Chapter 466

The old asylum stood on a hill overlooking the town, a skeletal silhouette against the perpetual twilight sky. It had been abandoned for years, whispers of cruelty and neglect clinging to its decaying walls. Then, a new corporation bought the property. They intended to turn it into a halfway house for rehabilitated patients, or so they claimed. What they got was a bloodbath and a ghost of something feral.

Michael, a night security guard, was skeptical about the rumors the workers circulated. Phantom growls in the basement and unnerving glowing eyes peering from the darkened wards. He saw it all as childish superstition, tales spun to alleviate boredom and fear in this desolate place. But a part of him, a small, nagging part, did fear, as any person would.

The building groaned under its own weight, every creak and rustle echoing through the empty corridors. Michael's boots tapped a dull beat against the tile, the sound amplifying the oppressive silence of the night. The generator gave off a low drone that vibrated through his chest, almost like an animal growling.

The fluorescent lights, old and unreliable, cast long, distorted shadows that seemed to dance around him. He found nothing that night, other than a persistent unease. Then, a fellow guard, Daniel, found a deep gash on the storage room door. The wood was splintered and twisted, it was far too high for anyone to make.

He called Michael in, and they both looked at it with a grim expression. "I didn't touch it," Daniel stated, more to convince himself than the other guard.

"Maybe the wind?" Michael suggested, trying to dismiss the oddity with reason.

Daniel shook his head. "The doors are closed, nothing touched it." They both went quiet, listening. Only the wind sang around the cracks of the old structure.

The next morning, things turned violent. During the handover to the day shift, Martha, the head nurse, was discovered sprawled at the base of the stairwell, her neck broken. Her eyes were wide with terror, her expression one of profound shock. She had deep, claw-like slashes marring her body.

The authorities dismissed it, chalking it up to an accident, with no witnesses. It didn't sit right with many of the staff. The staff had talked amongst themselves, many spoke of seeing golden eyes when turning corners at night, a sensation that always followed. But management told them to ignore it, told them it was the stress.

The staff did try to act normal, despite the very opposite. Michael found it difficult to swallow the lie. His anxiety began to fester, becoming a physical sensation. He took to patrolling with more focus, his flashlight beam cutting through the darkness.

He found his hand kept going to his weapon, the spray tucked to his side. A pathetic offering against the dark, against the invisible things he knew lived there with them.

He began to see the eyes. Yellow orbs floating just at the edge of his peripheral vision. They'd vanish as soon as he turned, but he always knew they were there, watching, waiting. The feeling of being hunted took root in him, like a cold vine wrapping around his heart.

He told the other guards, most laughed, and the others, tried not to believe it. They all wanted to be sane, it's what they craved the most, a return to normalcy.

One night, the old generator sputtered and died, plunging the asylum into absolute blackness. A wave of panicked cries came through the building from the remaining staff. A tense quiet followed.

The moon was veiled behind the clouds, and the old building was consumed by the pitch. Michael pulled out his personal flashlight, the beam a small, fragile star in the oppressive void. It felt as though they were in the belly of some beast, in its most sinister parts.

Then the growls began. Low and guttural, they echoed through the corridors, not of this world, animalistic, and very, very close. He heard them approach, moving with incredible speed and strength. It wasn't a normal animal growl.

It resonated through bone and caused the air around it to become thick with unease. He felt, rather than saw it. A powerful weight, massive, the presence made him take a quick breath. His flashlight beam swung across the ward.

There, in the dim light of his meager torch, a tiger. But this was not flesh, no animal he had seen before. It was a ghostly apparition, transparent, yet its outline, razor-sharp. A spectral tiger, its eyes burned bright like twin suns.

He watched as the staff screamed around him. All who had mocked, all who doubted. This was no dream, this was reality. It sprang upon another guard, one he had come to know over the days he spent here, Robert.

He watched in horror as the spectral beast tore through Robert, it tore at flesh, bone and spirit. Michael cried out, and was quickly silenced with the growling entity's eyes locking onto him.

Michael fumbled for his spray, the plastic feeling cheap and ineffective in his trembling hand. He was trying to bring logic to the situation, but only panic came. He remembered seeing Daniel, his face wet with panic, only to be swiped away like a bug.

Then Martha, his face and eyes. He took in the carnage around him, but the eyes, that stare, remained his point of reference. He could move, a slow drag of his feet across the tiled floor, like walking in mud, against all the urgency in his heart.

Every step made the spectral beast roar out of him, as if it wanted him to break and succumb to the hunt. He turned and ran, every labored breath burning his throat and lungs.

The asylum was a labyrinth in the dark, doors seeming to move, hallways extending themselves further and further away from him. He ran through endless hallways that kept stretching and moving.

Each time he turned his head, there they were. The two glowing orbs, locked and focused only on him. He burst through a side door that went into the kitchen area and the old freezer. The sudden blast of frigid air burned his face, but the lack of sounds was a blessing.

His legs ached, but the quiet here made him think. He used a large shelving unit to barricade himself, praying this ghost wasn't something that could simply phase through walls. He prayed for some kind of escape, anything to get out.

The growling grew closer. He could feel it coming closer now. He closed his eyes, his back against the cold steel of the freezer. This was it, he told himself. All the bad choices he's made had come down to this, his miserable existence ending in the old freezer of a dying asylum.

He thought about his family, his sister, how he had never made his family proud. A terrible brother, a worthless man. This ending seemed very much on point. Then it stopped. He could not hear the growls anymore.

No signs of the monster that stalked the halls. But the heavy oppressive air was still present. As was the dread in his heart, it would not leave. His panic began to fade.

He breathed through his mouth and carefully moved to the large freezer door. He made sure to make as little noise as possible, moving like a child trying to escape trouble. Michael pulled the steel handle, bracing himself, as it slowly, painfully swung outwards.

Nothing. Just the dark, cold kitchen with all of its dead appliances. He sighed with relief and took slow and deep breaths. Trying to relax the taut muscles of his body. It seemed like it had given up, he must have gotten far enough to shake off his stalker.

He stepped forward when he saw the door of the freezer he came through. It stood there, a small rectangle. He did not remember moving that far from it. It had to have moved. The handle glowed, a soft and strange light emitted from the metal as it called to him.

It whispered in a low, alluring tone, beckoning him closer to it. Michael's feet moved without any direction of thought, it wasn't conscious at all, more like instinct. Michael's arm reached and slowly grabbed the cold steel of the door.

His hand wasn't shaking for some reason. He pulled the heavy steel open, and he stared straight ahead at the inky blackness of the opening. There was nothing inside. Just blackness.

It pulled him in. His vision went black. He struggled but the pull was far too strong. Like the current of a great river that carries debris into the sea. He was not of the mind that could make these choices.

Then, an image bloomed in his mind. A vision, of an orange tiger with golden eyes that peered at him. But now its face was that of a human, one that had an extremely similar look to the head nurse, Martha. It had sharp canine teeth and a blood-red smile that was painted onto its face.

She slowly spoke. Her voice, however, was a deep, low growl that echoed into his mind with a deafening tone. "You will be one of us." Then her face turned into that of Robert, then Daniel. Their eyes the golden orbs of the ghost tiger.

He was pulled into the darkness and his mind shattered into many different fragments. The next morning, the surviving members of the day shift found nothing but a blood-soaked kitchen, all traces of their fellow guards gone.

The freezer was open, a thick frost on the door's edge. But they said that the cold didn't linger. It faded quickly as if a small breeze had gone through and blown it out, leaving the heavy, quiet, air of dread behind.

No one mentioned Michael's name ever again. The asylum was then closed, for the last time.