It was a Sunday afternoon and I slipped wordlessly from the house, taking the stairs two at a time. I wanted to look under rocks and expose the centipedes squirming beneath; I needed to do something I shouldn’t.
I chewed my fingernail waiting at the bus stop, and soaked my sneakers tromping across a lawn heavy with sprinkler dew. The theater’s shadow finally stopped me; it engulfed the sidewalk, eclipsed the sun. “The Pantheon,” golden lettering proclaimed. I considered the building’s limp neon caution tape, its swirls of once elegant plaster.
This looked like a good place to start.
I crossed the weedy parking lot with my hands shoved deep in my pockets like the rest of me might disappear too, but no one glanced my way. Down a couple of concrete steps . . . . I smiled a little when I discovered it there, hidden from the sun, but didn’t allow my excitement to bloom until the handle turned and the door gave way.
I slipped in and closed it firmly behind me, pressing my back against the metal. I had sealed myself in darkness and it beat against my eyes. I could sense a great space, an opening before me. And that smell, not entirely unpleasant, of closed-off, uncared-for places.
I lingered there for a few breaths, waiting to be afraid of the dark, but I only felt shrouded and safe. Eventually I produced a flashlight from the pocket of my baggy sweatshirt to keep from stumbling. It flickered to life, creating distorted, dancing shadows and deepening the blackness it could not reach.
I stood in the half-light and listened for the snore of a homeless person cocooned in their sleeping bag or the laughter and tinkle of broken glass from some illicit teenage gathering. But all was quiet. Only dusty silence wafted from the rows of seats and layered corridors.
The place was untouched, and it was mine.
I set off. Not toward the amphitheater with its amplified, almost frightening absence,or the ordinary, uncluttered stage. No, I delved further into the wings, past stacks of ladders and forgotten props, beneath curtain ropes that curled from the darkness like sinister jungle vines.
I loved the rambling senselessness of this abandoned place. The hallways leading to nowhere, the shuddering elevators dinging open for passengers who would never arrive. Chipped signs announcing chambers like the “Lady’s Lounge” or the “Smoke Room” — their purpose and context having fallen away around them, the rooms they referred to repurposed again and again, then finally left empty.
This was an old building. It didn’t owe logic to anyone, and I adored it for that. I’d broken in because I wanted to discover something new, to scrape the edge of danger, but instead I found a refuge. The theater had bottled up a tangible silence, and a stillness so complete that sometimes it even invaded my own limbs. I often found myself standing motionless, forgetting that I wasn’t a streetlight, a pebble along a quiet lake shore, forgetting that I was. This place was almost sacred, in its emptiness.
I wandered and lingered at will. I found an old cork board up on the wall, covered in fliers for school musicals from twenty years ago, obscure bands on tour, and a town hall meeting.
A crack fingered its way across the bathroom mirror; the toilets were dry and purposeless. The walls were covered in tags, curses, psychedelic drawings and saccharine inspirational quotes. I watched my reflection warily. Tilted my head so that the mirror’s distortions made me monstrous. Then back again to a world of the ordinary. There was nobody to compare myself to, so I decided I was pretty.
One passage ended in a tiny cube-like room. I glanced around and then looked up. A square of blackness hovered above me. I knew it was a trap door leading to some new, inane storage space. It looked like something more, though. Like a scrap of deep space, like a portal to the emptiness between stars. I didn’t raise my flashlight, only backed away, shivering a little. I had plenty of nerve, but my supply was not infinite.
Off down subterranean hallways instead, I was opening every unlocked door. Just for the thrill of peering through, and right before — knowing that because I couldn’t see what was beyond, everything was on the other side. Schrödinger’s Cat, both dead and alive.
Most doors didn’t lead to anywhere interesting, but I didn’t care. I opened them all, feasting my eyes on stacks of boxes and toppled chairs, special because I alone knew of them.
I approached the last door a little carelessly. I decided that this would be the last. I’d had my fill of desaturation; I was ready to return to the living world with new calmness and surety lodged in my core.
The handle turned without any trouble. That should have been my first clue. Those creaking, haunted house doors are a lie. The truly sinister ones slide open silently. They invite you in and are almost a little too eager.
