Part of his hair was missing, and in its place was a black lump. Approaching it cautiously, I poked it with the pen… and it gave like a sponge. My gaze travelled upward in slow realization. I found myself staring at more of that black mold growing in the corner of their room.
Leaving them in their beds, I closed the door and fashioned my shirt into a breathing rag. It was a relief against the steamy heat in the hallway, which I now connected to the growth of the dangerous mold. With the big snowstorm, someone must have turned up the heat…
As I crept down the hall, knocking on doors, I heard the sound again. It was louder now, or closer somehow… it sounded like clicking or scraping, somewhere distant, or in the walls…
The hallway went dark.
Stumbling through the pitch black building, I continued knocking on doors, looking for anyone conscious or able. I heard childlike laughter from distant rooms, and stumbled over a few people crawling in the hallway, but none that could help. Blessed luck led me to a flashlight and a cellphone in an empty dorm room.
My call was greeted by an ‘on hold’ message, and I cursed. It was the worst snowstorm in years, of course emergency services were swamped… and what would I tell them? People were sick after a night of drinking? It was then I wondered why the power loss had left the building in darkness. I peered at the wall.
The mold had grown over the windows.
My head jerked to the side as the sound came again. It was near, and my flashlight jumped in search of its source. Somebody screamed in the distance, a mindless, animal cry of terror, and I heard something shatter. Heart racing, I realized that something more than a simple mold problem was going on. I could almost see it growing, creeping across the ceilings and walls… and something else was in the building with me, something clicking and scratching its way toward me… and it was hot, so unbearably hot…
Sweat ran down my face and under my breathing rag as I crept toward the back end of the building, hoping to find an exit. I held the cellphone against my ear, still on hold, the flashlight in my other hand.
Entering the back maintenance hallway, I spotted a patch of black on the floor – but nowhere else. It seemed the mold couldn’t get a foothold on the bare stone… so how did it get there? I leaned down to examine it closer for the first time.
I could almost feel my color drain as a horrible thought occurred to me. Grabbing a tool from a nearby rack, I placed it next to the mold. In moments, I knew what I was seeing was real.
The black mass had moved.
It had only moved a very tiny bit, but it was definitely moving. The clicking and scraping came again, loud enough to be in the hallway with me, but frantic flashlight searching turned up nothing. Shaking with terror, I ran for the back door. Pressing the bar, I swung it open to a blast of icy air and harsh white snow-light, taking one look back as the sound came again.
I didn’t see the horrific creature I expected. Instead, I saw the black mass begin to visibly move faster. It seemed to roll or spill toward the open door, which I shut in haste, remaining inside. I was scared, but I was still a scientist at heart – details rushed into my awareness. The black masses had grown on the windows, had sped up in contact with the freezing cold air…
I turned my flashlight on the furnace at the other end of the maintenance hall, lighting on the prone body of a maintenance worker, connecting his effort with the sweat soaking my body. Had he guessed that the heat would slow the horrible black?
I approached the black mass on the floor, now slowed by the heat once more. I kicked it into the hallway proper, watching it split and reform after the impact. That moment – yes, that was the moment – I knew what I had to do. I understood what it was. I had to destroy it! The basement renovations they were starting, to be completed over winter break – they must have uncovered something, must have let it out… if it escaped into the snow…
“So you burned the building down?”
Yes! I had to!
“With two hundred people inside.”
They were infected… well, not infected, that’s not the word. It’s more like… infested.
“More like you’re insane. Hey, we’re almost to the hospital. Stay with him. Don’t let him out of your sight. Goddamn psycho.”
We can’t go the hospital… you two have to burn me.
“Burn you?”
Hah, don’t you get it? That’s the worst part. It was never mold at all. It spilled and reformed… I watched it. It was a colony. A mass of little bugs. The sound… that was them, drilling into my ear! I can’t hear it anymore… but I can feel them, crawling around in there, inside my skull… it’s getting harder to think…
“Jesus, he is insane!”
You’ve got to burn me! No, get off! You can’t take me in there! You’ve got to burn me! They’re eating my brain!
****
The Everest Corpses
When a friend asked me if I thought climbing Everest would be a good idea, I couldn't help but flashback to a story my uncle once told me and my cousins late one night at a family reunion.
He was kind of notorious among the extended family; one reason being that he went on an Everest expedition when he was younger. As kids, we adored him, even if our families tended to isolate him for reasons they wouldn't say. In retrospect, I realize he was drunk that night, but I think that was the only reason he told us what he did when the other adults weren't paying attention.
My cousin asked him about the Everest expedition, and he told us that he'd lied. They'd climbed it, alright, but they never made it to the top as he’d claimed. There were six of them, and they were climbing a standard route on the south face. A little after they crossed into the death zone that held too little oxygen for unassisted breathing, they saw their first corpse lodged in a ravine. The bravado of the men in the group dimmed quickly.
