Here I come

The abandoned asylum loomed in the night like a coffin half-buried in mist, its crumbling walls swallowed by ivy and shadows. Broken windows glinted in the moonlight, like blind eyes that still remembered how to stare. Fog coiled along its foundation, sifting through cracked bricks, winding around rusted gates and sunken walkways, as if the building remembered every anguished scream it had ever contained. The stale air smelled of mildew and antiseptic.

Outside, staring up at the second story, Jenny, a petite brunette, chewed her thumb nervously. At fifteen, she often felt too small for the world. Tonight, doubt gnawed, skin prickled. Liam, two years her senior, with dark hair falling into his eyes, had convinced her to explore the deserted Tranquille mental hospital on the outskirts of town that Hallowe’en night. He seemed energized by the thrill, but Jenny noticed hesitation in his tight jaw, the flashlight trembled in his grip.

“Do you believe in ghosts?” Jenny whispered, searching his face.

“Of course not,” Liam smiled, taking her hand and squeezing it.

They entered.

Initially, the colossal derelict offered only silence, broken by their hushed whispers and echoing footsteps. Then a strangled voice floated eerily down the empty corridor.

“Ten… Nine…”

Jenny froze. Liam’s flashlight swung wildly, illuminating only peeling plaster and warped floorboards as they came to a dead end.

“Eight… Seven…”

Fear clenched like iron. Liam gripped Jenny’s hand tighter.

“Just rats,” he whispered.

Jenny hissed, “Rats can’t count!”

“Six… Five…”

A ghastly specter emerged, hair clinging in damp, stringy strands, a sharp vertical scar bisecting her forehead, and eyes that glittered like shards of ice, brimming with frozen malice.

“Four… Three…”

Jenny screamed. “RUN!”

They blindly fled. Corridors twisted impossibly; walls stretched and shifted. Staircases ended in brick. Every exit looped back into the same shadowed hall. The asylum seemed to morph around them.

“Two… One!”

She spilled from the shadows as if the asylum had exhaled her, fluid, spectral, impossible. Gnarled feet barely touching warped floorboards. Scar glinting like a moonlit shard — impossibly close, blank sockets unseeing, clawed hands reaching.

“Liam!” Jenny screamed, grasping his warm, smooth hand.

Only his hand.

The rest of Liam was gone.

The air was suffocating. Every heartbeat, a drumbeat inside her skull. All hope exhausted, paralyzed by fear, Jenny stood rooted in place, and from every direction came the whispered hiss:

“Ready or not… Here I come.”