The next morning, sunlight did little to warm Greystone's cold walls. Kaine barely remembered falling asleep, but the whisper from last night still echoed in his mind. He must've imagined it, he told himself. Sleep deprivation could do that.
Downstairs, the dining hall buzzed with quiet chatter and clinking cutlery. Patients sat in small groups, some talking, others lost in their own worlds. Kaine grabbed a tray and sat alone at the corner table, under a cracked stained-glass window.
A girl with a shaved head and pale grey eyes slid into the seat across from him. No warning. No greeting.
"You heard it, didn't you?" she asked, stabbing her eggs.
Kaine blinked. "What?"
"The whisper. From the hall." Her eyes locked on his. "Room with no number."
He hesitated. "That door was open."
"No. It opens for you. Doesn't open for most." She lowered her voice. "Not unless it wants you."
Kaine stared. "Do you always talk to strangers like this?"
"Only the ones marked." She took a bite, chewing slowly. "I'm Elara."
Before he could ask what she meant, Nurse Marla entered the hall, clipboard in hand. "Morning check-ins begin in ten. Kaine, Dr. Halbrook will see you now."
Dr. Halbrook's office was lined with bookshelves and soft lighting, clearly designed to feel comforting. It didn't work. The man himself wore wire-framed glasses and smiled too easily.
"So, Kaine," he said, scribbling on a notepad. "How are we settling in?"
"I didn't sleep," Kaine replied. "I heard… something. In the hallway."
Halbrook's smile never faded. "Adjustment takes time. Many patients experience heightened imagination their first few nights here."
"It wasn't my imagination," Kaine insisted. "Someone whispered my name."
Halbrook paused, then flipped a page. "The mind has clever ways of externalizing inner fear. Perhaps what you heard was your subconscious calling to be heard."
Kaine stared at him. "That's not what it was."
Halbrook nodded politely, but his pen was already moving again.
That night, Kaine couldn't stop staring at the hallway through the gap in his door. The silence was deeper tonight. He couldn't even hear the wind.
At 3:06 a.m., a soft creak echoed down the corridor.
He stepped into the hallway.
The door across from him, the one with no number was shut now.
But something else had changed.
Three long scratch marks had appeared down the center of the wood.
Fresh.
And just below the scratches, carved in what looked like fingernail marks, was a word.
"COME."