The door opened with a slight creak as the girl opened it and looked around.
“Hello?”
The hospital appeared to be deserted. She walked further into the reception area and found no one behind the desk, as well as in the chairs in the waiting area.
‘Weird…’ she murmured to herself as she walked around the room, and then went back
to the desk and stared at it. It was dusty. There couldn't have been anyone there for a while…

But... she’d been told a friend of hers was here, and she was sure she hadn’t got the name wrong…She looked around again, trying to find a sign or some explanation why this area was deserted. Maybe this part was no longer used? She sank onto one of the chairs; a cloud of dust flew up from the cushion, making her cough. As the dust floated away, she spotted it: a small sign on the wall, a red arrow pointing down the corridor into the darkness. She got up and walked down the corridor, hesitantly, wondering why it was so dark. She hadn’t seen anything to suggest there was work being done there but it did make sense; the seemingly deserted reception, the dark corridor…

Then, she heard it. A methodical sound of scraping metal seemed to emanate from around the corner. Her heart began to pound against her ribs as she reached the end of the corridor. What would she find around that dark corner?

She stopped just before the end of the wall, breathing deeply and steeling herself for what she might find. She took a final deep breath, held it, closed her eyes, and then stepped quickly around the corner. Opening them, she stared ahead of her. …Nothing. She seemed to be standing in a perfectly normal hospital hallway, painted pastel yellow with various medical posters and signs to wards on the walls.   

She sighed with relief and walked down it; this corridor was lighter, although still quite dim, and more inviting. It seemed like a perfectly normal hospital corridor, worlds away from where she had just left. Soon she passed another entrance into the hospital, which she assumed was the one she should have taken, and nursing stations. It took her a moment to realise why it didn’t seem quite right. It was empty; every bed in every ward, every office and desk and station, totally empty. She looked around, confused, and then gasped. Blood smeared across the hallway wall, forming twisted hand prints at the beginnings and ends of the smears. She wondered what made the marks; someone must have been either in great pain, or terrified, to grab at the wall like that. And the blood… she shuddered and looked away, trying not to imagine the kind of wounds that would produce so much blood.

She wondered if she should walk back up to the entrance she’d seen a little earlier, and just run away… she didn’t want to be here anymore, it was obvious no one was here, there had to be a mistake…

She turned and walked towards a pair of doors she’d just walked through, and tried to open them. They were locked. She hammered on the thick glass as the sound of scraping metal filled the air again. She screamed, kicking the door, until she realised that there was no one there to hear her. She looked around the corridor, wondering what could be there, what was making that noise. There was nothing; no sign of a person anywhere, not even a shadow or a flicker of movement.

She sighed, and sagged against the door, shaking. It must have been her imagination. There couldn’t be anything there. She was just about to try to open the doors again, convinced they must be stuck, when the lights went out. She froze, listening hard, but it was silent. She groped for the door handle, starting to panic, when something grabbed her, pulling her backwards into the darkness. Within seconds, the lights were back on, illuminating the corridor and its pale yellow paint. The girl was gone; but there were fresh marks on the walls, where hands had grasped at the walls in vain, trying to escape some unknown horror, and a freshly sharpened scalpel lay on the floor, shining menacingly in a small puddle of deep red blood.