~o0o~
“Are you okay?” Milo asked.
“I’m fine,” Jordan replied. “Why do you ask?”
They walked down a hallway on the fourth floor of old Wallingford. Charred walls, blackened, fallen timber and cracked plaster testified to the fire that had damaged the once-stately old dorm. Up here, the rain was audible as it hammered down on the roof above their heads and the peals of thunder shook the walls around them.
“I don’t know,” Milo said. “It just seems… you just seem different.”
Jordan held her candle out in front of her, its small flame barely penetrating the darkness of the hall. They walked in silence for a few moments.
“Different how?” She finally asked.
Milo shrugged. “I can’t really put my finger on anything specific,” he said. “It’s just a feeling.”
She stopped and turned to him, a small smile playing across her lips as she planted a soft kiss on his cheek. “You think too much sometimes, Milo.”
It was true, he knew. Sometimes, he did think too much and spent too much time inside his own head. But he knew Jordan like the back of his hand and ever since they’d returned from summer break, she had seemed different. She was somewhat colder, seemed a little more distant and removed. Sometimes when they were together, he felt like she was someplace else entirely. Milo loved her completely and lived in fear every day that she was going to break things off between them. He braced himself for it day after day and considered himself lucky that so far, it had not come to pass. But still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something within Jordan had shifted, that she had changed somehow.
“So,” he said, just to change the subject. “When are we supposed to see this Midnight Man?”
They turned and walked down the hall again, a crack of thunder booming overhead.
“I don’t know,” she replied. “Soon, I guess.”
It was faint and distorted by the sheer size of the old building but Milo distinctly heard a scream. He shuddered as a cold finger of dread slid its way up his spine.
“Did you hear that?” Milo whispered. “It sounded like Lance.”
“It probably was,” she replied. “He’s probably trying to scare Kyle.”
His eyes scoured the darkness around them. “Yeah, maybe.”
Something in the back of Milo’s head wasn’t convinced. To him, it didn’t sound like the good natured screaming of somebody trying to scare a friend. It sounded like a scream filled with a primal terror. And pain. But Milo tried to convince himself that it was the fact that he was on edge combined with the way sounds carried and were distorted in the old building that made it sound that way. They walked a little farther, passing empty room after empty room, waiting for something to happen.
“Let’s split up,” Jordan announced. “Maybe if we’re not together, we’ll have a better chance of seeing the Midnight Man.”
“Split up?” Milo asked. “I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.”
Jordan looked at him and smiled. “Are you scared, Milo?”
He gave a small, nervous laugh. “No,” he replied. “I just don’t think we should go stumbling around in the dark all alone. It’s dangerous up here.”
“Ten minutes,” Jordan said. “We’ll split up for ten minutes. I just want to see if this works.”
“Why does it matter so much to you?”
The candlelight cast flickering shadows across her face. “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess I’m just curious.”
He looked at her, knew that she wasn’t telling him something. “But why?”
She shrugged and sighed. “I made some new friends over the summer,” she said. “They just sort of got me curious about a lot of things I hadn’t considered before.”
Milo felt his heart plummet into his stomach. “New… friends?”
She met his eyes and he saw comprehension dawning behind them. She laughed and for a minute she was the same old Jordan again.
“It’s not like that at all, Milo,” she said, laying a soft, warm hand against his cheek. “I promise. These are just some people I like to talk to. People I’d never meet at a place like this school. They’re smart and fun.”
“So are we though,” his voice sounded defensive, perhaps even petulant.
“It’s different,” Jordan said soothingly. “They’re different. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with having other groups of friends, is there?”
Milo looked down at his feet and then back up into Jordan’s eyes. “No,” he said. “Of course not.”
She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “You worry too much, Milo.”
The silence spun out between them for several long, awkward moments. Milo needed to be reassured that they were still together, that she still cared for him. Maybe that she even loved him. But he didn’t want to ask for that. He didn’t want to appear weak or needy but he needed reassurances that she wasn’t giving him. He needed to trust her, he told himself. He had to have faith that she would tell him if there was something that needed to be said about their relationship. But that voice in the back of his head continued to whine and nag at him. He knew how he felt about her. He’d told her that he loved her. Often. And yet she never once said it back to him. He tried to not let it bother him. Love was a serious word, he told himself, and he wanted it to come from her when she was ready to give it. He wasn’t going to force it. Trust. It all came down to trust. He trusted Jordan, would keep trusting Jordan. But still, there was something between them that was off and he knew it.
