Narrator (Hospital story) (26:53)
1986 in the last dwindling decades of its active operational life, Litch Hurst Hospital, a place that had seen more than its fair share of births over its long and troubled history, gave one final and unexpected existence to the world. Although constructed as a sanctuary of healing, scandals and tragedy had clustered around Lichurst since its founding in 1844. Most who came through its doors felt a shiver, as if aware on some deeply subconscious level that something was terribly wrong with the place, even if they couldn't say why. All hospitals were haunted, of course, being transitional portals where souls entered and left the world each day, and where grief and trauma, joy and hope were focused within a single structure like nowhere else. But still, few hospitals felt like Litchhurst. The scent of death lingered in every breath taken by the living, and visitors and patients alike reported feeling watched constantly. Voices could be heard drifting faintly through the vents, from within empty rooms or down the long, gloomy stairwells. Locked doors had a frequent habit of swinging open. People dressed in clothing styles decades out of date were frequently seen getting into elevators, only to never exit on any of the floors. Objects and equipment rarely remained where they had been left, sometimes even disappearing entirely, and hollow echoes of disembodied souls whispered along the dark hallways each night, or were glimpsed as curious shadow figures caught by the flicker of the lights as they flitted through the wards. The hospital had been an abnormal thing from its beginning. Set out in a basic cross shaped floor plan, it should have been easy to navigate. But somehow, once inside those doors, everything seemed to shift and warp, becoming a confusing warren of rooms and hallways, as if the internal structure existed in open defiance of any outward plan. It soon acquired a sinister reputation among those living nearby, but few could have suspected what lay within the miles of tunnels that ran like a dense warren beneath it all, in that gloomy maze, far from the bright lights and sterile rooms where the miracle of birth and the release of death occurred so often, another secret miracle had taken place, albeit a darkly twisted one. It was a newborn of sorts, not actually a life, nor created in the darkness of the womb, but something conscious that was born out of the shadows beneath the ground. It was the only thing the Hospital had truly given to the world. It began as a residue, gathering for decades down in the darkness. There had been no midwife to oversee the arrival of this new entity. Its soul was stillborn. It had floated aimlessly for decades, not a physical thing, but a festering accumulation of dark emotion, lost and confused, rats and roaches scuttling in terror as it traveled the tunnels. It had no former life to recall, nor any true understanding of the feelings and thoughts flowing through it. The lessons and experiences of childhood and those learned through interactions with others were utterly alien to this entity. It operated solely on instinct. It gathered and rested in the cracks between the bricks, lurked behind the boards, and coiled greasily about the cables that riddled its hidden domain. Though it spent most of its time around the old death chute that had once ferried bodies down to the hearses, in times gone by, it took the energy it needed from its environment, absorbing everything that came close to it, even pulling the heat from the air and drawing power from the cables and emergency lights, often burning them out. It didn't grow, not exactly, but it used the energy to become stronger and to manipulate the world around it in lieu of a physical body. Eventually, almost imperceptibly, it became aware of itself, consciousness awakening like a smoldering ember, gradually being stoked into a flame. It spoke with the wheezing cough of the tuberculosis victim and chuckled with the wild, throaty gurgle of a restrained lunatic. It stretched out, reaching through the tiny spaces and forgotten gaps of the tunnels. Brooding in shadow, it began to think, and then, finally, to hunger for more. Here it had gathered, stitched and sutured into itself all the broken and diseased fragments of spiritual energy filtering down into this neglected recess deep below the hospital. Like some Frankenstein's monster, cobbled together from the energies of dozens of different beings, it had slowly formed an amalgamated whole. Not a true gestalt. It had only one consciousness, and like an infant, it had taken time to grow, learn, and absorb knowledge of the world and its place within it. Gradually, as it explored its subterranean domain, it learned to better interact with the physical environment around it, discovering how to move and collect objects, drawing them around itself like armor. Within months, it had crafted a crude physical shell to hide within. A nightmare conglomeration scraped together from the discarded pieces it encountered. As with any infant, its first steps were slow, clumsy, and faltering. But it soon learned to master this new form and reveled in it. Its hypodermic fingers scratched the walls as it patrolled, and its Mouth bristled with discarded scalpel blade teeth. It lumbered on constructs of old crutches, broken wheelchairs, and twisted fragments of rusting beds. It could abandon this artificial body at will if it needed to be quick or silent or wanted to hide. But it liked the feel and weight of the metal limbs as they scraped and clanked and dragged. It also used them to crush the rats that weren't fast enough. It didn't eat them, of course. It felt no physical hunger. That impulse belonged to the realm of the living. But it understood the need for energy. So instead it absorbed something from the rats, some sort of life essence that gave it renewed vitality. It was different from the power it stole from the lights and the cables. It was delicious and far more satisfying. The rat soon grew wise and became cautious, but it was patient. It had learned to wait, to listen. It knew all of the tunnels in its network, every corner and alcove, every crevice and hiding space, but it never left this area for the strange, clean lights above. Its empire ended at the long, narrow staircases that stretched up toward an alien world of muffled sounds and constant activity that was unknown territory and filled with uncertain dangers. Down here, hidden alone in the dark or wrapped in its armor of discarded junk, it was safe. Or so it thought. Until a stranger entered its world, it had been the pale spirit of a small boy, lost and lonely, dressed in a hospital gown of a style from several decades past. In one hand the boy clutched a yellow ball. His other arm was gone, lost to injury and amputation. This ghostly child had just wandered quietly into the tunnels one evening, as if exploring the echoing patter of his bare feet announcing his presence seconds before his willowy frame turned the corner near the top of the death chute. It had screamed at the sight of him, recoiled in startled terror from this tiny specter, shedding its accumulated armor across the tunnel floor like leaves in a fall breeze as it fled down the hallway in panic. Hello? The boy had followed, his hollow eyes filled with curiosity. He found it curled in the darkness, trying to hide.
