Chapter 9 – The Nightmare

The bathroom was surprisingly luxurious, even by Trinity Academy standards. The floor was lined with polished white marble, and the walls were covered in painted ceramic tiles that shimmered faintly under the dim glow of William’s phone screen. Ornate silver-framed mirrors lined the walls above a row of spotless porcelain sinks. Each sink had a neatly folded stack of soft, lavender-scented hand towels beside it, and there was a dispenser with lotion and liquid soap, both labeled with premium brand names.

The stalls were more like private booths, with floor-to-ceiling wooden doors painted in a pristine white finish. Each stall door had a small, elegant plaque of a different animal on it. The air was filled with the faint scent of roses, though it did little to mask the acrid smell of the cleaning chemicals that lingered in the room.

William stepped further in, his slippers sliding softly against the marble floor. Near one of the sinks, a toilet scrubber rested against the counter. Beside it was an open bottle of cleaning solution, tipped slightly, as if dropped in haste. A bucket of soapy water sat by the door, untouched, with a sponge floating on its surface.

The trash bin nearby was overfilled with damp paper towels and wet wipes, indicating someone had been working here for a while. However, everything seemed abandoned mid-task. Several of the stall doors were open, and William noticed one of the toilets inside was half-cleaned, with streaks of cleaning foam still clinging to the porcelain.

It was clear Abby had been working diligently at first, but for some reason, she stopped abruptly.

“Abby?” William called again, his voice echoing slightly in the empty space. His footsteps grew louder as he walked further in, checking each stall. Every one was empty. He even opened the supply cabinet at the far end, but obviously she wasn't there. He didn’t know what he was expecting by checking that.

A chill crawled up his spine as he stood in the center of the bathroom, his phone’s light reflecting against the tiled walls. The faint sound of water dripping from a faucet was the only sound in the bathroom, each drop echoing unnaturally loud in the silence.

Where could she have gone? The door had been closed, and she wouldn’t have just left everything like this, especially when she knew Ghoulstein would check her work in the morning. The thought that something might have happened to her began to gnaw at him.

“Abby?” he called one last time, his voice less confident this time around.

No response.

The silence felt oppressive, and the once luxurious bathroom now seemed cold and unwelcoming, as if it were holding its breath, waiting.

“Is she not here?” asked a familiar nasally voice from behind.

William spun around and saw Finn standing at the doorway. Finn rubbed his eyes and yawned.

“What are you doing here?” William asked.

Finn groaned. “I needed to go to the bathroom too, but I forgot to bring my phone so I just tried to follow you. It’s so dark and I got lost before I heard your voice. Don’t think they’ll mind if I use this bathroom do they?”

“Probably not, there’s no one around.”

William was actually glad that Finn was here. Being entirely alone in the dark wasn’t a good feeling. He felt bad for Abby. And speaking of which…

“If no one’s around, then where did Abby go?” Finn asked, washing his hands. “Ghoulstein said he’d give her a disciplinary strike if she didn’t finish cleaning the toilets, right? She’d absolutely hate that.”

“I don’t know where she went,” William said. “It looks like she left in the middle of her work. Just like Ebenezer—“

He stopped. What did he just say? Now that the alcohol had time to settle and his thinking began to trickle in, his conscious train of thought finally began to catch up with his subconscious thought.

Ebenezer… Abby… what was the connection here?

“She left just like Ebenezer? I don’t get it. You think someone slipped her drugs?” Finn asked groggily, still confused. “And then she went off and wandered somewhere? That doesn’t sound like her.” He went to the sink and turned on the leaky faucet, taking off his glasses to splash some water onto his face, before turning back. “It’s so dark in here, it’s hard to see anything. Mind shining a light here for a sec?”

William didn’t reply.

Finn looked over. “Uh, William, can you hear me? It’s really dark in here.”

William had stopped paying attention to Finn a minute ago. His mind raced to connect the dots. The last time he saw Ebenezer was in stability storage, desperately and unsuccessfully trying to retrieve an unreachable box of sherry wine. He was alone when they left stability storage. Then when they revisited the storage area, Ebenezer was gone. He’d left the place quite a mess in his attempt to grab the wine, but the box was clearly untouched, and he was nowhere to be found.

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And now the exact same thing happened to Abby. Both of them disappeared after being interrupted in the middle of their task. He was beginning to think that this wasn’t a coincidence.

He looked around the room again, this time more carefully. His eyes caught something on the farthest stall door—a faint smudge, almost like a handprint, trailing down the white wood. It wasn’t dirt or grime, but something darker.

He continued to look around. Now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he realized that there was one place he forgot to check with his flashlight. It was a place that he would have no reason to check otherwise, because logically, nothing should ever be there in the first place.

That place was…

Above.

William’s eyes shifted ever so slightly upwards, his body stiff, his chest tight as if he was afraid of making a sudden move. His fingers were clammy with cold sweat, wrapped tightly around his phone. He was afraid of what he could possibly see. His breathing slowed to a steady rhythm as he tried to calm his nerves, squinting into the dark. The theory… the theory…what if it was true—

He looked past the door frame and into the darkness above.

