Introduction
A couple years ago, I took a tour of St. Ignatius, an abandoned hospital in Colfax, WA. (pictured). You can book yourself a tour and do the same. Yes, it’s haunted. All the big ghost hunter shows have been there. I didn’t encounter anything paranormal, but the stories about the place are great and the vibe isn’t one you’ll get anywhere else.
This is part 1. It’s around 1,600 words. Expect part 2 next week.
Edit: “St. Ignatius” is now complete and you can read/download the PDF here.
“St. Ignatius”- Part 1
by Will Thompson
Leah wasn’t for me from the beginning, but I was looking for a distraction. Her better parts filled in my worst. Leah was an elementary education major, going to become a teacher. A kindergarten teacher. She already was, she just had to jump through the hoops and pay the fees to get a piece of paper.
Leah was born to herd the young. She was kind and with her kindness came a genuine warmth and not a fake bubbliness, but when she looked at you, it was obvious you were supposed to be right there, at that moment.
I knew we weren’t meant to be together and I felt I should take it upon myself to end it before she got closer to me and invested. I don’t want to be a project to anyone. I own my shit. I may not try to fix it, but I’m aware of it and won’t dump it on someone else… unless I can tell they’re just as fucked up as I am. Then I can mitigate the damage. Usually.
Leah didn’t deserve me, my garbage, and, after four dates that had all ended with us being intimate and connecting in ways I’d never connected with anyone else, I had worked myself up to breaking up with her. And that’s when she showed up at my door and said, “Rachel, we are going ghost hunting.”
Leah drove. She was giddy.
“What if we actually see one?!” she said. I couldn’t fight her excitement. I smiled.
“We’ll be ghosts haunting the ditch on the side of the road if you don’t get us there,” I said and before I could finish, she put her right hand between my thighs.
“You know, some have reported sexual pleasure when encountering ghosts…” she said, slowly moving her hand upward. The rain splattered the car windows. The drops sounded huge. I took her hand in both of mine and moved it away toward the wheel. I didn’t want to let it go.
“Just get us there. Then we can do some ghost fucking,” I said.
Leah smiled.
“Deal.”
She turned her eyes to the road, hands at ten and two. It took all I had to keep my hand from hers. I just stared at her and had the first and most transformative realization of my early 20s: I was scared of her because she made me feel safe. I spent the remainder of the drive trying to convince myself to break up with her because, after that epiphany, I’d completely changed my mind. I’d go back to counseling for the first time since 10th grade when I’d stormed out of the counselor’s office, telling my mom and the counselor to both “fuck the hell off.” I’d stop drinking. Well, drinking alone. I enjoyed being around friends and sharing a few, but it was when I was alone that I drank with demons.
I had other thoughts: exercising, wearing pants more often, maybe putting on a little makeup when we hung out (it did make me feel good when I did it for myself or someone I liked). I was even ready to try and salvage my grades and recommit to getting my degree when we pulled up to the most terrifying structure I’d ever seen. Leah or no, I wanted to turn back. I must have made a nervous groan because Leah looked at me as she shut the car off.
“What?” Leah asked. “Oh. You’re legit scared right now.”
“No, no, let’s go,” I said.
“They’ll have flashlights and stuff in there. People visit here all the time,” Leah said. She took my hand. “I won’t leave your side.”
“What if I’m making out with a ghost and I want some privacy?” I asked, feeling my confidence surge at her cheesy, if honest, promise of protection.
“No way. I get to watch,” said Leah.
“Deal,” I said, then kissed her with tight lips and exited the car.
We parked in a dead end lot that ended in trees. Behind us loomed the hulking, black windowed hospital.
“Can you believe this place has only been abandoned for about 20 years?” Leah said as she locked the car.
It looked way worse than that, way more than just two decades of decay. A pile of metal bed frames stood toppled in a corner of the building near a boarded up window, or maybe it was a huge door. The beds looked like they’d all been tossed from the room, bent in a tall, jagged pile.
