I work for a commercial cleaning company who specializes in cleaning run down, abandoned buildings and getting them ready for refurbishment. We were hired to clean out an old hospital that had been abandoned for some 20 odd years. My team, of which there were three of us, was assigned to the "Behavioral Health Unit" or more simply, the psych ward. While I was clearing out rooms of dusty, old linens and matress pads I found an old marble journal tucked under one of the pads. I opened it up and flipped through quickly and saw that it was about half filled with journal entries. I thought it was pretty cool so I slid it into my back pocket for so I could read it later and went back to work. I totally forgot about it until I got into the car to drive home.

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When I got home I decided to read it and what I found inside was terrifying, mostly because of the similarities between what was in the journal and what we had cleaned up earlier today. I'll go over the connections I found between the journal and what I saw today later but before that let me share the story. I'm going to try and stay as true to the writing in the journal as possible. So that means some things might be misspelled and some grammar might not be perfect, if it's underlined on the page, I'll underline it here, written in all caps? I'll type it in all caps. So let's get started.

DAY 1 -12pm

The ER nurse lied to me. She said I could leave after 3 days. The doctor here said SHE decides when I leave. She said I won’t be out in 3 days.

I don’t want to be here.

I don’t belong here.

DAY 2 - 11am

I’ve been here 24 hours. I don’t want to be here. I don’t belong here. They do a “patient check” every 15 minutes. If you’re in your room they knock loudly on the door. They don’t care about the time. I can’t sleep. They gave me my meds and say they have mood stabilizers for me tonight.

I miss Thea

I miss my bed

This is my world now

DAY 3 - 11am

It’s been 42 hours. I’m feeling a little better. I broke down last night. I played some monopoly earlier today, it was fun.

After I broke down I was given meds to calm me down. I laughed for the first time since coming here.

DAY 5

I’m OK

I’ll be OK

DAY 7

It’s time to go home.

They won’t let me leave. I don’t know why. I ask and they ignore me. I just want to go home.

DAY 10

There was a huge boom from outside. None of the nurses reacted, they just carried on like normal. All I can see out the window is black smoke.

DAY 14

We found a nurse in the hallway this morning. He was dead. We’ve been seeing less and less each day but since we found him, we haven’t seen anyone else.

DAY 27

There hasn’t been a single nurse or doctor or security or anyone at all since we found the nurse in the hallway. The door knocking hasn’t stopped though. Every 15 minutes, if a room door is closed, it will knock. Food still shows up. Meds still show up in the medicine window.

DAY 28

Gerald tried to jump through the window at the nurse station. Something we couldn’t see stopped him and dragged him back out. He was dragged all the way to the “quiet room” . We hesitantly followed and watched as he was hauled up onto the slab bed. We watched the straps wrap themselves around him and tie him down. Then the room door slammed shut.

That was this morning. It’s almost lights out. We can still hear him screaming. Poor guy. I guess security is still here?

DAY 32

It’s been over a month. We put the body of the nurse in Gerald’s room, since he doesn’t need it anymore. Gerald is still strapped down in the quiet room. Still screaming. I don’t know how.

Out the window is just smoke. Large, roiling, jet-black columns of smoke, painting the sky a large swathe of uncolor. We’re still fed. Don’t know where it comes from, but it always shows up at the end of the hallway and wheels itself down to us.

DAY ???

It’s been a while. A lot has happened. A lot of the lights have stopped working. The knocking never does. Some of the windows have cracks in them. Don’t know how. None of us could even scratch them. There is no more outside. It’s just black. The smoke took over the sky weeks ago? I’m really not sure about the time. Haven’t seen natural light since. We only know days because the lights, what few we have left, dim for a bit every few hours or so. The water stopped getting hot a few days ago. With the lights, the windows, and now the water, it’s almost like this place is dying. Gerald stopped screaming eventually. Still strapped down. We can still see him moving from time to time so we know he’s still alive. Don’t know how he survives, but I do know that none of us want to piss off whatever thing he did.

