The Culture Hall
As we neared the pillars and the ghostly orchestra reached my ears I began to have second thoughts. When I told Anneli I thought it would be fun to explore this place together I hadn’t meant I would actually do it. This place was downright creepy, but now I was here with Anneli and there was no turning back.
It wasn’t that I truly had anything to be afraid of. It was just an old building. As I stepped between the pillars and into the glass strewn courtyard I ran my hand across the cracked surface of the pillar, shivering against my fear. The glass was like hail beneath my feet, crackling and crunching as it was ground into the cement with each step I took, sounding especially eerie next to the warbly Russian Soprano that had just joined the orchestra floating past my ears. As I stumbled over one of the more tangled of the weeds littering the courtyard I thought back over what had led to me be heading towards the rusted ladder of a fire escape to climb through a shattered window.
It was strange being an American in Estonia. I had moved around a lot when I lived in America, but nothing that prepared me to move to another country. After 4 years of living in Estonia and learning the language and culture I was fitting in pretty well, but then we moved again, and I was just as unprepared. We now moved to the city of Narva, a primarily Russian city right on the river border that separates Russia from Estonia. Just when I was getting the hang of Estonian, I had a new language to deal with.
The language of the invaders.
After years of trying to become as Estonian as possible I was not a fan of Russians, their harsh language grated on my ears like the shards of glass and cement grated against the soles of my shoes as I pushed off from the ground, hoisting myself onto the ladder and beginning to climb. Once I reached the top I reached down to help pull Anneli up. As my hand closed around her wrist and I tugged her up I looked at her and tried to remember why I had ended up here with her.
When I was exploring my new city I had stumbled upon an abandoned square in a park, the ground covered in cracked and crumbling cement tiles. . On either side of this empty square sat the memorial busts of some famous Russians. Even if I could read Russian it would have done no good, as the Cyrillic lettering had become scratched and worn away through time, neglect, and vandalism. But the most interesting thing I had seen sat beyond the busts.
As I turned away from observing one of the more magnificently mustachioed busts of some Russian writer or revolutionary I saw four giant pillars, their paint peeling, leaving large patches of dingy gray cement among the whiteness of the rest of the pillar. Atop these pillars sat a roof, with some inscription facing outwards. Even without any knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet I could tell that large portions of this inscription were missing, rubbed out by weather and time. Behind and on either side of the pillars crouched a three story building which greatly conveyed a sense of faded glory. The space between the pillars and the building created a courtyard of weeds and shattered cement. Like the pillars and the inscription this building was clearly once quite beautiful. But now what windows weren’t boarded up were broken, and not only was the paint peeling but small chunks of the wall had fallen out, not enough to break through to the inside, but enough to cause me to question the structural integrity of this old building. Directly in the center of the building was a large metal doorway, two hefty metal bars crossed over it to keep intruders out. A fire escape crawled up the right side of the courtyard, leading to a broken window on the third floor.
I had stood transfixed, unable to look away from this building. It was eerie and unnaturally shadowed, as if the sun were unable to reach this particular part of Narva. I walked towards the courtyard, seeing shards of broken glass spread intermittently throughout the weeds. As I reached the pillars I reached out my hand and stroked the cracked paint and chipped cement, leaning forward to rest my head on the pillar.
My forehead touched the cool cement of the pillar and I jumped as the air was suddenly filled with an eerie orchestral melody sounding as if it were echoing from within the heart of the building. The melody sounded as if it were being played off a very old record. The whole world seemed unable to move, my breathing stopped, my heartbeats froze. I felt trapped. After a few moments of standing frozen to the pillar an old woman’s voice drifted slowly into the melody, slowly singing what sounded like an old Russian love song.
As soon as I first saw this building I was afraid. It was an old Russian culture hall, the former home of Soviet propaganda and Communist lies. But once I heard the music I completely spooked. I turned and ran.
