The Weeping Maiden of Ward Three

My only brush with the other side happened in the winter of 1994, at a rehabilitation center for the blind nestled in the foothills of the Appalachians. The place was a converted Victorian hospital, all creaking floors and drafty corridors, and it had a reputation among the residents for harboring more than just the living.

The rumors centered on Ward Three, a section of the top floor that had been sealed off years ago after a fire. They said a patient had died there, a young woman named Clara, and that her spirit lingered, mourning the loss of her sight and her life. The stories were treated with a mix of skepticism and dread, but I, being newly blind and newly bitter, dismissed them as the fanciful tales of people with too much time on their hands.

My blindness was caused by diabetic retinopathy, and I was still adjusting to a world of sound and touch. I spent my days learning to navigate with a cane, memorizing the layout of the building, and trying to keep my mind off the fact that I would never see my children’s faces again. The facility was a maze of long hallways, each lined with identical doors, and I often found myself lost, even with the cane.

One evening, I was making my way back to my room after supper. The main hallway was quiet, the other residents having retired to their quarters. My cane tapped a steady rhythm on the worn linoleum, and I counted the doors as I passed. When I reached what I thought was my door, I paused. The air felt colder here, and there was a faint, sweet smell, like rotting flowers. I reached for the doorknob, but my hand brushed against something else, something soft and damp. I recoiled, my heart hammering.

‘Hello?’ I called out, my voice trembling. There was no response, but I heard a sound, a faint, wet sobbing coming from inside the room. The door was slightly ajar, and I could feel a draft of cold air seeping through the crack. I knew my room was on the second floor, but I had the sudden, irrational fear that I had somehow stumbled upon Ward Three.

I should have walked away, but curiosity, that damnable curiosity, got the better of me. I pushed the door open slowly, and the sobbing grew louder. ‘Is someone there?’ I asked. The crying stopped abruptly. Then I heard a voice, a woman’s voice, barely a whisper: ‘Help me.’

I froze, my mind racing. My blindness had heightened my other senses, and I felt a presence in the room, a cold, heavy pressure in the air. I took a step back, but the door slammed shut behind me, plunging me into darkness. I fumbled for the doorknob, but it wouldn’t turn. I was trapped.

‘Who’s there?’ I cried, panic rising. The laughter that answered was low and guttural, not the innocent sob of a grieving woman, but something malevolent. The temperature plummeted, and I could see pinpricks of light dancing in my remaining vision, a cruel mockery of sight. I squeezed my eyes shut, and when I opened them, for the first time in months, I saw.

I saw the room. It was a hospital ward, old and decaying, with rusted beds and yellowed curtains. And standing before me was a figure, a woman in a tattered white gown, her face obscured by long, dark hair. She raised a hand, and her fingers were blackened and twisted, like burned twigs. ‘You see me,’ she hissed, and her voice was like a knife scraping bone. ‘You see me, and now you will join me.’

I tried to scream, but no sound came out. She lunged, and I felt her icy fingers wrap around my throat. The world went white, then black. When I came to, I was lying on the floor of the corridor, my cane beside me. The door to the room was now closed, and the cold was gone. I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding, and made my way back to my room, vowing never to speak of what I had seen.

But I never forgot. And sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I can still hear her sobbing, and I know that she is waiting for me to see her again, to see the horror that lurks in the shadows of Ward Three.