Daylight barely pierced the dirt caked windows. Saint Mercy Recovery Center had been abandoned after a hurricane flooded the lower floors. Many believed the disaster provided a convenient chance for administration to flee, avoiding charges for the horrific acts rumored to have happened within the dingy walls. Claire had grown up hearing whispers about Saint Mercy. Her parents knew people admitted to the center whose broken bodies were later found in the surrounding woods. Waving her flashlight, she turned the corner and froze. The wheelchair sat motionless in the center of the hallway. Leave, she thought. Should never have come. But the internet loves creepy, and she needed views to pay rent and eat. “Second floor of Saint Mercy. The pediatric wing,” she whispered into her camera, forcing confidence into her voice. Her flashlight trembled across peeling wallpaper decorated with faded cartoon ducks. Pausing, she turned back to the wheelchair. Had it moved? A slow metallic sound echoed down the corridor. “Nobody’s here,” she muttered starting down the hallway. Darkness as thick as bruises filled the corners. Most of the doors hung open, revealing rusted hospital beds and collapsed ceiling panels. Stopping, she lifted her camera. One door remained closed. Room 217. A child’s laughter echoed faintly. She looked down the hallway. Nothing. Then the wheelchair moved. Just a few inches. The right wheel turned slowly, blood rippling outward. She backed away, phone still recording. The laughter came again, closer this time. “Claire?” A little girl’s voice. Claire’s blood turned cold. Nobody knew she was here. The wheelchair suddenly rolled forward. Fast. Its footrests scraped against the flooded floor as it raced toward her. She screamed and slammed herself against the wall as the chair stopped inches away. Something wet dripped from the seat cushion. Water? No. Not water. Hair. Long wet black strands dangled over the armrests. She stumbled backward. The wheelchair jerked violently toward Room 217. The closed door creaked open. She crept after it, struggling to hold her camera steady. Inside, dozens of wheelchairs sat facing the walls. She opened her mouth to scream, but fear consumed them before they left her lungs. Tiny skeletal hands rested on the armrests. The wheelchairs were occupied… by children. Every skull slowly turned toward her at once. Her phone flashlight flickered. And in the center of the room stood a nurse in a mold-covered uniform, her face hidden behind soaked bandages. “You left them,” the nurse whispered. The wheelchairs began to move. One by one. Rolling toward Claire. Her phone hit the flooded floor as she ran, splashing through black water while wheels squealed behind her. But the hallway no longer led to the exit. Only walls with peeling paint. And more wheelchairs. More children laughing in the dark. Days later, police found her phone near the hospital entrance. The final video was corrupted by static, but one frame remained perfectly clear. A wheelchair with Claire sitting motionless in it, smiling at the camera surrounded by children.

Moonlight seeps through the cracked and blackened roof beams. Tendrils of mist curl around empty doorframes, swirling along the debris-cluttered floors. Black mould oozes down damp-stained walls. A waft of fetid air lifts dust and chips of soggy plaster. A voice echoes down the empty hallways, chanting in a language that hurts to hear––too many consonants, words chewed and splintered. A hooded figure, its face lost in shadow, kneels in a sacred circle, surrounded by flickering black candles. It took the figure a long time to find this place. A lot of time, money, and threats. It’s well hidden. A secret place. Where the innocent were broken. The powerless were used, then discarded and forgotten. The hooded figure chants louder. A wind swells through the burned-out building, rising into a gale that howls down the empty hallways, shoving an abandoned wheelchair ahead of it with a rusty, screaming shriek. Long ago, a fire was started to bury what happened here. To erase it. To make forgetting easier. The flames of the black candles gutter and dim as the air is sucked from the room in a great, shuddering gasp. Then the figure screams the final words, its voice joined by a host of unseen voices. Air rushes back in a swirling vortex, sending towering columns of fire through the gaps in the roof. Someone always remembers. The hooded figure remembers. In the centre of the circle, an old photograph dances in the swirling air. A family of two. Father and daughter. The centre of each other’s world. The hooded figure catches the photograph, stroking a gentle finger over the face of the father before closing her hand around it, as a hand settles softly on her shoulder. A thin hand. Hard. Fleshless––but gentle. The hooded figure doesn’t look back, but she draws strength from the touch. She lifts her head and listens. From all around, soft, dragging footsteps approach. Shadows move towards the candlelight, gathering in the corners––the owners of those shuffling steps. The swirling air stills. Flames gutter out. Then––silence, heavy as a shroud. The hooded figure takes one last look at the photograph before slipping it into a pocket. Then she begins to move. Leading the army of the lost and forgotten to find those responsible and remind them. Someone always remembers.

The ear-splitting whine of speakers squealed around town, sending anyone under twenty running for the safety of their homes. Blood seeping slowly from their ears. Drip Drip Drip 5 pm on a Friday was always the same, 6 pm was the time limit for under thirty and 7 pm for anyone under the age of forty. We all knew the drill: retreat to our shielded homes, log in, and the shields would activate, and the noise would blissfully stop. If you weren’t locked in your home, you would suffer. Debilitating ringing in your ears, followed by increased heart rate, and blood oozing from your ears, eyes, and nose. Every orifice is pulling at you to make it stop until permanent deafness—a quiet you long for but a silence you dread. I had been born deaf, so for me, the obedience noise never bothered me. I only realised it was there when red droplets began to creep down my face, staining my skin as they went. Tonight, as the streets emptied like rats deserting a sinking ship, I wondered. As the doors slammed, as the lights flicked off one by one, the town felt hollowed out. I stepped forward, my soft ballet shoes whispering over the pavement, feeling the vibration beneath my feet, the only hint that the noise was still there. The air shimmered in anticipation as I crossed the street through the school gates. The old, rusted gate creaked at my touch. The halls stretched open, long and pale beneath the flickering fluorescent lights. Lockers stood open like broken teeth. I drifted past classrooms with chairs that were knocked over, long-forgotten school bags spilling their contents like teenagers' secrets. Dust danced lazily through shafts of light, turning the air into a mystical playground. For a moment, it felt peaceful. Like the world had somehow corrected itself. Skipping down the empty street behind the school, I ambled into a small shop, its door left wide as if someone had simply been plucked from the Earth. Inside, colour exploded, the shelves were stacked with rows upon rows of biscuits, the glossy wrappers reflecting the light from every angle. My Snickers sat untouched, perfectly aligned, the rich, sweet promise was absurd in this abandoned world. Picking up just one, I took a bite. The chocolate melted instantly, the combination of sugar and cocoa exploded across my tongue. It should have felt wrong. But it didn’t. I moved deeper through the shop, trailing my fingers across jars and tins, everything just left behind. By the time I reached the hospital, stars had started to appear in the nights sky. The automatic doors hid monitors that blinked steadily, green lines crawling across screens that no one watched. Even here, they had run. A single wheelchair sat abandoned in the hallway I stood still, letting the emptiness engulf me. The world hadn’t ended. It had just… paused until 9 am.