Act 1, Scene 2 Part 1.1

Act 1, Scene 2 Part 1

The lights that the fifteen men saw was the reflection of the lightning off a massive five levels building structure at about half a mile ahead. It was once a mansion owned by an eccentric millionaire, but on his passing, the building was acquired by others who renovated and extended the structures into a U shaped building on its fifty acres of land. The new owners converted the place into a hospital for the infirmed and elderly, but soon the funds ran dry, they made it into a sanatorium. They painted the place white and erected the high wall around it. They placed a lot of ''no trespassing' signs on the walls. It became a place rumored to be haunted and soon nobody liken it to the prison. It ahd guard dogs patrolling the grounds.

The place housed over four hundred inmates at its peak with individual rooms, separated into five main sections with metal grilled gates separating it.

The main section placed at the front entrance was the Administration Block, where the doctors and nurses held their stations. The main entrance to the building opened up to the main lobby of the place with its main staircase that led to the upper third level where the doctors have their clinics. The ground level was the clerical and record section, which at the peak held a staff strength of thirty staffs including the Director of the Sanatorium. The next level which was serviced by the two sets of stairs on the end of the section that lead to the library, labs and visitor rooms, for the visiting professionals who used to plague the place for their experiments on the human behavior and brains studies.

Onto its right were Block West One and Two, which housed the patients of the affordable cost of stays which included the hotel desired level of services that also holds room deliveries. There was the main dining hall, library, tea rooms, servant rooms and the living halls with the indoor swimming pool. Each Block held its own facilities but Block Two lacked the indoor swimming pool. Block One hosted a stay for a hundred paying clients as they were termed then but Block Two had twice the numbers with the the smaller space of facilities. Both the blocks opened up to the well maintained lawn and garden, with the sporting facilities expected of their status.

There are the five pavilions build there for the parties which the rich threw weekly. On those occasions, invited guests are allowed, with them adjoining to the bushes later for the tete-a-tete. Everyone threw a blind eye to it all. The nurses allowed the parties as it helped to calmed them, more so when the food and drinks are laced with drugs to made them mellow. You can't have a lunatic running half naked in the party, but there were some when things get out of hands behind the bushes. That's when the nurses stepped in to calmed things down. 

The left blocks were different; it was named Block East Three and Four. This was the freeloaders that the State threw in to filled the beds. For three square meals, and medication of sorts, the inmates as they were termed were given a room to shared with three others. That was for the pleasant ones while the nastier ones gets the version of the dungeons; chambers of small and narrow spaces with the high windows all by themselves. The pleasant dormitories housed about four hundred inmates in the one hundred and eighty rooms, with the fifty dungeons. There are no libraries or living areas, but the pleasant inmates are allowed to use the open ground on the opposite side of the building. They are not to ventured into the middle section in between the east and west wing; that was the borders of sanity for the staff and visitors to enjoyed the three hundred width garden of flowers and ponds filled with fishes. Not even the screams from the either Block could not be heard outside of the structure. The hills have a strong wind that blew from North to South, thus carrying all the sounds away from the structures.

For those inmates who are screaming crazy as termed by the nurses then, they are kept in the two rooms specially prepared for their solitary stay on each floor. Each room was heavily padded to cover the screams from being heard, and more to it, the rooms had piped in music 'supposedly' to soothe them down. It was an experiment proposed by one doctor. It worked to an extent, the inmates became more subdued after being bombarded with constant music for days. Once they are released from the room, they were as compliant as a new born babe.

Unknown to many, the place had a series of hidden corridors which the nurses could moved about and spied on the inmates; they called it survelliance then, but it was more of privacy intrusion. None of the inmates and not all the nurses knew of the corridors, hence it was privileged to be told about it. There are also the linking tunnels between the blocks for the nurses to move about, and also to transport the dead inmates to the morgue, or the incinerator. Either way, it was not to alarmed the inmates from seeing their mates died. But the rumors went out. It was said that the dead were sent to Hell below and burned. But who ever believed the crazy inmates must be mad themselves.

That was then when the place was named Evergreen Homes for the Infirmed and Needy, but ten years ago, its doors were sealed by the new owner then, and the inhabitants cleared to other places of sanity preservation places. No one knew who bought the sanatorium but its sign was retained. It scared off visitors and more so, also the reckless with rumors of spirits in the place. It worked as the intruders were discovered fifty miles away from there in a state of temporary amnesia. Soon the roads to the place was left deserted with new roads that ply through the lower valleys where homes were build.

On that night when Alan Nates and his boys were plodding through the rain, there was one other set of eyes on the third level of the Administration Block. His name was Paul Miller as he was known by then. He was then an older man with a long beard and unkempt lock of long hair; dressed in the maroon dressing gown of the once worn by the clientele. He had spent ten years in his place to await today's event.

Paul was once a tall man from the hard labor of the docks, before he became its protector. He ran the racket there and established his own family with Alan Nates. He was King for over ten years before his disappearance from the scene. In actual facts unknown to many and including Alan Nates, Paul was in hiding there at the old Sanatorium. If there were ghosts as told by the skeptics, then he was also one that haunt the place. He looked like one, with his body frame all stooped down on his sunken shoulders with his sight aided by the thick glasses perched on the bridge of his nose. He stood there in the dark looking to the woods.

He was waiting for someone. Someone he had not seen for over a decade.

Someone he had intentionally invited.

Someone he needed to kill.