Chapter Four – Patients and Ghosts

Halden Clinic housed twelve long-term patients that winter. Isolated in a wing shaped like a horseshoe, their rooms opened into a shared common area with cracked leather chairs, a flickering fireplace, and a puzzle table no one touched.

Mila had kept her distance. Until now.

On the second morning of the storm, the generator buzzed through the walls like a heartbeat, and the air inside felt heavier. Tension had its own temperature. Everyone felt it.

Adrien decided to break the routine. He gathered the patients for a “community hour” his idea of bonding under duress.

Mila sat near the back, wrapped in a dark sweater that swallowed her hands. She scanned the room, not making eye contact. At least, not intentionally.

There was Jonas, a wiry man in his forties with darting eyes and a voice like crushed gravel. He spoke to shadows more than people.

Eloise, mid-twenties, mute by choice, with a sketchpad full of disturbing drawings she never let anyone see.

Hassan, older, ex-military, always standing near exits, hyper-alert, like he was waiting for a war no one else could see.

And then there was Nina.

Late thirties. Blonde hair tied tight, the kind of smile that didn’t reach her eyes. She watched everyone like she already knew how the story would end.

When Adrien began speaking about "shared coping strategies," Mila felt Nina's eyes on her. She didn’t turn. Not yet. But she felt it like heat at the base of her neck.

Then,

“I know you.”

The words slipped out softly, but the room tensed around them like a plucked string.

Adrien paused. “Nina?”

Nina leaned forward. Her gaze never left Mila. “I’ve seen her before. Years ago.”

Mila’s face didn’t move. But her breath stopped just for a second.

Nina tilted her head. “Fire. You were there. I remember your face.”

Adrien’s eyes sharpened. “What fire?”

No answer.

Jonas began muttering to the shadows beside him, and Eloise turned the page in her sketchpad with jerky movements.

The moment fractured.

Adrien ended the session early.

But the crack had been made.

---

That night, the clinic did not sleep well.

The storm raged louder than before, rattling doors, whistling through vents like breath through teeth. Somewhere in the walls, something groaned.

Mila stared at the ceiling of her room, the shadows forming shapes her mind refused to follow.

At 2:11 a.m., a scream sliced through the silence.

Hassan was the first into the hallway, barefoot, fists clenched. Eloise hovered in her doorway, clutching her sketchbook like a shield.

Adrien was already there.

Jonas stood at the far end of the corridor, eyes wild, pointing. “She was floating,” he hissed. “I saw her. She walked right past me—eyes open. No shoes. No sound.”

Mila.

Adrien found her near the stairwell, standing barefoot in a long shirt, hair loose around her face. Her eyes were open, unblinking, but empty.

Sleepwalking.

“Mila,” he said gently, stepping closer.

She turned to him slowly, as if from a deep underwater place.

Then blinked.

Clarity returned. Confusion swept in behind it.

“I…” she murmured. “I don’t remember leaving.”

Her voice was dry and hoarse, as if it hadn’t been used in years.

Adrien guided her back to her room. She didn’t resist. But she didn’t speak again.

---

By morning, word had spread.

“She’s cursed,” Jonas muttered, pacing near the fire. “She brings ghosts.”

Nina watched Mila like she was a puzzle already solved. “She was there. I know it.”

Eloise drew something quickly, then covered the page with both hands when Adrien approached.

He let it go.

But that night, when he checked her sketchpad after lights-out, he found the drawing.

It was a female figure, standing barefoot at the edge of a fire. Behind her, a building collapsed in flames. In her hand: a match.

Her face?

Blank.

But above her head, Eloise had written one word, over and over:

REMEMBER.

---

Adrien confronted Mila the next day.

“You sleepwalked,” he said. “You nearly went outside. In this storm, that would have killed you.”

She nodded, barely.

“Nina claims she saw you years ago. At a fire.”

Mila’s hands gripped the chair. White-knuckled.

“I need the truth, Mila.”

She looked up, finally. Her voice was low and deliberate.

“There is no truth in memory, Dr. Kael. Only what we survive.”

He froze at that.

“Are you afraid of fire?” he asked quietly.

She met his gaze.

“No. I’m afraid of what it covers.”

---

That night, Adrien dreamed of smoke.

Not just smoke, screaming through smoke.

And a girl, barefoot, walking through the flame as if it were water.

When he awoke, the storm was quieter.

But the air felt colder.

And someone had scratched a word onto his door with a nail or a key.

Just one word.

RUN.