Wild Places
The Patients of Blackthorn Hall
I pulled into the cracked and weed-choked tarmac car park of Blackthorn Hall at about 19:30, just as the sun sank behind the trees. The vast stone building stood black against the fading sky, a four-storey Victorian complex with later red-brick ward blocks sprawling across the edge of the North York Moors.
I pulled into the cracked and weed-choked tarmac car park of Blackthorn Hall at about 19:30, just as the sun sank behind the trees. The vast stone building stood black against the fading sky, a four-storey Victorian complex with later red-brick ward blocks sprawling across the edge of the North York Moors. Six people waited in a loose circle beside their vehicles, their head-torch beams bobbing as they checked their equipment.
I recognised Callum Reed immediately. Even in the dim light, there was no mistaking the man-bun or the tattoo sleeves. Beside him stood Peter Walsh, filling the pockets of his workman's multi-pocket gilet. The others were new faces.
I took my rucksack from the passenger seat and walked over, my boots crunching across the loose gravel.
"Dan, right on time."
Callum clapped me on the shoulder with one heavy hand.
I nodded to Peter, who gave me a quick two-fingered salute without looking up from his equipment check.
"Everyone, this is Daniel Mercer," said a stocky bloke in an outdoor photographer's chest rig whom I did not recognise. "He's done a dozen major sites with Peter and Cal."
He held out his hand.
"Gareth Price. I organised this little expedition."
I shook it, noting his firm grip and the expensive-looking head torch strapped around his forehead.
Gareth gestured towards the three women standing nearby. "That's Sophie Grant and Alice Fenwick by the green Discovery, and Rebecca Shaw with the camera."
Sophie waved. She wore a vintage leather jacket that looked far too stylish for crawling through derelict buildings. Beside her, Alice stood perfectly still, staring up at Blackthorn Hall with unnerving concentration. Something about her pale face and intense blue eyes made me look away after a few seconds.
Rebecca glanced up from adjusting her camera and gave me a quick smile.
"Let's finish the checks," Gareth said. "We've got four and a half hours inside. We clear out after the midnight rendezvous."
I unpacked my gear: a powerful LED torch, spare batteries, a camera, first-aid kit, bottle of water and several cereal bars. I switched on my radio and confirmed that it was working on the group channel.
"Blackthorn Hall closed in 1998," Gareth told us as we gathered around him. "But it opened as a county asylum in 1882. At its peak, they packed more than 3,200 patients into accommodation intended for about 1,400."
I tested my torch, sweeping its beam across the front of the building. Most urban explorers came for the architecture: the grand staircases, glazed tiles and enormous windows. Places like this had darker attractions as well.
"There was plenty of mistreatment," Gareth continued. "Experimental procedures, punishment by isolation, deaths that weren't properly recorded. The usual horror story with these old asylums."
"Were there ever ward disturbances?" Alice asked suddenly, her voice softer than I had expected. "Patients turning on the staff? Any attendants killed?"
I looked at her. Most first-timers asked about security patrols or how quickly the police might arrive, not whether anyone had been murdered.
Gareth seemed pleased by the question. "There were incidents, yes. An attendant died during a ward disturbance in 1968. There were patient-on-patient deaths as well, and rumours that some were covered up."
Alice nodded without taking her eyes off the building. A silver locket hung at her throat, and she kept touching it.
"Stay with your teams," Gareth said. "Radios on channel three. Check in every thirty minutes."
We approached the building together, making for a service entrance around one side. The lock had been broken, and Gareth pushed the door open with little effort. The hinges gave a harsh creak that echoed into the darkness.
The smell hit me first: dust, mildew and something chemical beneath it all.
Our torch beams revealed a reception area frozen in decay. Yellowed papers covered the floor. Chairs lay overturned or had been shoved against the walls. Three wheelchairs stood near what had once been a nurses' station, positioned as though their occupants had simply risen and walked away.
"Temperature's dropped," Peter said, pulling his jacket tighter.
He was right. It felt roughly 6 degrees Celsius colder inside than it had in the car park.
"We'll split into three teams," Gareth said, his voice echoing from the peeling walls. "We'll cover more ground that way. Cal, Peter and Becca take the west wing. I'll look through the administration section and the case-note archive. Dan, you take Alice and Soph into the east wing."
I was not thrilled about shepherding two newcomers, although Sophie at least seemed capable. Alice worried me. Since entering the building, she had kept staring at different parts of it as though tracking something that moved through the shadows.
"Ground floor first, then work upwards," Gareth added. "Nobody goes into the basement alone. We meet back here at 00:00."
The group separated, torch beams dancing over the walls as we headed in different directions. I led Alice and Sophie along the main corridor towards the east wing, our footsteps stirring little clouds of dust. Water damage had spread dark stains across the ceiling.
"Have you two explored many abandoned places?" I asked.
"A few factories and an old hotel," Sophie said, taking a photograph of a row of rusted wall hooks. "Alice and I went to Severalls Hospital in Essex last year. She's got a thing about old psychiatric hospitals."
Alice walked slightly behind us, trailing her fingers along the wall.
"The paint is different here," she said. "They changed it after the isolation-wing fire on 14 November 1981."
I glanced at Sophie, who merely shrugged. I had no idea what fire Alice meant, and I did not ask.
The corridor opened into what had once been a day room. Ancient television brackets hung from the ceiling. Plastic chairs were scattered around, several of them broken. A faded draughtboard had been painted onto one table, its squares now barely visible.
As we crossed towards a set of double doors, something moved at the edge of my torch beam in a side corridor.
I stopped and aimed the light straight down it. There was nothing there but peeling paint and shadows.
"What is it?" Sophie asked.
"Thought I saw something move."
I kept the beam fixed on the empty passage.
"Probably a fox or a badger," Sophie said. "We found a whole family of foxes at Whittingham Hospital in Lancashire."
I watched for another few seconds, then nodded. Old buildings made noises. Darkness played tricks on the eyes. I had known for years that people often saw movement where there was none, a remnant of the days when failing to notice a threat in the dark could get you killed.
"Let's look at the patient rooms," I said, pushing through the double doors.
Alice finally looked at me instead of the building. Her blue eyes reflected the beam of my torch.
"They're waiting for us," she said quietly.
I pretended not to hear. I concentrated on the solid floor beneath my boots instead of the chill gathering at the base of my neck.
I took Alice and Sophie deeper into the east wing, our torches sweeping across empty doorways. For nearly two hours, we worked through the ground and first floors, photographing crumbling patient rooms. They all began to look the same: peeling paint, rusted bed frames and shattered floor tiles.
"There isn't much left down here," I said, panning my torch across yet another empty room. "Most explorers come for the architecture, but the really interesting things are usually higher up. That's where they kept some of the treatment rooms."
"Treatment is a generous word for what they did to people in places like this," Sophie said as she photographed a broken mirror.
Alice had said very little since we began. She walked several paces behind us with one hand brushing the wall, as if reading Braille. Every few minutes she stopped to stare into an empty corner or touch some random object: a door handle, a light switch, the edge of a window frame.
We entered a long corridor lined with more patient rooms. My torch picked out something bright red on the wall ahead, vivid against the faded green paint.
"Looks as if we've found some graffiti," I said.
The jagged letters stretched across the wall in an uneven hand.
BLOOD WILL SPILL.
"Charming," Sophie said, raising her camera. "Teenage goths having the time of their lives."
Farther along, we found more messages in the same red paint. THEY MAKE US HURT THEM had been scrawled across a door, the letters running downwards as though painted in haste.
"At least they committed to the horror-film look," Sophie said with a small laugh, although there was an edge to her voice now.
Alice had fallen completely silent.
When I looked back, she was standing before the BLOOD WILL SPILL message with her torch switched off. Her fingertips traced the letters. Her eyes were wide, reflecting the red paint in my beam.
"Alice," I called.
She did not respond. Her fingers continued following the letters while her lips moved rapidly.
I walked back to her. "Alice, are you all right?"
She turned slowly, one hand still pressed to the wall.
"What?"
"You were saying something."
She shook her head. "No, I wasn't."
"Your lips were moving."
"I wasn't saying anything."
She wiped her fingertips on her black jeans, leaving faint red smears.
