towards me. In the bowl beside the heart, the lungs inflated like yellow mucus-filled sacs, sucking in the surrounding air, then exhaling it with a watery gasp.
I forced my eyes shut and shook my head, driving these thoughts from my mind. I knew they were not real. I knew they existed only within my imagination, but they held fast.
When I opened my eyes, the organs were gone, the bloody bowls were empty again, and I breathed a sigh.
The sheet moved, I was certain of this. A small red dot appeared near the center.
My feet took another step towards the bed, forcing me to follow.
I heard the lungs again, the rough thump of the heart, only this time the sounds didn’t come from phantom organs in the bowls at my back; they came from under the sheet on the bed in front of me, only inches from me now as I somehow drew closer. I reached for the sheet and took it by the corner, pulling it away in one quick, fluid motion.
I stifled a scream.
On the bed lay Mr. Appleyard, his uniform shirt soaked in blood and his face whiter than any I had ever seen, nearly alabaster. Frothy blood dripped from the corners of his mouth when he tried to speak. His eyes were glossy, like fluid-filled marbles, but they still held life. They focused on me for a moment before rolling back up into his head. A gash in the man’s neck was spurting blood, the flesh hanging in a loose flap. When he drew a breath, I found the source of the sound. It wasn’t the lungs in the bowl; it was the air seeping through the gash. Red spittle was draining from it and seeping into the blood-soaked mattress beneath him.
As a doctor, I would like to say I immediately began treatment to help this man, to save what little life still flowed through his ravaged body, but I did not. Instead, I froze, my eyes locked on him, my limbs unwilling to move. I stood motionless as his final breath escaped from that gaping hole in his neck and he finally found peace.
The room fell quiet then, so quiet I thought I heard the mice as they scurried through the walls and my own heart as it continued to work at a fevered pitch. I stood there, one hand clutching the sheet, the other limp at my side, unable to look away from the wound at this man’s neck. It appeared to be an animal attack, but that was not plausible, not here, not in the basement of this hospital. Then what? Surely not a man, for what instrument would yield such a ghastly tear? It certainly wasn’t a knife, but the alternatives were unthinkable.
A man it must be, though, for Appleyard hadn’t climbed up on the bed by himself and hidden under the sheet on his own.
At that moment, another thought entered my mind, one that I wished I could quickly expel, one that gripped me with an entirely new fear.
Where was the man who had done this? The wounds were surely fresh, inflicted no more than minutes before I arrived. The perpetrator couldn’t be far; had he left, I would have passed him in the corridor leading to the basement. Yet I had seen no one.
Could he be here now, watching me?
This thought was enough to force my eyes from the body of the security guard to my surroundings, to the dozens of beds around me. I realized I wasn’t alone, not truly. There were bodies on many of those beds—twenty, if not more—each lying in perfect silence.
Could the killer be amongst them? Waiting for the right moment to strike me down?
The ring of a little bell came from my left, and I spun to meet the sound. I was faced with nine occupied beds. My eyes quickly followed the strings tied to the hand of each body to the little bell hanging above each bed, but none betrayed the stillness. Another bell sounded, this one behind me, and I spun yet again only to find more motionless beds, more bodies lying in wait. Another bell rang out at my right, then two more on