THE NORTHBEND YOUTH RECOVERY CENTER — Rooftop Journal Entry, 2:07 AM
The roof of the center was technically off-limits, but during the storm, nobody was really paying attention anymore.
The staff were too busy dealing with the kids trapped in the gymnasium and the theater room.
Jane wanted to find flashlights.
Elliot kept insisting he’d seen “a light” on the roof right before the power completely died.
So we took the service stairs.
The wind was so loud we could barely hear each other. Rain soaked through our jackets. The antennas above the building screeched like something alive.
There was this small structure.
An old wooden maintenance shed sitting in the middle of the rooftop. The kind of place nobody ever thinks about. The door was slightly open.
Inside, it looked like nothing but storage.
File cabinets swollen from moisture.
Jane wanted to leave immediately.
Then Elliot noticed the marks on the floor.
Like the furniture had been moved over and over again.
Behind a large metal cabinet, there was a door.
A real door.No outside handle.He pushed it open.And behind it, there was a small room .Two old computers were still running despite the blackout, walkmans were lined up across a table,
maps of Northbend covered nearly every wall, crossed with red strings connecting: abandoned houses, bus stops, the old movie theater, the center itself…
Some locations had been circled multiple times.
written across them in marker, missing person posters were everywhere
Others so old the paper was falling apart.
Decades of local headlines opened to the same kinds of stories:
The back wall was completely covered in Polaroids, teenagers, groups, parties…
Faces scratched out with black marker.
But the thing that really stopped us…
Pinned to the slanted ceiling like someone wanted it to be the first thing you noticed.
Underneath it, someone had handwritten:
“IF YOU HEAR YOUR NAME, DO NOT GO DOWNSTAIRS.”
Then one of the computers crackled.
The screen flickered on by itself.
THEY FINALLY MADE IT UP HERE.
