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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/mortanx on 2026-05-15 15:11:34+00:00.

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Our shift was already well underway. Twelve hours of nonstop pressure. Luckily, the night was shaping up to be quiet, at least as quiet as it ever gets when you’re a paramedic. So far, we’d only had two calls.

An elderly woman slipped in her bathtub and fractured her femur. Calls like that were always hard. The elderly are helpless. Vulnerable. Thankfully, her husband had called 911 in time.

The other was a traffic accident. No serious injuries, fortunately. One of the drivers still had to be transported to the hospital for observation.

After that, nothing. No more calls. We pulled into a gas station to take a break. Just me and Ruby.

Ruby was almost ten years younger than I was. When I first got her as a rookie, I wasn’t thrilled. Training a young woman, being the one who had to show her the things the human body can do to itself when it breaks… it wasn’t something I was eager for.

But four years had passed since then. And Ruby had adapted. To wading through blood. To arriving too late. Or too early. To the silence that settles in after a shift is over.

Those things became routine for us. Our crosses to bear. We carried them. And aside from each other, there wasn’t really anyone else we could rely on.

“Ambulance eighteen, we have a call.” The radio crackled to life, pulling me out of my thoughts. “A pregnant woman has collapsed.”

“This is eighteen,” I replied immediately, grabbing the radio. “What’s the situation?”

“We have limited information,” the dispatcher said. “The husband called it in. Can you respond and check it out?”

“Copy that,” I said, flipping on the siren to signal Ruby, who was outside by the gas pump, drinking her coffee. “We’re en route.”

We tore through the streets with the sirens screaming. The adrenaline always hit me like a wave in moments like that. We were flying, because in our line of work, time is everything. By then, I knew most routes by instinct.

The MDT guided us all the way to the edge of the city. The road turned rough and uneven, and the GPS started giving us increasingly unreliable positioning.

“Ruby, ask dispatch for a more precise address,” I said, keeping my eyes on the rutted road.

“Dispatch,” Ruby leaned closer to the radio. “This is Ambulance 18. Can you confirm the exact location?”

“Copy, Ambulance 18,” the dispatcher replied, her voice crackling through the static. “The husband says if you follow the old road, the first dirt road on the left leads to it. First mansion down that way.”

“Copy that, dispatch,” Ruby said, glancing at me.

“What is it?” I asked, scanning the darkness for the dirt road.

“A mansion?” Ruby shot me a sideways look. “We’re heading to rich people, Jacob. Hope you dressed classy.”

I let out a tired laugh and finally turned onto the dirt road. Farther ahead, the outline of a massive building began to emerge. In the darkness, it barely revealed itself, like a sleeping mountain.

“Rich people don’t live in places like that anymore, Ruby,” I said, gesturing toward the old structure. “That kind of thing went out of style.”

Ruby just smiled.

The mansion looked both ancient and imposing. Its massive walls stretched upward into the night sky. Every window was shuttered, yet a faint glow leaked out from behind them, like the eyes of some enormous creature watching us.

“This is creepy,” Ruby said flatly.

“A little…” I replied as I pulled the ambulance to a stop in front of the mansion.

The flashing red and blue lights washed over the mansion’s grimy, time-worn walls. Shadows twisted and stretched like phantoms. For a brief moment, the thought crossed my mind that I didn’t want to go inside.

Then, as if something had sensed our hesitation, the massive front door swung open.

A young boy ran out toward us, waving frantically.

“Hurry! Hurry!” the boy screamed in terror, and when he reached the ambulance, he began pounding on its side with his small fists.

Ruby jumped out without a word, and I heard the rear doors of the ambulance swing open.

I stepped out as well. The moment my boots hit the muddy ground, the boy grabbed my arm and started yanking me back and forth like a rag doll.

“Please, hurry!” he shouted. “Hurry! My sister! Please, hurry!”

The boy wore simple clothes made of old, heavy fabric. He looked like he had stepped out of another era, more like a medieval farmhand or an Amish child than a kid from the modern world.

The flashing red and blue lights twisted his face into something grotesque. He couldn’t have been more than ten years old, and even then it was obvious something wasn’t right about him. As cruel as it is to admit, my eyes passed over him with a reflexive grimace.

“Hurry!” the boy nearly screamed. “It’s almost here! Hurry, please!”

