Wavertree Asylum for The Criminally Insane
A study conducted in April 2019 showed that 73% of British citizens did not believe in ghosts.
Evidently, 73% of British citizens have never set foot on the grounds of the Wavertree Asylum for the Criminally Insane.
Something about the place writhes with something entirely inhuman. It almost… pulses; beats like a withered heart, dried and pounding ferociously, cracking and ripping and bringing forth long-forgotten things that hide in your shadow and smile at you with mouths of broken teeth. Shadows wander through the halls, fingernails ripped from their beds, bloody stumps of fingers carving out the same patterns over and over, a relentless dull scrape as fragments of bone hit concrete. The sickening yet disembodied crack of joints echoes throughout the halls, a sound that calls to mind images of bodies warped and broken - pulled apart and sewn together, shoulders rolling and legs buckling, arched spines and hollow eye sockets. And the smell - so pungent and thick that you can taste it in the air. Sweet, like the last few drops of a cheap perfume scavenged from a mother’s dressing table, but the overpowering scent is that of meat. Rotting meat, left out for too long, the sort of smell that makes you hold your breath and run, run as far and as fast as you can just to escape. Most people will tell you that a rotting corpse smells just like sewage, or like excretion. Those who enter Wavertree know better.
On this particular night, the wind is howling with all the savagery of a cornered animal, biting and scratching and screeching in a way that wakes you up in a cold sweat years later, clawing at your ears and drawing your knees to your chest in fright. White-hot lightning darts across the sky and strikes the ground like a keen blade, reopening old wounds and bleeding inky darkness across the landscape. Clouds sag, murderously dark and swollen with rain. Sheets upon sheets of rain desperately throw their droplets against the cracked window panes. It’s as if every evil thing has risen up and is rejoicing in the melody of the storm, each clap of thunder or screech of wind a twisted exclamation of joy.
Eva cringes as a particularly loud growl of thunder shakes the floor beneath her feet, nursing her broken arm and spitting blood from her mouth. Shivers run through her body, and she stands still, a statue in the pale moonlight, eyes darting nervously as she takes in her surroundings. The door is locked; that’s something she noticed relatively quickly, after throwing herself against it for god knows how long (she had a watch on, but it told her that it was 3 A.M - and how could it be, when she’d arrived two days ago and the hands hadn’t yet completed one full lap of the watch face?). There is no handle, however - just a flat surface. Well… flat may be the incorrect term. The door is littered with scratches. Not with animal scratches, though. Scratches so high up and so rounded that they could only have been made by humans. Eva’s suspicions are confirmed as she traces a dark-crimson stain down the length of the entire door (she’s trying extremely hard not to imagine where the stain came from, or what the person must have endured in order to dig their fingers into wood with such desperation) and it met with what looks like a dirtied yellow shell. She prods it - once, twice, three times - and recoils as it falls from the door and lands on her foot. A nail. A rotting, yellowed, human nail. She spins round and heaves on to the dusty floor, nothing but water coming up.
She takes a deep breath, composes herself, and continues to look around. The walls are also adorned with deep-set scratches, too many to count, and too many to have been put there by a single person. The floor has accumulated centuries worth of dirt and dust, disturbed only by Eva’s footsteps, and if she squints hard enough, she can almost see the floor rising and falling like the chest of some great beast. In the far corner, she can see a smashed oil lamp, bloodied fractures of glass scattered across the floor, glinting in the moonlight. The storm seems to have mellowed out, so there is no sound other than the steady drip, drip, drip of the rain as it leaks through the roof and stains the floor a dark colour. A colour that looks far too dark to be made by water. And if the spherical drops are enough to go by, the liquid dripping from the ceiling certainly isn’t rain.
It’s blood.
Whispers fill the room and Eva clamps her hands over her ears, sinking to her knees and praying to everyone, anyone, to save her. The voices call out to her, and the building calls out too, a separate entity, hungry for the taste of flesh, the sweet flavour of fear and fresh meat. The walls shake and the whispers grow louder and louder until the whole place is screaming, taunting and torturing and begging and laughing. It drills into her head and she clenches her fists so hard that blood flows from her palms, exciting the voices even more.
Yes, something unholy dwells in the halls of Wavertree Asylum.
So you’d better hurry. Because it’s been waiting for you your entire life.
And you’re just about ripe for the taking.