Voices

Brian shuddered under the scratchy, thin hospital sheets. His arms were stiff beside him, as were his legs as he stared up at the ceiling.
"Brian." A voice called out. The voice seemed to echo as if it had bounced off a few walls before entering his ears. "Brian."

On the hospital bed, Brian froze, staring straight up at the blank, grey ceiling of the hospital. He closed his eyes and soon fell asleep. lulled into the land of nod by the steady, rhythmic chorus of beeping machines of other patients in the ward.

He was chained to a wall, unable to move an inch. Suddenly, he heard echoing footsteps, growing louder as they drew closer and his body became more tense than it had been to begin with.
"Brian." There was that voice again. The dreamlike, echoing, other worldly voice.
It took everything Brian had not to scream when the figure belonging to the voice and the footsteps rounded the corner and came into view.
"I'm so glad you're here." The voice said, slowly approaching him. Brian opened his mouth and the creature, because Brian didn't really think you could call it human, quickly closed the gap between them with a few side steps that looked like something out of a creepy horror movie and raised a bony finger to his lips.

"Uh uh. Shh." Said the creature. Brian closed his mouth abruptly and stared at the creature before him. It could have been human, Brian realized, once, maybe. To him, the creature looked as if it had hitched a ride on a time travel machine to get there and that it had come from a Nazi Concentration Camp from the second world war where it had been tortured before it had managed to escape. The pillow case like dress it wore hung loosely from it's skinny, sickly frame. All the creature's bones and veins were easily visible and it's head was completely bald. It was a short thing, around the height of a six year old child and on first glance, it looked harmless. But, Brian was scared out of his skin.

Brian woke with a start, sitting upright to see a kindly nurse smiling at him.
"I saw. There was someone. They looked sick. Near death. I don't even know if it was human" Brian stuttered. The nurse continued to smile at him as she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder.
"It's ok Brian. There's nothing there. You're in the hospital remember? The institute."

Brian lay back down, but he was still uncomfortable. Cautiously, he leaned over to look underneath his bed. There, laying motionlessly under his bed was the bony, sickly, tortured looking creature he'd seen in his dream. Startling him, the creature opened it's eyes suddenly and looked up at him, winking once.

Brian shivered, a mixture of cold and fear, returning to lie flat in his bed. He shook his head vigorously in an attempt to erase the image from his mind. But had the creature really been there? Had he really heard those voices? Or, was it all in his head?