DAY I DON’T KNOW

We have to get out of here. Doris went into her room and the door closed behind her. It wouldn’t open. Something unseen dragged her to the bed and held her there. We watched as the bed then made itself with her in it. That wouldn’t have been that bad except that when it was done Doris was just a red smear between the sheets and the bed. There’s not even a bulge where her body is. She’s just gone. The door has stayed closed ever since. No one is brave enough to go into their rooms now. We’re all just staying in the day room now.

BEEN A FEW DAYS

I lost this book for a bit. It’s not that strange, stuff sometimes goes missing here. We just assume the “housekeepers” got it. The strange part is that I found it in Gerald’s room, next to the body of the nurse. Now just a semi-wet pile of meat and bones. No idea why that room won’t clean itself. We’ve lost a couple other folks to “housekeeping”. That’s what we call what happened to Doris. Maybe we’ll try and look in Gerald’s room for more stuff we lost.

DAY AFTER LAST ENTRY

It was a bad idea. The nurse wasn’t dead. I don’t know how it couldn’t be. It was LITERALLY just a pile of meat and bones. And yet.

We were in Gerald’s room looking for lost stuff. Ron bumped into the nurse’s body and it jumped at him. It dug its bone fingers into his neck. A wet squelching noise accompanying its every movement. Ron’s strangled, gurgled scream quickly stopped. I’m ashamed to say we ran. We left him there. With the nurse-thing still digging away at his neck. We closed and barricaded the door.

I DON’T KNOW ANYMORE

It’s been a few days. I can still hear the nurse-thing moving around in Gerald’s room. Every now and then we hear a wet slap against the door. The flies are terrible. Clarke got taken by housekeeping. A window broke out of nowhere. It just shattered. Some smoke came in. Just a little. Like a creeping miasma, it slithered its way across the ceiling and just sat there. We used a table to block the window and keep any more smoke from getting in. Now we’re just watching it.

WHO CARES

WE NEED TO LEAVE

Jenny decided to touch the smoke. It grabbed her. Like a snake, a thin trail came out and coiled itself around her outstretched arm and down her body and dragged her into itself. It’s unthinkable how such little smoke consumed someone whole. I say consumed because that’s what it did. It ate her. Not all at once, and not quickly. We tried to save her. Tried to drag her back down to us. Even with all of us pulling we couldn’t get her to budge. I think I heard something of hers pop or break or dislocate when we were pulling. But we couldn’t save her. So we had to watch. We had to watch as it slowly pulled her into itself. There was no noise. Except for Jenny’s screeches and screams. But it did eat her. Eventually. I don’t think I’ll ever forget her screams.

We stay away from it now. It stays on the ceiling, moving around, but never comes down.

We’re now living in fear of yet another unexplainable thing.

TOO LONG

The nurse - No idea, was he ever dead? Was he even human??

Gerald - Not dead somehow. Still strapped down.

Doris - Housekeeping

Aspen - Housekeeping

Donald - Housekeeping

Ron - The nurse-thing

Jenny - Eaten by the smoke

Danielle - Eaten by the smoke

WE’RE LEAVING

We’ve lost too many people just sitting here trying to survive.

We’ll unblock the window and hop out, there’s a small landing with an access hatch about half a story below. I’m leaving this book here as a way to ensure we are not forgotten.

If you find this, I didn’t live to come back for it.

GOODBYE

NOTE:

THIS JOURNAL WAS FOUND IN THE ROOM OF A

MENTAL PATIENT WHO JUMPED OUT OF HIS

WINDOW TO HIS

DEATH.

I CAME BACK

I didn’t write that. I don’t know who did it but it wasn’t me. I found this journal; right where I left it. It’s just me now. We didn’t even make it out of the hospital. I came back because I’d rather die here where I’m at least taken care of.

We were exploring the hospital for about a week, I would say. This place hasn’t changed much. The black smoke is still there. It moves around the ceiling, following me. I feel like it’s watching me. Like a predator watching its prey. Not actively hunting but just waiting for any little slip up so it can bag itself an easy meal. It won’t be from me.

I guess I should explain what happened…and how everyone died.

When we left there were still six of us.

Me

Jule

Richard

Alberto

Gwen

Ray

I don’t know what we expected to find when we left but there was no way for us to guess what we saw.

