It was a quiet sunny day on the far reaches of the Iowan west; 15 minutes past Boone and an hour past Ames.
Granted, there was still snow on the ground but the air felt like spring. I was almost nodding off in the passenger seat when I barely made out the star on top of the grain silo. It was off of course but it's how I knew it was Beaver.
This was the first time I had seen it in broad daylight. It stood out among the emptiness of the country and the endless highway as something barely mentionable.
St Nick hooked a sharp right into the town of 40 and we slowly cruised down the streets. I saw that the only place open was a small office for whoever ran the silo bin.
A twelve year old got out of a mini van to cross the main street. ''That kid doesn't even look old enough to drive'' said St Nick. ''That doesn't matter out here. What are they going to do? Call the cops? The nearest sheroof gotta be at least thirty minutes out'' I responded.
It only took a left turn and right turn to find what I had been looking for in this spitball town for all this time; the school.
It was surrounded by overgrown trees and shrubs that looked naked from the cold. It was impossible to miss it now. It stood out among the nearby houses (most of which were abandoned) like a sore thumb.
After looking around a few times, a van passing by that looked like it was driven by another child, we had decided that the town was either deserted or everybody was hiding inside what was left of their homes.
We parked right in front of the school and hopped out. Ben, St Nick's cousin, rubbed his hands together in delight, and prepared to get into his first abandoned building.
The building was large but small at the same time. It had three floors and had looked long abandoned.
The only door in the front was blocked off by clusters of junk and snow. I first thought it'd be impossible to get inside to or that there was anything to get into.
Easily visible through all the windows was that the entire left side of the building had collapsed into itself from the inside. The outer walls of the entire building and the whole right side (with a staircase) were still intact. We walked freely on the small property.
We saw nobody. I poked my head through the first floor windows and saw that the bottom was completely covered in the remains of whatever was above it. Broken wood and foundation sat piled on top of each other. You could see through the entire building.
We maneuvered towards the rear of the building and saw a fire escape with the door leading in was nailed shut by a piece of wood. The thing looked way too rickety to stand on anyway.
I walked under it to get to the other side of the building. The dead grass and weeds were so thick that it would've been impossible to maneuver through the dark as I had previously planned before.
As I was walking around, I noticed that the ground looked shallow and realized that I was standing on top of what must of been a separate basement of the building.
The roof was long gone but the foundation and the walls still remained. There was so much snow that it was barely visible. It must of been at least 10 feet down. The top of the remains judded out in sharp points all around the right side of the building. I could see that there was a door that led into the bottom floor but was completely blocked from all the remains of the wood and other junk that was in the main building.
When I walked around the remains of the outer basement, I found myself in front of the building again. I didn't think I was going to get in but, after looking around and only finding a train pass by on the tracks in front of the tow, I decided to crawl through the empty window frames of the front door by holding myself up by a piece of junk that was stacked up on the inside.
Right when I was getting over the wood that acted as a makeshift barrier over the window, the junk started wobbling around and I shifted my weight against it to get on the ground and once I felt my foot on the ground; I let go and the thing went down with a huge metallic crash.
I looked around and waited for at least some old guy to come out in the middle of the street and squawk but no one ever did. I laughed at the irony of it all, my stomach felt bloated from the door frame mashing into it, and I turned to start poking around and see what I could find.
I was on the only staircase of the building, I looked behind me and saw all of the crap jumbled against the main door, and I looked up to see that there was a door frame on the second floor.
There was an electric organ with all it's keys busted out and a safe that looked like it had grown into the floor. The ground and the staircase didn't look stable but it also wasn't collapsed so I slowly walked up the stairs.
The stairs were covered in crumbled concrete and some old bear traps that had long been activated. I noticed animal tracks all over the small hallway of the first floor and figured it must of been for them. Probably.
I turned and saw a door frame that gave a view of the bottom and all the way up (even the roof was starting to go) as the left inside of the building didn't exist. There were small remains of each floor connected to the side of the right but they barely clung to its side.
The bottom looked even worse. You could make out from looking at the sides of the walls that the junk must of made at least a five foot build up. By judging that, I didn't feel the need to walk off the stairway and into the small hallway as snow covered the ground.
You couldn't tell if there were holes or not. I looked up and saw the skeleton of the staircase. It was rusty metal and weakened concrete. I laughed at the absurdity of going up another level but St Nick had a death wish and made his jolly way up the stairs.
I slowly followed, there was a window in between floors, and saw that the streets were still empty. No burning torches or pitchforks. I looked at the ground and it was covered in old National Geographic magazines. I figured they'd come out of the sticks and hack us alive like old cannibalistic tribes; burn down the hollowed out building, with us still inside, as an elaborate temple sacrifice or something.
The third floor was about the same. Just higher up. I started to sweat real good. I saw that the principal's office sat above the stairs by only a couple inches of concrete.
