsoNormal">The tape would end there and none of the other tapes that I watched were any different. The only thing that changed was the person in them. I didn’t finish watching the rest of the tapes due to time and I didn’t think there would be any change anyways.

<p class="MsoNormal">But I decided to finish the search with the next room. Inside there were several cheap tables lined along the four walls and documents were scattered all about. Some of them were pinned to the walls on corkboard and the others were piled onto the tables. I immediately started with the task of searching for anything else that might explain the tapes and any connection of them with the Strongloch institution.

<p class="MsoNormal">What I found was equally disturbing and intriguing. According to what I could see and what I read, it was true that the man who lived there worked for the Strongloch institution after all. But not only that, he was one of the directors there and the video tapes pertained to a major project they were working on.

<p class="MsoNormal">Despite the façade, they were no mere mental institution and it was clear they were doing something far more sinister with their patients. The patients were guinea pigs in an attempt to approach the paranormal and the unseen. The man in question and the institution both believed that the damaged mind was a key to unseen forces of the paranormal and they wanted to prove that. What that meant exactly, I’m not sure. But I do know that they believed whatever paranormal forces there were, would be more likely to interact with the mentally vulnerable.

<p class="MsoNormal">Of course that failed obviously and there was no evidence to suggest that there was any paranormal activity regarding the mind involved. But they had been trying hard to make something happen regardless and now there were dozens of patients dead because of it.

<p class="MsoNormal">I recorded the information there and I left, to go back to my hotel. I only hoped that I wouldn’t get caught and I knew there was enough evidence of foul play, to warrant getting the actual police involved.

<p class="MsoNormal">When I returned to the hotel, I recall opening my room door and stepping inside only to be struck in the back of the head with a blunt object. I must have blacked out because when I awoke I was sitting in the middle of a room I didn’t recognize.

<p class="MsoNormal">The straps of the chair hurt my skin and I frantically searched around the room. But there was nothing else in the room other than a few small boxes and the four white walls surrounding me. I could feel myself getting sweaty and my body would have certainly been shaking if it wasn’t for the restraints. I tried to fight against them but they wouldn’t budge and I was stuck with just waiting, waiting for something happen or for someone to come.

<p class="MsoNormal">It must have been hours and before then I didn’t have any contact with anybody. It was only after that I remember some doors behind me, bursting open with the sounds of “Police, police!”

<p class="MsoNormal">Once they realized I was a victim there, they quickly unleashed me and they led me to safety. When I was being taken out, they informed that this was the Strongloch institution. My theory had now been proven true. It was that they had kidnapped me.

<p class="MsoNormal">During my drive away from the island, I wanted to know what would happen to those on the island. The driver, who was one of the officers who arrived on the scene, told me that there would be an investigation into this. He didn’t share anymore details and so I just let it be for the time being.

<p class="MsoNormal">But when I was returned home, after a long stay at the local police station and a few questions, I didn’t hear from the police ever again. I didn’t see anything about it in the newspapers, TV, the internet, or anywhere else.

<p class="MsoNormal">   It was as if had never happened and I wondered if that wasn’t deliberate. I suspect it was, but I’m still not certain as to why. I don’t know if it was out of fear that the public might not be able to handle it, they were somehow involved, or maybe there were some other reasons for the secrecy.

<p class="MsoNormal">Whatever the case may be, I retired from my freelance work after that and I never really forgot that case. It was the case I would never be able to shake and I wondered sometimes how much it would take before I would have to go to an institution myself. <ac_metadata title="Strongloch Island (Rewrite) (Unreviewed)"> </ac_metadata>