One Night In Hospital

A simple dare was all it was, right? A night in an abandoned hospital? How tough could that be? We were new kids. New to the suburban area and new to the school. We hit it off from the moment we met. We had so much in common it was insane. We were twin souls.

We had it all planned out systematically. We told our parents we were sleeping at a friend's place. Surprisingly they bought that. Equipped with our Swiss army knives, cold drinks, chocolate, flashlights, and blankets, we made our way towards our challenge.

Being introverts we were never included in anything and this would be the first time we'd experience an initiation test to be allowed to join the coolest kids in the neighbourhood and the school. All we had to do was to spend the night in the abandoned hospital.

Of course, we didn't know all the local stories about the place. We were new and we hadn't had time to meet enough people to piece the local beliefs and stories together.

We retrieved our flashlights from our backpacks and headed indoors. The sun was setting. We walked into the building and started scouting around for a room to sleep in for the night.

The floorboards creaked in protest. Who knew how long ago it was since there was the human weight on these things? We looked around, there were hospital beds all pushed to one side. This looked like a ward of some sort. Was this hospital a boarding school? Floorboards were missing or piled on in the middle of the floor revealing empty spaces.

We finally chose a spot in a ward that had the least floorboards missing. We watched the sun disappear from sight. Dusk turned to darkness. We were not allowed to light candles or use flashlights after dark. Dawn seemed a long way off.

We were on the fourth floor. The room was spacious and didn't have a musty smell the rest of the dilapidated building did. That foul stench that permeated every single nook and cranny except the fourth floor.

We groped for snacks in our backpacks trying to guess what was what going solely by feel. It was pitch black now. The winter chill was setting in. We weren't sure at that point if it was the cold or just the general vibe of the place. We were trying to figure it out when something brushed against us. We admonished every scary thought and struck up a perfectly idle conversation about what the place might have been.

That's when we heard it, bloodcurdling screams, eerie almost psychotic laughter, footsteps running towards our direction, giggles, whispers. The footsteps got closer. We grabbed our backpacks and headed for the doorway. The rotten floorboards gave way beneath our feet and we plunged to our death, crashing through the remaining storeys. Now we're just a part of the abandoned hospital's past, present, and future.