If I tried to write down ten of the worst possible places to visit around this area, given my ability to see ghosts, few places would rank higher than Cottonwood Mental Health Center.

Unfortunately, when you’re a social worker, there’s only so many times you can watch a teenage boy get hurt before you’re mandated to do something about it. That something was sending that mess of a teen, me in this instance, to Cottonwood to complete a mandatory 48-hour mental health screening.

It turns out when you run from the hospital only to show up hours later, having punched out a glass door with your bare hands, they consider that a giant red flag.

I couldn’t blame her. Heck, I’d been wondering lately if I shouldn’t have checked myself in long before this. At least it was only two days. I can do anything for two days, right?

Who was I kidding, this was going to feel like an eternity. I had only been in this place for around four hours and I was already going nuts.

Plus, while I was stuck in here, the town of Ravenwood was left on its own. I still felt like a bad situation was brewing out there. Sadly, every moment I spent in here put me one step further behind. At least I tried to plan ahead.

While Naomi’s hands were tied, I had made her promise me one thing before I was wheeled away. I needed her to find Murph, give him my laptop, and share whatever she could about the building.

There was something weird going on in that place, and I needed Murph to get a head start with research so that when I finally got out, I would be able to hit the ground running. Naomi didn’t look thrilled about it, but I hoped she’d come through.

Unfortunately, the girl seemed to vanish into thin air. Wherever she was, I hoped she was safe. Hopefully, Naomi could find her while I was stuck in here. I couldn't begin to imagine what she had been through.

While Naomi was out looking, I had to get acquainted with my new reality.

The town of Cottonwood was just outside Ravenwood. A lot of people called us sister towns due to our relative size and similar names, but I never really understood the comparisons.

Both towns were born in the mid-1800s, but that’s where the similarities ended. Ravenwood grew, thanks to a new state run highway in the 1930s. Cottonwood? Not so much.

It limped along until the late 1940s, when this place opened. Apparently, there is a lot of money in mental health, because once they showed up, Cottonwood's population boomed. Almost overnight, dozens of offshoot centers that specialized in related fields sprouted in the town.

As a result of all of the mental health related businesses that formed in Cottonwood, the kids in Ravenwood started to make rude jokes about how anyone who was weird or different was a certified cotton brain. That was the nickname we gave to the residents of the hospital. Crap, I’m a cotton brain now. That sucks. Kids were assholes.

Speaking of kids, I don’t even want to think about what they’ll say to me when I finally go back to school. My social life, well what little I had of it, was all but guaranteed to be ruined at this point. Maybe my mom would be able to homeschool me. No, that would somehow make things worse.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

Whatever, I guess there was nothing I could do about it now, the rumors had most likely already started. For now, I just needed to get through my forty-eight hours and get out of here. Who knows, maybe I’d even run into Sharon. They said she was in here somewhere, right? Man that’d be awkward.

I looked around. I didn’t see her in the room. Would I even know what she looked like? Probably not. I assumed she’d look like Naomi. Maybe that was wrong of me.

Either way, this place was crawling with spirits. I guess that wasn’t exactly a surprise when you considered how many patients they had treated here over the years.

What did come as a surprise however, was just how modern day everyone looked. Maybe Hollywood had lied about what people looked like in the forties to seventies, or maybe it was the consistent scrubs the patients referred to as elopers were forced to wear, but I had yet to see a person that didn’t appear to have died before the 1980’s.

I wasn’t sure why that bothered me so much. It just felt… weird.

It wasn’t just their appearance or age of death that bothered me. It was how they acted. Or rather, how they didn’t act. Unlike Nicole or Sally Anne, who seemed to know exactly what they were, these spirits carried on like they were still alive.

It was like they had no recognition of their own deaths. They also seemed to have no awareness of me. I guess that could have been seen as either a positive or a negative depending on how you looked at it.

I had taken a count of twenty spirits. That was twenty just within the four hours I had been here. There was probably more. Still, if they had noticed me, it might have been ghost overload. Talk about absolutely zero sleep for two days.

On the flip side, it would have been hard for me to help them in any way. To be honest, with how short my time was here it would have probably been a wasted effort anyway.

Either way, the fact that none of them noticed me broke everything I thought I knew about ghosts—granted, that wasn’t much.

They just... carried on. It was like I was the invisible one. Nothing in the guide that I had read or watched so far mentioned anything about a time when a ghost didn’t acknowledge Alex’s existence. Perhaps they couldn’t see my flame. Or whatever it was that signaled my existence to them.

For now, they went through the motions, day after day, following the same routines. It looked like they’d been stuck in a loop for decades. It looked fucking miserable.

From my seat, I watched as one of the ghosts—a pale, frail man—waved his hand in front of a nurse’s face, trying to get her attention. She obviously didn’t respond, but I noticed her shiver. Apparently even these ghosts give off cold energy. Not a complete surprise.

Above the nurse hung a row of photographs. It looked like a hall of fame of sorts for the therapists who had worked at the hospital.

I wheeled myself closer to get a better look at the wall. It went all the way back to the founders of the building. This whole place started thanks to a man that went by the name of Mr. Ashcroft. Just like 98% of the other doctors up here, Mr. Ashcroft was a grouchy looking old white man. For some reason, I expected more mustaches up there.

I saw the name Klanderman on the wall. According to his plaque, he served the hospital between 1957 to 1992. That was the same name as the doctor who did my intake assessment. I bet that’s his dad.

My dad worked in the medical field too. I often wondered if he was disappointed that I didn't plan to follow in his footsteps. But my heart was set on animation, and I couldn’t stand the sight of needles—especially now, given my current situation.

“Hey!” a voice yelled across the room.

A skinny guy with wild, curly hair and a scruffy beard. His bushy eyebrows hovered over wide, almost bulging brown eyes.

“Uh, can I help you?” I asked.

He rushed over, stopping way too close. I stepped back. What was this guy on? For ten solid seconds, he just stared at me. Then, out of nowhere, he blurted, “You can see them!”

“Excuse me?”

“The monsters! You see the monsters!”