The Chapel Thing

Florence Frightengale

Welcome… dear listeners, to another unquiet night in the Frightengale Files. Tonight’s tale comes from the hallowed—

Unknown Speaker

You mean haunted.

Florence Frightengale

—and haunted halls of Hollow Hill Hospital. A place that seems, well, reluctant to let go of its inhabitants, living or otherwise. I hope you’ve kept the lights dimmed. This story deserves shadows.

Unknown Speaker

Shadows? Please. The anatomy of fear is all about the unseen, Florence. The half-light. The flicker in your peripheral vision. Shall I list the cranial nerves active during such moments of terror?

Florence Frightengale

Do spare the poor listeners. They came for ghosts, not a lecture. Now then, where was I? Ah, yes. Our setting tonight… Hollow Hill. You know, some say places remember grief. That the walls themselves whisper of it. Hollow Hill? It screams.

Unknown Speaker

I once dissected a patient who claimed to see shadows crawling across the ceiling. Post-traumatic stress, possibly temporal lobe epilepsy, though the brain’s surface appeared—

Florence Frightengale

Hush. There’ll be plenty of time for your, um, appetites, later. Let me tell the tale first, before you, as always, swoop in to pick it apart.

Unknown Speaker

Oh, I wouldn’t dream of interrupting. Do go on.

Florence Frightengale

Tonight, we unravel the story of something—or should I say someone—left behind. A life not quite lived, and a death not quite followed. The kind of story that seeps into your dreams.

Unknown Speaker

Or nightmares, depending on your disposition.

Florence Frightengale

Indeed. But first, a word of caution: if you hear faint ticking as we tell this story… it may be your imagination. Then again, it may not.

Florence Frightengale

Hollow Hill’s chapel was unlike any other. Not sacred. Not… welcoming. The air inside seemed to carry whispers, as if the bricks themselves held breathless secrets, waiting to exhale. That night, dear listeners, as the faint ticking seemed to linger in the shadows, the church bell rang. Once.

Unknown Speaker

At midnight, naturally. These stories always begin at midnight.

Florence Frightengale

No one touched the rope. And yet, when the sisters approached the altar… there he was. Wrapped in cloth like a gift no one wanted to open. A child. Too still, too quiet. And in his tiny hands… a stopwatch. Ticking.

Unknown Speaker

Now, that’s fascinating. An infant holding an object it shouldn’t even neurologically recognize. Intrinsic grip reflex? Or something… more deliberate?

Florence Frightengale

More deliberate. The nurses felt it first, you know—this creeping cold, like their bones were giving up. They couldn’t hold him. Sister Verity tried, but when her fingers brushed the cloth, she dropped him as if something beneath it reached up and bit.

Unknown Speaker

Good God. And she didn’t check for injury? No examination, no—

Florence Frightengale

She didn’t dare. No one did. The nurses called him “The Chapel Thing” and left trays of food near the pews. But he never cried for them. Never reached for warmth. The quiet seemed to grow heavier around him, suffocating everything else. The chapel… oh, it changed.

Unknown Speaker

I’m intrigued. What exactly changed? The architecture? The acoustics? Or...

Florence Frightengale

The silence. You see, Elijah, silence can be as loud as a scream. It wasn’t just empty—it was waiting. And he waited with it. Year after year, untouched, unclaimed. Still as stone, though his body stretched unnaturally thin, his skin growing pale enough to match the stained glass soot. But the tick-tick-tick… it never stopped.

Unknown Speaker

You know, I once operated on a patient who survived a lightning strike. A neurologist’s dream, honestly. But the nerves… the nerves screamed like they weren’t done living.

Florence Frightengale

And did they come back, Doctor?

Unknown Speaker

They… twitched. Temporarily. But this, a stopwatch that measures life and death? Surely there’s a—

Florence Frightengale

Hush. This is no machine for measurements. It decides, Elijah. And as you’ll see, when Mr. Ellis began to move beyond the chapel, the dead made their own choices, too.

Florence Frightengale

The choices of the dead—do they linger or drift away? No, this is something else. Something deliberate. The tick of that cursed stopwatch commands precision, a rhythm that even the silent must obey.

Unknown Speaker

Yes, yes, but precision suggests purpose. It’s fascinating… and terrifying, simultaneously. What exactly did this man—

Florence Frightengale

Wait. Let me tell you about the deaths first. They came softly at first, like whispers. A nurse, Glenna, slumped in her chair during prayers. They said it was her heart.

Unknown Speaker

Sounds plausible. Cardiac arrest mid-prayer—

Florence Frightengale

Except someone saw the stopwatch open beside her. Ticking.

Unknown Speaker

Coincidence. Surely.

Florence Frightengale

Then came Dr. Calloway. Found in the vestry with—

Unknown Speaker

A scalpel, I assume? Or something more… ironic?

