The old hospital had stood at the edge of town for over a century, its once-white walls now stained with time and neglect. Few dared to enter, not because of any real danger, but because of the stories—whispers of patients who never left, of doctors who vanished without a trace, of strange lights flickering in empty rooms. The town council had tried to tear it down years ago, but every attempt was met with strange occurrences: equipment breaking, workers falling ill, and one man walking into the building and never being seen again. Lena had always been curious about the place. She was a journalist, not afraid of the unknown, though she didn’t often write about things that couldn’t be explained. But when her editor asked her to cover the hospital’s recent reopening after a long period of abandonment, she found herself drawn to the story like a moth to a flame. She arrived on a cold October morning, the air thick with the scent of damp stone and rusted metal. The front doors creaked as she pushed them open, revealing a lobby that looked frozen in time. Dust motes swirled in the weak light from broken windows. A reception desk sat untouched, its surface covered in a thin layer of grime. The only sound was the occasional drip of water from somewhere unseen. A maintenance worker named Carl greeted her, his face pale and eyes darting. He warned her not to go too deep, but Lena was already hooked. She wandered through the halls, her footsteps echoing strangely, as if the building itself were listening. She passed rooms with rusted gurneys and faded patient charts, each one more unsettling than the last. In one room, she found an old medical journal. The pages were yellowed, the ink barely legible, but one entry caught her eye: "Patient 479, admitted under false name. Refused treatment. Last seen in Room 312. No record of discharge." The date was over fifty years old. She turned to look at the door labeled 312, but it was locked. As she continued deeper, the temperature dropped. Her breath formed clouds in the air, even though it wasn’t that cold outside. The lights flickered, casting long shadows on the walls. She heard a soft whisper, just loud enough to make her pause. It wasn’t words, just a hum, like a voice trying to speak but failing. She found a stairwell leading down, the steps worn smooth by time. At the bottom, a door stood ajar. Inside was a small room with a single chair and a mirror on the wall. The mirror was cracked, but something about it felt wrong. When she looked into it, her reflection didn’t move. She blinked, and still, the image remained frozen. She stepped back, heart pounding, and the mirror suddenly showed her moving—only it wasn’t her. It was a woman in a white dress, eyes hollow, lips curled in a smile that didn’t reach them. She ran back up the stairs, nearly tripping on the uneven floorboards. The hospital seemed darker now, the silence more oppressive. She tried to leave, but the doors wouldn’t open. She pressed against them, screaming for help, but no one answered. Then, a voice—soft, almost gentle—called her name. “Lena… you shouldn’t have come.” She spun around, but there was no one there. The voice echoed in her mind, repeating the same words over and over. She stumbled into a hallway, and there, hanging on the wall, was a photograph of a young woman. She looked familiar, though Lena couldn’t place why. The caption beneath the photo read: “Patient 479. Admitted October 12, 1968. Discharged? Unlikely.” The hospital had a way of holding onto people. Not in a violent way, but in a quiet, insidious manner. Those who entered often left changed, their memories hazy, their minds filled with questions they couldn’t answer. Some claimed to remember things that never happened, others swore they saw faces in the mirrors or heard voices in the walls. Lena finally managed to escape, her hands shaking as she pulled the door shut behind her. The sun was setting, casting long shadows across the grounds. She didn’t know if she had truly left the hospital or if it had simply let her go. As she walked away, she glanced back one last time, and for a moment, she thought she saw a figure standing in the window of Room 312, watching her. But when she turned, the building was empty. And yet, she couldn’t shake the feeling that she had left something behind. Something that would never truly be gone.