Devil’s Lake Hospital sat on the western edge of the small town within walking distance of the lake that gave the town its name. The building was larger than most might expect, but in its day it was the only hospital for over a hundred miles. With mine accidents being common and far worse than the incidents that occurred in most small towns, the town elders had opted to bring in state of the art medical facilities, both to protect the miners and to bring in revenue from surrounding villages. When the mine fire erupted there were more than a hundred patients in the hospital that were evacuated. News reports said everyone had gotten out safely. Aspen looked up at the four-story structure and shivered. It didn’t look like a small-town medical facility. It didn’t look like a hospital at all, and the strange Gothic architecture looked out of place. It looked like a tomb of horrors dragged out of a 1960s Hitchcock film, Aspen half expected a serial killer to run out the door yelling for his mother.