"Don't mind her," Sophie said as she rejoined us. "She gets odd feelings in places like this. You should have seen her at Severalls. She spent twenty minutes talking to an empty corner in one of the wards."
"I did not," Alice said, without much conviction.
"Then who were you arguing with in that empty bathroom?"
Sophie nudged her shoulder playfully.
"Come on. Let's go upstairs. I want to see whether any medical equipment is still there."
We found the stairwell at the end of the corridor and climbed to the second floor. The stairs creaked under our weight, and fallen plaster littered the steps.
I went first, testing each tread before allowing the women to follow. The second floor was in worse condition than the levels below. Whole sections of ceiling had collapsed, forcing us around heaps of insulation and broken light fittings. The air felt heavier there, dense with dust that caught in our throats.
"Watch your step," I warned them. "The floors have gone in places."
We picked our way carefully along the main corridor. Most rooms were in much the same state, stripped of anything valuable and left with rusted bed frames and broken furniture. Near the end of the corridor, however, we found one that was unlike the rest.
"Hold on," I said, shining my torch through an open doorway. "This is different."
It was larger than the patient rooms, with tiled walls and a drain in the middle of the concrete floor. Unlike the other spaces, it still contained intact equipment: a hospital trolley fitted with leather restraints, a metal cabinet with glass doors and a wheeled cart holding an old electrical apparatus.
"Treatment room," I said, stepping inside with care. "Probably used for electroconvulsive therapy."
Sophie gave a low whistle.
"Now this is what I came for."
She raised her camera and began taking photographs.
Alice hesitated in the doorway, gripping the frame with one hand.
"Are you coming in?" I asked.
She nodded and took a small step into the room, her gaze fixed on the apparatus.
I looked more closely at the cabinet. It contained glass bottles with faded labels, syringes without needles and what appeared to be old rubber mouthguards. The treatment apparatus was surprisingly complete: a metal control box with dials and switches, wired to a padded headpiece.
Alice approached the cart and lifted the rusted headpiece. Her hands were steady as she turned it over, studying every part. As she held it, her expression changed. Her eyes took on a distant look, and her fingers moved slowly across the metal contacts.
"You wouldn't believe how many patients they put through rooms like this," I said, trying to break the uncomfortable silence. "At its worst, Blackthorn Hall held more than 3,200 people in wards designed for about 1,400."
Alice did not appear to hear me. She raised the headpiece as though considering putting it on.
"Alice, put that down," Sophie said sharply. "It's filthy, and you'll probably catch something from it."
For a moment, Alice did not move. Then she slowly returned the device to the cart. Her hands were trembling when she stepped away.
"Are you all right?" I asked.
"Fine," she said quietly. "I was just thinking about the people who were in this room."
I checked my watch.
"We should call the others. It's been more than thirty minutes since our last check-in."
I unclipped the radio and pressed the transmit button.
"Daniel here with Sophie and Alice. East wing, second floor. All clear. Anyone receiving?"
The radio released a burst of static, then fell silent.
I tried again. "Gareth, Callum, Peter, anyone reading me?"
This time, a broken voice emerged through the interference.
"West wing... thought we saw... can't find..."
"That's Cal," I said. I pressed the button again. "Cal, you're breaking up. Say that again."
More static, followed by fragments.
"Peter went... heard something... not answering his..."
The transmission died completely. I checked the battery indicator. It was still full.
"The signal shouldn't be this poor," I said. "These buildings can interfere with radios, but we're not buried that deep inside."
"Perhaps something's wrong with theirs," Sophie suggested.
"Try Gareth," Alice said suddenly.
I nodded and called him.
"Gareth, do you copy? We're having trouble reaching Cal."
Only static answered.
"Try again," Alice insisted, tension sharpening her voice.
Before I could, a noise cut through the hospital's silence. A loud metallic bang rang out somewhere in the building.
We all froze.
It came again, clear and resonant, like metal striking metal.
"What was that?" I whispered.
The noise repeated, rhythmic now.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
"Could be Peter or Gareth trying to lead us to them," Sophie suggested.
"They'd use the radio first."
"Maybe it's teenagers. Other explorers messing about."
"Nobody else should be here tonight. Gareth said he'd watched the place for weeks. He'd have mentioned it if anyone else was using it."
The banging continued, echoing through the building. It was impossible to locate. It might have come from any floor or any wing.
"We should return to the entrance," Alice said, suddenly urgent. "Right now. We need to leave."
Sophie was already walking towards the doorway.
"No chance. We came to explore, didn't we? This is exactly the sort of thing we ought to investigate."
"It could be dangerous," Alice said. "Someone could be hurt."
"Or it could be nothing. Come on, where's your sense of adventure?"
I stood between them, weighing our options as the steady, insistent banging continued.
"If it's nothing, we've wasted a few minutes," Sophie said. "If it isn't, the others might need help."
"She's right," I said reluctantly. "We should at least work out where it's coming from."
Alice clutched her silver locket so tightly that her knuckles whitened.
"You don't understand what's happening here."
"Then explain it."
She shook her head and looked at the floor.
"I'm going," Sophie said, already entering the corridor. "You two can catch up or return to the entrance."
I looked at Alice, who was still gripping the locket.
"We stay together," I told her firmly. "Safety in numbers, yes?"
She stared at me for a moment, then nodded once.
"Let's go."
I followed Sophie into the corridor, with Alice trailing behind us, her reluctance apparent in every step.
The banging drew us deeper into the east wing, growing louder as we approached whatever or whoever was causing it. Then it stopped abruptly, leaving Blackthorn Hall sunk in an uneasy silence.
Alice, Sophie and I stood motionless in the corridor, listening for another metallic blow.
A sharp crack shattered the quiet, loud and explosive. The sound ricocheted through the building. It seemed to come from the west wing, and it sounded exactly like a gunshot.
"What was that?" Sophie whispered, her torch beam wavering as she turned towards the noise.
Alice seized my arm. Her cold fingers dug into me.
"We need to leave now."
There was an urgency in her voice I had not heard before.
"That sounded like a gunshot," I said, my mind racing through the possibilities. "Gareth said nobody else should be here."
"Which is exactly why we need to check," Sophie said, already turning towards the main corridor. "What if someone's hurt?"
Alice shook her head violently.
"No. We go back to the entrance and call the police."
"With what?" Sophie demanded. "My mobile has no signal in here. And if that was a shot, Peter, Cal or Gareth could be in trouble."
I considered our options. If someone was wounded, every minute mattered. But Alice's fear was clearly genuine, and running towards a possible gunman was not sensible.
"What if it wasn't a gun?" I said. "Old buildings have pipes that burst and metal fittings that collapse. It could have been anything."
"All the more reason to look," Sophie said.
Alice's grip tightened on my arm.
"Please," she whispered. "I have a terrible feeling."
I looked from one woman to the other and made my decision.
"We'll investigate, but carefully. We stay together, and at the first sign of real danger, we get out. Agreed?"
Sophie nodded at once. Alice hesitated, her face pale in the torchlight.
"Alice, we can't abandon the others if they're in trouble," I said gently.
At last she released my arm and nodded, though her whole body seemed to resist the decision.
We retraced our route across the second floor towards the main stairs. Every creak and groan made us stop and listen. The air felt different now, heavier and colder, and I kept glancing over my shoulder.
"The west wing is on the other side of the building," I said as we reached the stairwell. "We'll have to pass through the main reception area again."
The stairs were hazardous in the dark, covered in rubble and damaged by water. We descended slowly, our torches revealing missing treads and rusted handrails torn from the wall. Alice stayed close behind me, with Sophie at the rear.
The first-floor landing was mostly intact. When we reached the ground floor, however, part of the ceiling had collapsed and blocked half the stairwell. We climbed over broken plaster and exposed wiring, careful not to disturb the unstable heap.
"This wasn't here before," I said, frowning at the debris. "We came up these stairs."
"Perhaps we used a different stairwell," Sophie suggested.
I shook my head. "No. This is the main one. I remember that broken window."
I pointed towards a star-shaped crack in the landing window.
Alice said nothing, but her breathing had grown rapid and shallow.
We pushed through to the main corridor and turned towards the west wing. The distance seemed greater than I remembered. The corridors looked longer and more twisted. Water damage had buckled the floor in places, forcing us to keep close to the walls.