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Narrator note: The entire next page is fully scribbled out. I'll put a link to it in the comments

JUST WOKE UP FROM A NAP

Something more is going on. I took a nap after writing the last page. When I woke up I saw it was completely scribbled out. I didn’t do that. I guess something didn’t like what I had to say. I can’t remember what I wrote, honestly. I can’t really remember most of yesterday, This place hurts to be in. Hurts to think about. It just hurts. Good news though, the food still shows up.

IT’S BEEN TWO DAYS

I guess I’ll try again to write down what happened when I left.

Outside the window was a small drop down to an access hatch. We quickly filed out and fell down. I couldn’t help but notice no more smoke made its way through the window. Even now, sitting here writing this, I don’t have the window blocked. It doesn’t make much of a difference if I’m honest. There is no weather. No wind. Everything is still. I don’t hear any animals or bugs. No cars, no people, nothing. Just silence. The world is empty.

BACK TO WHAT HAPPENED

We hopped down to the access hatch. We managed to open it and dropped down into the floor below. I’d tell you what floor number but I honestly don’t know. When we hopped down, we were in a hallway. Long and semi lit. I guess the rest of the hospital was falling apart, just like our unit. Half of the lights were either flickering dimly or just out. Still enough light to see where we were going though. The hallway had elevators on one side, and a few rooms on the other. The rooms were labeled “Radiology” 1, 2, 3 and so on. Throughout the entire hall was a low humming and beeping, the sound of medical equipment left on. Being all too familiar with house cleaning, we didn’t dare go into any of the rooms. Gwen wanted to take the elevator but the rest of us said no, there’s no telling what horror that would have led to.

Once we got our bearings, we chose a direction and started walking. It was dark, we could barely see the floor. I guess that’s why we didn’t notice at first. When we did notice, we were too terrified to move. We had been walking maybe 10 minutes, the hallway just went on and on. Every now and then we would pass a sign with an arrow and the word “Visitation” on it pointing the way we were going. Occasionally we would come to large intersections with multiple hallways leading off. It was in one of these intersections we noticed what was around us. All over the walls were dark stains, the color of dried blood. Everywhere on the floor, we found wet piles of rotting meat and bone. Like our nurse-thing. It’s amazing how we didn’t smell it at first, but once we noticed, it was all we could smell. It was horrible. Just thinking about it makes me want to puke, even now.

I HAD TO GO THROW UP

I caught a whiff of the smell, I don't want to think about where it came from.

RICHARD AND JULE

We were stood in the intersection, surrounded by potential monsters. We had no idea how long these things could last like they were. Hell, they were literally half rotted. Once we found our nerves we decided to move on. It’s honestly a miracle we hadn’t bumped into a pile before then. Our luck couldn’t last forever though. In the dark confines of a particularly tight hallway, Richard lost his balance and ended up stepping on a meat pile. It instantly rose up and swallowed him. More an amorphous blob of meat and bone than anything resembling the human form. His scream was quick but loud. Loud enough to wake the dead.

Unfortunately I don’t say that as an expression. Apparently noise also sets them off. 2 more of the meat blobs suddenly launched themselves at the closest person. Jule was gone in an instant. The blobs fully enclosing her before she could even scream. Richard was a bit slower. We watched as whatever bones the blob had forced their way into and through him. A long bone through his neck. What looked like maybe fingers digging into his gut. A couple ribs into his thigh. On and on. We watched in horror for what felt like hours, too scared to move. When he finally stopped moving, we managed to collect our senses and run.

GWEN

A few days later we had moved a few floors down via the staircase. We were never able to take just one the entire way. There was always a blockage forcing us out into the hospital proper. Through more halls and rooms we weren’t sure we would make it out of.

Gwen was leading us through a hall. She took a turn and all we heard was the faintest squeak and then nothing. We waited around the corner for a while before carefully peeking our heads out. About a foot from where the wall turns was a massive wall of the black smoke. Floor to ceiling, wall to wall, there was no way through. Gwen must have walked right into it. Gone before she even realized it. Poor girl.

