Hospital House (Patreon)

“You don’t have the guts,” Casey said, staring me directly in the eyes. “No one has ever managed to stay in Hospital House overnight.”

I glanced down the hill where the decaying husk of a manor sat. The old Hospital House, named because it was once a hospital and old manor managed and run by an elderly, yet wealthy family, had this weird aura around it. It was as if light blended funny when it shone onto the grubby walls and cobwebbed banisters.

Every now and then, you could have sworn the light was on when electricity hadn’t been in that place for years.

“I mean, it’s just a house,” I reasoned. “Or hospital or whatever. It’s not a big deal.”

“Then why don’t you stay overnight?” Casey took a step closer to me. Emphasizing the dare..

“What will you give me?”

“For an overnight stay?”

“Yeah?” I asked meeting Casey’s gaze.

“How about $100 bucks.” Casey pointed to the house. “Stay overnight and I’m giving you $100 bucks.”

I laughed. “$100 bucks isn’t nearly enough to get me to stay in that asbestos trap of a house. The doctor would cost more than that.”

Tracy, who had been watching all of this with fascination cut in. “What if he gives up his dorm room?”

Both of us looked at her.

“I mean, if it’s really a big deal to stay at the house, then you need to be willing to offer something big right?” Tracy had a slight smile on her face.

Casey looked at the two of us and signed. “Fine, if you stay overnight. That’s 7PM to 7AM, I’ll give you my dorm room.”

I considered the offer for a moment.

Right now, I was sharing the dorm with about four other Co-Ed’s, each of them seemingly with the ability to snore louder and louder as the semester went on. Even the women sounded like buzzsaes. Casey had a private room.

This offer was too good to pass up.

“You have a deal.” I stuck out my hand. “Shake on it.”

Casey nodded, shook my head and grinned. “There’s no way you can stay overnight. No one has ever made it.”

I rolled my eyes. “I don’t believe in ghosts and I’m not superstitious.”

“We will see.” Casey grabbed his phone out of his pocket and stalked away, leaving a swirl of leaves behind him.

***

That night I had packed and overnight bag in preparation for my overnight stay in Hospital House. I was siting in the cafeteria munching on a slice of pizza when another student who looked older than me entered the cafeteria, saw me sitting there and made a beeline for my table.

“You’re Adam, right?” He asked.

I looked up from my pizza and nodded.

“Whatever you do, don’t stay at Hospital House.”

“Excuse me?”

The kid looked panicked. “Don’t spend the night there. Like don’t ask why, but trust me, you don’t want to be there overnight.”

I smiled gently. “Look man, it’s just an old house. It makes noises, the place is settling. People are probably afraid of their own shadow.”

“No,” the kid was adamant. “You can’t stay there. There’s this woman who lives there. She preys on he guys who go there. And her husband can’t stop her or anything.”

I laughed a little. “Come on. Did Casey put you up to this?”

“Nurse Motina or Molina or whatever will mark you hers if you’re there past bedtime.” The poor kid looked distressed.

I looked around the room half expecting to see Casey nearby laughing with his friends. But instead, everyone in the cafeteria went about their business grabbing pizza, veggies, french fries and what I could have sworn were burritos.

“You have to be careful. I’m begging you, please don’t go.” The kid stood up. “I have proof, look!”

And without warning the kid started unbuckling his pants. In an instant, his fly was open and I could have sworn I saw white crinkly plastic. The type of plastic you usually see on a baby's diaper. But he managed to pull the elastic waistband down and he pointed to his pelvis where there was a faded, but highly visible mark. In deep burgundy was the word BABY. It was as if someone had burned it into the man’s skin.

I stared for a moment and then snapped back to attention in an instant. He’d buttoned his pants back up with a crinkle and leaned in really close to me, the pizza on his breath blowing in my face. “I stayed there as a dare and almost didn’t make it out of there alive. Please for the love of god, don’t go in there. My life is permanently different now.”

I laughed. “Casey is really doing his best to win this bet huh.” I grabbed my tray and duffle bag from the table and stood up. “Nice try. I’m not buying it.” And then with a smirk, “Nice diapers baby.”

The kid looked defeated and I could have sworn I saw a tear drip down the side of his face. “Then remember this, she only sleeps when the baby sleeps. That’s your chance.”

I snorted and dumped my tray into the trash belt.

What the fuck was this guy smoking.