"Listen," Sophie said suddenly.
We stopped.
Distant footsteps sounded through the building. Someone was running towards us, drawing closer by the second. I instinctively moved Alice behind me as a figure appeared at the far end of the corridor.
It was Gareth, sprinting towards us. His chest rig was hanging loose, and terror showed plainly on his face. He was pale and staring blankly. He almost collided with us before lurching to a stop.
"Gareth, what happened?" I asked, illuminating the sweat on his forehead.
"Peter," he gasped, bending over to catch his breath.
"Someone shot Peter?"
"What? Who?" Sophie demanded, stepping closer.
Gareth shook his head.
"I don't know. We were searching the administration offices when we heard someone moving in one of the rooms."
He took a deep breath, trying to steady himself.
"Peter went to look. I heard him say something, and then there was the shot. When I reached him, he was on the floor, bleeding from his chest."
"Where is he now?" I asked, already reaching for my first-aid kit.
"I don't know," Gareth admitted, his voice cracking. "I went to fetch help. But when I came back with Cal, Peter had gone. There was only a trail of blood along the corridor. Then even that stopped."
Behind me, Alice made a small sound, halfway between a whimper and a word I could not understand.
"Where's Cal now?" I asked.
"We separated to cover more ground."
I pulled out my radio.
"We need to gather everyone. This isn't safe."
I pressed the transmit button.
"Cal, do you copy? Peter? Anyone?"
The radio crackled. Then Callum's voice emerged, frightened and breathless.
"Dan, is that you?"
"Yes. We're with Gareth. Where are you?"
"North corridor, first floor of the west wing. Something's wrong."
His voice faded in and out.
"Becca was right behind me. Then she just... she's gone, mate. One minute she was there, and the next..."
"Stay where you are," I said firmly. "We're coming to you."
"I've looked everywhere," Callum continued, his voice beginning to break. "She wouldn't wander off. Not after what happened to Peter."
"Wait there," I repeated. "Don't move."
The radio dissolved into static and then silence.
Gareth looked even more shaken.
"We need to find them. All of them."
"I agree, but we stay together from now on," I said.
Gareth shook his head. "We'll cover more ground if we split up. You and I can search the basement. There's a mortuary down there where someone might be hiding. Sophie and Alice can search this floor and the first."
"Splitting up is a bad idea."
"We haven't time to argue," Gareth said. "Every minute counts if Peter is bleeding to death somewhere."
Alice turned to me, her eyes pleading.
"Don't leave me."
I hesitated, torn between the need to find our missing friends and every instinct telling me to keep the group together.
"I'll stay with Alice," Sophie offered. "We'll be careful and only check the rooms on this floor. You two can manage the basement, then meet us back here in twenty minutes."
I looked at Alice. She was plainly terrified by the thought of separating.
"Can you manage that? Twenty minutes, no longer?"
She nodded reluctantly.
"Don't go too far," she said, barely above a whisper.
"Twenty minutes," I repeated, checking my watch. "It's 22:48 now. We meet here at 23:08."
Gareth was already moving towards the basement stairwell. I gave Alice's shoulder a reassuring squeeze, then followed him.
The basement steps were narrow and steep, and most of the railing was missing. Our torches scarcely penetrated the dense darkness. As we descended, the air grew noticeably colder and damper. A sharp chemical odour burnt the back of my throat.
"What exactly are we looking for down here?" I asked.
"The mortuary has a screened service passage," Gareth explained. "Undertakers used it to remove bodies without taking them through the wards. If someone has entered the building without us knowing, they might be using it to get in and out."
Pipes lined the basement ceiling, many of them broken and dripping foul-smelling water. Thick black and green mould coated the walls.
Our torch beams passed over a series of heavy doors. Most hung open, revealing storerooms filled with shattered furniture and discarded medical equipment. Gareth led me towards double doors at the end of the corridor. A faded sign read MORTUARY - AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY.
The doors creaked open onto a large room containing several post-mortem tables arranged in rows. Their stainless steel surfaces had rusted but were still recognisable, complete with drainage channels and straps once used to secure bodies. Along one wall stood a bank of cold-storage compartments.
"This place gives me the creeps," I muttered, sweeping the room with my torch.
"Check those compartments," Gareth said, moving towards a door at the far end. "I'll see whether the service passage is secure."
Several of the steel compartments were partly open. I pulled the first farther out, wincing as its metallic screech carried through the mortuary. It was empty except for a stained sheet.
I checked several more and found nothing but rust and decay.
At the final compartment, I stopped. Unlike the others, it was fully closed. I took a breath and pulled it open.
Empty.
"Anything?" Gareth called from across the room.
"Nothing," I replied, relieved. "What about the passage?"
"Sealed. It looks as though it hasn't been opened in years."
We searched the rest of the mortuary and found only old equipment and more empty compartments. There was no trace of Peter, Rebecca or anyone who might have fired a gun.
"We should go back up," I said, checking my watch. We had already been there for fifteen minutes.
Gareth nodded. We retraced our route along the basement corridor and climbed to the ground floor.
The hospital seemed different. The shadows were deeper and the air colder. A strange draught passed through the corridor, though I could not tell where it came from. Every window we had passed was either sealed or boarded.
When we reached the meeting point, Sophie was waiting alone. Her torch beam moved nervously over the walls.
"Where's Alice?" I asked at once, searching the space behind her.
Sophie looked distraught.
"She heard something. Whispers coming from a room down there."
She pointed towards a side corridor.
"She went to investigate while I was looking the other way. When I turned round, she'd gone."
"You let her go alone?" Gareth demanded.
"I didn't let her do anything," Sophie said defensively. "She simply wandered off. I called for her and searched every room along that corridor, but I couldn't find her."
A chill passed through me that had nothing to do with the falling temperature.
"How long ago?"
"Perhaps five minutes. I came straight back here to wait for you."
I raised my radio.
"Alice, do you copy?"
Static.
"Alice, if you can hear me, please answer."
Nothing.
"Cal's our best tracker," Gareth said, taking out his own radio. "Cal, come in. We need your help. It's Gareth."
We waited. Only static broke the silence.
Gareth tried again, frustration lifting his voice.
"Cal! For God's sake, answer me!"
A sudden burst of interference made all three of us jump. Then the radio went quiet.
"Something's wrong with these radios," Gareth muttered. "They worked perfectly earlier."
"Or something is blocking the signal," I said, disliking both possibilities.
Another cold draught swept through the corridor, stronger this time. It carried faint whispers too distant to understand. Our torch beams seemed to dim, struggling against the oppressive darkness of Blackthorn Hall.
"We need to find the others and get out," I said, forcing my voice to remain calm. "Every one of them."
Gareth nodded, his eyes shifting constantly between the shadowed corridors branching away from us. He raised his radio once more and pressed the button with deliberate force.
"Cal, it's Gareth. If you can hear me, respond."
Only static answered.
Then even the static died, leaving us in a silence that felt wrong in every possible way.
Sophie swept the dark corridors with her torch. My watch showed 23:25. In the seventeen minutes since Gareth and I had returned, the temperature had fallen far enough for our breath to mist in the torchlight.
"This is pointless," I said, clipping the useless radio back onto my belt. "We need to regroup. The entrance might give us a better signal, or at least somewhere central to work from."
Gareth nodded reluctantly.
"Fine. But this time we stay together."
We set off through the winding corridors, losing our way several times as we tried to find the entrance. The building felt larger than it had when we arrived. Passages seemed longer, and new corners appeared where I was certain none had existed before.
"This doesn't make sense," Sophie whispered after our third attempt to follow what should have been a direct route to reception. "I swear we've passed that same broken wheelchair twice."
Gareth said nothing. His jaw was set as he led us around another corner and finally into the main reception hall.
Moonlight entered through the cracked windows, bathing the space in a weak blue glow. We gathered in the middle of the hall, our torches forming a pool of light around us. My throat was dry, and a dull headache had begun behind my eyes.
Roughly three hours inside the vast hospital had left us with nothing but questions and fewer people.
"Let's go through what we know," I said, trying to organise my thoughts. "Peter is missing and may be injured. Becca vanished while she was with Cal. Alice disappeared when-"
A sound from the stairwell stopped me.