“So,” she said, finally breaking the silence. “What about it? Ready to go hunt down the Midnight Man?”
“Ten minutes?” He asked.
“Ten minutes,” she replied. “Chances are, you were right and nothing happens. But you heard the door slam down in the common room. You heard the screaming. Maybe the Midnight man is here. Maybe he’s watching us right this very minute.”
For just about the first time that evening, Milo felt a smile tugging at his lips even as fear knotted his stomach. An irrational fear, he told himself. Jordan was always the dreamer while he was always the grounded and rational one. He loved her for her eccentricities and for showing him the world from a different perspective even if he initially resisted it.
“Or maybe it was just the wind.”
“Maybe,” she said. “Only one way to find out!”
“Okay, we meet right back here in ten.”
She snapped him a salute. “Aye, aye cap’n.”
Milo watched her walk away, the weak light of her candle doing nothing to stop the darkness from swallowing her whole. The thought that he’d never see her again passed through his mind and he felt a profound sadness in his heart. He shook his head and turned in the opposite direction, holding his candle out in front of him as if it could somehow ward off whatever evil lurked in the pockets of shadow that danced around him. Evil. He chuckled to himself. He was completely rational and logical ninety-nice percent of the time but every now and again, he found himself getting caught up emotionally in whatever was going on around him. Jordan’s ghost stories had apparently gotten under his skin a little bit and he was feeling a little tense and on edge. His heart rate was a little higher than normal and he felt the beads of sweat rolling down his back. Logically he knew that there was no such thing as the Midnight Man and that he was simply being paranoid, ridiculous and allowing himself to get caught up in the moment. But he decided to play it out, if for no other reason than he knew it would make Jordan happy.
Milo poked his head into half a dozen different rooms but found nothing, just as he’d expected. He’d just come out of an empty dorm room when movement at the end of the hall caught his eye. It seemed like a darker shadow moving amongst the shadows that clung to the far end of the hallway like curtains. He squinted and strained his eyes but saw nothing. He shrugged it off as a trick of light and a cas
e of nerves. A peal of thunder roared overhead as he checked his watch and decided to head back to meet Jordan. It had been creepy and he’d been startled a couple of times but ultimately, it came to nothing. Just as he'd known it would. But being startled and creeped out was the whole point of the game, wasn’t it?
Milo arrived back at their meeting spot but Jordan wasn’t there yet.
“Jordan?” He called.
Minutes ticked by and still no Jordan. The shadows crowded uncomfortably close with only his small candle to keep them at bay. It was irrational he knew, but Milo felt exposed standing there. He felt eyes on him like he was being watched from the darkness. Rather than continue to stand there letting his imagination run wild with his ridiculous fears, he headed down the hallway Jordan had gone down.
“Jordan,” he called out. “Where’d you go?”
A floorboard creaked behind him and Milo spun around expecting to find Jordan sneaking up behind him. But there was nobody there. Further back, in the darkened gloom of the hallway, he thought he saw movement, a furtive shadow in the darkness.
“Jordan?” He called out. “Lance? Kyle? Who’s out there?”
There was no reply and no other sound but the rain drumming down hard on the roof overhead. Another floorboard creaked behind him and he spun around but again, there was nobody there. And that’s when it hit him. They were all in on this together. All of the others had conspired together to screw with him. He smiled to himself as he remembered that they’d done something similar to Ruby last year and had gotten a good laugh out of it. It was sort of an unspoken tradition amongst their group; the last one to the hall was the one that got messed with. He shook his head again and smiled, feeling foolish. They’d almost gotten him this time.