***

Casey stood with Tracy on the bottom of the hill next to Hospital House and checked his watch. “It’s 6:45 now. Not too late to change your mind.”

“You’d better start packing up your dorm room now.” I insisted. “I’ll see you at seven tomorrow.”

Casey scowled. Before I walked the length of the path leading to the house I scolded Casey. “Nice try sending that crazy kid to try and scare me. I don’t scare that easily.”

Casey, to his credit, looked extremely confused as I began walking towards Hospital House. Kid was going all in on this front. I resolved right then and there to call him from inside the house, panicked, demanding that he come in to save me. I was going to scare him so he’d be the one who felt some humiliation. That would be pretty funny, I thought, scare the man and take his room all in the span of 12 hours or so.

But I couldn’t shake the sight from earlier. The man in the cafeteria and the red hot brand that was on his public area. It looked like it had taken some time to put there, it looked too real for comfort. Even the students in the special effects department would have a had time replicating anything that specific.

Each step that I took heading towards the delipidated house reminded me that not many people had come down here in a while. There was a fine layer of white dust on the ground from the sugar mill that was down the street that constantly blew the sweet fine powder towards campus. The trees that lined the sidewalk, bent towards me, as if they were trying to shade me from the sun. Their branches, sticking straight out like hands trying to drag bodies out of hell, clacked against one another sending low audible warnings to anyone who would be dumb enough to creep towards the door.

The breeze reminded me that I was cold.

I checked my phone.

6:57 PM.

I quicked my pace until I got to the archways that led to the steps that led to the house. They didn’t creak as I walked up them, instead they felt solid as stone, even if the middles sunk in slightly. The brick was exploded, poking through the concrete as if the ground itself was split from beneath.

And then I saw it. The door.

The door was a deep burgundy and that seemed pulsed with the beat of my heart. I took a deep breath and looked at my phone one more time.

6:59.

I was tempted to look back one more time, up the hill where Casey would be standing watching to make sure I went along with this dare in its entirety. But I realized that this might make me look weak and instead glanced at the door handle and pulled.

The door didn’t budge.

I tried again.

But the brass knob would budge. I pushed, pulled and leaned my shoulder into the door. But nothing happened.

“Come on,” I hissed to the door, refusing to glance backwards and witness others turn my spectical into comedy, “Open up. I need to get inside.”

And with that, the door gave a heavy groan, swung open, I tumbled inside and proceeded to break my arm in the process.

***

Hospital house was awfully still. There wasn’t even the scent you’d expect to find when entering an old building that had been vacant for years. Instead the house just sat as if permanently grounded. My arm however, was not sitting still. The moment it had hit the hard, wooden floor boards, I felt this grinding noise and felt an intense pressure.

The snap and then the wobble when I tried to push up on the arm cause this pain to radiate around me.

Fuck, I mumbled to myself. It’s probably broken.

I glanced behind me to where the front door stood, the dark red blocking out the twilight of the great outdoors. I couldn’t leave now. Casey would call me a pussy and I’d lose all credibility. So instead, I stood up, ripped my tee shirt and wrapped my arm into a sling. I could just find a place to sit and wait this out for 12 hours.

The good news was after the initial shock, there wasn’t much pain. This was manageable.

I began walking closer to the center of the house where I knew there had to be a living room. I glanced at my phone that indicated there were no bars available and zoomed in on the map. According to the floor plans, there was a large area that was built traditionally like a large home, while further back in the bowels of the house, there was the actual hospital itself.

Hospital House was large, but in the darkness, things felt claustrophobic.

I dumped my bag onto a large boardroom table and decided to explore the house portion of the building for a bit.

As expected, the home portion was just a home, only larger. There were old tables, chairs and ornaments that had been melted to time. In the seating areas, chairs were draped with white cloth and dust. If I craned my ears, I could hear the movement of small critters as they moved around the room.

I had never had a problem with spiders. I didn’t bother them and they didn’t bother me.

Suddenly, there was this large, grating, scraping noise behind me.

I pushed my cellphone higher and shone the light into what should have been an empty room.

The darkness pushed back at me, the light from my flashlight proving to be not enough to overpower the heaviness of the room.

“Hello?” I asked tentatively.

The darkness responded.

***

I took a sharp step back.

“Who’s there?”” I demanded, trying to sound tougher than I usually was. Probably Casey again pulling his tricks, trying to convince me to leave the house.