At first, he saw nothing. Relief. But then, above Finn, ever so imperceptibly, the outline of something within the dark shifted. Finn was still moving, still talking to him, trying to get his attention, but he could no longer hear what his friend was saying, as all his attention was focused on a single point—that edge where the walls met, where he could have sworn in the blurry darkness something had moved, but he could not be entirely sure.

Impossible. He refused to believe it. His eyes had to be playing tricks on him again. It was so dark, anything could be mistaken… Before he even knew what he was doing, acting out of instinct alone, he slowly pointed his phone upwards.

The beam of William’s phone light wavered slightly, his hand trembling as it moved upwards. The cold marble beneath his feet felt like ice now, his body frozen in place. The pale glow of his flashlight began to creep along the smooth tiles of the wall, inching higher, painting the bathroom in stark, unnatural shadows.

He tried to convince himself that he was just seeing things—a shadow cast by an uneven tile, a trick of the dim light, his exhausted mind playing games with him. But as the light climbed higher, he saw it again. A blur of motion that shouldn’t have been there, ever so slightly out of sight.

“Finn,” he whispered hoarsely, but Finn was still obliviously talking to himself, rubbing his eyes and muttering about the dim lighting.

The beam reached the corner where the wall met the ceiling, and for a moment, everything appeared perfectly normal. Relief washed over him in a brief wave… until the light hit something that didn’t belong.

Two reflective pinpricks caught the beam, gleaming faintly in the darkness like the eyes of a predator. They blinked ever so slowly, as if being awakened from rest.

William’s breath hitched. His instincts screamed at him to look away, to pretend he hadn’t seen anything, but his body betrayed him, his hand gripping the phone like a lifeline as the light continued its slow, treacherous ascent.

At first, all he could make out was an irregular mass clinging to the ceiling, its surface mottled and uneven, shifting like an oil slick in the faint light. Then the shape became clearer, and he wished it hadn’t. A gaunt, sinewy body stretched impossibly long, its limbs jointed at unnatural angles. The creature’s flesh was a patchwork of green and black, its skin glistening as though coated in some viscous substance.

The head… or what he assumed was its head… tilted slightly, the reflective eyes narrowing, as if it were sizing him up. Its mouth was a jagged tear across its face, filled with uneven, serrated teeth. The jaw jutted forward and hinged unnervingly, stretching unnaturally from one side of its head to the other.

William felt his knees lock, his body paralyzed by a primal fear he had never experienced before. This wasn’t just a monster. This was something wrong, something that shouldn’t exist.

He instinctively knew what this creature was, despite having never encountered it before—certainly not in real life. He had never even seen its likeness in a picture on the news or on video. And yet he knew what it was.

The creature was so rare that it did not even have a danger classification of its own yet. And as far as monsters went, the unknown category was by far the most dangerous one. It was a skulk. Full name skulkus furtivis. The night terror. The thing that Manager Kim greedily claimed to have seen that other night. The monster that not one person had seen and lived to tell the tale. The creature that inspired urban legends on the occult forums.

At this moment, William Blackwood knew that he was well and truly dead.

His mind screamed at him to run, but his legs refused to obey. He wanted to call out to Finn, to warn him, but his throat was dry, his voice stolen by fear. Finn, still oblivious, turned back toward William, squinting at the light.

“Hey, can you stop shining that in my eyes?” Finn muttered, rubbing at his glasses. He took a step toward William, and in doing so, moved closer to the thing above them.

“Finn,” William croaked, his voice barely audible. He didn’t dare move his light away from the creature, terrified of what it might do if plunged back into darkness. “Don’t… move.”

He could swear that the light seemed to have an effect on the creature. A sliver of hope.

“What?” Finn paused, his expression confused. He squinted up at the corner where William’s light was focused, his tired mind taking a moment too long to process what he was seeing.

The creature shifted. Its head twisted at an impossible angle, its eyes locking onto Finn with an intelligence that sent shivers down William’s spine. Slowly, its limbs began to uncurl, each movement deliberate and horrifyingly silent.

“Oh,” Finn whispered, finally understanding. “Oh, crap.”

His reaction was the worst possible one. Panicked, he stumbled back, his foot catching on the edge of a bucket. The clatter of metal against marble echoed like a gunshot in the oppressive silence.

Whatever effect the light had on the creature was broken in that instant. Its body uncoiled in a blur of motion, dropping from the ceiling like a spider descending on its prey. William’s phone light caught the full horror of its form for a split second—a grotesque amalgamation of sinew and shadow, its limbs too long, its jaw too wide, its movements jerky and unnatural. It seemed disoriented.

“Run!” William shouted, his voice breaking as adrenaline finally overpowered his fear. He grabbed Finn by the arm and yanked him toward the door, the two of them stumbling in their haste to escape.