MistNovel - Read Web Novel Stories & Fiction Online

Three days bled into four, and then five. The doctors wanted to keep her longer, monitoring for infection and any signs of neurological damage. Scarlet stopped arguing. The hospital room was a cage, but at least it was a cage where nurses brought her food and checked on her wounds. It was better than her apartment, where no one would notice if she collapsed.

The whispers came and went.

At first, she blamed the morphine. But they had reduced her pain medication on day three, switching her to something milder, and the whispers had only grown clearer. They were static-like murmurs that rose from corners, from the space behind the humming machines, from the empty air beside her bed.

She never told the nurses. She never mentioned the flickers of movement she caught at the edge of her vision. These were things that looked almost like people but were not quite solid enough to be real. They would increase her medication, or they would call for a psychiatric consult, or both. She did not need that complication added to her growing stack of problems.

By day five, she could almost tune them out. They were background noise, like traffic or construction. The human brain was adaptable. It could normalize almost anything given enough time.

Then the old man appeared.

Scarlet had been dozing, hovering in that strange space between sleep and waking. A sound had pulled her back to full consciousness. It was not static this time. It was a gasp. A desperate, panicked gasp for air.

She opened her eyes.

He stood in the corner by the window. An old man in a faded hospital gown, with thin hair plastered to his skull with sweat. His hand clutched his chest. His face was twisted in agony. He gasped again, his mouth opening wide, his eyes bulging with terror.

Then he collapsed. His body crumpled to the floor like a puppet with cut strings.

Scarlet’s heart hammered against her ribs. She should call for help. She should press the button for the nurse. But she could not move. She could not look away.

The old man stood up.

He did not rise slowly, not like someone struggling to their feet after a fall. He simply reappeared in the standing position, as if the last few seconds had rewound and played again. His hand clutched his chest again. His face twisted into the same expression of agony.

He gasped. He collapsed. He stood. He gasped. He collapsed. He stood.

Over and over. The exact same movements. The exact same expression. A broken record playing the same few seconds on an endless, silent loop.

Scarlet’s mouth went dry. This was not the morphine. This was not oxygen deprivation. This was happening. This was real.

She tried to speak. Her voice came out as a whisper. “Can you hear me?”

The old man did not react. He clutched his chest, gasped, collapsed. He stood. He started again.

“Please,” Scarlet tried again, her voice louder. “Can you see me?”

Nothing. He did not look at her. He did not acknowledge her presence in any way. He was trapped in his circuit, replaying his death over and over, completely unaware that he was being watched.

A ghost. The word finally settled in her mind, solid and undeniable. She was looking at a ghost.

Her hands began to shake. She gripped the cold metal bed rails, needing something solid to anchor herself to the world. This could not be happening. Ghosts were not real. The dead did not linger. They moved on to wherever the dead moved on to, or they simply ceased to exist. They did not stand in hospital corners replaying their final moments.

But he was there. He was as real as the monitors beside her bed, as present as the IV in her arm. She could see him with perfect clarity. She could hear his rasping breaths. She could even smell something faint and wrong in the air, like old flowers and antiseptic.

The old man collapsed again. He rose again. He clutched his chest again.

Scarlet closed her eyes. She squeezed them shut until lights sparked behind her eyelids. This was shock. It was trauma. It was her brain breaking down under the weight of too much stress. When she opened her eyes, he would be gone.

She counted to ten. She opened her eyes.

He was still there. Still dying. Still trapped.

A whimper escaped her throat. She bit it back, forcing herself to breathe slowly, evenly. Panic would not help. Panic would only make this worse.

Think. She needed to think. If this was real, if she could actually see ghosts, then something had changed inside her when she died. The doctor had mentioned neurological side effects. Maybe this was one of them. Maybe coming back from death had rewired something in her brain, opened some door that should have stayed closed.

Or maybe she was losing her mind.

The old man collapsed. Rose. Gasped.

Scarlet grabbed the button for the nurse. She pressed it repeatedly, desperate for another human being. Someone alive. Someone solid and real.

A nurse appeared in the doorway, young and efficient, her face showing concern. “What is wrong? Are you in pain?”

“The corner,” Scarlet said, her voice shaking. “Do you see him? The man in the corner?”

The nurse followed her gaze. She looked directly at the spot where the old man stood. She saw nothing. Scarlet watched her face, watched the confusion replace the concern.

“There is no one there, honey. You are alone in this room.”

The old man clutched his chest. Gasped. Collapsed.

“Right there,” Scarlet insisted. “He is right there.”

The nurse moved closer, putting herself between Scarlet and the empty corner. Her professional mask slipped back into place, but Scarlet saw the worry in her eyes. It was the worry that her patient was hallucinating. The worry that the brain damage was worse than they thought.

“I am going to get the doctor,” the nurse said gently. “Just stay calm. Everything is going to be fine.”

She left. Scarlet heard her speaking to someone in the hall, her voice low and urgent. They would increase her medication. They would run more tests. They would treat her like she was broken.

Maybe she was broken.

The old man stood in the corner, dying over and over. Scarlet stared at him, tears burning in her eyes. This was real. She knew it was real. But no one else could see him. No one else would believe her.

She was alone with the dead, and the dead were everywhere.