But the darkeness stayed quiet.

But I had heard a response a second ago. The response of an older man soft and raspy.

“Casey…” I demanded. “Is that you?”

The darkness was quiet.

“Come on, you’re not going to get me that easily.”

But the darkness had grown shy. No response. Nothing.

That silence caused the knot in my chest to tighten even more.

“Casey…?” I asked taking a slow step forward towards the great unknown in the previous room.

I called out again while creeping forward. But no one or nothing answered. As I got closer I reached my hand out and tried to guide myself forward. The light from my phone wasn’t piercing the darkness and all I could think about was clearing the room so I could ensure I could spend my night in piece.

But I had forgotten that my arm wasn’t working correct and gasped in slight pain.

It was then, that a pair of tough, honey and leathery hands, wrapped themselves around my mouth the pulled me backwards.

“Don’t let her hear you,” the old raspy voice said as I struggled.

It was as if bones were forcing me backwards.

“Mhmm.. mhmm!” I yelled as my voice was muffled.

“Be quiet or she’ll hear you.” The man hissed. “Promise me, you’ll be quiet.”

After a second, I nodded.

The man let go of my face and I scrambled backwards, careful not to make any noise. I held my phone at eye level and surveyed the person. He was hunched over, wearing a ratty old tee shirt and a pair of soiled pants. But what was shocking was that his face was nearly gone. It was as if he hadn’t eaten in a while. HIs cheeks were sunken, eyes sunken, strands of hair hung from his head and fell over his eyes… or eye sockets.

What was most peculiar was he was wearing a stethoscope around his neck.

The old man held up his hand to block the light that I shined in his face.

“Please, you need to listen to me,” the man rasped.

“Who are you?” I demanded, still afraid. The man looked like he was dying. He looked like he had passed through death’s door and forgotten his jacket so he reached back over here for a moment because of some sort of mercy from death.

“I don’t have much time,” The man glanced to the right where another hallway led to the hospital side of the house. “The night shift starts at eight.”

I stared at him. The night shift? This man had to be delusional. He needed help. I resolved right then and there to fuck the bet, we needed to get him some help now.

“Sir, it’s okay. I can get you some help.”

But the old man was not listening. “You need to listen to me, I’m not the one who needs help, you do.”

I shook my head. “You mean my arm?”

“Yes, your arm. Don’t move it.”

I winced as I reached out to him to bring the elderly man closer to me. “It’s okay sir, it’s just a small sprain probably. But we need to get you some help.”

“You need to stop moving your arm!” The man hissed again. “Please, you have to listen to me.”

“Sir come on,” I gestured again and winced again.

But the man looked up towards the hospital wing and looked afraid. A thud was heard and a loud creaking split through the air.

“You need to leave,” he yelled, dashing towards me and grabbing my good arm.

“Ouch,” I winced. In an effort to pull back, I kept agitating my badly damaged one.

A blinding light cut through the room. Footsteps were heard coming down the pathway. In the confusion, I glanced back at the man who had now let go of me and looked back once more in fear. The light showed me that his face wasn’t even complete. The sockets, where I thought the had sunken eyes, were empty. I saw the back of his skull. Where his teeth should have been, just bone and flaps of skin hanging loosely as he ran down the hall.

I shook my head and decided I better get out of the house before whatever it was came down the hall and caused me to feel the fear that… man… or shell of a man felt. But by the time I got moving again, I had lost my bearings. I collided into he boardroom table and the wind was knocked out of me.

Gasping in pain, I tried to get up, but found I had used my bad arm this time. I screamed in pain as my arm gave way and fumbled for my phone.

The footsteps, now clearly heels, clicked louder on the hardwood floor as a woman entered the room. I could see that she wore a black uniform and a black hat that looked oddly like an old nurses hat that you would have seen in the 1950s. She wore dark stockings and looked directly at me.

Her eyes bore into my soul.

I felt myself urinate my pants in fear.

Unlike the man, she wasn’t missing any of her skin. She came up to me, looked me in the eyes, pulled out a syringe from her pocket and plunged it into my shoulder.

“Patients should not be out of bed after 8 PM. Take him back to the hospital.” Her voice sounded like soft bells that had been dulled over time.

Before I blacked out, I heard more footsteps and her say something else… something about needing the proper protection…

And then the darkness laughed at me and swallowed me whole.