Things Out There
Evening settled slowly and gently like a fine mist over the grounds of Kadic Academy.
The already quiet building grew quieter still as the night drew on and the moon rose higher and brighter in the sky; one by one, lights were turned out and the building creaked as it settled down to sleep for the night. Beneath one lone door a light still glowed faintly and the soft tapping of computer keys, falling silent now and then to accommodate the occasional stifled yawn, fell on deaf ears.
Three floors below a light switch was snapped on with unseen hands and, with a hesitant flicker and a lethargic bzzz, a bulb sparked dimly into life.
In this small, cold room a man came suddenly into view. He appeared tired, something heightened by the flecks of grey in his scruffy beard and the deep lines etched into his brow. He leaned back on arms folded behind his head and heaved a quiet sigh. The soft paunch of his stomach rose and fell as he breathed, settling onto his usual makeshift seat of a rough wooden crate and ignoring the dust that rose up in puffy clouds to settle on his battered tweed jacket.
It had been a long day. He was grateful, as always, for the evening, when at last he was free to roam the building, with the place to himself.
The man longed for a cigarette, the new 'no smoking' laws be damned, but it had been far too long now since he had enjoyed the luxury of such things. He tried to conjure the memory to fill his lungs in place of musty boiler-room air, breathing in the recollection so deeply that for a few blissful moments the genuine scent of ash and nicotine almost, almost, drifted beneath his nose.
But, nothing doing.
He closed his eyes, absorbing all the regular sounds of the night. There was the steady hum of the boiler and the faint gurgling of water travelling through pipes. Somewhere a leak in the ceiling dripped water rhythmically to the tiled floor. He thought he should probably see to getting that fixed; but he had that same thought every time the splashing sound came to his attention, and had long ceased given up the idea of actually doing anything about it.
Not that his actions any longer achieved recognition, the man thought bitterly.
A sudden, powerful wave of malice took hold of him and with rage-fuelled strength he kicked a nearby bucket over, satisfied with the ear-splitting clang it made as it rolled into the darkness to be swallowed by shadows. Ha. That would certainly wake someone up or, if they were already awake, frighten them out of their wits. In fact the man thought he heard something, a distant, muffled squeak of surprise, and he smirked. Serves them right, too, being up after lights out.
The echoing of the bucket finally died away and the ensuing silence drew the man back into his sullen thoughts.
Delmas had never acknowledged him, for all the principal claimed to care about each individual Kadic resident. In fact, Delmas' only response when he had turned up at the last staff meeting was to adjust the air-conditioning settings and offer the rest of the faculty another round of coffee. So it was that the only thing keeping the boiler-man's sanity in the repetitive day-to-day dullness, where he had so long since lost track of time, was the belief that he would move on and up, out of there, someday.
Someday.
He slumped to the floor, back resting against the crate now, and there he sat until the chill of the tiles sent numbness creeping through his bones. Then with tremendous effort, he stood. He could brood forever, he told himself, or he could make some more productive use of his time. For now the night was his, and his alone.
Or so he thought.
The man's eyes widened in alarm at the emergence of a strange and unfamiliar sound, something so unlike anything he had ever heard that it made him freeze in momentary terror. Taking a few quiet steps, he pressed his ear to the cold wall and waited, tense. There was a near-silence that seemed to drag on for several minutes and just as he was beginning to think he had imagined it, there it came again. It was alien, almost certainly unnatural, and it set his nerves on edge.
The man took a few deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself. It was nothing out of the ordinary for the old building to creak now and then, especially these parts in which he resided – the labyrinth of corridors tucked neatly out of the way to hide the eyesore network of pipes and wires that lent the school its water and electricity.
He told himself this, mumbled it quietly just to hear the sound of his own voice, but the distant noise came for a third time and once more, he froze.
It was a low, gurgling and distinctly mechanical roar. What creature was even capable of uttering such a sound?
It can't hurt you, the man said to himself. Whatever it is.
And suddenly he laughed. He was being absurd. For as long as he had lived at this school, bar one particular incident that, as Jim Moralés would say, was something he'd "rather not talk about", nothing had harmed him. And this was a nice break from routine; he would track down the sound of the noise - probably those kids up late, now that he thought about it - and give the troublemaker a good fright.
He swung open a side door, not batting an eye at the scraping noise it made as splintered wood scratched against uneven tiles, and disappeared into a dark corridor. He groped for a switch along one of the walls and found it a moment later, flooding the disused passage with a dim light. And so he walked. Cautiously he made his way along, one hand pressed to the wall and following the path of pipes which ran alongside it. He paused to listen and, suspecting that the noise came from somewhere to his right, turned that way as soon as the corridor veered off.
Here the lightbulbs were broken in several place, separating the corridor into long patches of weak light and deep darkness. Still with his hand on the wall to feel his way, the man strode onwards.
