For a bunch of likes (Halloween Special) - Luis Fernández

🇪🇦spanish version 

We've been walking through this damned forest since yesterday afternoon. "This is going to give me a good bunch of likes," Pablo assures me, who in the digital world is the famous Cool_Fog46. "I've brought a burnt doll of my sisters on purpose to put it in all the photos we take of each other. In a corner, in a mysterious way, you know?" Pablo lives for likes; he's addicted to them. Every now and then he checks his cell phone to make sure his account is growing. "Fuck yes! 15 likes in two minutes and fuck you Happy Panda". Happy Panda is one of his virtual BFFs, but their rivalry has been on fire in recent months after she announced that she had been the victim of an attempted rape when she arrived at her house. "It was at least three guys; I knew them all. I won't give their names," she said in a show of humility. "Thanks to the fact that I'm a runner with great times, I was able to give them the slip. Let them apologise on my blog, my Twitch, TikTok or Facebook accounts, that's the only form of apology I'll accept." Despite criticism from some users that she had made it all up, and that she wanted to make money out of this despicable act, she remained steadfast in her statements. "They are pigs who had their eye on me. There's nothing that turns them on more than success. Don't worry about me, even if I don't sleep at all, I owe it to my fans. Have you tried SpiriTEA's new goji berry flavour yet?"

Our destination is a former children's home, closed after allegations that they couldn't be not verified, deep in the forest; explore the home, film inside, and then broadcast it all, all of it on social media. The residence was run with an iron fist by nuns. "We'll say that they made satanic sacrifices and that it was freezing cold in some rooms, or rather... in all of them" my friend confessed to me. After the denunciation and the disappearance of some teens, it was finally closed at the end of the 80s. Although it is fenced off and difficult to access, this will not be an obstacle for us. We will of course visit it on Halloween night and will take the opportunity to stream it. Yesterday, however, we spent the night in a luxury hotel in the capital with continental breakfast, but the photos we posted were of a semi-ruined house on the outskirts. Tucked up in sleeping bags and with the bloody burnt doll nearby. Pablo (sorry Cool_Fog46), has defaced one of the few remaining untouched walls with his minimalist logo of a raccoon with burning eyes doing the horned hand. By the way, our original idea of not paying a penny to sleep in the hotel, claiming that we were very influential youtubers on the Internet and that they shouldn't risk a bad review from us, didn't work. We've made them laugh in front of our 100,000 followers and we've refilled a bottle of mini vodka they had in the minibar with water after drinking it with our boots full of mud on the bed. We also burnt their bedspread with a joint we smoked to relax.

The next morning, after an Uber took us to the edge of our hunting area, we drove into the forest. The Uber driver repeatedly begged us not to go to the residence, that there were places that deserved to be left alone. That he would take us back to the hotel for free. We told him very bravely to go fuck himself and, after getting off, we gave him a negative evaluation on the Uber portal, inventing that he was a pain in the ass, that he hardly spoke Spanish and that the car was very badly maintained.

We have a long walk ahead of us. We hope to arrive mid-morning, take some photos, and do the streaming once we have properly decorated the stage. Pablo has it easier, he's going as a star, and he's carrying a small child's backpack, like Dora the explorer only for posing. While I carry a whole backpack with food, tripod, several cameras, clothes, and the fucking doll hell. I could say that we hardly saw any animals on our journey, that even the birds stopped chirping, but that wouldn't be true. We will comment on it in a mysterious way in our streaming to give it more of an atmosphere, but the truth is that apart from a few squeaks of animals that we didn't recognise, the crossing was nothing special. But what animals do we know? Well, none of them. We had to cross a river a few hours later and the only remarkable thing was a fox gutted on the bank and pecked by crows. We wanted to take some photos, but when we positioned ourselves looking for the best shot, the fox had already disappeared. "The crows weren't hungry. They flew away with it" we laughed. I was terrified and even more so after seeing the same fox, hours later, hanging around near us. It had no eyes; its guts were hanging out of its belly and one of its legs was barely a bare bone. A crow was perched on its back. I said nothing and quickened my pace. Pablo was complaining about the null phone signal, that he couldn't post shit like that. "Happy fucking Panda" he lamented, as if his bitter enemy was also to blame for the poor coverage in the forest.

