No. 10

The Asylum, Part I

Salem, the town I grew up in held not only the Oregon State Penitentiary but also the women's prison, the state asylum for the mentally ill called Oregon State Hospital and Department of Corrections. The OSH asylum sat along Center Street, two acres of late nineteenth century bleached brick facade with tall windows covered in wire grates. Though still in use at that time, much of the grounds and outbuildings sat abandoned. In 1975 Milos Forman had filmed his classic One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest in and around this very group of buildings. Across the road sat the Department of Corrections, more recent of the two institutions, a grim brutalist structure with high barbed fences running the perimeter.

Freshman year, my buddy Kurt (all names have been changed) and I became privy to certain tunnels running beneath the Center Street asylum on account of Kurt's granddad Arlo played cards with this octogenarian named Clifford who ran a gas station on Center in the forties. One night during a card game at Arlo’s place Cliff related to us how back in the day inmates would escape into the tunnels, later their bodies turning up hunched and cold in the passages or if they were lucky, they'd find their way to wander out across the street to Cliff's service station. He said the asylum was a horror since it was built. Said one night a nurse accidentally poisoned a quarter of the inmates when rat killer ended up in their gravy at the mess. A dumping ground for the thoroughly traumatized and hysterical, it operated as a world unto itself where more than a few perished behind the dark walls over the years while occasional escapes spiced the local papers and fed the imaginations of us kids who knew the place, passing it on the way to YMCA, its grimy blackened windows and abandoned grounds a ripe canvas for juvenile legend.

In high school we started sneaking around the grounds late at night looking to find an entrance to these tunnels. We discovered narrow-gauge railroad tracks leading down to a wide double door at a derelict outbuilding with cement stairs descending into the ground and a chain link gate with two feet of clearance at the top we only had to crawl over. The passages were dingy, white-washed brick walls and polished cement floors, the push trolley rails running flush with the ground. Dusty bulbs shone along the passages and purple glass embedded in the pavement above let in a diffuse glow from the street.

Our first forays were short. Kurt, Clint and I would wander the halls, searching out new passages, the place littered with junk, desks and typewriters, fossilized computer gear, boxes of papers and trash. Never saw a single soul so we pushed further into the tunnels. Started finding weird things. Scenes dreamlike, unnatural or merely of inexplicable origin like a busted-out wall with a nook where sat a dusty recliner, beside it a pile of broken pencils. Nothing impossible but more or less unlikely, as you find in any place abandoned for any length of time. Once we found an empty coke bottle full of .38 casings on a ledge where an empty window looked into a dark room with no door. I tried to squeeze through the window but couldn't fit. Another time we happened upon an old guitar cracked down the middle, sitting in an alcove behind chain link where water leaked from the street above, the instrument full of water like a jug. And once a pile of bones that looked to be a dog or raccoon, scattered among the bones were rusty coins and a locket on a necklace, inside a tintype of a pale girl in braids.

Eventually we came to a section where the tunnel widened becoming large and vaulted. Old bamboo wicker trolley carts lay upended, surrounded by hordes of ancient junk. Rusted tools and steel beams and bedding and dish ware and appliances. From the traffic noises overhead, we figured to be beneath the road at the crossing that separated the asylum from the Corrections building.

As we kept on, the air grew cold, and the walls held moisture. Piles of brick and mortar turning to dust, the walls crumbling. We began to see narrower passages branching off, unlit running to darkness. In the main passage, the remaining lights were few. We walked carefully, unsure of what these passages held. Though we doubted anyone knew of them, they seemed entirely abandoned and we could find no corridors that led upward. Over the next few visits, we pushed further into the old tunnels beneath the Corrections building. We’d begun to feel the tunnels were ours, that they belonged to us, the eeriness heightening our sense of possession but the further we went the fewer lights remained. We started carrying flashlights and Kurt had a pistol, a silly little 32-20 he got from Arlo he kept in his jeans, for the place held a nightmarish quality that pressed upon us. We rarely spoke, the only sound the slap of sneakers on the concrete, the low thud of Kurt's boots.

One night we came upon a ramp with worn carpet leading upward to a thick wood door. We found it locked though it held a narrow window that looked into a fluorescent lit hallway. Another door sat across the hallway with inset window. In this window were a pair of eyes, the upper part of a face peering back. Kurt swore under his breath. What is it? said Clint. There’s someone there. Can he see us? Crowding around the glass we watched the face which did not move, though the eyes blinked. He's not moving, just staring. Think he's a murderer?

Something bad probably.

Let's get out of here.

I watched the eyes shifting, perhaps seeing us. I wondered how long the man had spent looking at this door, staring at it. Maybe he saw all manner of phantoms, the years producing a legion of terrible visions in this window. I watched the face, wanting to remember it, to remember the way the eyes looked, opaque, not entirely human. Wide like he was frozen in anguish or horror or surprise or ecstasy.

We made our way back out and over the grass. That night I climbed up on one of the wide sills, the glass covered in thick wire grating and peered into a room unlit but for the hard fluorescent from the hallway. A figure sat a wheelchair, head bent down at unnatural angle. No movement, though it was difficult to tell for the murkiness of the room. I caught up with the others and we did not return to the tunnels till the next year.