He headed back down toward the common room, keeping a wary eye out for somebody ready to spring from the shadows at him. Milo was going to take a seat on the couch and let them run around like idiots looking for him for a while. He slowly and quietly descended the stairs, cautious to not give away his position. When he reached the landing to the common floor, he blew out his candle and paused for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Lightning flashed beyond the boarded up windows and was followed by a peal of thunder that sounded like a cannon.
When his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he crossed the short foyer and stepped beneath the archway and into the common room. It took him a moment to process what he saw there. In front of the door, his friends were laid out side by side. Kyle, Lance, Stephanie, Kayce, Ruby and Gabriel. The candles they’d left by the door were at their feet, their flames still flickering. By the soft glow they gave off, he could see that the bodies of his friends appeared torn and broken, dark stains surrounding what looked like ragged holes in their chests glistened wetly in the weak candlelight. The sight of it shocked him and got his heart racing for a moment until he realized that this was all just part of the game.
“Nice touch, guys,” he said. “Seriously. You had me going there for a minute.”
“Milo,” Jordan’s voice was filled with fear. “Where’s your candle?”
He turned around to find Jordan kneeling in the far corner of the room, clutching her candle in a fist that shook almost uncontrollably. The candlelight glistened off of a face that was wet with her tears.
“Well played, Jordan. I really have to give you guys credit,” Milo said. “You outdid yourselves this time.”
He turned back to the bodies of his friends with a wide smile on his face. “Game’s over,” Milo said. “You got me. You win.”
“It’s not a game, Milo,” Jordan shouted. “Where’s your fucking candle?”
He turned back to her. “I dropped it back there in the hallway,” he said. “Why?”
“Are you fucking blind?” She sobbed. “He killed them. He killed them all. He ripped their hearts out of their fucking chests.”
Milo laughed. “You are totally convincing,” he said. “You really should try out for the fall play.”
“He’s coming, Milo,” Jordan said, sobbing. “He’s real.”
“The Midnight Man?” Milo asked. “Damn. I guess I’m a dead man then.”
“This isn’t a joke,” she said almost to herself, her voice quavering. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Nobody was supposed to get hurt.”
Something in her voice triggered something deep within him. He looked at her, saw how her tears sparkled in the candlelight, the way her lips trembled and how the candle shook in her grasp. Milo looked at his friends all laid out on the ground, none of them moving, dark pools spreading out from beneath them. It was a joke. I had to be. People didn’t really die playing stupid games like this. That was the stuff of stupid B-movies and campfire ghost stories. It wasn’t logical and it wasn’t rational. It made no sense to him.
“Milo?”
Jordan’s voice drew his attention back to her. He could see that she wasn’t looking at him though. Her eyes, wide with terror looked to the doorway behind him. Milo turned around as another peal of thunder shook the world around them. A dark shadow stood beneath the archway, a figure darker than pitch outlined amongst the gloom. It was tall, thick-chested and broad-shouldered. Other than that though, the Midnight Man had no other discernable features. It was as if a shadow cast on a bright summer day had risen up from the ground and now stood in silence before him. He shook his head but felt his eyes growing wider. Ghosts and goblins weren't real. They couldn't be. Milo's mind struggled with what he'd seen, with what had happened and tried to latch on to the only things that made sense to him.
Milo found himself backing up, his heart beating almost painfully in his breast as he tried to put some distance between himself and the Midnight Man. He stole a look at Jordan who had backed herself into a corner and held the candle out in front of her like a cross before a vampire. Her eyes were closed and it sounded like she was mumbling a prayer to herself. He looked back to the archway and found it empty. The Midnight Man had disappeared. Frantically, he looked around the room but he was nowhere to be seen.
“Jordan, we have to get out of here,” Milo said. “We have to run and get help.”
She shook her head. “We can’t leave, Milo,” she said. “We can’t leave the building until he does at three thirty-three. You need to get your candle.”
“We need to get help,” Milo said again. “We need to get out of here.”
“Get your fucking candle,” she screamed. “Or you’re going to die just like everybody else!”
“Jordan,” he said quickly. “The Midnight Man isn’t real. This isn’t some ghost or supernatural entity… it’s a sick, fucking guy that’s going to kill us if we don’t get out of here. Now come on!”
