The Hollow Wing

In the autumn of 2016, I took a night position at St. Elara’s, a small and aging hospital nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians. The town was called Morrow’s Bend, a place where the mountains seemed to swallow sound, and the hospital served both the townsfolk and the inmates from the nearby Northgate Correctional Facility. The facility had its own infirmary, but severe cases were sent to us. To keep the main ward from feeling like a jail, the hospital had a separate wing for prisoners, sealed off unless at least five inmates were admitted at once. During my shifts, from 7 PM to 7 AM, the hospital was nearly empty—just a handful of night staff, the quiet hum of machines, and the occasional distant clang of a door. The lab, where blood and other samples were processed, was in the basement, accessible through a service corridor that ran along the prison wing. I often volunteered to run samples down there, partly to help the overworked CNAs, partly to escape the monotony of the nurses’ station. But every trip meant passing the prison wing, and every time I did, I felt an odd dread, as if the walls themselves were holding their breath.

The prison wing was a world apart. It had its own entrance, guarded by a thick steel door, and its own narrow hallways painted a sickly institutional green. The few times I had to fetch supplies from the storage room there, I noticed the air was colder, stale, with a faint metallic tang. The lights flickered occasionally, and the silence was oppressive. I never saw any inmates—they were either in their rooms or moved elsewhere—but I always felt watched. One night in late October, the call came over the radio: Northgate was sending five inmates with severe injuries from a fight. The prison wing would be opened for the first time in months. I was assigned to assist with intake, and I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was off. As the prisoners were brought in, all wearing jumpsuits and handcuffs, I noticed one of them, an older man with a shaved head and dead eyes, staring at me from under the harsh fluorescent lights. He didn’t blink. I looked away.

The prisoners were settled into their rooms, and the extra staff left. I returned to my duties, but the prison wing stayed on my mind. Around 2 AM, I had to take a batch of blood samples to the lab. The corridor to the lab ran parallel to the prison wing, and as I walked, I heard something—a faint scratching, like metal on concrete, coming from the other side of the wall. I stopped, listened, but heard nothing. I continued, but the feeling of being watched grew to a suffocating intensity. When I reached the lab, I noticed a small door I’d never seen before, partially hidden behind a filing cabinet. It was labeled ‘STORAGE C’—but I’d been told storage was in the prison wing. Curiosity and a sense of duty warred within me; I decided to check it, thinking maybe they’d moved supplies. I pushed the cabinet aside, and the door opened easily. Beyond it was a short, dark hallway that led to a reinforced steel door, which was ajar. I pushed it open and found myself in a narrow service corridor that I realized must run behind the prison wing. The air was even colder here, and the walls were lined with pipes that hissed and knocked. I walked a few steps, and then I saw a door with a small window. Peering through, I saw a room with empty beds and medical equipment, but something was wrong. On the floor, there was a pattern of rust-colored stains, almost like a dried pool of blood, leading to a drain. The hair on my arms stood up.

I turned to leave, but the steel door behind me had clicked shut. Panic rising, I tried to pull it open, but it was locked. I was trapped. I pulled out my phone, but there was no signal in the basement. I tried the other doors along the corridor, but they were all locked. I was about to shout for help when I heard a low, guttural sound from the room I’d peered into. It was a voice, strained and barely human, whispering, ‘You shouldn’t have come.’ The lights in the corridor flickered, then went out, plunging me into darkness. I fumbled for a flashlight on my keychain, but it was dim. In the glare, I saw something move in the room—a figure, hunched and gaunt, pressing its face against the window. It was the old prisoner with dead eyes, but his face was twisted into a horrible grin, and his eyes were milky white, as if glazed over. I stumbled backward, and the impact against the door sent a clanging echo. Then I heard other sounds—the other prisoners?—scraping and scratching from all around.

The figure opened the door, slowly, with a creak. I wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. It stepped into the corridor, and I saw that it wasn’t human anymore. Its arms were elongated, its fingers tipped with black nails, and its mouth opened too wide, revealing a cavern of darkness. It spoke again, in that same terrible voice, ‘You will join us.’ I screamed, and as the others emerged from their rooms, their forms warped and hungry, I realized that the prison wing was not for holding prisoners—it was for feeding something older, something that had been in the hospital since its founding. The walls were thin, and the hospital was built on top of an old mining shaft, a place where the earth had never been blessed. I thought of the stories the older nurses told, of patients going missing, of the hospital’s dark history. And I knew that my only chance was to get to the main corridor, but the creatures were closing in. I shoved past the first one, feeling its cold fingers graze my neck, and I ran. The corridor seemed endless, but finally I burst through an unmarked door and tumbled into the basement lab. I slammed the door shut, locked it, and leaned against it, gasping. On the floor, I saw a discarded journal, old and stained. I opened it, and the handwriting was shaky, dated decades ago. It described the same thing I’d witnessed: the prisoners turning, the corridor, the door. The last entry read, ‘They are always hungry. Do not open the hollow wing again.’

I made it back to the nurses’ station, but I couldn’t get the image out of my head. The next morning, I resigned, telling the administrator I had a family emergency. The hospital records show that on that night, five prisoners were admitted, and five bodies were found in their beds the next day, dead of apparent heart attacks. No one ever mentioned the condition of the bodies, but I heard through a friend that their eyes were milky white. Weeks later, I couldn’t sleep, and I returned to Morrow’s Bend to see if I could find any trace of what I’d witnessed. The hospital was still there, but the prison wing had been sealed, and the corridor I’d escaped through was bricked up. But as I stood outside, I saw a light flicker in a window on that side of the building, and for a moment, I thought I saw a gaunt face staring back at me. I haven’t stopped running since, and every time I close my eyes, I see that grinning face, and I hear the scratching in the walls, and I know that the hollow wing is still there, waiting for the next unsuspecting soul to open the wrong door.