Later when relating this story to my best friend Anneli it ran quite differently. I don’t know why I wanted to impress her, but I felt I had to sound manly about this place. I couldn’t say, “I was out exploring our new city alone and I ran away like a little girl when some crumbling building started playing an old love song.” Instead I felt that I should be tough and overcompensate. Anneli had moved to Narva with my family to work as my parents’ translator, and as the one important thing I had ever taken with me on a move I felt that she was all I had left. So I told her I found this cool old building and that we should go in and explore it. When I said this I thought she wouldn’t actually do it. She wasn’t intending to call my bluff, but in the end she did.
As I climbed through the jagged edges of the smashed window on the third floor I tried to decide if I regretted try to act tough. I decided yes. I was terrified. As my foot hit the floor the ethereal voice dropped to lower key as the song became even slower.
“What’s it saying?” I asked Anneli.
“I don’t know,” she said, frowning as she strained to make out some meaning from the warbling voice. “It’s too echo-y. It’s definitely Russian, but it doesn’t sound like anything I can recognize.”
I walked into the empty room and heard the crunch as Anneli dropped onto the shattered glass and weak wood behind me. I walked to the one door in the room and as I opened it the voice dropped until it creaked almost like the rusted hinges of the door. I switched on my flashlight and looked into a long hallway, the maroon wall paper peeling revealing the yellowish bile colored wall underneath.
Outside the one doorway to the room was a staircase leading down to the second floor. “That wood looks pretty rotted, do you think we can trust it?” said Anneli, a slight note of worry creeping into her voice. I was afraid, but I couldn’t let her see that. In answer to her question I stepped onto the first decomposing step and put my full weight on it. Seeing that it held me we moved on down the stairs, turning left into a small room.
The room we stood in now had a large rectangular window on one side, with an old film projector thrown haphazardly on the floor below it. On one wall was a picture of Joseph Stalin, a yellow hammer and sickle floating to the side of his mustached face against a background of a waving red Soviet flag, his dark eyes watching our every move with a malicious dictatorial hunger. Outside the window of this projectionist’s box were rows and rows of seats facing a large screen. This was where the propaganda films were shown during the Soviet years. The orchestra and soprano were loud in this room, bouncing and echoing around the walls.
On the left and right sides of the screen hung Soviet flags, faded and dirty from time. The rows of seats were tattered and several were knocked over. As I looked down into the theater it seemed almost as if some of the cloth cushioning on some of the seats had been ripped or torn, but I convinced myself that it was only a trick of my paranoid mind, already creeped out by the surroundings.
Then I saw a movement down in the theater. As I watched, a young child, he couldn’t have been more than eight years old, crawled out from behind the front row. The boy had dark tousled hair and pale skin, wearing a dirty and torn black t-shirt and grimy jeans. I tapped Anneli on the shoulder and put a finger to my lips to tell her to stay quiet. As I pointed to the child Anneli jumped, a gasp fighting its way past her lips, surprised to see him there.
“Hey, what are you doing down there!” yelled Anneli. I tried to shush her but when I tried to clamp my hand over her mouth she pushed me away. When Anneli realized she was getting no response from the child she repeated herself in Estonian, then finally Russian. My heart seemed to stop. I knew I couldn’t make Anneli shut up, but that kid scared me. I don’t know why I was so afraid, but I wanted to run away.
As soon as she began speaking in Russian the child slowly began to turn, until he was looking right at us. I looked at the child, and jumped when I saw that it looked as if he had no eyes. My heart started again, only to beat as fast as I wanted my feet to beat against the ground as I ran away. The room was dark, and I could barely see the child, so I just told myself that it must have very dark eyes and it was a trick of the light. I would tell myself anything to fight off panic.
I shook myself, and looked over at Anneli. She stood frozen, her eyes transfixed on the eyes of the child. Apparently she had seen the trick of the light too. “Anneli,” I said. When she didn’t respond I repeated myself more urgently, “Anneli, come on, let’s go explore somewhere else, that kid is creeping me out. There’s nothing we can do about him unless we go downstairs.”
The ceiling above us creaked. I reach out and grabbed Anneli’s arm. Anneli jumped quite visibly when I touched her skin. As soon as Anneli looked away the child in the theater silently turned and padded off into the darkness. “Are you okay?” I asked, worried.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.” said Anneli, forcing a tight smile onto her face, “Let’s get out of here though. This place is creepy.”