I chewed my fingernail waiting at the bus stop, and soaked my sneakers tromping across a lawn heavy with sprinkler dew. The theater’s shadow finally stopped me; it engulfed the sidewalk, eclipsed the sun. “The Pantheon,” golden lettering proclaimed. I considered the building’s limp neon caution tape, its swirls of once elegant plaster.
This looked like a good place to start.
I crossed the weedy parking lot with my hands shoved deep in my pockets like the rest of me might disappear too, but no one glanced my way. Down a couple of concrete steps . . . . I smiled a little when I discovered it there, hidden from the sun, but didn’t allow my excitement to bloom until the handle turned and the door gave way.
I slipped in and closed it firmly behind me, pressing my back against the metal. I had sealed myself in darkness and it beat against my eyes. I could sense a great space, an opening before me. And that smell, not entirely unpleasant, of closed-off, uncared-for places.
I lingered there for a few breaths, waiting to be afraid of the dark, but I only felt shrouded and safe. Eventually I produced a flashlight from the pocket of my baggy sweatshirt to keep from stumbling. It flickered to life, creating distorted, dancing shadows and deepening the blackness it could not reach.
I stood in the half-light and listened for the snore of a homeless person cocooned in their sleeping bag or the laughter and tinkle of broken glass from some illicit teenage gathering. But all was quiet. Only dusty silence wafted from the rows of seats and layered corridors.
The place was untouched, and it was mine.
I set off. Not toward the amphitheater with its amplified, almost frightening absence,or the ordinary, uncluttered stage. No, I delved further into the wings, past stacks of ladders and forgotten props, beneath curtain ropes that curled from the darkness like sinister jungle vines.
I loved the rambling senselessness of this abandoned place. The hallways leading to nowhere, the shuddering elevators dinging open for passengers who would never arrive. Chipped signs announcing chambers like the “Lady’s Lounge” or the “Smoke Room” — their purpose and context having fallen away around them, the rooms they referred to repurposed again and again, then finally left empty.
This was an old building. It didn’t owe logic to anyone, and I adored it for that. I’d broken in because I wanted to discover something new, to scrape the edge of danger, but instead I found a refuge. The theater had bottled up a tangible silence, and a stillness so complete that sometimes it even invaded my own limbs. I often found myself standing motionless, forgetting that I wasn’t a streetlight, a pebble along a quiet lake shore, forgetting that I was. This place was almost sacred, in its emptiness.
I wandered and lingered at will. I found an old cork board up on the wall, covered in fliers for school musicals from twenty years ago, obscure bands on tour, and a town hall meeting.
A crack fingered its way across the bathroom mirror; the toilets were dry and purposeless. The walls were covered in tags, curses, psychedelic drawings and saccharine inspirational quotes. I watched my reflection warily. Tilted my head so that the mirror’s distortions made me monstrous. Then back again to a world of the ordinary. There was nobody to compare myself to, so I decided I was pretty.
One passage ended in a tiny cube-like room. I glanced around and then looked up. A square of blackness hovered above me. I knew it was a trap door leading to some new, inane storage space. It looked like something more, though. Like a scrap of deep space, like a portal to the emptiness between stars. I didn’t raise my flashlight, only backed away, shivering a little. I had plenty of nerve, but my supply was not infinite.
Off down subterranean hallways instead, I was opening every unlocked door. Just for the thrill of peering through, and right before — knowing that because I couldn’t see what was beyond, everything was on the other side. Schrödinger’s Cat, both dead and alive.
Most doors didn’t lead to anywhere interesting, but I didn’t care. I opened them all, feasting my eyes on stacks of boxes and toppled chairs, special because I alone knew of them.
I approached the last door a little carelessly. I decided that this would be the last. I’d had my fill of desaturation; I was ready to return to the living world with new calmness and surety lodged in my core.
The handle turned without any trouble. That should have been my first clue. Those creaking, haunted house doors are a lie. The truly sinister ones slide open silently. They invite you in and are almost a little too eager.
To read Part Two, please click here.