The air around the sanitarium felt wrong, like the atmosphere shifted when they approached its cracked stone facade. It smelled of mildew and something ancient, long buried beneath layers of dust and decay. Jake shuddered, feeling the cold bite of fear press into his bones. The lights they'd seen flickering moments ago were gone now, as if swallowed by the darkness within the walls.
Stacey hesitated at the entrance, staring up at the massive iron doors that hung crookedly on their hinges. Faded letters above the archway read: *Greystone Sanitarium for the Mentally Unfit.* She swallowed hard, trying to steady her nerves, but every instinct screamed for her to turn back.
"We… we can't stay out here," Jake stammered. His voice was brittle, hollow from the terror that hadn't yet left him. "That thing… it's still out there."
Tina stepped forward, her breath ragged. Blood still trickled down her arm from the cuts on her hand. She wiped it on her jeans, a grim look on her face. "Better inside than out. Whatever that thing was, it doesn't seem like it's just going to leave us alone."
The wind picked up again, howling through the trees, and Stacey could've sworn she heard it — a growl, distant but unmistakable. She felt a surge of panic, and before she could think better of it, she grabbed the rusted handle and pulled the heavy door open.
The smell hit them like a wall — rot and damp earth mixed with something else, something vile. Inside, the sanitarium was a husk of its former self. The peeling wallpaper was stained with water and grime, the floors cracked and broken from years of neglect. But it wasn't just age that had taken its toll. There were deep gouges in the walls, claw marks that seemed to be scratched by something more than human. The shadows hung thick in the air, pooling in the corners of the room like ink.
Tina's flashlight cut through the gloom, revealing more of the eerie devastation. "What the hell happened in here?" she muttered, stepping over the remnants of what looked like an old hospital gurney.
Stacey didn't answer. Her eyes were drawn to the far end of the room, where a series of old operating tables stood covered in grimy sheets. Something about the place made her skin crawl. The silence pressed in on them, suffocating, like the building itself was holding its breath.
"Let's find someplace to hide," she said finally. "We'll wait it out until daylight and then—"
A loud crash came from the hallway to their right, followed by the unmistakable sound of something scraping against the floor. They all froze, hearts hammering.
Jake's eyes went wide. "What was that?"
The flashlight beam shook in Tina's trembling hands, the light bouncing off the walls as they all stared into the hallway. For a moment, it seemed like nothing more than an empty corridor.
Then, something moved.
It was subtle at first, just a shift in the shadows. But then it became clearer — a figure slowly emerged from the darkness, hunched and distorted. Its body was gaunt, limbs bent at unnatural angles, and its face… its face was stretched into a grotesque, permanent grin, the skin pulled tight over bone.
Its eyes, black and hollow, locked onto them.
"Get back," Tina whispered, stepping in front of Stacey and Jake. But there was nowhere to go.
The creature let out a low hiss, the sound like nails on a chalkboard, and began crawling toward them on all fours, its long fingers digging into the floor with every movement.
Stacey took a step back, her heart racing, but her foot caught on something, and she stumbled. She looked down — her heel had hit an old chain, one that was bolted into the floor. As she traced the length of it with her eyes, she saw that it wasn't just a chain. There were more of them, dozens, all leading toward a door that sat ajar in the far corner of the room.
"What is this place?" she breathed, her voice trembling.
The creature was getting closer now, its breath hot and foul, like it had been trapped inside something long dead. Tina waved her flashlight at it, but the creature didn't flinch.
"Run!" Jake screamed, and the sound broke the spell that had frozen them in place.
Stacey and Jake bolted toward the door with the chains. Tina, in a panic, grabbed a piece of debris from the floor and threw it at the creature. It didn't slow it down, but it gave her a split second to dash after the others.
They slipped through the door just as the creature lunged, its claws slamming into the wood with a thunderous crack. Stacey barely had time to push the door closed before it started pounding against it from the other side. She found a rusted metal bar on the floor and shoved it through the handles, bracing it shut.
Panting, the three of them backed away from the door. The room they found themselves in was dimly lit by a single bulb that hung from the ceiling, swaying slightly. This room was different from the rest of the sanitarium. It looked almost… pristine. The walls were lined with shelves filled with strange objects — jars of preserved organs, tools that looked like they belonged in a torture chamber, and files, hundreds of them, stacked neatly along one wall.
Tina moved toward the shelves, picking up one of the files. Her hands shook as she flipped it open, and she gasped. "These are… experiments."
Stacey looked over her shoulder, her skin crawling. "What do you mean, experiments?"
"They were… experimenting on the patients here," Tina whispered, her voice low. She held up the file, showing Stacey the notes scribbled in the margins. "They were trying to… alter them. Turn them into something else."
"Something like that thing out there?" Jake asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Tina nodded slowly, her face pale. "I think… I think there were more."
Before anyone could say anything else, the sound of scratching echoed through the walls. But this time, it wasn't coming from the door. It was coming from below.
Jake's eyes darted to the floor, where he noticed a series of metal grates embedded in the tile. The sound was growing louder, the scraping becoming more frantic.
Stacey grabbed Tina's arm. "We have to get out of here. Now."
But as they turned toward the other exit, the grates burst open, and hands — dozens of them, pale and skeletal — clawed their way out from beneath the floor. Faces followed, twisted and screaming, their mouths open in silent agony.
The experiments had woken up.
The creatures erupted from the floor like rotting flowers, their limbs twisted and broken, their skin stretched thin over sharp bones. They scrambled toward the group with an unnatural hunger, their hollow eyes fixated on the living.
Stacey screamed, grabbing a chair and throwing it at the nearest creature. It didn't slow them down. Jake backed against the far wall, his chest heaving as terror gripped him.
Tina grabbed a broken metal pipe from the ground and swung it wildly. The impact sent one of the creatures sprawling, but it clawed its way back up almost immediately, its jaw hanging loosely, a string of dark saliva dribbling down its chin.
"We can't fight them!" Stacey yelled, her voice raw with panic.
"Upstairs!" Tina shouted, pointing toward a stairwell on the far side of the room.
Without hesitation, they bolted for the stairs, the sounds of the creatures' nails scraping across the floor chasing them as they ascended into the dark unknown, hoping desperately that whatever was waiting above wasn't worse than what they were leaving behind.