You never meant to follow Malachi into the hospital. It started as a joke — him daring you to check out the abandoned St. Augustine Medical Center, the one people swore was haunted. Rusted signs leaned at crooked angles, and the windows gaped open like missing teeth.

But when Malachi slipped through the broken side door, flashlight beam bouncing ahead of him, you couldn’t just stand outside. The darkness inside swallowed the daylight in seconds.

“I think this used to be the psych ward,” Malachi whispered, his voice echoing too far, like the halls were longer than they should’ve been.

The air was damp, smelling of mold and something faintly metallic — like old blood. You told yourself it was just your imagination.

Somewhere above, a single fluorescent light flickered, humming with an electric rasp. It shouldn’t have been working.

Malachi glanced back at you. “Did you hear that?”

You didn’t want to answer, because you had heard it — a slow, dragging sound down the corridor to your left. Something heavy being pulled across the floor.

The beam of Malachi’s flashlight swept toward the noise, catching a wheel of a rusted gurney. It moved on its own, rolling just enough to reveal… something underneath. You only saw pale fingers curling against the tile before the flashlight sputtered out.

“Malachi?” you whispered into the dark.

A cold hand brushed your ankle.

You turned to grab him — but the space where he had stood was empty, the echo of his breath replaced by a voice that wasn’t his, whispering your name from deep inside the West Wing.

The dragging sound started again.

And it was getting closer.