Hospitals are bad enough when they’re alive. When they’re dead, they’re worse.

We got a request from an urban exploration crew in eastern Poland—three thrill-seekers who’d gone missing while livestreaming in an abandoned psychiatric hospital. The police found the building empty but reported hearing “voices reciting numbers” through the radio static. That was enough to get Morizumi’s attention.

The hospital was a concrete husk in the middle of the forest, five stories high, windows shattered, halls bloated with moss and rust. The sign above the gate was half gone, the remaining letters spelling something like “COUNT—WARD”. I remember thinking it sounded like a warning.

The air was wrong the moment we stepped inside. Thick. Too still. Even our footsteps sounded muted, like the walls were swallowing the sound. The place smelled of iodine, rot, and something coppery underneath it all.

“Place your hand on the wall,” Morizumi said.

I did. The concrete was warm.

Morizumi’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t answer it.”

We moved through the corridors, our flashlights cutting across peeling paint and rusted bed frames. The counting grew louder, echoing from room to room like it was coming from everywhere at once.

“…four… three…”

“Why’s it counting down?” I whispered.

“It’s how the place remembers time,” Morizumi replied. “When the last number reaches zero, it resets.”

“Resets what?”

“The living.”

We turned a corner and found a hospital gurney in the middle of the hall. Something was written on the wall above it in black marker: YOU WERE HERE.

My flashlight flickered, and suddenly the corridor ahead wasn’t empty. I saw them—the missing explorers. Standing. Perfectly still. Faces blank, eyes wide open. Not dead. Not alive. Just paused.

“Don’t look at them,” Morizumi said softly.

Too late. One of them turned their head toward me with an awful cracking sound. Their mouth opened—too wide—and the countdown started again.

“…ten… nine…”

The lights in the corridor began to burst, one by one. Morizumi stepped forward, eyes glowing faintly, and pressed his hand against the wall. The concrete shuddered, veins of black spreading out from his touch.

The counting stopped. The bodies collapsed like puppets with cut strings.

The silence that followed was absolute.

When we left, Morizumi didn’t speak for a long time. Finally, he said, “That place wasn’t haunted. It was the haunting. The building wanted to know if it still existed.”

Later that night, as I reviewed my audio logs, I found something at the end of the recording. A whisper.

“…one.”

Then static.

And when I looked at the timestamp, I realized something: that last clip was recorded three hours after we’d already left the building.