The Salt Creek Annex

The summer I turned eleven, my family moved to the outskirts of a small Nebraska town, into a neighborhood that had been carved out of the prairie in the 1950s. The houses were all ranch-style, with flat roofs and pastel siding, but they had settled and sagged over the decades. Ours was the last on the street, bordering a dry creek bed that only filled during spring rains. At the end of the cul-de-sac, half-hidden by a gnarled old cottonwood, stood the Salt Creek Annex. That’s what the realtor had called it, noting that it was once a meeting hall for a rural electric cooperative, then a community center, now abandoned.

My brother, Mitchell, who was fourteen and therefore knew everything, announced that the Annex was haunted. He’d heard from the other kids that a man had died there in the ’70s, electrocuted by faulty wiring, and that his ghost still wandered the halls. I was skeptical, but I was also bored, and Mitchell’s promise of a real adventure was seductive. He and his friend, a wiry kid named Derek, were planning to break in through a basement window. They made me swear I wouldn’t tell Mom.

On a humid July afternoon, with the cicadas screaming in the cottonwood, we stood at the side of the Annex, staring at the sun-warped plywood over the windows. The building was a long, single-story rectangle, with a flat roof that had collected years of leaves and debris. The white paint was blistered and peeling, and the few remaining windowpanes were so grimy that we couldn’t see inside. Mitchell and Derek wrestled a window loose and dropped into the dark basement. I followed, my heart thumping.

The basement smelled of mildew and old dust. We found a set of stairs that led to the main floor. The main hall was huge, with a stage at one end and a polished wood floor that was warped in places. The walls were lined with corkboard that had bits of faded posters and yellowed paper still pinned to them. It was just an empty, dusty room. Mitchell and Derek started making ghost noises and stomping their feet, but I was drawn to the stage. Behind it, there was a small door that led to a back room.

I pushed the door open. It was a small office, with a heavy steel desk and a rolling chair with a torn leather seat. There were papers scattered on the floor, and a old rotary phone. A musty smell, like old books and burnt coffee, hung in the air. On the desk, there was a black, leather-bound ledger, open to a page with columns of numbers and what looked like names. I went to touch it, but Mitchell shouted from the main hall, ‘Hey, found a broom closet!’

I closed the office door and rejoined them. They were shining a flashlight into a narrow closet, revealing shelves stacked with old fuse boxes and circuit breakers, all coated in dust and rust. Derek said, ‘This is where the guy got fried.’ Mitchell kicked the boxes, and one of them fell and shattered. ‘Whoa, careful,’ I said, but they ignored me.

As afternoon turned to evening, the light through the grimy windows faded. We decided to leave, but when we tried to open the main door, it wouldn’t budge. The lock was old and rusty, but we had entered through a window, so the door was never locked. But now it seemed jammed. We pushed and pulled, but it didn’t move. Panic fluttered in my chest. We ran back to the basement window, but it had closed somehow, and when we tried to lift it, it was stuck. We were trapped.

Mitchell and Derek started shouting and throwing their weight against the doors. I stood in the middle of the main hall, looking at the stage. There was a faint hum in the air, like a distant transformer. I turned to look at the office door, and I saw a thin line of light under it, as if a light had been turned on. I walked over, my footsteps echoing, and slowly pushed the door open. The office was lit by a single, bare bulb that we hadn’t noticed before. The ledger was now closed, and on top of it was a photograph.

I picked it up. It was a black-and-white picture of a group of men in suits and hard hats, standing in front of the Annex, with a sign that said ‘Platte Electric Cooperative’ and a date: 1962. In the center of the group was a man with a confident smile, holding a clipboard. The photo was oddly sharp.

Then I noticed that the details were wrong. The men’s clothes weren’t from the ’60s. They looked modern, like from a few years ago. And the sign said ‘Salt Creek Annex Community Center.’ The picture was of a grand opening, but we knew the building had been abandoned for decades.

The hum grew louder, and the light bulb flickered. Mitchell and Derek burst into the room, shouting, ‘The door just opened by itself! Let’s go!’ I dropped the photo and followed them. We ran out the main door, across the yard, and didn’t stop until we reached our porch.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept thinking about the photo, and the way the men in it seemed to move when I blinked. I decided I had to go back, to look at the ledger more closely. The next morning, I rode my bike alone to the Annex. The plywood window was still open, but I used the main door this time. It was unlocked, and I walked in.

The main hall was not empty. The stage now had a microphone stand and a table with paperwork. On the walls, the corkboard was covered in new flyers, announcing events: a fish fry, a town meeting, a 4-H club. The air smelled like coffee and lemon cleaner. I walked to the office. The door was open. Inside, a woman in a cardigan was sitting at the desk, typing on a computer. She looked up and smiled. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. I backed away, stammering, ‘This was supposed to be abandoned.’ She chuckled. ‘Oh, honey, we’ve been here for years. This is the community center. You must be new.’

I ran outside. The cottonwood was still there, but the Annex was now freshly painted white with a new sign above the door: ‘Salt Creek Community Center.’ The parking lot had cars. People were walking in and out, chatting.

I rode home in a daze. When I told Mitchell, he called me crazy. But I knew what I’d seen. That summer, I kept going back, trying to find the old, abandoned version, but I never did. The ledger was gone, the photo was gone. The only trace was a faint humming sound I’d only hear in the distance, like a warning I couldn’t quite parse.

Years later, I learned that the Annex had been renovated in the mid-80s, but that in 2003, there was a fire and everything was destroyed. No one rebuilt. The land was left vacant, and the cottonwood eventually fell. But when I drive by the empty lot, I still see the outline of the old building, and I feel the hum, and I wonder about the other Salt Creek Annex, the one that exists in that other time, and whether the door I opened that day is still open somewhere.