Shuffling footsteps dragged across the tiles.
We all aimed our torches towards the noise. Someone was climbing out of the darkness.
Callum stumbled into the light. His right sleeve was torn, and deep cuts ran from his elbow to his wrist. Blood had soaked the fabric around them, although the bleeding seemed to have slowed.
"Cal."
I rushed forward, but he waved me away and leant against the reception counter, struggling for breath.
"What happened to you?" Gareth demanded, moving closer to inspect the injury.
Callum winced as Gareth's torch illuminated the gashes.
"Something grabbed me in one of the first-floor bathrooms. I went in looking for Becca and..."
He shook his head.
"I didn't see it. I only felt something seize my arm and pull. I tore myself free and ran."
I opened my rucksack and took out the first-aid kit.
"Those cuts need cleaning."
"Have you seen the others?" Sophie asked as I worked on Callum's arm.
He shook his head.
"I've looked everywhere for Becca. For Peter too, after Gareth told me he'd been shot."
Callum hissed as I applied antiseptic.
"This place is enormous. I got completely turned round after whatever happened in that bathroom."
The cuts were peculiar: four parallel lines, too evenly spaced to have come from exposed metal or broken glass. They resembled claw marks, though I kept that thought to myself. I wrapped gauze around his forearm and secured it with medical tape.
"We should leave," Gareth said abruptly. "Call the police once we're outside."
"No chance." Callum pushed himself upright. "I'm not leaving without Becca."
"Look at your arm." Gareth gestured towards the fresh bandage. "Someone or something in here has already shot Peter and attacked you. We're not equipped for this."
"All the more reason not to abandon them."
I returned the supplies to my first-aid kit.
"Cal's right. We can't simply leave them."
Gareth ran a hand through his hair, plainly frustrated.
"Fine. But we stay together this time. No exceptions. We do not split up for any reason."
I nodded.
"West wing next. That's where Cal lost Becca and where Peter was supposedly shot."
We kept within arm's reach of one another as we headed back into the hospital.
The entrance to the west wing was blocked by double doors hanging from broken hinges. Beyond them, the corridor was dark and colder than the reception hall.
We searched each room carefully as we worked along the ground-floor corridor. There were empty patient rooms, a nurses' station with nothing useful left and cupboards full of broken equipment. Nothing brought us closer to finding our missing friends.
"First floor next," I said, heading for the stairwell at the end of the corridor.
The upper level was in still worse condition. Sections of ceiling had collapsed, and stagnant water covered parts of the floor. We picked our way through the debris, searching every room.
"There," Callum said suddenly, pointing ahead. "That's where I lost Becca."
He led us to a junction where the corridor divided in three. The left-hand branch appeared to enter an administrative section, the right led towards more patient rooms, and the central passage opened into a large communal area.
"We were checking rooms along the right-hand corridor," Callum explained. "I entered one while she checked the next. When I came out, she'd gone."
"Which bathroom were you attacked in?" I asked.
He pointed down the administrative corridor.
"Second door on the left. I was searching for Becca when it happened."
We approached cautiously. The door stood open, revealing cracked tiled walls and shattered fittings. I searched with my torch but found nothing unusual except a smear of blood on the sink, probably left by Callum's wound.
"Let's keep moving," Gareth said, clearly uneasy about lingering there.
As we continued along the corridor, I spotted a familiar shape on the floor ahead. Gareth's rucksack lay on the tiles, its contents scattered around it.
"What the hell?"
Gareth hurried forward and crouched beside it.
"I never took this off. It was on my back the whole time."
"Are you certain it's yours?" Sophie asked.
Gareth turned the rucksack over and showed us his initials, written on the base in permanent marker.
"Positive."
I scanned the corridor, troubled by what it implied.
"How did it get here?"
Gareth did not answer. He gathered the scattered contents: flapjacks, a bottle of water, spare batteries and his camera. He zipped them back into the rucksack, put it on and stood with a deeply unsettled expression.
We continued down the corridor, checking doors as we went. Most led into empty offices containing overturned desks and broken chairs.
Halfway along, I noticed a door marked MEDICAL SUPERINTENDENT. It stood slightly ajar.
I pushed it open.
The office was larger than the others, with fitted bookshelves covering one wall and a heavy wooden desk in the centre. Something behind the desk caught my torch beam.
Wet, gleaming red letters had been written across the wall.
ALICE KNOWS.
It looked like fresh blood. A thin red line was still creeping down from the final S.
"What is that supposed to mean?" Gareth asked, stepping beside me.
I turned towards Sophie. She had gone completely still in the doorway.
"Soph."
She did not respond. Her gaze remained fixed on the red letters.
"Sophie," I repeated more loudly. "Do you know what this means?"
At last she looked at me. Her face was blank with shock.
"I... I'm not sure."
Gareth rounded on her.
"You know something you're not telling us."
He pointed at the wall.
"First Alice disappears, and now this. What does she know?"
Sophie stepped backwards.
"It isn't what you think."
"Then what is it?" Gareth demanded. "Four people are missing. Peter has been shot, or something wants us to believe he has, and something attacked Cal. If you know anything that might help, you need to tell us now."
"We've been here before," Sophie said quietly.
"What?" I asked.
"Alice and me. We've been inside Blackthorn Hall before."
She leant against the door frame, suddenly looking exhausted.
"About eight months ago. Just the two of us."
"You neglected to mention that earlier," Gareth said, his voice rising. "I specifically asked whether anyone had been here before."
"It didn't seem relevant then," Sophie replied defensively.
"It is relevant now," I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could. "What happened when you were here?"
Sophie folded her arms tightly across her chest. "Most of the exploration was normal. We looked round the main buildings and took some photographs, but when we found a way into the basement, Alice insisted on going down alone. She said she felt drawn to something."
"And you let her?" Callum asked incredulously.
"She can be very determined. I waited at the top of the stairs. She was only gone for about fifteen minutes, but when she came back up, she was different."
"Different how?" I pressed.
"Distant. Detached. She kept touching that silver locket and saying she could hear them talking to her." Sophie shuddered slightly at the memory. "She said the patients were still here, trapped in the building. That they wanted her to help them."
"Help them how?" Gareth asked.
"She wouldn't say. For the rest of the day, she kept stopping to listen to things I couldn't hear. She'd stand in empty rooms, whispering to nobody." Sophie looked directly at me. "It frightened me, but she went back to normal after we left. I thought it was just the place getting to her. You know how these explorations can play with your head when you're already on edge."
I did know. I'd experienced it myself in other abandoned buildings: the feeling of being watched, the footsteps and voices your mind invented. But this felt different. More real.
"Why come back?" Callum asked. "If it affected her that badly the first time."
"Because she wanted to," Sophie replied simply. "She said she needed to. When Gareth posted about this trip online, she insisted we join."
Gareth ran a hand down his face. "Brilliant. So Alice is having some sort of psychotic episode and now everyone's disappearing."
He gestured towards the message written in blood. "And apparently she knows something about all of it."
"We don't know that's what it means," I said, although I couldn't think of another interpretation.
"We need to find her," Sophie insisted. "She might be in danger as well."
Callum had gone quiet. He was staring down the corridor beyond the office. Suddenly he straightened and pointed into the darkness.
"There. I saw someone."
I squinted along the beam of his torch. "Where?"
"Down that corridor. It was Rebecca. I'm sure of it."
His voice tightened with urgency.
"Becca?" he called, his voice echoing back at us.
"Are you certain?" I asked. I could see nothing beyond the reach of our lights.
"Positive."
Before any of us could stop him, Callum sprinted down the corridor, his torch bobbing as he ran.
"Becca, wait!"
"Cal, stop!" I shouted, running after him with Gareth and Sophie close behind.
He reached a corner and vanished around it. We followed seconds later and turned into a narrow corridor lined with small observation rooms. Our lights swept over empty doorways and broken windows, but Callum was nowhere to be seen.
"Cal!" I called, listening for an answer.
Nothing.
"He was just here," Sophie said, panic lifting her voice. "He couldn't have gone far."
We hurried along the corridor, checking every room we passed. All of them were empty. At the far end, the passage opened into another junction.
"Which way?" Gareth asked, breathing hard after the sprint.
