Two Exits

Before the place began changing, he had known it by repetition. A low, heavy thudding that vanished into itself because it was nearly always there. A softer disturbance that came and went without pattern, sometimes long, sometimes broken into little bursts. The enclosing warmth shifted with him — one side gave when he pushed, another slowly returned him to where he had been. He could fold, turn, drift a little. There were no edges that stayed hard for long.

Then one did.

The enclosure gathered around his back and shoulders and held him until he could not unfold. Not pain exactly. Something more primitive: wrongness. The place had changed its rules. He twisted against it, and it tightened further. The softer disturbance rose suddenly, rough and jagged. Then everything let go.

Almost everything.

*

On the first floor of St Catherine's, Miriam waited for the corridor to straighten. It had been doing a poor job of it since lunch. She held the wall until the green EXIT sign stopped sliding sideways, then looked back toward Records, where forty-three archive boxes sat, each labelled in handwriting belonging to people sensible enough not to be working in an abandoned hospital on a Saturday.

St Catherine's had closed nine days earlier. Patients first. Staff next. Beds, monitors, computers, even the vending machines. What remained were empty rooms, dustless rectangles on walls, and a silence so complete Miriam could hear rain travelling through the drainpipes.

She had promised herself she'd be done by three, home in time for the omelette she made most Saturdays because nobody else in the house minded eggs and she'd long since stopped pretending she minded eating alone.

Her lower back seized again. She leaned into the wall. "Cheese sandwich," she said. The hospital offered no second opinion. When it passed, she continued toward reception.

*

The changes returned. This time the yielding space around him shifted in pieces. Something firm travelled slowly along his spine. The softness near his legs gathered them closer. His head met a curved resistance that had not been there before.

He moved toward the only part that still gave. It gave less than expected. The deep thudding accelerated. The other disturbance followed — several short bursts, then one longer one that shook faintly through everything enclosing him.

He became still. The thudding slowed.

Not enough.

*

At reception, Miriam lifted the desk phone. Nothing. She tried her mobile. NO SERVICE. "Wonderful."

The lights blinked out. Darkness swallowed the corridor so completely that for one second she could no longer tell whether her eyes were open. Emergency strips flickered on near the floor. A recorded voice spoke overhead.

ATTENTION. MAIN POWER HAS BEEN INTERRUPTED.

Miriam looked up. "You don't say."

PLEASE PROCEED TO THE NEAREST EXIT.

"That's the dream."

The lift was dead. The front doors were one floor below. She opened the stairwell. Concrete steps descended into weak green light. Nothing moved down there. No voices. No trolley wheels. No cleaners swearing at an overflowing bin. Even the rain sounded farther away.

Miriam put one foot on the first step. Something inside her pulled tight. She gripped the rail. The pain deepened until her knees softened. For several seconds she could not make herself move either forward or back.

When it released, she sat on the top step.

One floor. She only needed one floor.

Her body disagreed.

*

Around him, the old ease was disappearing. There had once been room to change position without consequence. Now every movement met something sooner. A firm sweep pressed across his back, retreated, returned. His body was turned slightly by it. He tried to correct himself and found no useful direction.

The enclosing warmth no longer felt endless. It felt occupied. Crowded by him.

A faint vibration reached him from far beyond the boundary, different from the familiar irregular one — thin, mechanical, repeating without variation. Then it stopped. The familiar disturbance answered with something abrupt and harsh. He recoiled from it. The place closed around him again.

*

Miriam got back into Records and shut the door. Immediately she opened it again. Being trapped behind a closed door in an empty hospital seemed unnecessarily cooperative.

She called emergency services. One bar appeared.

"Emergency services. What's your location?"

"Old St Catherine's Hospital."

"The closed hospital?"

"Yes."

"What's happened?"

Miriam looked at the abandoned desk, the boxes, the framed sailboat someone had left behind because apparently even art could be made redundant.

"I don't know."

"Are you injured?"

"No."

"Are you alone?"

Miriam looked through the open door at the green corridor.

"Yes."

"What symptoms are you having?"

"Pain. Dizzy. My back. My stomach."

"How severe is the pain?"

Another wave began. Miriam bent over the desk. "Ask me in a minute."

"Ma'am?"

The room narrowed around her. She heard the operator speaking, but the words moved farther away. Her own breathing became louder. The edge of the desk dug into her palms.

Then the line went dead.

Miriam stared at the screen. CALL FAILED.

Nobody knew she was in this building. Nobody was coming up this corridor. She understood, all at once, how large St Catherine's actually was — floor after floor of empty rooms between her and a door nobody would think to check.

"No." She tried again. Nothing. "No, no, come on." NO SERVICE.

Outside, rain hammered the windows harder. Beyond them, the car park was empty. The old ambulance bay shone under the emergency lamps, wet and useless.

