The silence after the last flicker of the lights is worse than the sounds.
In the darkness, my ears feel sharper, hungrier. I can hear my own pulse beating inside my throat, the quiet clicking of the cooling vents, and somewhere far down the corridor… a dragging sound.
Not footsteps.
Not shoes.
Something softer. Something that doesn't lift its weight fully off the floor.
I force myself to breathe. I've been a nurse long enough to know that panic makes the world tilt faster. But tonight—no, right now—panic feels like the only thing keeping me anchored to something real.
The light above me flickers one more time, like a dying breath… and then it goes out completely.
For a moment, I stand drenched in darkness.
Then my eyes begin to adjust.
And that's when I realize the hallway is wrong.
At first it's small things: the paint on the walls is bubbled and peeling. The floor tiles look cracked at the edges. The bulletin board that usually hangs beside the medication room is gone, replaced by a rusted fire safety box. The air smells different too—no longer sterile with disinfectant but thick with dust, mold, and something metallic.
Something like dried blood.
I step backward, and the sound beneath my shoe is wrong. No longer the firm polished hospital floor—more like soft grit. Dust. Sand.
"What the hell…" I whisper.
But even my voice sounds swallowed by the hallway, like the walls ate the sound.
Another flicker.
Not from above.
From the rooms.
Room 204 on my left spits out a weak pulse of yellow light, like a candle hidden deep inside, and then it dies too. The window on the door is fogged from the inside… and something brushes against it.
A silhouette.
A hand.
No—wrong. Not a hand. The fingers are too long. Too thin. They taper into needle-like points. They slide down the fogged glass slowly, leaving streaks like scratches.
I stumble back… and bump into a wall.
Except it isn't the wall that should be behind me.
The layout has changed.
My stomach drops. I was standing in the middle of a straight corridor a moment ago, but now the hallway bends sharply to the right. The walls are narrower. The ceiling feels lower, like it's pressing down on me.
This is not my hospital.
This is—
My throat locks.
I know this place.
Not from memory.
From nightmares.
From the other side.
The Boundary Land.
"No. No, no, no…"
The dragging sound returns—closer this time. It scrapes along the floor like fabric soaked in something heavy.
I try to run.
But the moment I turn the corner, the world shifts again—violently, without warning.
The ceiling stretches upward in a long, rippling motion, like skin being peeled back. The fluorescent lights embedded in it warp and twist, stretching into long serpentine shapes, then snapping back into the dark as if swallowed.
The floor buckles beneath my feet.
The walls pulse once—like a heartbeat.
And then the hospital collapses inward.
The hallway convulses, folds, and reshapes itself like wet paper sinking in water. Doors melt into the walls. Walls split open into shadowed alcoves. The air hums with a low, throbbing vibration that vibrates in my bones.
I squeeze my eyes shut.
When I open them, the transformation is complete.
The hospital is gone.
The building around me is… dead.
An abandoned husk—broken windows patched with wooden boards, ceiling tiles missing or hanging by threads of rusted metal, dark stains smeared across the floor in long dried trails. Some rooms are hollowed out shells. Others are filled with shattered beds, broken IV poles, and rust-colored splashes across the walls.
The temperature drops enough for my breath to show in the air.
My hands tremble.
"I'm back," I whisper, voice cracking.
"Oh God… I'm back."
The Boundary Land.
The destroyed hospital.
The place I escaped—barely, desperately, breathlessly.
He brought me back.
A sharp buzz of static tears through the hallway's silence. I spin around. Behind me, an old hospital intercom crackles to life, hanging crooked from the ceiling by a few frayed wires.
A voice slips through.
Not loud.
Not clear.
But unmistakable.
"Jenny…"
My blood turns to ice.
His voice.
My ghost husband.
I want to run, but my legs lock. My breath becomes shallow and quick. Every instinct in my body screams the truth:
I am not just in an abandoned hospital.
I am inside his world again.
My ghost husband's realm.
The walls groan as if responding to him, bending inward just slightly, like the building itself is listening for my reaction.
The dragging sound returns.
Closer.
Too close.
I press my back against the ruined wall, sliding downward until I'm crouched on the cold floor. I curl my hands into fists and try to force my breath into my lungs.
I escaped him.
I built a life.
A job.
A home.
A child.
A second chance.
And now he's ripping it all away.
A soft tap-tap-tap echoes down the dark corridor.
Not footsteps.
Knuckles.
Like someone knocking on the walls as they walk past.
Finding me.
Following me.
Claiming me.
"I'm not yours…" I whisper.
The intercom cracks again. Static spits sparks. His voice slides through like a whisper pressed directly against my ear.
"You came back."
"I didn't!" I shout, my voice shaking.
The intercom pops.
"You always belonged here," he murmurs. "You walked too far. But everything finds its way home."
I choke on air.
Home.
This place—this nightmare—is what he calls home.
"No… no, this isn't real," I whisper, shaking my head violently. "This isn't real."
But the floor beneath me feels real.
The cold against my skin feels real.
The stench of mold and rot is painfully real.
And the dragging sound is now only a few feet away.
I force myself to stand. My legs wobble. My heart slams hard inside my chest.
I step backward.
The hallway stretches before me—darker, narrower, endless.
But behind me…
Something moves.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
Purposefully.
I turn—
There is nothing there.
But the drag marks on the floor end right at my feet.
And the wall behind me has a fresh, long streak—
As if something just brushed against it.
Something invisible.
Or something faster than my eyes.
"No," I choke. "Please… I need to go back. My daughter—"
The intercom cuts me off with a violent squeal.
And then:
"You won't be needing her anymore."
My scream tears out of my throat before I can stop it.
I run.
I don't care where the hallway leads. I don't care what's waiting. I sprint through the ruined corridor, dodging debris, slipping on dust, pushing past broken wheelchairs and collapsed ceiling tiles.
Behind me, something slams against the floor.
Once.
Twice.
Then it begins to follow.
Dragging.
Scraping.
Pursuing.
I don't look back. I can't.
Because I already know who is coming.
And I already know—
The hospital has fully transformed.
And so has my fate.
---