And then something got him.
He flailed wildly, clutching his face as it was assaulted with a blanket of fog. His heart beat wildly and he squeezed his eyes shut, grasping desperately at his face, pulling the stuff away from eyes and mouth and nose in handfuls. It was suffocating him; he couldn't breathe.
It was all happening again...
But a moment later the last of it was gone. Reality and the present flooded back to him, reminding him of his relative safety as breath rushed gratefully back into his lungs. As the man wiped cobwebs frantically from his fingers, scraping the grey stuff onto his baggy trousers with an expression of distaste, he leaned back against the wall to catch his breath.
Cobwebs. Spiders. That was all.
Shaking his head free of the panicked memories that had flooded him, he pushed away from the wall and strode briskly on his way again.
Such was his relief and distraction that he didn't even notice when it finally approached. It was creeping along the ceiling towards him, pitch-black but with a strange density which set it apart from the darkness of the shadows. And then, slowly and methodically, it poured down the wall like tar. Only when they reached the next stretch of light did the man notice his new companion. He blinked hard, watching the substance spread slowly across the floors and walls in front of his path. A spillage, perhaps? But he knew immediately that it wasn't true. The substance seemed to have a mind of its own and it seeped gradually towards him with a sense of mounting purpose.
It pooled and gathered in front of him, the blackness coming together and seeming to draw life from the surrounding darkness. It took on shape and form, a small mound which grew taller and taller until it filled the width of the narrow corridor and stood between the man and his escape. He wasn't one for heavy use of intuition – as a builder he'd taken orders without much thought, and during his time at Kadic Academy his mind had stagnated with mundanity and boredom – but even he knew that this was something else.
Unusual, spectacular. Deadly.
The thing opened its mouth and from it came the sound that had first brought the boiler-man here; that mechanical gurgling, a drawn-out scream of rage. And for the briefest of moments he glimpsed, in the back of the shadow-creature's gaping mouth, an all-seeing, glowing red Eye.
And if he himself was filled with malice, years of pent-up resentment, then this thing... this thing of pure focus, of cold callous determination and an intense hatred for all It saw... it made his perpetual unrest look like something unturbulent and peaceful. He understood with perfect clarity, for a single terrifying moment, that whatever he himself was, there were things out there he could not even begin to fathom. This thing, this mechanically growling creature rising up from the floor between one world and another, was nothing he was equipped to handle.
Without a second thought, the man turned and ran.
He stumbled blindly back through the corridors he had come down, feeling the light swallowed up behind him as the creature crawled across the ceiling and its body shattered the bulbs. For one heart-stopped moment he almost fell, foot caught on a loose tile, but desperation pulled him quickly to his feet and he set off again. The man's breaths came in painful gasps but as he spotted the boiler room up ahead he burst into a final sprint. The creature cried out to him, but he didn't look back as he slammed the wooden door closed behind him, leaning against it as he slumped once more to the ground.
He waited for the thud, anticipating the creature hammering on the door from the other side, but there was nothing but silence.
After a few moments the man rose shakily to his feet and placed a hand on his forehead. He frowned as he spotted a soft candle-glow up ahead, and peering around a stack of old boxes, he saw the second unusual sight of the night, though this one didn't hold the absolute terror of the first. Three boys and a girl gathered around a red circle on the floor, a dozen small candles casting flickering shadows on their nervous faces.
There had been so many kids coming and going over the years that he had long since stopped bothering to remember, or even notice, names and faces. Only Louisa Meyer, who had come back to teach, and the Heidi Klinger girl who had cried recently in this very room on several occasions, stood out in his mind. But the girl, dark-haired and pink-clad and shivering slightly in the cold, was Principal Delmas' daughter, he was sure of it.
As the man watched them talk quietly amongst themselves, he knew that they had no idea what was coming. As the thought crossed his mind, his already pale face grew even paler; a denser substance emerged from the shadows in the boiler room ceiling and descended slowly downwards, seeping through the ceiling as though it were air. It had escaped from behind the closed door somehow, its pursuit unrelenting.
And the students, standing uneasily in the circle, were completely unaware.
The man shouted his warning, begged the children to get away before it was too late, because no matter how much he resented Kadic's staff and students for their blissful ignorance, their ongoing lives, he would save them from this thing if he could.
But no one ever hears Leon Corbet. Not his lonely mutterings as he trawls Kadic Academy at night, not the muffled screams upon his death in 1904 as drying cement caked his mouth and lungs.
So that evening when the spectre came, no one heard him scream.
A/N (explanatory note): Leon Corbet is Kadic's resident ghost, with whom Sissi tries to communicate via a séance in the episode "Is Anybody Out There?" The fic title, subsequently, is something of a reference to the name of that episode (which is also when this fic takes place, the 'spectre' being the XANA attack of the week). Thanks for reading!