Withering Sights

 

by Zobostic Corwin

No one remembered when Withering Sights was built, not even the oldest resident, Mr. Cavanaugh, who claimed to have danced with Eleanor Roosevelt and survived a lightning strike in the same week. The building sat on a lonely hill just outside the town of Berrystone, where the trees grew at crooked angles, and the clouds never quite knew how to leave.

The sign out front, once a cheerful blue, had faded to a sickly gray. It tilted slightly, as though it, too, were tired of standing. Beneath the name—Withering Sights Rest Home—someone had scribbled in marker: “Abandon all hips, ye who enter.” No one bothered to erase it.

Inside, time didn’t move so much as loiter. The hallways smelled of lavender and something less definable—like old paperbacks and forgotten birthdays. The residents shuffled through the days like ghosts still waiting on appointments that were canceled years ago. But the strangest thing about Withering Sights wasn’t the smell, or the flickering light in Room 11, or even the humming nurse who never blinked.

It was the fourth floor.

There wasn’t one.

Not on the elevator buttons, not in the stairwell, not on the blueprints they kept in the administrator’s locked file cabinet. And yet, several residents swore they’d visited it. “I was just there last night,” Mrs. Danforth insisted, eyes wide and unblinking. “They were serving lemon pudding and holding hands around a giant birdcage.”

Birdcage?

No one took her seriously, of course. She once tried to trade a slipper for a slice of toast, and her stories were more colorful than a bag of Skittles in a microwave. But Mr. Cavanaugh—who hadn’t spoken more than three words in two years—leaned forward that day and whispered, “It’s not the birds you have to worry about. It’s what they keep locked inside.”

That night, the power flickered. The emergency lights buzzed on in a low, blood-orange glow. And in the silence, from somewhere above the third floor, came the distinct sound of footsteps.

Tap.
Tap.
Drag.

Nurse Clara looked up from her crossword puzzle and frowned. “Again?” she muttered, reaching for her keyring. “I swear if it’s Harold up there feeding that damn thing toast again, I’m filing a report.”

The thing?

She rose, adjusted her white shoes, and headed for the stairwell—the one without a fourth floor.

The residents watched her go. Some chuckled. Some crossed themselves. And in the corner, Mrs. Danforth just smiled and whispered to the shadows: “They’ve let it out again.”