I concurred completely and we walked into the room on the other side of the projection room. As we walked into this room we saw a little girl, standing with her back to us, directly in the middle of the room. Her simple black dress was graying from dust and age, and had slight rips throughout it, exposing ivory skin underneath.
The girl slowly began to turn, her steps in time with the continuing music, her straight shoulder length hair floating strangely beside her head. Once she had turned to face us I brought my flashlight up to see her face and was horrified to see two empty eye sockets staring at me. Slowly the girl’s cracked lips moved and in hollow whisper she said one word, “Durak!”
In my very limited Russian I understood her to have just called me an idiot, but at the moment I was too concerned with her lack of eyes to be offended. “DURAK!!” she yelled, and as her voice raised to a screech she began running toward Anneli and jumped onto her chest, knocking her down. As Anneli fell at my feet the girl’s head shot forward to bite Anneli and I instinctively kicked the girl right in the head.
I stumbled back, gagging as the girl’s head went flying from her neck as if it were connected with a wet sponge which I had just torn with my kick. Anneli screamed as the girl’s body fell limply against her chest. Pushing it off of Anneli I grabbed her hand and pulled her to her feet. I pulled Anneli with me as we ran through room after room, looking for a way out. As we ran I could hear the sound of little feet running all around us.
My world seemed to move in slow motion. The heavy thumping of our running feet sounded like the repetitive beat of a bass drum, with the many lighter feet of the eyeless children playing the drum roll of a snare drum. As we ran I saw a staircase leading down. Surely there must be a way out, I thought to myself.
Bolting down the stairs we ran into what appeared to have once been a large entrance hall, the murals on the walls chipped with age and the tile floor covered in long, scar-like cracks. There were many squares where windows once were but were now boarded up. Rusty nails stuck through some of the boards from the time when they were poorly nailed into place. I saw the rectangular form of a door, boards crossing over it and nails dangerously sticking out at odd angles. Mustering my fear and turning it into strength, I ran at the door and jumped into the air, putting my full body weight behind my kick.
My foot connected with the door, and I felt a jab of pain in my heel as a nail dug through the sole of my shoe. The door gave way, and I stumbled through into a piles of weeds and rotting wood.
“Are you okay?” shouted Anneli, running over and crouching beside me. “Can you run? We need to get out of here, we need…” her voice trailed off as she raised her head and looked out over what we had just stumbled into.
Despite the aching in my body I slowly sat up and looked around. My jaw dropped as I surveyed our surroundings. We were in a weed filled yard surrounded by a crumbling high concrete wall. In the middle of the yard was a rundown children’s amusement park, with giant swings, spinning teacups, and even a mini rollercoaster. On top of the controller’s shed of the mini rollercoaster sat two ancient speakers, and from these speakers emanated the eerie soprano and her orchestra. The amusement park was crawling with children, all swinging and playing in time with the music.
As we watched the rollercoaster slowly began to creak along the tracks, full of blank faced children sitting in utter silence. I sat horrified, unable to move.
“We really need to go now,” said Anneli, her voice a shaky squeak. “Come on!”
Anneli grabbed my shoulder and dragged me to my feet. We turned and ran for our lives back up the stairs and into an empty room. Suddenly a little boy dropped down from a hole in the ceiling and landed on my shoulder. The boy wrapped his arms around my head, making it impossible for me to see.
“Anneli, help me!” I yelled, my voice slightly muffled by the child on my head. Suddenly I heard a loud cracking noise and followed by a swish and a thwack, the last of which I felt quite strongly against the side of my head. As the now limp boy slid off the side of my head I saw Anneli holding a piece of wood from the boarded up window in the room. A shaft of moonlight shot in from the space where she had torn away the wood. I kicked away the rest of the wood boarding up the window and look out at the one story drop.
Behind us I saw a large group of children moving toward us, some crawling, others slowly walking. We were trapped. “Anneli, we have to jump!” I said, grabbing her hand.
“Okay,” she said, looking over her shoulder and shaking as she stared fear in the eye, “one, two…” we jumped.
