The Long Hall

Haven't written here for a while, but this has been in my brain for some time... Hopefully, you can get it out of yours!

It looked like an abandoned warehouse, not a hospital.

He wasn’t sure he was in the right spot.

Reaching into his pocket, he found the scrunched-up piece of paper and checked it. He had the right address. This was the place.

Shaking his head, he let out a defeated sigh and went to the door.

It was locked, but there was an intercom next to it. He pressed it, it buzzed, and he waited. A small red light next to the camera lens blinked.

“Yes?” crackled a staticky voice after a long moment’s wait.

“Sagittarius,” he said, trying to sound cool but feeling a little silly instead.

The door clicked unlocked.

“Here we go,” he whispered to himself. With another sigh, he steeled himself and opened the door.

Inside was a very asynchronous room. It looked just like a real surgery’s reception room, like stepping through some wormhole from one place to a completely different one. At the reception desk behind a sealed window sat a woman in a nurse’s outfit. She was tall and lean, beautiful, with dark hair and dark eyes. “How can I help you?” she asked, somewhat coldly.

He frowned. “I’m searching for a friend of mine,” he said softly. “Gunshot, on the streets last night. I was told he was brought here. To… avoid… the wrong people asking questions about what happened to him?”

The nurse nodded slowly. “Name?”

“Jack,” he answered. “Jack Carter.”

She nodded again and reached out for a buzzer to unlock a door set into the wall in the waiting room next to her sealed office. She had another door in the back of the office that she could use to exit the reception space, but this one was for those in the waiting room to access the hall beyond. “Down the hall. Last room on the left.” He moved towards the door, but she spoke again, a warning very clearly in her voice. “Only the room on the left. Do not go anywhere near the other rooms.”

“Got it,” he said, putting his hand on the door. He pushed it, but it didn’t open. He turned back to the nurse and found that she was scowling at him darkly. “Last room on the left, don’t go near the other rooms. I’ve got it.”

The nurse pressed the buzzer, and this time the door gave way to his push.

Inside, there was a long, straight corridor. On each side were closed doors. A lot of closed doors. There was nothing else; no hospital clutter, no turns in the hall, no other wings or wards, just this one. It was lit with a sort of sickly yellow light and smelt strongly of disinfectant. “Last room on the left, don’t go near the other rooms,” he repeated to himself. He started walking.

It really was a long hall, much longer than he expected. Thinking of the warehouse from outside, the hallway must’ve stretched the whole way down the inside of the seemingly abandoned structure. It was self-contained, though- just a hall of a standard height, maybe eight feet tall, and a claustrophobic width of around four feet. The hallway and the rooms beyond must’ve been built as an insert inside the warehouse structure, because from outside the warehouse looked to be at least twice the height of the rectangular hallway. He wondered what was outside the self-contained ward, in the rest of the warehouse above this ceiling and beyond this hall, but there was no way to know or to access that space from here.

About halfway down the hall, he heard his first noise, aside from the faint buzzing of the neon lights.

It was a groan.

Deep and loud, the sound came from a room off to the right.

He stopped walking.

Another groan cut the silence.

He turned up the hall, looking back the way he had come. There was nothing there.

He turned back to the other end of the hall.

The groan came again, this time more frantic, more pained.

It ended abruptly.

He closed his eyes.

No.

There was no more noise.

He went to move forward, but his legs wouldn’t work.

He slowly turned to the room on the right.

Again, he cast a glance at the empty hallway he had just walked down.

Without ever really making a decision to do it, he found himself at the door, his hand on the handle, turning it.

The door swung open to the dark room beyond.

“I truly am sorry,” came the voice of the nurse behind him, making him jump and gasp in a massive lungful of air. The cold steel of the silencer against the back of his head quickly stilled him. “I did warn you.”

“Wait,” he started to say, before his world erupted in a flash of white light.

Pic made with Bing Image Creator (MAI-Image-2.5 Flash)

Thanks for reading!!