“Where are your parents?” I asked as I started moving with him toward the mansion.

He tugged at my arm, spit running from his mouth in his excitement, pulling me toward the open front door.

Ruby caught up to us. The EMS bag hung from her shoulder as she watched the scene unfolding between me and the boy, her expression tight and uneasy.

“Edmund!” a voice suddenly boomed from the doorway. “Get away from there! Don’t you have anything better to do?”

Only then did I look up.

A man stood in the doorway. Like an apparition. It was hard to make him out in the darkness, but warm light spilled out behind him from inside the mansion. He was bald, older, probably around sixty, and dressed in a long black wool garment, like a priest’s robe.

At the sound of the man’s voice, the boy froze and fell silent. He was still gripping my hand, rocking slightly from side to side.

“Jacob?” Ruby asked cautiously.

Without warning, the boy let go of me and took off running, like a dog slipping its leash. He vanished into the dark night, between the trees, screaming for help. Screaming about his sister.

“Please, come inside,” the man said calmly. “Forgive Edmund. He’s a difficult case. It didn’t quite…”

His sentence trailed off.

Ruby and I exchanged a look.

We hurried up the mansion’s steps, and suddenly I was standing in front of a massive black wooden door nearly ten feet tall. Warmth and light poured out from inside.

The man turned and headed in.

Ruby and I followed.

The man dressed like a priest didn’t seem to be in any hurry. I could already tell Ruby was tense, she looked like she wanted to break into a run, just like we’d been trained. Get to the patient as fast as possible. Assess who’s sick, how bad it is, how much help is needed. But the man only walked at an unhurried, almost leisurely pace. Maybe it was his age. Or maybe he didn’t think the situation was all that serious.

Ruby and I followed him in measured silence.

The mansion felt even larger on the inside than it had from the outside. And just as I had suspected, it was empty. No furniture. No decorations. No paintings on the walls. Just an empty crypt. Only the lights were on, glowing yellow, dull and lifeless. Mansions like this were no longer inhabited by the old aristocracy.

Our footsteps echoed through the vast, hall-like space as we moved across it. Ruby glanced at me as we walked. I only looked back at her briefly, I didn’t want her to think I was just as uneasy as she was. We needed to stay calm.

“Excuse me, sir,” Ruby finally broke the silence, impatience creeping into her voice. “Shouldn’t we be moving a little faster? We were told a pregnant woman isn’t doing well.”

The bald, thin man stopped short, as if genuinely surprised. Then, like a robot, he slowly and deliberately turned to face us. He tried to smile kindly, but on his tired, sunken face, the expression was unsettling. His deep gray eyes didn’t settle on Ruby. They locked onto me instead. As if I’d been the one who spoke.

“Now that you’re here,” the priest said calmly, “she’ll be just fine.”

He flashed us a wide grin. His yellow, unkempt teeth stood out sharply against his pale face. I couldn’t help the grimace that crossed my own, there was something deeply unpleasant about the man’s presence. Then he turned away and shuffled forward along the same path as before.

“What the fuck?” Ruby whispered, falling a step behind. “Jacob, this is bad. This guy, the mansion, the kid… all of it.”

“I know… I know,” I said quietly, trying to soothe her. “But this is where they sent us. We have to check on the woman.”

“Pff. Don’t be naïve,” Ruby muttered. “There’s no woman here.”

“She’s here,” the priest cut in, stopping beside a long, semicircular staircase that led up to the second floor.

Ruby stared at the old man. I could tell he was getting under her skin, but there was nothing I could do about it.

“She’s upstairs?” I asked, partly to reassure Ruby, partly to convince myself.

The man grinned at us again, teeth bared.

“Yes…” he said sweetly. “Upstairs. She needs help.”

I glanced sideways at Ruby. It was obvious she had absolutely no desire to go up there.

“You’re not coming with us?” I pressed.

I was nervous now. I had a strong feeling that something here was deeply wrong. We had no way of knowing whether there was actually someone upstairs who needed help.

“Ah… my legs aren’t what they used to be,” the man said, still smiling.

I didn’t respond. I just studied him. His cassock hung all the way to the floor. Slippered feet stuck out from beneath it, and he stood there as if he’d been nailed to the ground.

“Father!” a voice called from above, from the very top of the stairs.

Ruby and I both snapped our gaze upward at the same time. The priest ...

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