The Last Ward

The summer I turned twenty-two, I took a job as a night security guard at the old Fairview State Hospital annex. The main hospital had been demolished in the nineties, but the annex, a cluster of nine buildings from the 1940s, remained, fenced off and forgotten. I was hired to watch over the construction crews who were renovating the first building, Bldg 12, into a museum. The other eight, including the infamous Bldg 14, sat locked, their windows like blind eyes staring out at the overgrown lawns.

My rounds took me past Bldg 14 every hour. It was a massive structure, taking a full two minutes to walk from one end to the other. A covered wooden walkway once connected it to Bldg 13, but only a platform remained, now home to two vending machines that hummed a low, constant note. I never thought much of it until the second week, when I started hearing things from inside Bldg 14. Not voices, not screams, but a rhythmic tapping, like a finger on glass, coming from the windows on the second floor.

I reported it, but my supervisor, a man named Miller, shrugged it off. ‘Probably pipes,’ he said. But the tapping grew louder, more insistent. I began to notice a pattern: three taps, pause, two taps, pause, three taps. It was a code, I realized, a rhythm that felt familiar. I started to hum it without thinking, and it wasn’t until I caught myself that I recognized it: it was the Morse code for ‘SOS’.

One night, I decided to investigate. The gate to the locked area was rusted but gave way with a push. I walked the perimeter, the gravel crunching under my boots, my flashlight beam cutting through the pitch dark. The tapping was coming from a window on the second floor of Bldg 14, directly above the old platform. As I approached, I noticed a faint light flickering inside, a strobe of pale blue.

I found a door, not the main entrance, but a side door ajar, at the end of the building. I slipped inside. The corridors were long and lined with rooms that had been stripped of fixtures, leaving only bare floors and peeling paint. The air was cold, a sharp drop from the summer night. I followed the tapping up a flight of stairs, my footsteps echoing too loudly. The corridor on the second floor stretched into darkness, and at the end, a faint glow.

As I walked, I passed rooms with numbers still stenciled on the doors. 214, 215, 216. The tapping grew louder. I reached room 220, the door slightly open, light spilling out. I pushed it open. Inside, the room was empty, save for a single cot, a metal frame with a thin mattress, and a window that overlooked the platform. On the floor, in the corner, a small box, about the size of a shoebox, sat. It was old, made of wood, with a brass latch. The tapping was coming from inside.

My heart pounded. I knelt down, unlatched the box, and lifted the lid. Inside, a small, wooden metronome, its pendulum swinging back and forth, ticking out the rhythm. I recognized it then: it was the same metronome my grandmother had on her piano, the one that had disappeared after she died. She had played a lullaby, a song she said was for ‘the lost ones.’ I remembered the tune, and I started humming it.

As I hummed, the metronome began to slow, then stop. The room fell silent. But then, from the walls, I heard a scratching sound, like nails dragging along the plaster. The lights flickered. I looked up, and in the window, I saw a face. Not mine. It was pale, gaunt, with sunken eyes, and it was mouthing something I couldn’t hear. It was the face from the old photographs in the hospital’s archive, the ones that had been deemed too disturbing to display.

I stumbled back, dropped the box, and ran. I didn’t stop until I was outside, gasping for air, my legs trembling. I looked back at the building. The windows were dark, but on the second floor, in room 220, I saw a silhouette. It was standing at the window, watching me. Then it turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

I quit the next day. But the tapping followed me home. I hear it in the hum of my refrigerator, in the rhythm of rain on my windowpane. And sometimes, in the dead of night, I see that face in my mirror, its lips moving, mouthing that same word over and over. I’ve started to write it down: ‘help.’ But I don’t know who to ask. And I’m afraid to reply.