Before anyone could answer, my radio crackled into life. A burst of static made us all jump. Through the white noise, a woman's voice came clearly, scarcely louder than a whisper.
"Find me."
Then there was silence.
I stared at the radio in my hand, my stomach turning cold. The voice had belonged to neither Alice nor Rebecca. It sounded older, with a hollow quality, as though it had travelled from somewhere impossibly far away.
"Did you hear that?" I asked, looking up at Gareth and Sophie.
They nodded, their faces showing the same unease I felt.
"Who was that?" Sophie whispered.
I had no answer. The radio had gone completely dead. Not even static came through now. I clipped it back onto my belt.
The only sounds were water dripping somewhere beyond the ceiling and our own breathing, growing quicker in the darkness of Blackthorn Hall.
Gareth broke the silence by shouting Callum's name again. His call echoed through the empty corridors but brought no reply. I pressed the transmit button on my radio several times, trying to make contact, but the set remained lifeless in my hand.
"We need to find him now," Sophie said, her torch beam darting nervously between the three possible routes ahead.
We chose the left-hand corridor and moved quickly, calling Callum's name every few minutes. The passage twisted and branched in ways that made no sense for a hospital. I tried to keep a mental record of the route: left at the broken wheelchair, straight past the nurses' station, right at the medicine trolley.
But when we doubled back after finding nothing, the landmarks had changed. The wheelchair had vanished. In its place stood an overturned hospital trolley that had not been there before.
"This is wrong," I said, stopping to check my bearings. "We've just come this way, and that trolley wasn't here."
Gareth shrugged. "You're getting muddled in the dark. All these corridors look the same."
But I wasn't muddled. I'd been exploring abandoned buildings for years, and my sense of direction was good. This was something else. The hospital itself seemed to be rearranging around us.
We tried another route, then another. With every unfamiliar corridor, my nerves tightened. Time dragged as we searched, our voices becoming hoarse from calling out. My watch showed that we had been looking for nearly an hour when we turned a corner and found ourselves facing double doors unlike any we had passed before.
The wood was carved with religious symbols, crosses and angels worn smooth by age. A small brass plaque beside the frame read "Chapel".
"I didn't know there was a chapel here," Sophie said, barely above a whisper.
"All these old county asylums had them," Gareth replied. "Religion was considered part of the treatment then."
I pushed one of the heavy doors open and winced at the loud creak that travelled through the space beyond. Our torches revealed rows of broken pews facing a plain altar. Moonlight filtered through a stained-glass window above it, scattering coloured shadows across the stone floor.
We moved forwards cautiously, our footsteps unnaturally loud. As we approached the altar, something caught the edge of my torch beam: a small black object placed squarely in the centre of the stone table.
"That's a camera," Sophie said, moving closer. "It looks like Alice's."
She was right. The little digital camera on the altar was identical to the one I'd seen Alice using earlier. Gareth reached it first and picked it up.
"It's still switched on," he said, turning it in his hands.
The screen glowed faintly in the darkness.
"Let me see."
I took it from him and pressed the review button. The last photograph showed a hospital bed with rumpled sheets, as though someone had just risen from it. I went back to the previous picture, then the one before that. There were dozens of them, all showing much the same thing: hospital beds with disordered sheets, some with head-shaped hollows in the pillows, others with restraints hanging from the sides.
"These are recent," I said, checking the time stamps. "They were taken tonight."
"That's impossible." Gareth snatched the camera and flicked through the pictures himself. "This place has been abandoned since 1998. There aren't any beds with sheets left anywhere in the building."
"Perhaps they're from somewhere else," Sophie suggested, although she sounded unconvinced.
Gareth's expression hardened as he studied more of the photographs. "No. Look at the walls and the shape of the windows. This is Blackthorn Hall, but it isn't the Blackthorn Hall we're standing in."
He pointed to a photograph of a bed beside a distinctive arched window.
"I passed that same window two hours ago. The room was empty. No bed, no sheets, nothing."
"What are you saying?" I asked.
Gareth turned angrily towards Sophie. "I'm saying Alice is playing games with us." He held up the camera. "She arranged this somehow. The whole night - Peter apparently being shot, people disappearing - it's all part of some sick performance."
Sophie shook her head. "That's ridiculous. How could she fake someone being shot, make Callum vanish in front of us or put that message on the wall in real blood?"
"I don't know how she did it, but this proves she's behind it." Gareth jabbed a finger at the camera. "She left this here for us to find. She's probably got friends hiding round the building, moving things and making noises."
I put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. "Think it through. Even if Alice wanted to frighten us, how could she have taken those photographs? Those beds don't exist any more."
Gareth shrugged me off. "Perhaps she found old photographs and doctored them. Perhaps she's been planning this for months. All I know is that your friend is making fools of us, and I'm finished with it."
He looked at Sophie. "You knew about this, didn't you? That's why the two of you came back."
"No. I had no idea."
"Save it," Gareth snapped. "You already lied about never having been here before."
"Gareth, this isn't helping," I said. "We need to stay together and find the others."
"You want to stay with these liars, that's your choice."
Gareth slipped the camera into his pocket. "I'm going to find Callum and Peter. Then I'm getting out of this place."
He headed towards the chapel doors. I moved to block him.
"We agreed to stay together. It isn't safe to go alone."
"Perhaps I'm safer on my own than I am with whoever's running this freak show."
He pushed past me, his footsteps echoing as he strode down the centre aisle.
"Gareth, wait!" I called, but he had already shoved through the double doors and disappeared into the darkness.
Sophie touched my arm. "Let him go. He needs to calm down."
I turned on her, angry and worried. "This is what's been happening all night. People go off alone and vanish."
She lowered her gaze, her shoulders sagging. "There's something else I need to tell you about Alice."
I leant against a pew and waited. Coloured moonlight from the stained glass laid patches of red and blue across Sophie's face, making her expression difficult to read.
"When Alice and I came here before," she began, "we found a part of the hospital that looked different from the rest. It seemed newer. There were isolation rooms and small padded cells for violent patients. Alice was drawn to one particular room. She said she could hear someone calling to her from inside, and I let her go in alone."
Sophie folded her arms tightly again. "I waited in the corridor, but there was something wrong about the place. The air was colder, and I kept hearing whispers even though we were alone in the building."
She took a deep breath.
"Alice was only in there for about ten minutes, but when she came out, she was different."
"Different how?"
"Her eyes looked empty. She moved stiffly, as if she were sleepwalking. And she kept saying, 'They're still here.' Over and over."
Sophie met my gaze.
"She returned to herself after we left the building. She claimed she couldn't remember anything that had happened in that room. I thought she was winding me up."
"Until now," I finished for her.
She nodded. "Until now."
I thought about what she'd told me. If Alice had experienced something supernatural during their first visit, it might explain her behaviour that night: her fixation on the hospital, the way she'd whispered to empty spaces. But it did not explain how people had vanished or how the sound of a gunshot had separated Peter from us.
"We need to find Alice," I said at last. "Whatever's happening, she seems to be at the centre of it."
"I agree." Sophie pushed herself away from the pew. "That isolation room might be the best place to start."
We left the chapel and returned to the main hospital, following Sophie's uncertain directions. The corridors continued their disturbing transformations. Doors appeared where none had been before, and familiar landmarks shifted position.
After twenty minutes of increasingly confused navigation, we reached a junction where the corridor divided three ways.
"I don't remember this," Sophie admitted, looking between the three identical passages.
"Which way leads to the isolation rooms?"
She pointed towards the right-hand corridor. "I think it's that way, but I'm not certain."
I considered our options. "This place is playing tricks on us. Let's check all three, but we can't risk wandering far apart. I'll take the right-hand corridor while you check the middle one. Only to the end and back. No more than two minutes. If neither of us finds anything, we come straight back here and try the left one together."
Sophie looked nervous but nodded. "All right. Two minutes, no longer."
"I'll time it." I checked my watch. "It's 23:45. Back here at 23:47."
We separated. Her torch beam bobbed down the middle corridor while I entered the one on the right.
It was longer than I'd expected, with doors on both sides leading mostly to patient rooms whose contents had long ago been stripped away. At the end, I found nothing but a window overlooking the dark hospital grounds. There were no isolation rooms and no sign of Alice.
I checked my watch. It was exactly 23:47. Time to return to Sophie.
