A small group of workmen have been assigned to clear out an empty hospital in the bad part of town. They're working in small groups, one in each part of the building. The men in the ward building are breaking down old pieces of furniture and carting out piles of trash. The hospital's been shut down for years, and the inside's pretty disgusting. There's dirt and dust and needles everywhere, not to mention rats the size of dogs.
About midday, the men break for lunch--all but one of them. His co-workers can't find him; he must have wandered off. They break for lunch anyway, call his mobile a couple of times (with no success), and decide to wait for him to turn up.
Towards the end of the lunch break, he does. He's behaving strangely though. His hard hat is pulled down over his face, his coat collar turned up. He doesn't stop to talk to his colleagues, but keeps his head down and heads quickly for the gate. His friends try to stop, to find out what might have happened inside the hospital, but he pushes past them and is gone.
It's puzzling, but they have a job to do. The workmen head back into the building and carry on with the clearing out. A few hours go by, and they've almost forgotten about their workmates strange behaviour. Then it happens. The foreman is checking ahead through the empty wards. Shining his torch into a dusty corner, he comes across a dead body. It's the man who they all saw leave the site earlier that day. Or the man who they all THOUGHT they saw leave.
The body is lying there on the floor. He's been stabbed, and his clothes have been taken. Whoever it was who went running away from the hospital earlier that day, it clearly wasn't him.
No comments:
Post a Comment