“I can’t,” she sank to her knees. “He’s real. You saw him. He’s real. He’s going to kill us. I’m sorry, Milo. I’m so sorry.”
Milo knew he couldn’t wait. He had to get the cops down here fast. He sprinted for the door, making sure to keep away from the bodies of his friends to avoid tripping over them or slipping in their blood. He grabbed the knob and flung the door open as lightning flashed as bright as sunlight outside. Milo staggered backward, his foot catching on something and went down hard on his butt. When he looked, he found himself staring into Lance's dead eyes. Milo was dimly aware of Jordan screaming somewhere behind him as he raised his eyes again. The silhouette of the living shadow, the Midnight Man, filled the doorway in front of him. Milo scrambled backwards, his hands slipping in the pools of blood beneath him as the Midnight Man stepped inside, the door slamming shut on its own behind him.
His hand slipped in another pool of blood and he went down on his back, his head ringing off of the wooden floor beneath him. Milo stayed down, his eyes fixed on the ceiling above him, still denying what he was seeing.
“This isn't real,” he said. “This isn't happening, It can't be.”
His heart raced, hammering
so hard that he was sure the inside of his chest was going to be bruised. He blinked away the tears that stung his eyes as a dark, featureless face suddenly entered Milo’s field of vision. Cold blue eyes that glowed from within looked down on him, pinning him to the floor.
“Please,” Milo begged. “Don’t.”
The Midnight Man’s touch was cold and leathery and the stench of rotting meat filled Milo’s nostrils. Jordan’s screaming and sobbing seemed more distant and far away… as if she were screaming to him from beneath a pool of water. Feeling almost hypnotized, Milo stared into the eyes of the Midnight Man eyes as he felt the skin on his chest being sliced open. The pain washed over him like a heavy wave and threatened to pull him under as darkness danced at the corners of his vision like thick cobwebs. Blood, warm and thick spilled over his skin and he tasted its coppery flavor in the back of his throat.
“I'm sorry, Milo,” Jordan screamed, her voice racked with sobs. “I love you.”
Milo opened his mouth and screamed as a deafening peal of thunder crashed outside. The fury of the storm lashed at the world around them. To Milo, it sounded like the sky was being torn wide open. Jordan's screams began to fade in the distance, as if he were somehow moving away from her. The cold blue eyes of the Midnight Man looked into Milo's one last time before a darkness, thick and heavy descended upon him.
If you liked this story, check out...
From the Edge of Darkness
You are cordially invited to take a trip to the Edge of Darkness. In his first collection of short stories, Kevin Saito presents you with thirteen terrifying and macabre tales that will make the shadows around you seem much darker and the movement in the corner of your eye infinitely more sinister. In "Tending the Flock," you will see the lengths that faith and devotion will drive a man to. "Tiebreaker" shows what happens when your family turns out to not be who - or what - you thought they were. Logic and reason only takes you so far in "Proof Positive" while in "One Shot Deal," you'll discover what desperation really looks like. Terrifying legends, paranormal horrors and the dark depths of human depravity... All of this and more awaits you within the pages of "From the Edge of Darkness." So step up, gaze into the abyss and see if the abyss truly does gaze back at you.
Available through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other fine retailers.
About the Author
Inspired by all the things that go bump in the night as well as a host of fantastically warped minds, Kevin Saito has been spinning stories since he was, as they say, knee high to a grasshopper. Born and raised all over Southern California, Kevin finally found a home in Long Beach, graduating from California State University Long Beach with a degree in History and had his sights set on teaching… Not the smartest move for somebody actually looking for a stable job these days. He is fascinated by history, politics, sports, travel and has an unhealthy obsession with Chinese food and sushi. After a long time away, Kevin returned to writing because it seemed about as stable career-wise as teaching but also as a means of staving off insanity. He’s dabbled in science fiction, fantasy and historical fiction but feels most comfortable lurking in the shadows where it’s easier to get people’s hearts racing and send shivers down their spines. And make them scream in terror. He really likes that.
Kevin has a website and a Facebook page. If you'd like to read more of his work, please consider following him. His forthcoming novel Shattered Honor, will be available soon.
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