More to come as I think of them.
By the time you are twelve, you’ve heard all the stories about Spider Gates Cemetery: the hauntings, the curse of the eighth gate, the Satanic altar hidden back in the woods. You’re brave, and you don’t believe any of that anyway; you want to see for yourself. The trouble is, no matter how you search, no matter whose directions you follow, you can never find it.
You’re less than five minutes outside of the city, and already, the skyline has been devoured by thick, green trees.
It’s your first date at what used to be East Side Mario’s, and then Vinnie Testa’s, and now Buca di Beppo. The server seats you on the deck, overlooking Lake Quinsigamond. The hair on the back of your neck stands up, but there’s no breeze. You turn to see, far in the distance, the tower of the old Worcester State Mental Hospital, glaring down at you. The hospital was torn down in 2008.
You’ve stopped at Kelley Square. The other cars have stopped at Kelley Square. No one knows who arrived first or who should leave first, and none of you dare to take the initiative.
The dark interior of your friends’ homes, all Victorian manses that have fallen on rough times, the wallpaper peeling, the windows barely providing enough light, dust dancing in the air above ill-used velvet upholstery.
Purgatory Chasm opens in the spring, the crevasse full of glacial rocks the size of cars, nestled deep in woods untouched in centuries. You try not to ruin the picnic by wondering where the pitch black caves lead, what is causing the whispers that echo against the chasm walls, or why it was called Purgatory Chasm in the first place.
The longer you stay, the less color you see, a layer of grime that you tell yourself is just the remnants of hard-working sand trucks.
Above the city, the sky hangs heavy, so dark it looks like night. When you look to the north, to the south, to the east, to the west, you see sunshine.
There’s still a hole where the old Cold Storage building used to be, where a homeless couple lit a candle that killed six firefighters. The air still smells like smoke, and if you drive past with your windows down, you hear bagpipes playing “Amazing Grace.”
In April, the weather finally warms up. The snow melts to reveal everything dead beneath.
The abandoned Trance Buddha Nightclub and remains of the Edgemere Drive In on Route 20, purple and red paint peeling, enormous white squares falling from the old screens, the golden tiki statue still oddly pristine.
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