RAY

Ray had the worst fate of anyone, except maybe Gerald. Ray was leading the remains of our group, just Alberto, myself, and Ray, through the kitchen. This was about a day after Gwen. As we were walking through the kitchen, past stoves and burners and rotten food, Ray saw something on the counter, I still don’t know what, and reached for it. His hand was cut in half. All four fingers gone at the knuckles. Next, the skin on his arm was peeled off, like skin on a fish. He watched his arm get sliced into small sections, unable to move. Alberto and I tried pulling him away but we couldn’t.

After his arm, Ray was haphazardly thrown onto the counter and the rest of his body was cut up. Prepared, like meat at a butcher shop. I saw a few pieces get flung into a pot on the stove before Alberto and I ran away while the cooks went to work on the rest of Ray.

I skipped my meals the next few days after I got back, just in case.

ALBERTO

Alberto was just unlucky. After what happened to Ray, we decided to just go back to our unit. It was all too much. Alberto and I quickly backtracked. A few days later we found a stairwell that said “To BHU/Psych” we were almost back.

Running up the stairs, Alberto didn’t notice a blob on the next step up. Stepped right on it. Of course it launched itself at him. It ended up tackling Alberto over the railing and down into the empty central column of the stairwell. They fell, Alberto and the blob. They fell what must have been 10 storeys, of course we couldn’t have been that high up. I watched them tumble down, the blob ripping chunks out of Alberto. Then I noticed what was at the bottom. A roiling, bubbling, almost boiling pool of the black smoke. All the way down. Alberto and the blob were plummeting towards it. Alberto fell in quietly. The meat blob fell in and everything was the opposite of silence.

HOW I GOT BACK

I guess these things don’t like each other. When the meat blob fell into the black smoke, at first there was a blinding light. I can’t describe the color, it was beyond white. That’s all that comes into my mind when I try to recall what it looked like. Beyond white is the best I can do. With the light came the noise. Deafening, the sound of flies, buzzing so loud I couldn’t hear myself scream. I was lucky to open my eyes quickly enough to see the black smoke rocketing up towards me. I quickly threw myself back against the wall as the black smoke shot up past me and continued on upwards, filling the central column. I admit it took me longer than I’m proud of to regain control of myself. The light, the noise, the powerful wind from the rush of the smoke. It was almost too much.

I felt the smoke glaring at me. It was angry. It wanted to eat. But it was hurt. If I was more of an action hero I would maybe do something with that information. But I’m not, so I ran. I ran up the stairs as fast as I could. I ran through the door marking “Floor 3” I ran through the halls, following the signs for the “Behavioral Health Unit”. Thanking whatever power above that all these doors were unlocked. I crashed through the twin doors leading back to where this all started. I collapsed onto the floor, finally feeling some semblance of safety. I don’t know how long I was out for.

I only realized after I woke up, all the doors that were unlocked, they all locked behind me as I ran. Now I’m stuck here again.

IT’S BEEN A FEW DAYS

I’m alone. Gerald is still here of course. He’s still strapped down. He’s little more than literal skin and bones now, but he’s still moving. The water is still cold. The window is still broken. The smoke still follows me. The food still rolls down the hall towards me. I did learn something through all this though.

The realization of false hope is more damaging than no hope at all. So for now, I’ll just live here with no hope of getting out.

I’ll be ok.

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That's the whole thing. Pretty creepy if you ask me. When I was cleaning up earlier today, I noticed the ceiling was smudged with a lot of black stuff. Windows were cracked, with one window leading to an access hatch broken open. In the solitary hold rooms, I guess what the writer called the "Quiet rooms" there was one bed with its straps tied down. Nothing on the bed though. A few of the rooms had linens that were completely stained with something. Honestly couldn't tell you what. Walking through the hospital I also noticed a lot of stains on the floors. I can't say for certain, but I've had to clean up dead bodies before and the stains in the hospital looked exactly like the kind of stain a body leaves when it sits and rots for a long time.

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After reading that and comparing what happened in the journal with the kind of mess I found, I'm honestly considering calling out tomorrow. Maybe even just call out for however long it takes to finish cleaning that hospital.