It was getting dark... how was it possible? We looked at our watches and it had been more than 6 hours since we started our journey. Even though we had taken longer than expected to reach the residence, it was already looming in the distance. Immense. Imposing. Before long we arrived at the outer fence. A wide rusty chain and a beaten sign adorned the main gate. Private property. Photo. The outer stone wall, though deteriorated, was too high to climb. So, Pablo decided to force his way in.

There are 5 "official" rules of Urbexing and of these we will probably only respect the one "Never go alone" for obvious reasons. The other rules like "Don't take anything except your photos / Don't leave anything except your footprints, don’t break anything to get in and Don't run" we'll not give a shit.

Before continuing, I took a piss on the sign and as I looked up at the sky, the sun was getting darker and darker. It was getting very late. "Come on, we're running out of time," I said to Cool_Fog46, who was already making a video of himself doing a little dance as a broken robot, "We're going to blow it, Fortnite will beg us to include it in the next battle pass," my friend enthused.

I took a couple of pictures from the outside. Trying to bring out the ugliest and grimmest of the place. I noticed one of the windows of the tower. The window was licked by a dirty curtain torn between one-eyed glass. Photo. When I wanted to take a second snapshot, the window was closed. We advanced towards the door. It was closed. Photo. Pablito had already used his spray paint to paint his logo of Louis, the raccoon rocker. "Yes," he replied as he kicked the empty spray can into the garden. Photo.

The door was locked tight. We decided to go around the house in search of other entrances. About a hundred metres away we could see a small cemetery. Photo. And at the entrance, another with a burnt doll and Pablo's frightened face.  We managed to catch a glimpse of a small opening a few metres above ground level. It was a rickety gate. When we opened it, we saw a ramp and a small wagon that led to the kitchens. We pulled the rope and climbed into the wagon. We climbed in and with only our weight we slid inside. I had the torch in my mouth but standing behind Pablo I only managed to light up his neck and the woollen cap he was wearing. The smell coming from inside was nauseating. A mixture of stagnant water and animal shit. Broken plates, overturned shelves and a banging or scratching sound coming from one of the cold rooms. "Some animals must have got trapped" Pablito confirmed to me "Let's go on, we haven't got all day". I kept taking pictures. Photo. Photo. Photo with nun. Photo. We went up to the main floor. In front of us, the gate of the main entrance, which was closed before and now open. We thought we heard scurrying on the upper floors. I took one last look outside. The fucking fox was barely 10 metres from us surrounded by a flock of crows. I slammed the door shut and as I did so, the lock knob popped off, dooming our exit. No matter how hard we tried later, we could not open it again.

Little light was coming in through the windows that were not blinded with wide timbers. To the left was possibly the admission area and the offices. In the centre a wide staircase led to the upper rooms. To the right was the old dining room, a spectacular table for 50 people. There was still cutlery and plates on the table. Pablo grabbed some forks and put them in his backpack. "Auction it off on eBay, man". The whole thing was giving me the creeps. I looked at the accumulated dust on the table... Why could you still see the marks of both elbows on every part of the table where there had been a plate? They would have to be covered in dust too, wouldn't they? As if after all this time, the former residents still sat at the table to eat day after day. Maybe praying. I don't know.

We went to the left, towards the office area. A closed door of dirty glass blocked our way. Pablito kicked it across. The door wept shards of glass and he lay down to sleep. "Mother, I almost cut myself, but did you see the trip I took him on?" A table cluttered with papers and adorned with pigeon droppings, files scattered on the floor and a mural with miniature black and white photos of the nuns. Crowning the mural was the inscription of Our Lady of Mercy Immortal. Funny Pablo crossed out the T of immortal and left the nuns devoid of any modesty. Photo. We were laughing our heads off. I took a closer look at the miniature of the Mother Superior. She must have been about 120 years old by now if she had not already passed away. Cool_Fog46 put his hand on my shoulder and indicated with a chuckle that I needed one of those penguins in my life. Outside, the trees swayed and howled in the wind. Bored, we left the wing. The mural of the nuns had come down, and all the photos had fallen to the ground except the one of the Mother Superior. I inadvertently stepped on a couple of them, and we headed back to the entrance. To the right of the stairs, a half-hidden door indicated Cellar, but we couldn't open it no matter how hard we tried. Whatever. Photo. Photo. Photo.