Their mood grew even worse when an unexpected snow squall came in and they had to camp for the night prematurely. My uncle visibly paled as he talked about setting up a tent within line of sight of a frozen body that clung to an opposing ridge. He kept peering at its distant contorted face until the snow blocked it out, his thoughts transfixed by how that face seemed twisted in eternal pain and horror. Whoever it was, he’d clearly died begging his friends to save him from the impossible position to which he'd fallen.
Sleep was difficult that night, but the rigors of the climb helped.
He awoke at some point, his ears filled with the razor whistle of frozen wind from the storm outside. A hissed whisper kept him from getting up - the other two men in the tent were already awake, lying motionless and listening. Something was scratching around in the crunchy snow outside... but outside, the oxygen levels were too low for anything to survive. A quiet but continual cracking sound followed the scratches, as if something covered in ice was painfully clawing around.
The sounds only lasted for a few minutes, but my uncle lost something of himself that night. He trembled visibly as he described lying still, terrified - while the icy horror wheezed "help me... help me..." outside in the dark.
In the morning, their worst fears were confirmed. The high winds had torn open the other tent, and one of the men had been dragged out. On the dark and storm-torn slope, he was unable to find his way back, and had fallen and died on the same ridge as the other unreachable body.
My uncle and his friends knew there was nothing they could have done - if they had gone out there they would have just died, too - but the incident ended the expedition. My uncle quieted as he described packing up in the sight of that nightmarish frozen corpse. It was hard to tell, but, the more he peered at it, the less the expression on its face seemed horrified and pained... and the more it seemed that its unnaturally wide mouth was actually a horrible grin.
My uncle resolved to check the other tent's damage to see if it really was from the wind when they got to base camp, but in all the commotion about the death of their friend, he never got the chance. That decayed and mocking leer has haunted him
ever since.
****
Something’s Wrong
It was obvious something was wrong, but it took a while to get the full story out of her.
Something's wrong.
She awoke that night with that wordless fearful impression. It was hot, almost uncomfortably so, and exceedingly still. Through the window next to her bed, she saw only black clouds and the silhouettes of motionless trees. Her eyes traced the shallows and depths of darkness across her room, but no movement or sound betrayed the silence. After a few minutes, when her heart stopped racing, she closed her eyes again.
That! It's that!
Her subconscious snapped at the flashes of light through her closed eyelids, and she knew what had woken her. She lethargically turned her head to look out the window again at the clouds. Heat lightning! She waited a minute or two, but the clouds remained black. Disappointed, she reached up and pulled the blinds down, then turned back to sleep. The heat lightning flashed through her closed eyelids a few moments later.
Something's still wrong.
Something seemed off about the timing or brightness of the lightning... it was unnatural. Her relief faded, and she peered between two of the blinds. The world lay heated and quiet. What had she expected to see? Some sort of monster or spirit or something? She shivered at that thought, and peered around her room again in the darkness. Something felt seriously off, but she couldn't... quite... place it... she started to imagine the sensation of being watched, as if a particular patch of void in the corner was crouching motionless, staring back at her unseen.
Get out!
The feeling unnerved her enough that she pretended to get up to go to the bathroom, and instead left the house entirely. I knew that much about the story because I remembered that night, when she showed up in her pajamas disheveled and embarrassed. There was nothing in the house the next morning, of course.
The revelation I had to pry out of her was a new realization. She suddenly went nuts and stormed out of the bar seemingly without cause. I found her outside, alternating between angry rants and frightened sobs. I finally got her to tell me what had bothered her so much: she'd finally recognized that light. It was never heat lightning at all. It was the exact same pattern and brightness as the flash our friend's camera phone had given off as he took our picture in the bar.
****
An Overheard Conversation
It’s a slow night for my typical excursions, but I do happen to overhear a disturbing exchange between a man and his friend seated nearby at the bar:
“Tell me about it, women can be so confusing. I got one that tops it all, though. Way back, when Heather and I had just ended things. You remember her, right?”
The friend says: “Hah, yeah…”
“Nothing bad, just didn’t work. I think I’ll never hear from her again ‘til she calls me, says she hears noises outside her house at night. I wasn’t sure what to feel, but I stayed over. She spent the whole night lying there awake, keeps waking me up saying ‘Do you hear that? Do you hear that?’ and I heard some rustling or something, maybe a raccoon, but saw nothing out the window… went back to sleep, right?”
“Anyway, maybe three days later she called asking for me to stay over again. This time she says she heard noises inside the house. This girl lived with her sister and that one’s four-year old daughter, but says they didn’t leave their room that night. I’m a bit frustrated at this, you know, since she broke up with me but keeps calling me… but I’m still a man, so I take my tire iron over there and sleep with it nearby.”
The man telling this story takes out a napkin and draws something on it.
“But see here… this is her room… and her backyard, it’s fenced. It’s got this gate. I had this idea then that she might have a stalker from the coffee shop she worked at down the street. The gate was creaky as hell, and if anyone was creeping about, we’d listen for the sound of the gate. Instead, about 2 AM, we hear this creaking in the hallway.”