Florence Frightengale

His wrists. Slit cleanly. The kind of clean only another doctor might understand. But the odd thing? His blood pooled in precise circles—small, concentric pools, spaced perfectly.

Unknown Speaker

Spaced? What does that even—never mind. Go on.

Florence Frightengale

And always… always someone recalls seeing him. That pale man in black, standing too still in the doorway. If you see him, Elijah, he doesn’t move. Not at first. He just watches you with eyes that feel… older than they should be.

Unknown Speaker

Wait, not moving? Could it be some… catatonic condition? Statuesque paralysis, perhaps?

Florence Frightengale

No, Elijah. He moves when you’re not looking. One moment, at the threshold of the vestry. The next, in the hall outside the morgue. No steps. Just… there.

Unknown Speaker

Now that can be explained with—

Florence Frightengale

Hush for a moment. He spoke to one of them once, you know. A dying patient in Ward C. She later, um, returned.

Unknown Speaker

Returned? You mean—alive?

Florence Frightengale

Not quite. She walked backwards into the hallway that evening. Something wasn’t… connected anymore. Her mouth wasn’t where it should’ve been. And the first word she whispered?

Unknown Speaker

What was it?

Florence Frightengale

“Not done.” That’s all she could say. “He told me I wasn’t done yet.”

Unknown Speaker

This stopwatch—it’s reanimating them? Or bridging… I don’t know, dimensions?

Florence Frightengale

Elijah, he’s building something. That pale man. A circle. A clock face. The deaths weren’t a choice—they were preparation.

Florence Frightengale

They say Mr. Ellis doesn’t weep for the dead. But it’s his quiet rituals that linger—brushing their hair, pressing coins over their eyes, aligning their limbs just so. It’s as though he’s not mourning them but arranging them, shaping something larger… something precise.

Unknown Speaker

Fascinating. But why? Caretaking suggests a level of, well, affection, or at least reverence. For someone—or something—like him, that’s unexpected.

Florence Frightengale

Ah, but Elijah, not everything kind is safe. Observe long enough, and you’ll see it—a ritual unfolding there in the chapel. Stones laid in a clock face. Pew shards forming something that looks eerily like… a stage.

Unknown Speaker

A stage? You’re implying intentionality. That he’s building this—not instinctively, but knowingly. For what, though?

Florence Frightengale

Does it matter what? He builds, because his time isn’t the same as ours. The ticking watches us, not the other way around. The stones he moves? They align like gears.

Unknown Speaker

Stones—gears—you’re equating his work to a clock mechanism. But why a clock? Unless, of course… it’s not time he’s keeping, but… controlling.

Florence Frightengale

Controlling. That’s the word, isn’t it? The deaths grow faster when he adjusts the stopwatch. But it’s more than control—it’s a… weaving. The dead enter his chapel and don’t just stay gone. They… linger. Changed.

Unknown Speaker

Changed? You mean—

Florence Frightengale

Twisted. Not cruelly. Carefully. A nurse once noted how he stands over each body, whispering. The stopwatch ticks louder then—as though calling time into motion. Or stopping it.

Unknown Speaker

Wait. You think the stopwatch is… bridging death itself? Borrowing seconds, years even, rather than stopping them entirely?

Florence Frightengale

And what, do you think borrowed time costs? Time is malleable in his hands, yes, but so is flesh. Have you noticed? The corpses always leave the chapel… wrong.

Unknown Speaker

Ah, now that’s unsettling. So, he’s reconstituting them—but for what purpose? You said a… clock face, didn’t you? This chapel ritual… it’s too intentional. What is he preparing for?

Florence Frightengale

Preparation, often arrives before understanding. Thirteen chairs in a circle, yet twelve numbers on a clock face. Perhaps one of us will find out what fills that last space. Personally, I’d rather not.

Unknown Speaker

And yet here we are, Florence. Ticking along with him.

Florence Frightengale

And so, Elijah, the ticking persists—unceasing, methodical, watching us more than we watch it. Mr. Ellis, with his silent precision, waits. But what is he waiting for? Not vengeance, surely. Purpose, perhaps. Yet each step draws us closer to that clock face, and I can’t shake the feeling we are already entwined in its mechanism.

Unknown Speaker

Charming, isn’t it? No birth, no death—and yet a presence greater than either. An anomaly beyond the boundaries of both medicine and reason.

Florence Frightengale

Yes, and perhaps that’s the cruelest part. Not everything unexplained seeks explanation. Some things simply… are. Like the ticking of a clock you didn’t wind. Or the reflection behind your shoulder that vanishes when you turn.

Unknown Speaker

I suppose that’s my cue to sleep with a mirror at arm’s length tonight. Though, I doubt it will help.

Florence Frightengale

It won’t. But perhaps the ticking will. After all, it’s not how much time we have that matters—but what we do with it. Until next time, Elijah. And to our listeners… may your nights be quieter than Mr. Ellis’s.

Unknown Speaker

Cheerio. And if you hear a tick in the silence... don’t look back.