The Transference Ward

In 2007, my mother was admitted to St. Anne’s, a sprawling hospital with a reputation for its outdated equipment and overworked staff. She had a sudden stroke, and the doctors placed her in the ICU, her body tethered to machines that beeped in arrhythmic patterns. I had always possessed a peculiar sensitivity, not to the supernatural in general, but to the presence of death. It was a faint, cold brush on my skin, a subtle shift in the air’s pressure. I avoided funerals and nursing homes, but I couldn’t avoid this.

On the fifth day, the nurses pulled back the curtains for the designated viewing hour. I stood in the corridor, my reflection ghosting on the glass, and watched my mother’s pale face, her eyes closed, her chest rising with mechanical regularity. A sob caught in my throat. I knew, with a certainty that felt like a weight in my chest, that this was the end. As I blinked back tears, a flicker of light danced at the foot of her bed. It was brief, like a bulb struggling to stay lit, and then a wisp of pale, grey mist curled upward from her body. It rose, coalescing into a vaguely human form, its head turning towards me. It had no face, but I felt its gaze, vacant and cold. For a moment, it hung there, and then it dissolved into the air like smoke from a dying candle.

A cold dread seized me. I felt a shift, not in the room, but within myself. It was as if something had been borrowed, something unspeakable. The next day, a nurse named Eva, who had been kind to my mother, asked me if I had been in the medication storage room the previous night. I shook my head, puzzled. She frowned, saying that the security camera showed a figure in a white coat, tall and thin, lingering near the locked cabinet, but when she went to check, no one was there. The figure, she said, seemed to dissipate as she approached.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. My mother’s condition had stabilized, but a strange unease gnawed at me. I decided to walk to the hospital chapel, which was on the lower floor, away from the ICU. As I neared the end of the corridor, I saw a man standing by the vending machine, his back to me. He was wearing a white doctor’s coat, but it was too long, almost touching the floor. He turned, and I saw his face—it was blank, featureless skin, like a mask of flesh. I froze. He tilted his head, as if studying me, and then he took a step forward. His movement was silent, gliding, and the air around him seemed to frost.

I backed away, my heart pounding. He followed, not quickly, but with unnerving persistence. I stumbled into the chapel, slamming the door shut. The silence inside was broken by a low hum from a faulty fluorescent light. I knelt at a pew, trembling, trying to pray, but the words wouldn’t come. I felt a cold breath on my neck, and I spun around. The figure was standing at the altar, its head bowed. Then it raised its head, and I saw a dark void where its face should be. It pointed a long, pale finger at me, and I felt an icy pull in my chest, like something was being drawn out of me.

I cried out, and the lights flickered. The figure stepped backward, dissolving into the darkness of the chapel. I fled, not stopping until I reached the nurses’ station. The night nurse, a burly man named Frank, looked up from his crossword. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ he chuckled. I tried to explain, but he waved it off, saying the old hospital was drafty and old, prone to tricks of the mind.

Over the next few days, the visits grew more frequent. The faceless figure would appear at the end of hallways, in the reflection of the window over my mother’s bed, even in the stairwell, its head tilted as if waiting. Each time, I felt a strange weakness, a heaviness in my limbs, as if my vitality was being siphoned. My mother, meanwhile, began to recover. The doctors marveled at her turnaround. On the day she was discharged, I helped her into the wheelchair, and I noticed a small, dark bruise on her neck, shaped like a handprint. I touched it, and she flinched, saying a nurse had startled her.

As I pushed her toward the exit, I passed the chapel door. It was slightly ajar, and I saw a flash of white inside. My mother squeezed my hand. ‘I feel light,’ she said, ‘as if a weight has been lifted.’ I forced a smile, but I felt a cold presence walking beside us, invisible but tangible. At the glass doors, I glanced back. The figure was standing in the middle of the corridor, its featureless face meeting mine. It raised a hand and made a beckoning motion. I turned away, pushing my mother outside, into the warm sunlight. But I knew, with a deep, unshakable dread, that it was not finished with me. The transference had only just begun, and I was now its host.