The friend says: “Damn, what’d you do?”
“I look over and notice a little movement. Immediately, I realize, Jesus Christ, there’s a small crack in the wall – and an eye is peering in, watching us. I get up ready to beat someone to hell, when I hear a little girl giggling – kid you not, it’s just the daughter, learned to escape at night and wander around the house.”
The friend says: “So she was freaked out over nothing?”
“No, get this, she keeps calling me asking me to stay over, but I tell her I can’t do it anymore. It’s too hard on me.”
The friend says: “Wow, that’s messed up. Was she just messing with you the whole time? Was there ever a stalker or anything?”
“Well you know better than I do, right?”
The friend says: “Whatcha mean?”
“Well I ran into her about six years later and she says she called you to stay over in the living room after that. Back then I actually suggested she call you, ‘cause you’d met once or twice at the coffee shop. I figured you were my friend, but the breakup wasn’t bad, so chivalry and all that…”
The friend says: “Seriously? When was this?”
“Like ’02, round August.”
The friend says: “Now I know you’re just messing with me, man.”
“What? Why?”
The friend says: “That was my 24th birthday or ‘round, I remember it because my cellphone got stolen and I was too poor to get another one for a while.”
“Well that doesn’t make any sense…”
The friend says: “Oh my god -”
“What? What is it?”
The friend says: “Last time I saw my cellphone. Seriously. I remember this because I was so pissed off and went back there asking around – last time I saw my cellphone was at her coffee shop.”
“And you’re sure you didn’t have it then? But she says you came over and slept in her house every night for like… a month...”
The two men begin talking too quietly to be heard at this point, though I do hear several expletives. They soon hurry out, and I realize that they left the napkin with the drawing of her house on it.
Upon inspection, it looks vaguely correct, though it’s a bit inaccurate.
I smile fondly as I sit at the bar, reminiscing.
****
Smoke and Mirrors
I reclined in discomfort across from my small television, which erratically radiated light around my dark room. My pervasive caffeine-withdrawal headache permitted me no other activity that evening, but I could take comfort in knowing that I would be free of the demon in only a few days.
I nearly leapt from the bed at a sudden glass knock behind me. I eyed the blinds over the window nervously. I kept my windows constantly locked after an incident a few months ago, so I kept my wits, decided that it was nothing after a moment of silence, and laid back down amid my pillows and pounding temples.
An hour of fatigued sleeplessness later, a flash of lightning mixed with the varied glow of the television and the windows clattered at the impact of an enormously loud roll of thunder. An instant later, I could hear sheets of rain hitting the window. I loved thunderstorms, so I moved to lift the blinds without thinking.
I found myself looking out from my second-story window on to a bright, sunny day. The trees shifted in a slight breeze, and the park across the street seemed verdant and inviting. How long had I been awake? Where was the thunderstorm that I could still hear? I looked to the television, but it displayed only commercials. I ran to the window in the bathroom down the hall and opened the blinds - it showed only a wall of blasting rain and intermittent flashes of lightning.
At that sight, I turned slowly back to face my room. I could see that brightly-lit window across the hall and through my open door, its sunny glare illuminating the walls in stark contrast to the dim shimmering of the television. I walked toward it in thoughtless confusion, ready to run for my life at the slightest hint of danger...
I stopped at the threshold of my roo
m, staring at the window. What was I seeing? Was it really there? Was I going insane...? As I watched, I saw something appear beyond the glass. A delicate feminine hand with painted red nails reached down from above the window... and knocked twice.
I ran for the stairs, hearing the storm grow even more intense outside. I headed for the back door, but stopped just short as I saw the warm glow of a summer day emanating from the glass panels to either side. To my right, through the kitchen window, I could still see the storm. I looked back at the door, and could just barely detect the side of someone standing outside. I heard a knock... once, twice, three times... I screamed at it and ran toward the basement door.
... and then it all stopped. The glow from outside was gone, the storm was gone, and everything was quiet and dark. Peeks out of the window showed nothing but a normal night, with the odd car passing on the street. Confused and doubting my sanity, I soon had no choice but go back to watching television with no explanation as to what the hell happened. Still, I can't help but wonder... if there is something outside... some entity that can deceive... how do I know the calm night outside isn't a deception, too? How do I know that it's ever safe to leave...?
****
An Unhappy Awakening
I woke up that morning to a stinging pain in my eyes. I'd slept in my contacts one too many times, and they felt like burning knives against my eyelids. In a surprised fury, I pulled them out and threw them away. I blinked, now hardly able to see, but felt around for my replacements in my backpack. I silently crept out of my still-sleeping girlfriend's dorm room, gripping the contacts. I'd have to put them in with water.
As I hit the hallway and the door closed and automatically locked behind me, something seemed wrong. I silently cursed at getting locked out, and felt an immediate desire to go back inside. I couldn't place what was wrong... it was exceedingly quiet... but it was two days after the last day of finals, and practically everyone else had left for the summer. That was normal, right? My blurry, pained eyes couldn't make out any details...