Pablito was emptying his bladder against a fallen cross, resting on the ground. "Don't be a pig" I told him, the owner of the account with more than 100,000 followers replied that when nature calls, it's taken care of and that he didn't get the feeling that the urinals were in optimal conditions.

Again, the scurrying from the upper floors, and a female voice ordering them to stop running. Pablo rushed upstairs to see who it was or if it was just our imagination. "Don't fucking run," I shouted, but it was too late. I lost sight of him. I'm the fat guy behind the camera, the one gorging on fried chicken, I don't run, I'm not the star of the screen. He was in one of the upper rooms on the third floor. Taking pictures with his camera like an asshole. The residents' dormitories. Naked beds of twisted iron. An awful smell. Pablo lay down on one of them and asked me to take several snapshots of him. "Don't forget to put the doll close by, sitting there on the chair. This is going to get us a lot of likes", he said to me quickly. I took all the shots he asked me to take, I pushed aside the torn curtain that was on the chair and when I placed it on the chair, I realised that we were in the same room that I had photographed from the outside before entering. I looked out of the window. The fucking fox was still outside. I turned to take the picture of Pablo. He was smiling and doing the horned hand. Meanwhile an old nun was watching us from the doorway.

"Your motherfucker!" we shouted in unison. I grabbed the doll and threw it at her, and it went through the old woman like smoke. It disappeared. We looked at each other and convinced ourselves that it must only be a shadow, what else could it be? Night had fallen and we had to find a good place for our streaming. One that was scary as fuck... As if I didn't already have it! Pablo made me look for the fucking doll, it had fallen downstairs. Downstairs, the sound of dishes and people praying. They came from the dining room. I turned on the camera. Nothing. No battery. We went downstairs.

As we entered the dining room, a succession of nuns, ashen as old embers, looked at us with interest. The mother superior presided at the table. "Take a seat, Pablo. We've been waiting for you”. The other children sat with both elbows on the table and prayed silently. Pablo was as if he had been overruled and took a seat. I had not been invited. "You are free to go," the mother superior told me. "Every abandoned house is a door to our world, to our reality. One can enter, but few can leave. The well-known five rules of Urbexing are not rules of behaviour, or of good manners. Pablo has broken them all. He forced his way into our residence, got rid of the spray can in the garden, took a fork off the table, ran upstairs, and entered only one of the rooms. He broke ALL of them. To break them is to sign up to stay with us. They are the rules of access to our world, to our hell “.  I fainted.

When I woke up, I was at the entrance to the forest. Alone. No sign of Pablo. I grabbed my backpack. It was heavy. I looked inside. The damn plastic doll was inside looking at me inquisitively. I threw the whole backpack away and walked out.

Instagram, Twitch and Cool_Fog46's TikTok user profile are still active, but hardly anyone logs in anymore. Twitch is still broadcasting, but interest in liking an empty table is minimal. Some users left comments for a while, such as that a fork seemed to be moving, but nobody paid attention to them. Over time, even the comments became fewer and fewer, until no one commented at all. Another of the millions of accounts on the Internet that languish day by day without anyone caring.

Epilogue.

Now, a year to the day after Cool_Fog46's disappearance, his Twitch channel has started to broadcast some shocking images... sometimes they are distorted images with a strange static noise and in others Pablo can be seen, sitting crestfallen in the dining room whispering, begging for help. He repeats again and again that its very cold there. The broadcast is cut off when a hand rests on his shoulder. This same sequence is repeated every hour. Since then, the number of visits to his channel has increased steadily.

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