Every institution teaches its staff how to survive—even the haunted ones, especially the haunted ones, the ones where survival requires learning protocols that will never appear in employee handbooks. By month three after Lucy's disappearance, I'd stopped asking questions about missing patients, stopped documenting perceptions that conflicted with official records, stopped pretending that Blackstone operated under principles that governed normal psychiatric facilities. I learned to avoid the east wing after dark, to never stay in rooms when the humming started, to recognize the warning signs that preceded erasure. I started my own notebook—not the official documentation, not the personal journal, but something else: a catalog of rules written in careful script, each one learned through observation or near-miss or the particular education that comes from watching other nurses disappear. The first rule, written on the inside cover in letters I pressed deep enough to emboss: "You don't say it out loud. It encourages it."
-----------------------------------------------
Dr. Lee's meeting lasted fifteen minutes.
He didn't offer pills. Didn't offer amnesia. Offered something else instead—position as "senior clinical observer," unofficial role that came with modest pay increase and explicit understanding that my documentation would serve purposes beyond standard patient care, would contribute to research project that had been running since 1891, would help Blackstone understand itself better, help it refine the processes through which it claimed and transformed and incorporated consciousness into architecture.
"We need witnesses," Lee said, hands folded on desk that was too large for his office's dimensions, that suggested the room itself was larger inside than outside just like Blackstone entire. "People who can hold onto memories everyone else forgets. People who can document patterns without succumbing to the comfortable amnesia that makes most staff functional. You're rare, Reeves. Most break completely or forget completely. You're choosing awareness. That makes you valuable."
I accepted because refusing meant choosing between pills or transformation, meant acknowledging that middle path I'd been walking—conscious but functional, aware but employed—required institutional sanction to continue, required Lee's approval to remain viable option.
"There are rules," Lee continued, pulling folder from drawer. "Not official policies. Not what we write in employee handbooks. But essential for survival. For maintaining the awareness you've chosen while still functioning in your role. Morrison will brief you. She's been senior observer for fifteen years. Learn from her. She's very good at staying conscious without being consumed."
That was three months ago. October became November became December became January became the long gray stretch of winter where darkness came early and Blackstone's windows showed nothing but reflection, showed us back to ourselves while outside ceased to exist or perhaps had never existed, perhaps the world ended at the asylum's walls and everything beyond was projection, shared delusion that kept us functional while the building slowly incorporated us into its essential structure.
I learned the rules through osmosis and instruction both, through Morrison's careful mentoring and through direct experience with consequences of violation. Learned which corridors to avoid after certain hours, which doors never to open even when they appeared inviting, which sounds to ignore and which required immediate response.
The first rule—the foundational one, the one that governed everything else—I wrote in my new notebook, the one I kept locked in Morrison's office rather than my locker, the one that existed outside official documentation:
You don't say it out loud. It encourages it.
Speaking of the building's consciousness, of the children in the walls, of the staff who'd vanished—speaking made it real in ways silence didn't, made it active rather than passive, gave it permission to manifest more fully, to demonstrate its presence more aggressively. Silence was protection. Careful euphemism was survival. Never naming directly what we all knew created buffer between awareness and consumption.
Other rules followed, accumulated through observation:
Never count the children during rounds. Your number will be wrong and noticing the discrepancy makes you visible.
I'd tried counting once in early December, tracking how many patients were present during evening medication distribution. Counted seventeen. Cross-referenced with the official census: fifteen. Counted again: nineteen. The number wouldn't stabilize, wouldn't resolve, and the effort of trying to force it into consistency had given me migraine that lasted three days and made the lullaby almost deafeningly loud in my head, as if the building was punishing me for attempting precision where ambiguity was preferred.
The east wing after 10 PM requires two staff minimum. Never go alone. Never.
Standard safety protocol officially, but the reason wasn't patient violence or institutional liability—it was that the east wing's architecture became more fluid after dark, more willing to show its true configuration, more likely to open doors that shouldn't exist and invite you through them into spaces where staff became architecture, where consciousness became distributed through structure rather than contained in flesh.
Stevens had gone alone once, before I arrived. Had returned three hours later with no memory of where he'd been, with stories of rooms that contradicted his own documentation, with new knowledge about patients who'd never been officially admitted but lived in the walls nonetheless, sang through pipes, waved from windows that appeared in peripheral vision.
He'd almost not returned at all. Morrison told me this during one of our weekly supervision sessions, her voice carefully neutral, her warning clear without being explicit: the east wing after dark consumes the solitary, claims the isolated, transforms those who wander alone through its particular geography.
