The Locked Ward of Mulberry Rest

For years, I kept a candle of skepticism burning at the back of my mind, even as I worked the night shift at Mulberry Rest, a sprawling psychiatric hospital that had long outlived its reputation. The place was a maze of corridors, each lined with doors that locked from the outside, and the faint smell of antiseptic barely masked something older, something like decay. I wasn’t a doctor or a nurse; I was a janitor, tasked with cleaning the halls after the patients were tucked into their rooms. I noticed things, of course—the way some doors seemed to breathe, the flickering fluorescents in Ward C, the occasional sound of sobbing from a room that had been empty for years. But I shrugged them off as echoes of my imagination, until the night I decided to try something I’d read about in a tattered paperback left on a bench: a method to project your consciousness beyond the body.

My name is Elias, and I was new to the job, still naive enough to think that a mop and a bucket could protect me. That night, I sat cross-legged on the floor of the empty staff break room, practicing the breathing technique the book described. I focused on the pressure of my body against the linoleum, then imagined myself floating upward, like a leaf cradled by a gentle current. After many fruitless nights, something shifted. I felt a sudden, weightless pop, and I was floating near the ceiling, looking down at my own vacant expression. The world sharpened, colors more vivid, sounds more precise. I could hear a patient murmuring in his sleep two rooms away, and the hum of the ventilation system was a symphony. I decided to explore the hospital, drifting through walls and doors with ease.

I glided past the nurses’ station, where a bored orderly named Dave watched a static-filled TV. No one saw me. I moved down the main corridor, then veered into Ward C, which had been sealed off for a decade due to ‘structural issues.’ The air thickened here, cold and musty. I passed through a broken door and found myself in a hallway that didn’t match the hospital’s blueprints. The walls were black, covered in peeling paint the color of dried blood. At the end, a door stood ajar, a pale light spilling through. I felt a pull, a curiosity that overrode my instinct to flee. I floated closer and peered inside.

The room was a nursery, but not like any I’d seen. Cribs lined the walls, each containing a screaming infant that made no sound. The babies’ eyes were too large, too dark, and they stared at me with an ancient knowing. In the center, a woman in a stained nightgown stood over a bassinet, her back to me. She was humming a lullaby that felt like nails on a chalkboard. As I watched, she turned slowly, and her face was a horrifying blank—no eyes, no nose, just a gaping mouth stretched in a silent wail. She pointed a bony finger at me, and I felt a yank, as if she were reeling me in. I tried to retreat, but my astral body refused to move. The room began to spin, and the infants’ stares drilled into me.

I forced myself to think of my body, to imagine the weight of my bones, the beat of my heart. With a surge of will, I snapped back, gasping on the break room floor, my clothes soaked in sweat. I told myself it was a dream, a trick of my brain. But when I stood, I noticed something on my arm: a small, five-fingered bruise, as if someone had grabbed me. I didn’t return to astral projection for months, but I couldn’t shake the image of that nursery. I began to notice things at the hospital—a pattern of small handprints on the walls near Ward C, even though no children had been there for years. Patients would sometimes whisper to me, ‘She’s looking for a new child, isn’t she?’ I would ignore them, but the question gnawed.

One night, I was cleaning near the entrance to Ward C when I heard the humming again. It was faint, but unmistakable, coming from a utility closet that was supposed to be empty. I opened the door, and there, propped against the wall, was an old photograph: a woman in a nurse’s uniform, standing in front of the hospital, holding a baby. The name on the photo’s caption read ‘Matron Graves, 1957.’ I later learned from a retired nurse that Matron Graves had been accused of harming infants in her care, and she’d vanished from the hospital one night, leaving behind a crypt that was later converted into the nursery. But the most chilling part was that the photo’s background showed a door that clearly had the same padlock as the one on Ward C, even though the photo predated the ward’s construction. I realized then that the nursery I’d seen wasn’t just a vision; it was a place that existed in the hospital’s hidden history, a room that had been sealed, but not forgotten.

Now, I avoid the break room after dark. I still do my job, but I’ve taken to wearing a silver cross, even though I’m not religious. And last week, I found a small, wet footprint on the floor of the supply closet where I keep my mop. It was the size of an infant’s foot. I didn’t tell anyone; they’d think I was crazy. But I feel her watching me, that faceless woman, waiting for me to slip again. The bruise on my arm still lingers, faded but never gone, a constant reminder that some doors, once opened, never truly close. I’m not sure how much longer I can stay at Mulberry Rest, but I’m terrified that if I leave, she might follow me home. So I stay, and I scrub, and I try to keep my mind focused on the mundane. But every night, as I pass Ward C, I hear the lullaby, and I wonder if she’s already marked me as her next child.