When I reached the junction, she wasn't there.
"Soph?"
My voice bounced back from the empty corridors. There was no reply.
"Two minutes," I muttered. "That was the agreement."
I checked my watch again. 23:48.
Perhaps her corridor had been longer than mine. Perhaps she'd found something and was already on her way back. I waited another minute, growing more anxious with every second.
"Sophie!" I called, louder this time.
Nothing.
I hurried down the middle corridor, calling her name every few steps. Like mine, it ended at a blank wall with a single window. There were no side rooms and no sign of Sophie.
Back at the junction, I tried the left-hand corridor. It turned sharply after about six metres. When I rounded the bend, I found a heavy metal door with a small window of wire-reinforced glass at eye level. A sign beside it read "Restricted Area - Staff Only".
The door stood ajar, although it looked as if it ought to have been locked. Through the gap, I saw another corridor lined with thick metal doors.
The isolation ward.
"Sophie?" I called, pushing the door wider.
The air beyond was noticeably colder and carried a medicinal smell absent from the rest of the hospital. I stepped through. My torch revealed a plain corridor unlike any other we had explored. The floor was sealed concrete rather than tiles, and the block walls were painted a dull institutional green. Most of the metal doors were firmly shut, but the one at the far end stood open.
A weak light flickered inside that room. It was not the steady beam of a torch but something uneven, like a candle or a failing bulb.
I advanced slowly, listening for Sophie or any of the others.
"Soph?" I called again, more softly now. I did not want to alert anyone, or anything, that might be in that part of the building.
I reached the open door and looked inside.
The cell was roughly three metres square, with padded walls stained by age and water damage. A single bulb hung from the ceiling, blinking erratically. Sophie lay face down in the middle of the floor, a dark pool spreading beneath her head.
Alice stood over her with her back to me, holding a length of rusted metal pipe in her right hand. Blood dripped steadily from its lower end onto the concrete.
"Alice."
My voice sounded strange in my own ears, scarcely more than a whisper.
She turned slowly and mechanically, as though she had to remember how her joints worked. Her face was blank. Her unfocused eyes looked through me rather than at me. Blood was spattered across her cheek and forehead, stark against her pale skin.
"The patients showed me what they did to the troublemakers," she said in a flat, emotionless voice.
It did not sound like Alice. It was deeper, with the trace of an accent I couldn't place.
She took a step towards me, the pipe hanging loosely at her side. I backed away instinctively, and my light fell more clearly across Sophie's body. One side of her skull had been crushed. Her hair was matted with blood and darker matter. She was unquestionably dead.
Alice stepped forwards again, leaving Sophie's body behind. Her eyes remained empty, but she tilted her head slightly as she studied me.
"Alice, put down the pipe," I said, retreating into the corridor. "Whatever's happening, we can work it out."
She did not seem to hear me. Her lips moved soundlessly, as if she were speaking to someone I couldn't see. Then her gaze snapped directly onto mine with such intensity that I froze.
"They won't let any of us leave," she said in the same dead voice. "Not until the hospital is cleansed."
She took another step, the rusted pipe still dripping Sophie's blood onto the concrete. Her movements were stiff, like those of a puppet controlled by someone who only vaguely understood the workings of a human body.
"The patients need their vengeance," she said. "You disturbed their rest. All of you did."
I backed farther into the corridor, fighting to keep my voice steady. "Alice, this isn't you. Put the pipe down."
Her head tipped to one side.
"Alice isn't here any more."
She sprang at me without warning, swinging the pipe at my head. I lurched backwards, and the metal missed my face by centimetres. She stumbled forwards with the force of the blow, giving me time to turn and run.
I raced along the corridor, my torch beam leaping wildly over the walls. Alice followed at a measured, unhurried pace.
Tap, tap, tap.
As if she knew she had no need to hurry. As if she knew I could not escape.
I shoved through the heavy metal door and returned to the main hospital. The twisting corridors that had confused us earlier might save my life if I could lose her among them.
I ran past empty rooms and abandoned nurses' stations, choosing turns at random whenever the passage divided. Blackthorn Hall seemed larger than before, with new corridors appearing where I was certain none had existed. I was breathless and sweating.
Behind me, Alice's footsteps continued.
Tap, tap, tap.
They never quickened or slowed. No matter how fast I ran, they never became more distant.
I rounded a corner and found a dead end. A wall of cupboards blocked what should have been a passage. I spun round, ready to retrace my steps, and saw Alice appear at the opposite end of the corridor.
The weakening beam of my torch caught her blank face, the blood drying against her pale skin. She raised the pipe and began walking towards me, every step slow and steady.
I turned back to the cupboards, looking desperately for a way through. They were old medical-supply cabinets, some with doors hanging open onto bare shelves. I forced myself between two of them and pushed with my shoulder until one shifted far enough for me to squeeze through.
Another corridor lay beyond, lined with rooms like the one where Sophie had died. Most of the doors stood open, but one near the far end was closed.
A crash behind me told me Alice had forced her way past the cabinets. I ran for the closed door, praying it wasn't locked.
It opened easily. Beyond it was an empty padded room with a small window set high in one wall. I stepped inside, then had an idea. Instead of hiding from Alice, perhaps I could trap her.
I pressed myself against the padded wall behind the open door and listened to her footsteps drawing closer.
"I know you're in there," she called, her voice travelling along the corridor. "The patients can see you. They see everything in their hospital."
I held my breath as a shadow crossed the doorway. Alice stopped just outside, and for a moment I thought she had seen through my plan.
Then she entered the room, the pipe raised as she looked towards the high window.
I threw myself against the door with all my weight. It slammed shut with a heavy metallic clang, catching her by surprise. She whirled round, but I was already outside, hauling the door closed against her sudden resistance.
"No!"
Her scream bore no resemblance to her previous calm. The door shuddered as she hurled herself against it, but the old county asylum had built those rooms to contain violent patients. The heavy metal barely moved.
I looked for something to secure it. Across the corridor, a broken chair lay on its side in another patient room. I grabbed it and wedged it beneath the door handle, bracing it against the floor.
Alice's screams changed from fury to terror.
"Don't leave me with them."
Her voice sounded like her own again. The strange accent had vanished.
"Please, they're going to hurt me. Dan, please."
I stepped away from the door, sick with fear and guilt.
Was that really Alice? Had whatever controlled her released its hold, or was this another trick?
"Dan, please," she sobbed, knocking weakly against the door. "I don't know what happened. There's something in here with me."
I couldn't risk opening it. Sophie was dead. Peter had been separated from us by the apparent gunshot and had vanished. I had no idea what had happened to Callum, Rebecca or Gareth.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, although I knew she couldn't hear me. "I'll send help."
I turned and ran, following exit signs that had seemed absent earlier in the night. The hospital's layout continued to defy me. Corridors ended at walls where doorways should have been. Stairwells led to floors that did not connect with those below.
As I descended towards the ground floor, I began noticing changes in the building itself. The decay seemed less advanced. Some corridors had working ceiling lights that gave off a dim yellow glow.
In one passage, I passed a metal trolley holding medical supplies: alcohol swabs, syringes and medicine bottles that looked new rather than decades old. I turned a corner and nearly tripped over a wheelchair. Unlike the rusted, broken chairs we had seen earlier, this one was clean and serviceable, as though someone had left it there only moments before.
It made no sense. Nothing about that night made sense.
At last I reached the main entrance and shoved through the double doors into the cool night air. The sky had lightened to a deep blue. Dawn was approaching.
I had lost all sense of time inside Blackthorn Hall, but somehow the whole night had passed. I staggered towards my car, fumbled with my keys and collapsed into the driver's seat. My hands were shaking so badly that I could barely dial 999 on my mobile.
"Emergency. Which service?"
"Police and ambulance," I said.
The operator connected me, and another calm voice answered. It sounded bizarre after everything I had experienced.
"There's been a murder," I said, scarcely recognising my own voice. "Several murders, I think. At Blackthorn Hall psychiatric hospital."
"Are you injured? Are you in immediate danger?"
"No. I got out, but my friends are still inside. One of them is killing the others."
"Stay where you are. Police and ambulance crews are being sent."