I looked at my phone and realized we had three minutes before the tour started. I looked for an entrance and didn’t see one. We clearly weren’t at the front of the building, so I started walking.
“Where are you going?” Leah said.
“We’ve got maybe two minutes to find the entrance,” I said, my steps quickening.
“How do you know it’s not back here?” said Leah. I turned around and she was craning her neck to peer into shadows just past the pile of beds. I knew Leah would figure it out. I heard her footsteps behind mine before I turned the corner of the building.
Distant street lights and porch lamps were filtered through the branches of trees that blocked the sky on my right. I flicked on my phone’s flashlight and looked for a path. I panned to the left. There, the front of the hospital shot upward. The sheer face of it taunted me. Four floors straight up with blacked and boarded up windows. Knowing that hundreds of people visited the place each week didn’t matter. That facade was menacing.
A bit further up, light shone from the edges of a boarded up window and, upon getting close, I could see a door. Leah walked past me and tried it.
“I can’t hear anybody talking in there,” Leah said. She had her phone’s flashlight on, too, and was ahead of me. I shined my flashlight on the ground and hurried to catch up with her. I was annoyed.
“Can’t believe they don’t mark the tour entrance,” I said.
“Kinda weird they’re making us work for it. Maybe it’s part of the experience,” Leah said.
Fear was creeping in. My annoyance pivoted to anger.
“It’s pretty fucking dumb,” I said and tensed. I realized I’d never gotten angry around Leah before. If I wasn’t careful, my anger would do the breaking up for me. She didn’t turn around, but pressed on.
“We’ve only covered two sides of the building so far,” she said. She was the first person who made me not want to push her buttons when I was angry. And what happened that evening solidified that and made it so much worse when she broke up with me.
The third side of the building was somehow even darker.
“Wait,” I said and walked toward her. There must have been something in my voice because she put her hand out behind her, open palmed, and I took it. I had to have been more scared than I realized, because I remember how it felt to exhale when my hand touched hers. That’s the feeling I’ve been searching for ever since. The walk along that third side came to a blinding end when we turned the corner and found ourselves a few feet from the pile of metal bed frames. I shielded my eyes from the light glaring from a metal street lamp affixed to the side of the building.
“So we missed the entrance completely,” Leah said. She let go of my hand to look at her phone.
“Maybe I missed something in the email with the tickets.” Leah scrolled on her phone and I turned around. I noticed then that there was an entire church campus behind us. We’d parked in front of what appeared to be a two story school building. An immaculately manicured lawn rolled downward to the right toward a boxy apartment building with wide, rectangular windows. To the left, the lawn gave way to a circular drive that yawned wide. A white, stone statue of Jesus gazed down underneath a streetlight about 50 yards away. To the statue’s right was the church, probably built in the 70s, with its clean lines and modern entrance.
That space had an aura. I can’t say that it was evil, but it was specific and expected me to conform to what was going on there. I felt like a grungy kid getting stared at by well dressed adults. I turned to look at St. Ignatius, the abandoned hospital, draped in shadowy decay, and then looked back at the church campus, awash in evenly spaced street lamps, no corner without illumination.
“Leave.”
The thought hung in my head as if I’d heard it. Leah was still scrolling through the email, declaring that this didn’t make any sense because where the hell else would the abandoned Catholic hospital be other than right here, surrounded by a lawn clearly mowed by Christ himself.
My anger started creeping back and I was about to open my mouth when rusty hinges shrieked and a metal door up and to our left swung open. We’d missed the door, probably while distracted by the pile of beds, but more likely it was that it didn’t look like a door, not one that would be used regularly, anyway. It seemed like more of a loading dock missing a ramp.
“We nearly missed you,” a figure from within the doorframe said. The figure shined a flashlight on some steps that had been bathed in shadow. “Come on up and we’ll start the tour. You’re the last to arrive.”
Sweet cliff hanger. I am eager for Part 2.