Khayalami Hospital

Sarah squeezed her eyes shut and tried to block the infant's cries from her mind. It isn't real, it isn't real. Yet the cries continued to echo through the darkened halls of the Khayalami Hospital.

"Do you hear that?" she asked.

"What? I don't hear anything." Brendon replied. His face was grey in the feeble light of their flashlight and deep shadows pooled around his handsome features.

"Oh, I thought I heard something," Sarah said. She hugged her arms around herself and tried to ignore the wailing.

"Let's go in here," Brendon said. The beam of light danced along the sign above the double doors ahead of them.

"The ICU?"

"Yeah, I bet lots of people died in here!"

Sarah shivered but allowed Brendon to lead her deeper into the abandoned hospital. They pushed the doors open with a squeal of neglected hinges. Brendon swept the flashlight over the beds and chairs that cluttered the ward. Weak moonlight filtered in through the dusty windows on one wall. She walked up to one of the beds, the mattress had been removed but all of the equipment stood silently next to the bed. An IV stand trailed thin chains. The black screens on monitors she couldn't identify reflected the pale moonlight.

At least the crying is quieter.

"Hey, look at this!" Brendon's excited voice grabbed her attention. He walked up to her holding a water-damaged manila folder. Faded and ratty papers stuck out of it at odd angles. "Most of it is in Afrikaans, but the x-rays are still here."

He held up a thick black film, using the moonlight to illuminate the image. It showed a thick bone that had snapped cleanly in two pieces.

"Ouch!" Brendon said with a smile on his face. "This is amazing. There's more here. They just left everything behind when they left."

They shuffled through the pages and x-rays. Whoever the patient had been, he had clearly been in an accident of some sort. All the x-rays showed broken bones, in his legs, arms, ribs, even his skull.

"I wonder if he survived," Sarah said. A cold chill ran down her spine and she hugged herself again.

"You OK?" Brendon asked. "We can leave if you've seen enough."

"Just cold," Sarah said. She wanted to leave, but Brendon had paid the security guards a hundred rand to let them into the old hospital and she knew he would be upset if she made him take her home. "I'll be fine, let's look around some more."

"Cool," Brendon said. "Oh, look at that!" He shone the flashlight at Sarah's feet and she gasped, taking a step back. A dark brown stain marked the old linoleum tiles. Sarah had been standing right in it.

"Oh, fuck," she felt dirty and a wave of nausea swept over her. "Do you think that's blood?"

"It must be, on CSI they said blood goes dark brown after a long time."

"Yuck," Sarah's skin crawled and she wiped the soles of her shoes on the tiles. "Let's look somewhere else, this is gross."

Brendon laughed and pulled her close. She immediately felt safer with his arms around her. He wasn't as big and strong as some of the other guys in their class, but she knew Brendon would do anything he could to protect her. They had all heard the stories of how haunted this hospital was, how everyone who worked in it had just walked out one day fourteen years earlier leaving everything as it stood.

They had spent Friday afternoon enjoying the autumn sun on the quad outside their classes, swapping stories they'd heard about the old building. Jenny lived a block from the hospital and said her mom kept seeing ghosts in the photos she took around their house. Peter said a film crew had come here to make a movie but they had destroyed the film. He also said the security guards would let you in at night if you paid them.