I sat in the car and watched the hospital as the sky brightened. From outside, Blackthorn Hall looked older and more ruinous than it had when we entered. Sections of roof had collapsed, and many windows were broken or boarded. It was difficult to believe that anyone could still be alive inside that crumbling building.
Marked police vehicles arrived roughly twenty-five minutes later from the nearest market town, their blue lights flashing but their sirens silent. Two officers approached my car cautiously, watching my hands.
I got out slowly.
"I'm Daniel Mercer. I made the 999 call about the murders in the hospital."
The older officer studied my face. "Tell us exactly what happened."
I explained as clearly as I could: the urban exploration, people disappearing, the gunshot we thought had struck Peter, finding Sophie dead and seeing Alice standing over her body. I told them that I had trapped Alice in a padded room.
The officers exchanged a look.
"Show us," the younger one said at last.
I led them into Blackthorn Hall, expecting at any moment to see the transformations I had witnessed: the moving corridors and the strangely new equipment. Instead, the hospital remained completely derelict as we walked through it. Our torches showed nothing but dust, rubbish and graffiti.
When we reached the corridor where I had found the isolation ward, I stopped in confusion. The heavy metal door marked "Restricted Area - Staff Only" had vanished. In its place was a blank wall covered in peeling green paint.
"It was here," I insisted, running my hands over the wall. "A metal door with wire-reinforced glass."
"There isn't a door here, sir," the older officer said, his patience beginning to fray.
"Then we have to go round. There must be another entrance to that ward."
We spent the next hour searching the east wing. I grew more frustrated as every corridor failed to match my memory. We never found the isolation ward. We never found Alice or Sophie's body. We did not even find the blood that had pooled beneath Sophie's shattered skull.
"Listen," the older officer said eventually. "We've searched the accessible parts of this building thoroughly. There's nobody here. No bodies, no blood, nothing."
"That isn't possible. I saw Sophie dead. I locked Alice in that room."
The younger officer sighed. "Perhaps you saw something, but we haven't found evidence of a crime."
They took me to the local North Yorkshire police station. I was not formally under arrest, but they made it clear that going with them was not optional. They put me alone in an interview room, where I repeated my story to an officer who looked as though he would rather have been anywhere else.
"We get calls about Blackthorn Hall every few months," he said after taking my account. "Teenagers, ghost hunters and urban explorers claiming they've seen something in there. It wastes a great deal of police time, and you've admitted entering the property unlawfully."
"This isn't a ghost story," I said, frustration sharpening my voice. "My friends are missing. Sophie is dead. Alice killed her."
"Then where are they?" he asked. "Where's the body? Where's the blood? Where's Alice Fenwick? Officers are still searching the hospital, and they haven't found anything."
"I don't know what happened to the bodies, but I know what I saw."
He leant back in his chair. "Here's what I think happened. You and your friends went exploring. You became separated in a vast, unsafe building. You frightened yourself and began imagining things in the dark. Perhaps you fell asleep and had a nightmare."
"That's ridiculous."
"Is it? Because at present, the only allegation we can substantiate is that you may have made a false report. Knowingly wasting police time is an offence, Mr Mercer."
In the end, they released me with a warning. There were no charges, but their message was clear: they thought I was either playing a prank or mentally unwell.
I left the station around midday, exhausted and bewildered. My friends were missing, perhaps dead, and nobody believed me. The hospital I had explored during the night seemed completely different from the building I had shown the police that morning.
I drove to a small transport cafe near my flat, ordered coffee and opened my laptop. If the police would not help, I would have to understand what was happening myself.
I searched Blackthorn Hall's history, going far beyond the basic facts Gareth had shared before we entered. The former county asylum had opened in 1882 and closed in 1998. Most sources repeated the same accounts of overcrowding and mistreatment: more than 3,200 patients crammed into accommodation intended for about 1,400. There were also references to an attendant who died during a ward disturbance in 1968 and a serious fire in the isolation wing on 14 November 1981.
A digitised local newspaper archive and a county-history article led me to something I had never heard before.
Edith Harrow had first been a patient at Blackthorn Hall and had later returned as a nurse. Between February and April 1971, she had killed five patients during her night shifts, smothering them with pillows. When she was arrested, she claimed that voices in the hospital had ordered her to do it.
They were the voices of dead patients, she said, and they wanted the hospital cleansed of troublemakers.
The article included a grainy black-and-white photograph of Nurse Harrow being taken into court. She was tall and thin, with dark hair pulled tightly back from her face. Her expression was blank, her eyes empty.
I clicked through the accompanying photographs and stopped at the last one. It was a staff portrait taken at Blackthorn Hall on 9 September 1970, showing Nurse Harrow among a group of employees. Around her neck hung an oval silver locket with a raised floral border and a darkened groove down its centre.
It was identical to the locket Alice had been wearing.
I stared at the screen while my coffee went cold beside me. Alice's behaviour, her obsession with Blackthorn Hall after her first visit, the voice that did not sound like hers when she attacked me, the locket - all of it had to be connected.
But that still did not explain how Sophie's body had vanished or why the hospital's layout had changed entirely between night and morning. I rubbed my burning eyes. I had not slept all night. None of it made sense, but one thing was clear.
I couldn't walk away. My friends had disappeared inside Blackthorn Hall, and Alice was still trapped there, under the influence of something I did not understand.
I paid for the coffee and drove back to my flat. I needed sleep before I could think clearly, but even then I knew I would return to Blackthorn Hall, with or without police help. I had to find proof that what I had experienced was real.
I woke with a start on the sofa, my laptop still open beside me. The browser displayed the black-and-white photograph of Nurse Harrow wearing the silver locket identical to Alice's.
My flat was painfully quiet after the chaos at Blackthorn Hall. The clock on the wall read 14:17. I had slept for less than two hours. My whole body ached with exhaustion, but my mind would not let go of the connections.
The police thought I was lying or losing my mind. They had walked with me through the same corridors where I had seen the horror unfold, yet the building had shown them something else. No isolation ward. No blood. No Alice.
I splashed cold water on my face and changed into clean clothes.
I had to go back. If Alice was still trapped in that padded room, I couldn't leave her there, possessed or otherwise. And if Sophie's body remained where I had seen her fall, it would prove I had not imagined the night.
The drive to Blackthorn Hall took twenty minutes. I parked in the same place as before but made no attempt to conceal my car. In daylight, the hospital looked smaller and less threatening. Sunlight flashed in broken windows, and birds had nested in gaps in the roof. It seemed impossible that anything supernatural could inhabit such an ordinary-looking ruin.
I took my powerful LED torch, a bottle of water and my fully charged mobile. Yellow police tape hung loosely across the entrance doors, evidence of the morning search. I ducked beneath it and went inside.
The main entrance hall looked exactly as it had when our group first entered, not as it had during the police search. The reception desk stood to my left beneath a layer of debris. Abandoned wheelchairs rested in the same positions where we had first seen them.
My skin prickled. The building looked as it had at the beginning of our exploration, not as it had appeared only hours earlier with the police.
I headed towards the east wing. Every corridor and corner matched my memory of the previous night. I passed the day room with its faded draughtboard painted onto a table. I climbed the staircase where sections of ceiling had collapsed.
Everything was where it belonged.
On the second floor, I found the treatment room with its old electroconvulsive therapy apparatus still intact: a hospital trolley fitted with cracked leather restraints, a cabinet of glass bottles and the rusted metal headpiece Alice had held.
Nothing had been moved.
I continued along the route we had taken the night before. I passed through the twisting corridors where the metallic banging had drawn us deeper and where we had later become lost while searching for the others. At the corner near the chapel, where Gareth had left us, I stopped.
To my right stood the heavy metal door marked "Restricted Area - Staff Only".
It was the door that had vanished during the police search.
I pushed it open and revealed the isolation ward beyond. The air was colder there, carrying the same medicinal smell. My torch picked out the concrete floor and dull green block walls.
At the end of the corridor, the door to the padded room where Sophie had died stood open. I approached it slowly, listening for any sound.
When I looked inside, the room seemed empty at first. There was no body and no Alice waiting with the pipe. Then my torch crossed the concrete floor and found a dark stain where Sophie had fallen.
Blood had soaked into the concrete and dried there.
The police had missed it because the hospital had never allowed them to find this part of the building.