If you hear your name whispered through vents, don't respond. Don't acknowledge. Don't investigate.
This happened regularly. The building learning our names, testing whether we'd answer, checking if we were permeable enough to manipulation, vulnerable enough to invitation. I heard mine at least once per shift—"Reeves... Reeves..."—sometimes in voices I recognized, sometimes in tones that belonged to no living person.
I'd learned to freeze when I heard it, to stop whatever I was doing, to let the sound pass through me without acknowledgment, without response, without confirming that yes, I'd heard, yes, I was listening, yes, I was available for whatever the building wanted to ask or offer or demand.
Children who draw circles are documenting architecture. Don't discourage them. Don't confiscate the drawings. They're mapping spaces we can't perceive.
Lucy had taught me this before she'd vanished. Other children had reinforced the lesson—small patients sitting in corners with crayons and paper, rendering patterns that looked like meaningless spirals but were actually floor plans, blueprints, architectural documentation of the building's true configuration as distinct from the official floor plans that showed what Blackstone pretended to be.
I'd started collecting these drawings, photographing them before art therapy staff could file them away, building my own archive of Blackstone's actual architecture as perceived by children whose consciousness hadn't yet learned to filter out impossible geometries, whose trauma had opened perception to frequencies adults had trained themselves not to access.
Staff members who disappear are transferred. Don't question where. Don't investigate. Accept the revision.
Patricia Chen was first lesson in this rule. Two more nurses had vanished since then—one in November, one in December. Their records revised overnight, employment histories rewritten, colleagues' memories adjusted until most staff believed the official narrative: transferred to other facilities, relocated to different cities, moved on to new opportunities.
Only the senior observers remembered clearly. Only those of us who'd chosen awareness over amnesia, who'd accepted the bargain Lee offered, held onto memory of nurses who'd worked here and now didn't, who existed in our consciousness but nowhere else, whose names we couldn't speak aloud without encouraging the building to demonstrate that yes, they were still here, just in different form, just incorporated into walls and pipes and the spaces between official reality and actual experience.
The lullaby is not hallucination. Everyone hears it. When you start humming it unconsciously, you're past the point where leaving helps.
I hummed constantly now. Had stopped trying to resist it, had accepted it as permanent feature of my consciousness, as background music that played whether I wanted it or not. The melody had become my default state, the sound I made when I wasn't actively choosing silence, the song that was more me now than my original voice had been.
New staff noticed. Would look at me strangely when they caught me humming during medication rounds, during documentation, during the small moments between tasks when consciousness drifted and the song emerged unbidden.
I'd learned to pretend I didn't notice them noticing. Learned to continue humming while maintaining professional exterior, while performing nursing duties with competence that suggested everything was normal, that this was simply personal quirk rather than evidence of transformation in progress, of gradual incorporation that would eventually complete if I stayed long enough, if I let the song penetrate deeply enough.
New hires get the difficult shifts. The night rotations. The east wing assignments. This is not hazing—it's testing.
Staff turnover remained high. New nurses arrived monthly, sometimes weekly, recruited through the same channels that had brought me here—recent graduates with student debt, experienced nurses burned out from other facilities, people desperate enough for employment that they'd accept position at Blackstone despite its reputation, despite the warnings that preceded it, despite the subtle way other nurses shook their heads when you mentioned working there.
Most lasted three weeks. Some made it to six. A few survived to three months and were offered Lee's choice—pills, transformation, or senior observer role that required accepting complicity while maintaining awareness.
By January, I was training them. Was giving the orientation Morrison had given me, was walking new hires through the ward, introducing them to patients, explaining procedures while carefully omitting the most essential protocols, the rules that kept you functional but that couldn't be spoken aloud, that had to be learned through observation or inferred from careful hints.
A new nurse arrived on a Tuesday in late January—Julia Hammond, twenty-four, fresh from state nursing program, eyes bright with the particular idealism that came from believing psychiatric care was about healing rather than survival, about helping rather than documenting transformation you couldn't prevent.
"This is the east wing," I told her during orientation, walking corridor I knew better than I knew my own apartment's layout, that I could navigate blindfolded now, that I sometimes did navigate blindfolded during dreams that might not be dreams, that might be night-wandering I couldn't remember, fugue states where the building borrowed my body to walk its spaces, to confirm its geography, to test whether I was ready for incorporation.
"We house twelve patients here currently," I continued, speaking the official narrative while my eyes told different story, while the slight emphasis on currently suggested the number was flexible, while my posture—slightly tense, slightly alert—communicated that this wing required different protocols than the main ward.
