Day 498

The thing about old buildings is that they tend to collect far more than just dust.
Bricks and mortar have a tendency to absorb memories, or rather the electromagnetic pulses
that the human brain emits when forming particularly strong memories.
For instance that certain day you can't forget, can never forget no matter how much you try.
It's being held in by the very walls around you.

The building we will be looking into today used to be an old Victorian workhouse.
It was nowhere near as foreboding as it had been in its' heyday, at least on the outside.
Residents never stayed for long - drawn in by its' past and flung out by its' present.
Not every worker had clocked out... not every worker could.
Some still ran their usual routines, ever fearful of the Overseers and their short tempers.

Reports were always flooding into the landlords (as short-lived as their tenants).
Always the same things too - sooty footprints on the floors, the sound of running.
Lesser so were the more... vivid experiences where the workers decided to interact with the living.
They never meant to hurt anyone, never meant to make them cry or bleed or die.
At least they said so.

Fourteen deaths later and the building was closed, only twenty years after its' grand opening.
The authorities never managed to explain it all, called it suicide, homicide etcetera.
In spite of this they never got round to demolishing the building, some small part of their minds,
something that saw what they couldn't comprehend, said it needed to remain just there.
Keep the bricks together, keep the memories inside where they can't hurt others.

It didn't stop vandals and morbid individuals from stealing small mementoes as they broke in
and so a several workers got out, saw the rest of the world and thought it sickening.
They had so much more work to do here, so many sinners to put back on the righteous path.
Though they weren't in the workhouse anymore the Overseers were always with them.
Guiding their hands to bring the unknowing living to heaven through blood, sweat and toil.