The fluorescent lights hummed their electric lullaby as Marcus wheeled the medication cart down the corridor of Eternal Rest Hospice. Three weeks into his new job, and he still couldn’t shake the feeling that something was fundamentally wrong with this place. The patients lingered too long, their suffering stretched like taffy pulled beyond its breaking point.

Room 237 was his first stop. Mrs. Chen had been here for eight months—far longer than anyone with her condition should survive. Her family had stopped visiting after month four, unable to bear watching her waste away in what seemed like an endless loop of almost-dying. Marcus checked her chart: no improvement, no decline. Just… stasis.

“How are we feeling tonight, Mrs. Chen?” he whispered, adjusting her IV drip.

Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilated despite the dim lighting. “It won’t let me go,” she rasped, her voice barely audible. “It’s so hungry.”

Marcus froze. In three weeks, he’d never heard her speak. According to her file, she’d been catatonic since admission. “What won’t let you go?”

But her eyes had already closed, her breathing returning to its shallow, mechanical rhythm.

The next room housed Mr. Valdez, a former construction worker whose lung cancer should have claimed him months ago. His daughter visited every Sunday, crying over his bedside, begging him to “just let go.” But he couldn’t. None of them could.

Marcus had worked at two other hospices before this one. He knew the signs of impending death, the way bodies prepared for their final journey. These patients showed all the signs—repeatedly—but never crossed the threshold. They existed in a perpetual state of dying without the mercy of death.

As he continued his rounds, Marcus noticed something he’d overlooked before. The air in each room felt thick, almost viscous, as if something invisible was pressing down on everything. The temperature dropped noticeably in the patient rooms, but the hallways remained warm. And there was a sound—so low it was more felt than heard—like a massive heartbeat echoing through the walls.

In Room 244, seventeen-year-old Sarah Martinez lay connected to machines that should have been turned off weeks ago. Her parents had begged the doctors to let her go, but somehow, inexplicably, her vitals always stabilized just enough to justify continued care. Her eyes tracked Marcus as he entered, and he saw something that made his blood freeze: awareness. Complete, terrified awareness trapped in a body that refused to die.

“Help me,” she mouthed silently, tears streaming down her gaunt cheeks.

Marcus’s hands trembled as he pretended to check her monitors. “I don’t understand what’s happening here.”

Sarah’s lips moved again, forcing a weak whisper: “It… feeds….. on us.”

The heart monitor’s beeping suddenly accelerated, and Marcus spun around to find Dr. Hendricks standing in the doorway. The elderly physician’s expression was unreadable, his eyes reflecting the green glow of the monitors.

“Working late again, Marcus?” His voice was soft, almost paternal. “You remind me of myself when I was young. So eager to understand.”

Dr. Hendricks moved to Sarah’s bedside, placing a gentle hand on her forehead. Sarah’s eyes rolled back, and her breathing deepened. “The Martinez family has asked about increasing her morphine. What do you think?”

“I… I think we should consider their wishes.”

“Interesting.” Dr. Hendricks studied him. “Tell me, Marcus, have you ever watched someone die? Really watched?”

“Of course. I’ve worked hospice for—”

“No.” The doctor’s interruption was gentle but firm. “I mean truly watched. Seen the exact moment when the suffering peaks, when the body surrenders but the mind… lingers?”

The room seemed to grow colder. Marcus noticed his breath misting slightly in the air.

“There’s something beautiful about that threshold,” Dr. Hendricks continued, his fingers still resting on Sarah’s forehead. “Most facilities rush past it. But here, we’ve learned to… appreciate it.”

That’s when Marcus noticed it. Not a shadow, exactly, but an absence. Places where the light should fall but didn’t. The gaps seemed to pulse with Sarah’s heartbeat, growing slightly larger with each spike of the monitors.

“Doctor, what’s happening to the light?”

Dr. Hendricks smiled sadly. “You’re very observant. Most take months to notice. Some never do.” He removed his hand from Sarah’s forehead, and she gasped, her back arching. The absence in the room contracted like a pupil adjusting to brightness.

“I’ve been here forty-three years, Marcus. I’ve made peace with what we do. These patients…” He gestured around the room. “They’re already gone. What remains is just an echo, sustained by something that existed long before we built these walls.”

The temperature dropped further. Marcus could see frost forming on the metal bed rails.

“You’re saying something is keeping them alive?”

“I’m saying,” Dr. Hendricks moved toward the door, “that when you build a place for the dying, you invite more than just death. Some things are drawn to suffering like moths to flame. And some flames never want to go out.”

He paused at the threshold. “Sarah’s parents will be here in the morning. They’ll ask you if she’s in pain. What will you tell them?”

Marcus looked at Sarah, saw the terror in her eyes, the way her fingers twitched as if trying to claw their way out of her own body. The absence around her bed had grown deeper, and he could almost—almost—see something moving within it.

“The truth,” he whispered.

Dr. Hendricks’s expression shifted, something ancient and tired flickering across his features. “Then you’re braver than I was.” He stepped into the hallway. “Or more foolish.”

After he left, Marcus stood alone with Sarah and the growing absence. Her lips moved again, and this time he leaned close enough to hear her words clearly:

“It’s… in… the walls… Always… hungry… Never… full…”

The frost on the bed rails began to form patterns—delicate, beautiful, and somehow organic. Like neural pathways. Like a vast digestive system mapped in ice.

Marcus reached for his phone to call someone—anyone—but stopped. Who would believe him? What would he even say?

That’s when he noticed his own reflection in the dark window. Behind him, the absence had taken shape. Not a creature, but a truth: the hospice itself was alive, had been feeding for decades, and everyone who worked here eventually understood. Some, like Dr. Hendricks, made their peace. Others…

Sarah’s monitor flatlined. For a moment, Marcus felt relief—she was finally free. Then the steady tone warbled, stuttered, and resumed its rhythm. Her eyes snapped open, pupils dilated with fresh terror.

The feeding had begun again.

Marcus understood then. He could leave, report this, try to shut it down. But the thing in the walls would just find another building, another hospice, another harvest of the dying. Or he could stay, try to ease what suffering he could, knowing he was complicit in something monstrous.

In the hallway, he heard Dr. Hendricks beginning his rounds, his voice gentle as he spoke to patients who would never be allowed to leave.

Marcus looked at Sarah one last time, then reached for the morphine drip. If he couldn’t free her, at least he could dull the feast.

His hands shook as he turned the dial.