By Avery, TIWP Student

Laughter filled the car as we pulled up in front of the enormous building. It stood behind a row of dead trees, its windows shattered and its walls covered in ivy. A rusted metal sign hung crookedly above the entrance. Newday Psychiatric Hospital.

“Well,” Sophia said, leaning forward between the seats. “This sure is welcoming.”

I stared up at the building. Nausea knotted in my stomach, and my white knuckles gripped the steering wheel hard.

“Come on, guys!” Noah said. He grinned through the cheap layer of white face paint, the jagged black triangles around his eyes crinkling as he stepped out of the car. “We didn’t drive forty minutes for nothing.”

“You’re the one who wanted to come here,” Emma reminded him.

“Right, that’s why I’m going inside.”

“Idiot,” I muttered, grabbing my phone.

There were six of us: me, Noah, Alice, Sophia, Lander, and Emma. We’d been planning this trip for almost two weeks after Noah found an online forum about the abandoned hospital. After all, we needed something scary to do on Halloween, and naturally Noah thought it would be a brilliant idea to investigate. Apparently, it had closed sometime in the late eighties after an incident involving several missing patients. We couldn’t find any information on exactly what happened. I lagged behind the rest of the group, my hands buried deep in my pockets. We made our way toward the entrance; they were laughing and shoving each other as Lander filmed everything.

“Welcome to our final resting place,” he announced dramatically.

Noah noticed me walking behind and came over, clasping a hand on my shoulder.

“You scared or something?”

“No, what?” I replied, rolling my eyes.

“Come on, man. Don’t be such a wuss,” he laughed, grabbing the cuff of my sweatshirt and dragging me toward the others.

Noah pushed against the enormous front doors. They resisted, but finally yielded with a heavy groan. Inside, the air smelled damp and stale. Our phone flashlights illuminated a dusty reception desk, overturned chairs, and flaky wallpaper, revealing the mold that coated the walls.

“Okay, this is actually kind of cool,” Alice whispered.

“Kind of disgusting,” Sophia corrected, burying her face into the fabric of her costume. We spent the next twenty minutes exploring the ground floor. We found old medical equipment, broken furniture, and a hallway lined with doors. Noah insisted on opening every single one.

“Look!” he shouted from one of the rooms. “There’s still a bed in here!”

“Congrats,” Lander called back. For a while, it was actually fun. Then Alice stopped walking.

“Guys?” We turned around.

“What?”

She pointed toward the end of the hallway.

“Was that door open before?”

We followed her gaze. At the very end stood a white door, slightly ajar.

I shrugged. “I mean, probably.”

“I swear I remember it being closed.”

“Alice, it’s an abandoned hospital. Doors open.”

She didn’t look convinced, but Noah was already walking toward it.

“Let’s see what’s inside.”

He pushed it open. The room was empty except for a single wheelchair in the middle. It was facing the wall.

“That’s certainly not a bed,” Sophia said. Lander started filming.

“Okay, I’m officially leaving if that thing moves.”

“You’re all such babies,” Noah laughed.

He grabbed the wheelchair handles and spun it around. Nothing happened. We stared at it for a while, and eventually moved on. But as we walked away, I glanced back.

The wheelchair was facing the wall again. I stopped.

“Guys?” Nobody heard me. I looked at it for another second before hurrying after them. I decided not to say anything. It was probably nothing.

We found the staircase a few minutes later.

A faded sign above it read: Second floor: Patient Rooms

“Oh hell no,” Alice said.

“Come on,” Noah pleaded. “Didn’t you hear about the patients?” “That’s literally why we’re here.”

I groaned, but we all followed him up the stairs. The second floor felt colder than the first. The hallway stretched farther than I expected, with identical doors on either side. The numbers on the doors had chipped away. Lander pointed his camera down the hallway. He motioned for us to stop. “Listen.” We all went quiet. Somewhere down the hallway, something scraped against the floor. Slowly. Then stopped. “Probably a rat,” Noah whispered. Alice shot him a filthy look, her eyebrows knitting together so hard that her painted cat-eye makeup twisted into an aggressive scowl.

“That was not a rat.” We stood there for a moment before Noah finally broke the silence.

“Alright, I say we just check it out.” He started walking. The rest of us followed, although nobody seemed particularly eager anymore. As we reached the end of the hallway, I noticed something on the wall. A photograph, displaying six people standing outside the hospital. Five doctors and one patient. The photograph was yellowed and covered in dust. Faded words were written underneath it. “That’s weird,” I said. Lander leaned closer. Before anyone could move, a loud bang echoed from somewhere behind us. Emma screamed. We all spun around.

At the other end of the hallway, one of the doors was slowly swinging shut. Nobody was standing near it.

“Nope,” Sophia said, her voice shaking. “We’re leaving.” For once, nobody argued. We sprinted back down the hallway, sliding down the staircase. Suddenly, a burst of static filled the hallway. We stopped. A quiet, distorted sound came through the intercom. Nobody moved. Then, from somewhere behind us, came the sound of footsteps. We could hear them getting closer. “RUN!” Noah shouted. We bolted. I could hear everyone screaming and running behind me. My heart was pounding so hard I could barely think. The front entrance was just ahead.

“Come on!” Lander yelled. We burst through the doors and stumbled onto the grass outside. For a moment, nobody spoke. We just stood there, gasping for air. Then Sophia started laughing. It was nervous laughter, the kind that happens when you’re too scared to do anything else. “Not funny,” Emma said. “Okay,” Noah replied, trying to catch his breath. “Everyone here?”

Lander. Alice. Sophia. Emma. Noah. I looked around. Something felt wrong.

“Wait.”

Everyone turned toward me. I counted again. And again. My stomach dropped.

“Where’s Alice?” Nobody answered. Noah looked toward the entrance.

“She’s probably behind us.”

But she wasn’t. We called her name. Nothing. We checked our phones. Nothing.

Then Noah tried calling her. Through the broken windows, we heard a phone ringing. We all froze. It was coming from the second floor. And then, just as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Emma began crying.

“We’ve got to go back.”

“We can’t,” Noah whispered.

“But she’s still in there!” Noah stared at the entrance. For the first time that night, he looked genuinely terrified. Then my phone buzzed. It was a message from Alice. I opened it:

Don’t let it out.

And then, from inside the asylum, something knocked on the rotting doors.