*

The place gripping him changed again. Not merely tighter now. Directional. A broad force gathered behind him and moved through the enclosing softness, carrying him with it. He pressed against the movement. His legs contracted closer. His chin was forced downward.

Fear was not a thought. It was the frantic need to return to the shape from before. He twisted. The place corrected him, again.

The familiar disturbance came, louder now, torn apart by pauses. He stopped fighting long enough to listen to it. The world loosened.

Barely.

*

Miriam lowered herself onto the floor. She had stopped believing in the cheese sandwich.

Something moved beneath her ribs. Not a cramp.

Moved.

She froze. There it was again, slow and deep, travelling across her abdomen before disappearing. Her first thought was muscle spasm. Her second was considerably less useful.

"No."

She waited. Nothing. The hospital voice started again.

PLEASE PROCEED TO THE NEAREST EXIT.

Miriam laughed once. "By all means, send someone to carry me." Her laugh broke at the end.

She looked toward the open doorway. Nothing. The silence beyond it had changed. Earlier it had been merely empty. Now it felt watchful, as if the building had noticed she was no longer capable of leaving.

She dragged one of the plastic chairs closer and sat. Another pain forced her out of it almost immediately. She knelt instead. Her hands shook.

"I need help." The words barely reached the corridor. She said them louder. "Help!"

Her voice travelled away. A second later a thinner version returned.

Help.

That was all.

*

The enclosing place no longer restored itself between changes. He remained folded tighter each time, the old space vanishing in increments. The soft boundary near his head changed texture, drawing close around him.

The deep thudding became wild. He moved toward the one sound that still belonged to before.

*

Miriam crawled toward the corridor. She made it three metres. A violent force low in her body stopped her. She pressed her forehead to the vinyl.

"No." Her body tightened harder. "No, wait."

It did not.

Something inside her bore downward with such certainty that panic arrived before understanding. She reached for the desk leg and missed.

The scream tore out of her before she could stop it.

The sound filled Records, entered the corridor, and disappeared into thirty empty rooms.

No answer.

When it ended, she lay still. Sweat ran into her eyes.

Her breathing stopped.

"No." She said it softly this time.

The next spasm began.

*

The place forced him toward somewhere he had never occupied — less warmth there, less give. He tried to retreat. There was nowhere to retreat into.

The familiar disturbance changed into something enormous, shook through him, stopped, returned. He struggled toward it because it was known. The movement carried him farther into the unknown.

*

Miriam pulled off her trousers. She did not decide to. Her hands simply did it.

Her vision kept narrowing at the edges. The emergency lights turned the room green, then grey, then green again.

She reached between her legs.

Her fingers touched something that did not belong there.

Hard. Smooth.

She jerked her hand away. For several seconds she stared at nothing. Then she began to cry — not from joy. There was no room for joy yet. Only disbelief, and the animal terror of being alone with something her body apparently understood better than she did.

"Oh God."

The hospital remained professionally unavailable.

Another wave took her. She grabbed the chair. Her body pushed.

Miriam shouted. "Stop."

It didn't.

She tried to hold back and discovered that resistance only added another kind of pain. She gave in. Once. Then again. The chair scraped backwards across the floor.

*

The world holding him compressed into almost nothing. There was no softness left to seek, no old position, no place that still recognised his shape.

One part of him crossed into something entirely different. The sensation had no relation to what had surrounded him before — it seized his skin, sharp and strange, as though warmth itself had suddenly been removed.

He recoiled. The force behind him continued. The familiar disturbance was farther away now — that frightened him more than everything else — and he drove himself toward it.

*

Miriam felt the change. She reached down again. This time she did not pull her hand away.

"Oh."

Something shifted beneath her fingers. Her fear changed shape. Not gone — never gone — but no longer entirely hers.

"Okay," she whispered. She had no idea whom she was speaking to. "Okay."

Another contraction rose. She pushed. The hospital lights flickered. Miriam screamed.

The enclosing world gave one final violent squeeze.

Then released him completely.

Everything vanished at once — the closeness, the muffled world, the warmth without edges. In their place came an enormous nowhere.

Something attacked every part of his skin, sharp and biting. Sounds no longer travelled through him; they struck from separate places, too many, too clear. His own weight dragged at him.

And through his closed eyes came brightness. Not shape. Not colour. An unbearable burning whiteness where there had never been anything but muted dark.

He twisted away. There was nowhere to turn. Something opened inside his chest. Air entered. Pain. A sound tore from him.

Miriam stared at the tiny wet body between her hands. For one second, perhaps two, they were strangers. Then he screamed again.

"Oh," she said.

She lifted him against her chest and curled herself around him on the dirty hospital floor. His face pressed into her skin, away from the awful brightness. The impossible open world remained around him.

But beneath his cheek, through flesh and bone, the deep familiar thudding continued.