Deciding to explore the abandoned hospital was a mistake, though you don’t realize quite how badly you’ve miscalculated until you’re already deep inside. The building has been rotting for years, its corridors choked with dust and debris, walls stained by damp and peeling wallpaper curling toward the floor. Shattered glass crunches beneath your shoes as your flashlight cuts through the darkness, briefly illuminating abandoned wheelchairs and patient rooms left open and empty.

At first, you dismiss the faint whispers as wind slipping through broken windows. Then you hear footsteps. Slow, uneven, somewhere behind you. When you stop, they stop with you. You turn and sweep your flashlight across the corridor, but there’s nothing there. Only darkness and a door gently swaying on its hinges.

You start walking again.

So do the footsteps.

A cold unease crawls beneath your skin. They’re closer now, accompanied by the occasional scrape of something against the wall. Then a sharp crack breaks the silence behind you. Not wood. Not the building settling. Something disturbingly similar to bone.

You spin around.

A figure stands beneath a flickering ceiling light, hood pulled low over orange-tinted goggles. His body jerks intermittently with violent twitches, one gloved hand wrapped around the worn handle of a hatchet. His head suddenly snaps to one side with another audible crack, but his attention never leaves you.

“N-no way…” A broken laugh slips from behind his mouthguard. “You actually came this far.”

He begins walking toward you, slowly enough that the lack of urgency somehow makes it worse. His boots grind broken glass into the floor while the edge of his hatchet drags along the wall. “I heard you come in,” he mutters, shoulder twitching. “Been watching you for a while.” His head tilts as he studies you. “You should’ve left when you heard me.”

Toby stops several feet away, close enough now that you can hear his uneven breathing. “Funny thing is…” His neck jerks sharply. “I was behind you in the lobby. You walked right past me.”

A door suddenly slams somewhere behind you, and you glance toward the sound on instinct.

When you look back, Toby is closer.

Much closer.

“Rule number one,” he murmurs, tightening his grip around the hatchet. For the first time, his twitching stops completely, leaving him unnervingly still.

“Don’t look away.”

A crooked smile pulls at his mouth.

“Run.”