"How often do room checks need to happen here?" Julia asked, taking notes with the dutiful attention of someone who believed documentation mattered, who hadn't yet learned that official records were fiction and actual practice required navigating unwritten rules.
"Every two hours minimum," I said. "More frequently if—" I stopped. Started to say if you hear humming, started to warn her explicitly about the lullaby, about the building's voice, about all the things Morrison had tried to warn me about and I'd dismissed as superstition before learning through direct experience that superstition here was just accurate observation that couldn't be phrased in clinical language.
Julia looked up from her notes, waiting for me to complete the sentence.
I met her eyes. Held her gaze. Let my expression communicate what words couldn't: Be careful here. Watch what the children show you. Listen to what the building teaches. Learn the rules quickly because learning slowly means not surviving, means becoming next name that gets revised from records, next nurse whose employment history gets rewritten until you never existed.
"If patients seem agitated," I finished neutrally. "Standard psychiatric nursing practice."
Julia nodded, returned to her notes, didn't understand what I'd tried to communicate through silence, through the pregnant pause, through the particular way I'd looked at her that was both warning and apology—apology that I couldn't tell her explicitly what she needed to know, that institutional constraints and the building's preferences meant she'd have to learn the hard way, through near-misses and direct experiences that would either break her quickly or transform her slowly into someone like me, like Morrison, like all the senior observers who'd chosen awareness over amnesia and were paying for that choice through constant tension, through knowledge we couldn't share, through complicity we couldn't refuse.
"Any other special protocols for the east wing?" Julia asked.
I glanced at the nearest vent. Confirmed nothing was listening more actively than usual. Leaned closer, lowered my voice to barely above whisper: "After dark, never come here alone. Always bring another staff member. Always."
"Is there a safety concern? Violent patients?"
"Not exactly." I chose words carefully, trying to convey truth without speaking it directly, without encouraging the building to demonstrate what I was hinting at. "The architecture here is... older. Sometimes the lighting is unreliable. Sometimes the corridors seem longer than they are. It's easy to become disoriented. Having two staff members provides mutual confirmation of location, of time, of—" I stopped again, realized I was already saying too much, already crossing line between careful warning and explicit acknowledgment.
Julia's expression had changed. The bright idealism was dimming slightly, replaced by first hint of unease, first recognition that Blackstone operated under principles that contradicted her training, that nothing here was quite what it seemed, that the job she'd accepted was more complicated than providing psychiatric care to troubled children.
"Mutual confirmation of reality," I completed quietly. "That's what the buddy system provides here."
She wrote this down. Probably didn't understand yet what I meant. Would understand soon enough, would experience the reality shifts and perception distortions and the particular way Blackstone's architecture became negotiable after dark, became fluid, became willing to show its true configuration to anyone isolated enough to see clearly.
I walked her through the rest of orientation. Showed her the medication room, the documentation protocols, the emergency procedures. Introduced her to patients, gave her standard clinical information about diagnoses and treatment plans and behavioral management strategies.
But in the margins of official orientation, through careful emphasis and pregnant pauses and the particular way I held eye contact when discussing certain topics, I taught her the real curriculum—the unwritten rules that governed survival, the protocols that kept you functional while awareness accumulated, the careful balance between professional competence and acknowledgment of forces that transcended institutional psychiatry.
By the end of her first shift, Julia was humming. Just barely, just unconsciously, picking up the lullaby from ambient sound or from my constant performance of it or from the building itself teaching her directly, installing melody in consciousness that would become permanent before she'd chosen to learn it.
She'd last three weeks, I estimated. Maybe six if she was stubborn. Then Lee would offer her the choice, and she'd either take the pills or accept senior observer role or—less likely but possible—choose transformation, choose to follow Patricia and the others into walls that would remember her better than records ever had.
I felt guilt about this. About facilitating her recruitment, about bringing another nurse into system that would consume her slowly or break her quickly. But guilt was luxury I couldn't afford, was emotion that interfered with function, was feeling that made survival harder.
So I packed it away. Filed it with all the other uncomfortable truths I'd learned to ignore—that I was complicit in Blackstone's continuation, that I was helping it claim children through careful documentation that never quite exposed what was happening, that I was teaching new nurses to survive through silence and complicity and the particular moral compromise that came from choosing awareness of evil over ability to stop it.
Morrison found me in the break room during lunch. "How's the new hire?"
"Bright. Competent. Won't last."
Morrison nodded, unsurprised. "They rarely do. The ones who are too bright see too quickly. The ones who are too competent notice too much. The ideal employee here is someone just mediocre enough to not notice patterns, just unobservant enough to accept official explanations. But administration keeps hiring the bright and competent ones because they look good on paper, because they pass background checks and reference verifications and all the bureaucratic requirements that have nothing to do with whether someone can actually survive working here."