I knelt beside the stain and touched it with my fingertips. The blood was completely dry. Near its edge lay a small silver object.
I picked it up. It was a hoop earring, one I had seen Sophie wearing the night before.
Proof that she had been there. Proof that she had died there.
I stood and continued down the corridor to the room where I had trapped Alice. The broken chair still braced the door handle exactly as I had left it.
"Alice?" I called softly, pressing my ear against the cold metal.
Quiet murmuring came from inside, too faint for me to distinguish the words.
I pulled the chair free and eased the door open, ready to leap back if Alice attacked me with the pipe.
No attack came.
Alice sat huddled in the corner of the padded room with her knees drawn to her chest, rocking slowly backwards and forwards. Her clothes and face were covered with dried blood. Sophie's blood. The rusted pipe lay discarded on the floor several feet away.
Her eyes lifted towards me, and recognition dawned in them by degrees.
"Dan?"
Her voice was her own again: young, frightened and nothing like the cold, alien tone she had used when she attacked me.
"Alice, is it really you?"
I kept my distance and watched her carefully.
She nodded. Tears cut clean tracks through the dried blood on her cheeks.
"They let me go," she whispered. "When the sun came up, they let me go."
"Who let you go?" I asked, although I already suspected the answer.
"The patients."
She clutched the oval silver locket with its raised floral border and dark groove, then tore it from her neck, snapping the chain.
"They live in here. I can hear them talking all the time. Talking and talking."
She flung the locket across the room. It struck the padded wall with a soft thud.
I remained beside the door.
"Alice, do you remember what happened last night? Do you remember Sophie?"
Her face crumpled.
"I killed her. I killed all of them. But it wasn't me, Dan. You have to believe me."
"They made me do it. They pushed me out and took over."
Alice buried her face in her hands. "I could see everything, but I couldn't stop myself. I was trapped inside my own head, watching."
"Tell me what happened," I said, sitting against the wall opposite her. "Start at the beginning."
Alice took a deep breath. "I found this locket when Soph and I came here the first time. It was beneath a loose floorboard beside an old cast-iron radiator in one of the patients' rooms. I thought it was pretty."
She gave a bitter laugh. "I didn't know it was hers."
"Nurse Harrow," I said.
Alice looked up sharply. "How did you know?"
"I saw her photograph. She was wearing the same locket."
Alice nodded. "She killed patients here. But that isn't the whole story. Before she worked here, she was a patient. The doctors did things to her. Experimental treatments, things they kept out of the official case notes. When they decided she was cured, they gave her work as a nurse, but she wasn't cured. She'd only learnt how to hide it."
I did not ask how Alice knew. I was beginning to understand.
"When I put on the locket, I could hear them," she continued. "All the patients who died here. The ones who were mistreated and the ones everyone forgot. They're still here, trapped inside Blackthorn Hall."
She glanced wildly around the padded room.
"The building keeps them. It changes itself to confuse people and trap them inside, so the patients can take their revenge."
"What about the others?" I asked. "Peter, Becca, Callum and Gareth. What happened to them?"
Alice's eyes lost focus, as though she were looking at something I could not see.
"Peter wasn't really shot. The sound was only a trick to separate him from the others. They took him into the basement, to the disused therapeutic-bath suite."
"What happened to him?"
"He drowned."
Her voice was flat and empty.
"Becca became lost inside the walls. There are passages that aren't shown on any plan, places where they used to take troublesome patients. She's still in there."
A coldness spread through me.
"And Callum? Gareth?"
"Callum followed someone he thought was Becca, but it wasn't her. It was never her. They lured him onto one of the covered walkways. The structure gave way and he fell into an internal courtyard no one can reach."
Alice raised both hands and made a small pushing motion.
"Gareth tried to leave after he abandoned you in the chapel. The hospital wouldn't let him find the way out. He's in the mortuary now, trapped in a sealed cold room."
I took out my mobile. There was a signal.
"Alice, I'm calling 999 again. We need police and an ambulance, and we need to get you out of here."
She did not object. I told the operator that I had returned to Blackthorn Hall and found the isolation ward that the earlier police search had failed to locate. I asked for police and ambulance assistance, gave precise directions from the main entrance and stressed that Alice was injured, distressed and covered in blood.
The operator told me that officers were coming from the nearest market town and should arrive in roughly twenty-five minutes.
"They won't find the bodies," Alice said after I ended the call. "The hospital hides them. It only shows people what it wants them to see."
"They'll find you," I said. "And they'll find the blood. That's enough to begin with."
We waited in silence. I did not tell her how close I had come to believing the police, or how their first search had found no isolation ward at all. I did not mention the hours I had spent in the digitised newspaper archives and county-history records, learning about Edith Harrow and the five patients she had murdered between February and April 1971. Nor did I tell her that the staff photograph dated 9 September 1970 had shown Edith wearing the same antique silver locket.
At last, voices carried along the corridor. I called out, guiding the officers through the section of the building that had concealed itself from them that morning.
When they reached the doorway, their expressions told me that they could now see exactly what I saw: Alice, bloodstained and trembling in a padded room within an isolation ward they had previously insisted did not exist.
One officer helped her to her feet while another photographed the room, the dried blood and the stain in the corridor. Paramedics examined Alice and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. I handed over Sophie's earring and gave my account again, including the moment I had seen Alice strike Sophie with the rusted pipe.
This time, they listened.
The following weeks dissolved into police interviews, further searches and psychiatric assessments. I was questioned repeatedly about the unlawful entry and warned that making false claims could amount to wasting police time, but the physical evidence meant they could no longer dismiss everything I had said.
They never found any of the bodies, just as Alice had predicted. They recovered Sophie's earring and dried blood associated with her from the isolation ward, but Sophie herself had vanished. Blood in the administration area was forensically associated with Peter, although there was still no evidence that he had actually been shot.
Alice underwent extensive psychological assessment. She spoke in precise detail about treatments used on patients during the 1950s and 1960s, describing procedures that matched surviving records which had never been made public. She recalled the names and histories of former patients, and those details were confirmed in old case notes and county-asylum documents.
The psychiatrists recorded a provisional diagnosis of a dissociative disorder, with possible psychosis. Their explanation was that Alice had developed separate identities based on former staff and patients at Blackthorn Hall.
I gave evidence at the hearing. I described what I had witnessed that night: the changes in Alice's voice, her posture, her expression and the way she seemed to become someone else entirely. I also described the corridors that shifted, the isolation ward that disappeared and returned, and the things Alice had known without any ordinary means of learning them.
The court was more willing to accept a psychiatric explanation than a supernatural one. In the end, Alice was made subject to a hospital order and sent to a secure psychiatric hospital under NHS forensic mental health care rather than to prison.
The disappearances of Peter, Callum, Rebecca, Gareth and Sophie remained officially unresolved. Police suggested that they had died in separate accidents while exploring the unsafe complex. Structural voids, flooded service tunnels and scavenging animals were offered as possible explanations for the missing remains.
It was easier for everyone to believe that than to consider the alternative.
Before moving to another part of Britain, roughly 300 miles away, I visited Alice one final time. She was being kept under close observation and was heavily medicated. She recognised me, but seemed distant. Her gaze kept drifting towards the empty corners of the room, as though she were listening to voices I could not hear.
"They followed me here," she whispered when the nurse stepped outside. "The hospital let them come with me."
She stared past my shoulder.
"They're waiting."
"Who is?" I asked, although I already knew the answer.
"The patients."
She leant closer and lowered her voice.
"And Soph and the others. They're patients now too." She tapped one finger against her temple. "They talk to me all the time."
I left that day and never went back.
I moved roughly 300 miles away and abandoned urban exploration altogether. Even now, though, I sometimes wake in the night convinced that I can hear metallic banging inside the walls, or whispers hovering just beyond the edge of understanding.
At those moments, I wonder whether Alice was right. I wonder whether Blackthorn Hall allowed something to follow me home as well.
The official investigation ended with psychiatric explanations and theories about fatal accidents. Every supernatural detail was dismissed. My account of the building's changing layout was blamed on stress, darkness and confusion.
But I know what I saw.
I know what happened.
And whenever I pass an abandoned building with broken windows and crumbling walls, I feel something watching from inside, waiting for me to step through the door again.