The roof was still intact but light still peered brightly through the empty door frame and the huge windows above the floor. The hallway was covered in snow and pieces of a bench and a typewriter. Ben sung to himself as St Nick ran into the principal's office to try and crack the code on a massive safe that was in the corner of the very small room. He said that he heard a quiet ticking noise from inside the safe. It was probably the timer of a bomb we had set off by walking up here. ''No, like, listen to it'' said St Nick as he squatted down and put his ear next to the huge box of tetanus.
An access door to the attic was hanging out of the roof and looked like it was barely held there by smashed in wood so I was finished with this. At this rate, I figured that no one would care if we went through all the abandoned buildings in the town. There were definitely enough to go around.
Just as I was about to climb out of the door again, I noticed that there was another floor; the basement. I couldn't help myself and walked down the small steps. The hallway was dark, only lit by the light coming from behind an empty door frame behind the staircase, and I didn't trust the roof enough to walk under it. The concrete of the floor was judding out in different directions and there was barely enough flat surface to walk on.
The bottom of the staircase was even more hollowed out than the rest of it. The side of what must of been the handrail was non existent. I walked up to the door frame, walking past this massive fire extinguisher that was almost taller than me with it's nozzle thrown around it like if someone had tried using it, and saw the layer of junk at ground level.
There was no floor but the remains of the building. I thought of getting on top of it to get a better look of the sarcophagus but I figured that it would become my own if I tried; especially judging by the massive cubes of glass that sat jutting out the rubble like spikes.
After whizzing on the steps, I followed St Nick and Ben out of the building, and we walked down to the car. I was surprised that it hadn't been ganked and put on cinder blocks by now but it was still there.
I spotted another abandoned building just across the street. We shrugged and started walking right into the yard.
Everything felt absolutely free as if we could of walked any of these houses and it just didn't matter because the people didn't exist and in a way, they didn't exist. They were most likely dead and this was only a dot on a map crammed in someone's glovebox.
There wasn't any fencing nor sign of life anywhere. It was just there out in the open. The snow was so thick and unkempt around the house that every step made you slump down a couple inches.
We walked up to the back of the house and found that there was a very small and open back porch with the back door wedged open.
''Smells like an old person's house'' said St Nick as he opened the door. ''This is actually a nice house. You walk in and there's the kitchen to your right, and there's a window thing, so you can invite all your neighbors in for a BBQ...smoke meth..you know''. On the kitchen floor were these wobbly planks of cheap tin and glass that broke and banged loudly around as you walked on it.
The ground, though the floor looked like it had been slowly raising by a shifting foundation, was stable enough to walk on. The sink and walls were covered in cobwebs. The fridge and oven looked about fifty years old and were covered with novelty stickers. On the floor was an old tabloid about Princess Diana like the ''news'' wasn't a day after it's date of 1998. In the distance we could hear the train whistling. It made the town eerie.
There were no sounds of vehicles, people, nothing. Just the train rushing into the whiteness of the country.
The living room was small and had nothing except a busted out window with a blanket shoved through it, an old stove that acted as heating for the place, and a mummified cat that sat frozen in time, and to the ground.
By judging by all the nails on the ground and planks of wood in front of the stove; someone must have tried to fix the place up and then gave up. It felt like a sad thing to be wandering around a place where people raised their children at and probably died in too.
St Nick wanted to go up the narrow staircase, following him, the steps felt brittle and creaked loudly when we put our weight on it.
Up the stairs, there were only a couple rooms. It was all small and narrow corners. The ceiling was low and must of been where whoever lived here slept. It had flower wall paper that barely remained on the wood walls. There two more rooms.
The one towards the right had a makeshift door by means of a dirty yellow blanket. I almost expected to find some hobo sleeping in there but only found a small room with a pile of bricks in the corner. The roof was gone and snow had covered the floor. Then, St Nick thought he heard steps.
We stopped and only heard creeks and cracks of the wood beneath us. We hadn't seen a human other than those kids driving cars around so I highly doubted that there was someone there. After that we slowly walked back down and out of the house.
As I stood in front of the house, trying to get a picture of the front, I finally heard some squawking. Some old woman from across the street waving her arms around and yelling ''You're trespassing! You're trespassing! You are on private property!''. I knew, by law, that I wasn't and I was tired of the woman's squawkings so I replied ''Oh yea?''. She responded ''It's private property for a reason''. I told her that we would leave if it was a problem to her. She looked surprised than said, ''You know who else trespasses like that? THE MEXICANS!'' and she ran back into her house. I glanced back at St Nick before breaking into laughter. What a loone.
Eyeing another abandoned house towards the end of the street, I thought it was best not to rile up any more crazies, so we got back into the car and drove towards the front of the town. I saw that the office for the grain silo was the busiest place in town and the last place to explore was right in front of it.
I surveyed it for a few seconds before hopping out to snap some pictures of the abandoned business lot that didn't come out during the first time with The Inch.
These buildings were all open and completely collapsed inside themselves. Anyone could roam through these places.
I turned and saw that a dog was coinking and getting excited so I got back into the car.
On the edge of town, just before the highway, there wasn't a train to pass by this time. I turned and saw the unlit Christmas star on the silo; it looked strange in the milky, grey, sky. The train track, that was right beside the town, seemed to run on forever. It disappeared on the endless road.
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