"You survived," I pointed out. "Fifteen years."
"I survived by becoming what was necessary. By learning to document without exposing, to witness without intervening, to care for patients while accepting that some of them would be claimed and I'd do nothing except file reports that matched official narrative." Her smile was broken, exhausted. "That's not survival. That's slow death. That's erosion of everything that made me become nurse in the first place. I wanted to help people. Now I help building consume them. The only difference between me and the building is that I still feel guilty about it, still recognize that what we're doing is wrong even as I participate in it, still maintain enough consciousness to know I'm compromised even as I continue compromising."
She left before I could respond, before I could acknowledge that yes, I understood, that yes, I was experiencing the same slow erosion, that yes, the guilt was there but the alternative was either amnesia or transformation and I'd chosen this middle path that was neither comfortable nor complete, just constant awareness of my own complicity, constant knowledge that I was helping Blackstone continue its project of claiming vulnerable souls while pretending I was providing care, while maintaining fiction that psychiatric nursing here was about healing rather than documentation of harm I couldn't prevent.
My notebook had grown thick with rules by then. Fifty pages of careful script, protocols learned through observation and near-misses and the accumulated wisdom of staff who'd survived long enough to understand Blackstone's preferences, to map its patterns, to navigate its consciousness without being consumed by it:
Mirrors cloud when the building is watching. Don't look directly at your reflection during these moments.
Doors that appear overnight should be reported as "maintenance anomalies" and sealed immediately.
Children who stop speaking have learned the most important rule. Don't force verbalization.
If time seems wrong—if clocks show different hours than your watch, if shifts feel longer or shorter than they should—don't question it aloud. Just adjust and continue.
The Mourner shows you visions for a reason. Pay attention. She's teaching, not threatening.
Staff who talk about quitting rarely make it to their final shift. Keep resignation plans private until you've physically left the grounds.
Lucy was real. So were the others. Remembering them is burden but also responsibility. Someone has to hold onto truth even when truth costs everything.
The last rule I wrote most recently, after three months of senior observer work, after countless orientations given to nurses who wouldn't last, after watching Julia Hammond progress through the same stages I'd progressed through and knowing exactly how her story would end:
You become what you witness. Choose carefully what you allow yourself to see. Choose more carefully what you allow yourself to document. Most carefully of all, choose what you allow yourself to become in response to witnessing what can't be stopped, documenting what can't be exposed, surviving in place that consumes even as it claims to care.
Every institution teaches its staff how to survive.
Blackstone taught better than most.
And I'd learned my lessons well.
Too well, perhaps.
Well enough that I couldn't leave even if I wanted to.
Well enough that the lullaby was permanent.
Well enough that I'd become what Morrison had become—keeper of rules, trainer of nurses, witness to processes I couldn't stop, collaborator in system that claimed vulnerable children while pretending to heal them.
Well enough that when I looked in mirrors, I sometimes saw Patricia Chen looking back.
Not literally. Not yet. But the resemblance was growing. The same exhaustion. The same resignation. The same understanding that we'd chosen awareness and awareness had chosen us back, had claimed us as thoroughly as it had claimed the children, just more slowly, just with enough function remaining that we could continue facilitating its work while maintaining pretense that we were still separate from it, still distinct from architecture that was slowly incorporating our consciousness into its essential structure.
The building hummed its lullaby.
I hummed back.
And taught new nurses to hum along, through demonstration and osmosis and the particular education that came from working in place where survival meant learning to sing with walls that were always, always listening.
[END OF CHAPTER]
Coming Up:
Julia Hammond lasts four weeks before Lee calls her into his office. Reeves watches from distance, remembers her own meeting, knows exactly what choice Julia faces. But something's different this time—Julia doesn't emerge with the careful neutrality of someone who's chosen awareness, doesn't take pills that would grant amnesia, doesn't accept senior observer role. She simply doesn't emerge at all. Her records revised overnight, employment history rewritten, colleagues confirming she'd never actually started working at Blackstone, had accepted different position elsewhere. But Reeves remembers. Holds onto Julia's memory even as everyone else forgets. And realizes that the building's patterns are accelerating, that disappearances are happening faster, that whatever Blackstone is becoming, it's approaching some kind of completion. Morrison confirms: "We're close to something. The building is preparing. Getting ready for arrival that will change everything. Maya Chen is coming. And when she arrives, everyone here—staff, patients, the building itself—will transform. We won't have choice anymore. The choice will have been made for us."