Story 1028: The Phantom Orphanage

They say the orphanage on Mire Hill was swallowed by the earth one black winter’s night—consumed whole, like a secret too heavy for the world to bear. No one speaks its name anymore. Not because they forgot.

But because the children didn’t stay buried.

Once, the place was called Saint Eulalia’s Home for the Forsaken, a crooked house of sour wood and weeping stone. It perched like a bird of prey on the fog-wrapped hill, cradling the unwanted and unloved in rooms that smelled of mildew, blood, and chalk.

Sister Delores ran it—half-nun, half-gaoler, with cataract eyes and hands like pruning shears. She told the children stories each night, but not the good kind. Tales of the hollow woman in the walls, and the soot-faced man who fed on breath. She said if they disobeyed, they’d go down to the red basement, where the air buzzed with whispers and the walls bled prayers.

They thought she was only trying to scare them.

They were wrong.