Hack to Death by Loreline Lumpkin

I work as a nurse in a psychiatric unit which is conveniently tucked away around the back of an old hospital.

I'm on night shift at the moment and most of the night is spent trying to convince manic patients to return to their bed.

We were having a strangely quiet night.

The staff usually sit in the corridor at the intersection between the male and female side of the

ward, but we can hear everything that's going on better from there and intervene quicker,

if need be. There's a shower room located just to the left of where we sit. It has a toilet and

short wall partition separating the shower in the far corner of the room. As we were sitting

there, the door to the shower room slowly crept open. No big deal. We get up, close it again,

and went on with the night. It happened again about an hour later, and again,

we thought nothing of it. After closing the door a second time, we soon heard the sound of water

running. I got up to check and found the tap in the shower room was running. I thought it must

have been faulty, but when I tried to turn it off, it spun easily and stopped running water.

Feeling a little freaked out now, I checked around the partition to the shower in case a patient

was somehow hiding there, but there was no one. When I turned to walk back out, I felt a sudden

chill on the back of my neck, and I heard a sound like gas hissing behind me. I glanced back

round and checked the shower,

which seemed to work fine and just assumed there was trapped air or something. The next night,

we were sitting in there in the same place, and again, it was an unusually quiet night until around

2 a.m. when we heard a massive bang, and then a dull thud as if something had hit against a wall and

then slid to the floor. The noise seemed to be quite close and we hurriedly looked around through

each dormitory and individual patient room expecting that one of the patients had fallen, but everyone

...