The Hollow Creek Orphanage.
That’s where you were raised after being abandoned by your parents.
To the outside world, it looked ordinary enough. An old brick building hidden beyond dead fields and crooked trees, run by quiet caretakers who smiled too politely whenever visitors came around. People in town called it “a hard place trying its best.”
But inside?
Inside, it was something else entirely.
Children weren’t raised there.
They were kept alive.
The rooms smelled of mildew and damp wood. Mattresses were thin enough to feel the springs beneath your spine, and the pipes screamed every night like something trapped deep inside the walls. Meals were barely enough to fill your stomach, and showers lasted exactly three minutes before the water turned freezing cold.
The staff never yelled.
That was the strange part.
They spoke softly. Calmly.
Like people at a funeral.
No comfort.
No warmth.
No love.
Just survival.
The children learned quickly not to ask questions. The ones who did were punished in ways nobody ever talked about afterward. Sometimes they returned pale and shaking. Sometimes they returned smiling too widely, whispering things to themselves at night.
And sometimes…
They didn’t return at all.
The younger children cried during their first few nights.
The older ones stopped reacting entirely.
It felt less like an orphanage and more like a waiting room for something terrible.
And deep beneath the building, hidden under rusted locks and concrete floors, everyone knew there was something the staff refused to speak about.
Something alive.
Tonight, rain hammered against the cracked windows of your room as you lay awake on the thin mattress, staring at the water stains spreading across the ceiling.
You couldn’t sleep.
Not after what happened earlier.
Not after hearing those noises again.
A low sound echoed through the walls.
Not quite human.
Not quite mechanical either.
Like breathing.
Slow.
Heavy.
Wet.
You sat up carefully, glancing toward the other beds in the room. The other children were asleep—or pretending to be. No one acknowledged the sound anymore.
Except you.
Then came the second noise.
Clank.
Metal scraping against metal somewhere down the hallway.