It was cold.
It was hungry.
For as long as it could remember there had always been a plentiful supply of food. The classrooms had provided a buffet of young emotions and energies; adolescent yearnings and furies upon which it could feed, and occasionally, raw hatreds and hormonal lusts that it could use to provide a feast of spilled blood.
But now, six months had passed since the building’s closure. Six months without food and it had slowly starved.
Now it was weak.
It was dying.
*
“Do you think it’s safe?”
Tommy Marshall turned to his smaller companion. “Course it is. They haven’t started taking it apart yet.”
Malcolm Hall wasn’t reassured. “But won’t there be alarms and stuff?”
“Nah! There’s fuck all of value in there now…probably just a load of old books and shit that nobody wants. Come on, we can get in through here.”
The two boys were standing outside a ground floor window around the back of Chillingworth House – away from the road and prying eyes. The window was in the same sorry state as the rest: remnants of glass jutting in lethal shards from leprous frames. Scanning the darkness around him, Tommy spotted a broken plastic chair in a porch way and instructed Malcolm to go get it.
As he handed the cracked, three-legged seat to his friend, Malcolm stepped back a couple of paces, anticipating what was to happen next.
“Watch yourself, Malc!” Tommy swung the chair back and forth across the window, smashing out the last remaining shards of glass, and, with the paint-flecked frames rendered harmless, he stretched a black-leathered arm through to unlock the latch, allowing him to lift the lower portion of the window, easing his entry. Leaning as far over the ledge as he could, Tommy lifted his right foot. “Give us a bunk up, Malc.”
Malcolm’s face registered a grimace that was an equal mix of effort and distaste as he gripped Tommy’s cold, wet boot, lifting him up through the window. Once inside, the bigger lad returned the favour, grabbing his friend’s belt and dragging him up and over the window ledge.
With both boys inside, Tommy pulled a small torch from his inside jacket pocket and flicked the switch. The batteries were on their last legs and the bulb cast a dull yellow glow over floorboards that looked as if they had long ago forgotten the taste of varnish - as if the building had been deserted for years rather than mere months.
Malcolm scanned around, his eyes scouring the dimly lit classroom. “Wow…don’t it look different now it’s empty? Looks twice the size…”
“Yeah…” Tommy wrinkled his nose, “still stinks the fucking same, though.” He strode over to the empty space at the front of the room where a blackboard used to be and picked up a wooden-handled board rubber from its little shelf on the wall, where it had been left – unwanted.
“YOU BOY!” Tommy’s voice boomed around the classroom shell, “STOP TALKING!”
He threw the board rubber hard against the far wall where it impacted in a cloud of chalk dust.
“Yeah…I can still hear old Jenkins voice now. Nearly took my head off with that thing…fucking psycho bastard.”
*
It stirred from its slumber, its senses aroused by the presence of the two boys.
Of food.
It felt their thoughts; their heat; the blood rushing through their veins – and its hunger raged. The taste of sustenance had fired it and it sloughed off the shroud of starvation-induced sleep…a sleep it had never expected to wake from.
Salvation was at hand: the slow death it had resigned itself to wait for slipping away with this new chance of survival.
Now, fully awake, it stretched, flexing the stiffness from its limbs.
*
Malcolm Hall’s heart jumped, missed a beat, and then returned with a vengeance, hammering like crazy behind his ribs.
“What the fuck was that?”
“What?”
“I heard something…upstairs, I think.”
A sharp cracking sound ripped through the walls and a roar like thunder boomed across the ceiling over the boy’s heads.
“Fucking hell!”
Malcolm ran for the window but was dragged back, choking, as he was grabbed around the throat.
7
As Roger was swept deeper into the tunnel, the intensity of the light diminished a little, a small circle of luminescence in the distance serving as a reminder of the brilliance at the entrance. The tunnel walls appeared to consist of some kind of viscous vapour, wavering and undulating around him like living wallpaper-paste. He reached out a hand, skimming a wall with his fingertips. The vapour felt thick and cool, almost clammy; like a cold sweat.
His journey towards the light must have been progressing quicker than he realised, the bright circle at the tunnel’s end growing rapidly larger and he was suddenly aware of the sound of voices.
Many voices.
As the noise grew louder he was reminded of a football stadium, the shouting and singing of thousands.
Were these voices shouting or singing?
He couldn’t tell. The myriad cries seemed as one, a thick, swirling soup of sound.
A choir of angels waiting to greet him?
The circle of light seemed now only yards away, the tunnel walls thinning a little as it got closer. Roger could see shadowy forms beyond the membranous vapour, grey figures that merged into one then broke apart, as if a crowd was surging and seething around him. As the walls grew still thinner, the voices became clearer. Shouting, wailing, crying: anguished and pitiful. The shadowy forms beyond the walls were also becoming sharper. He could make out humanoid shapes: heads, arms, legs…
“GRAB THE FUCKER!”
The voice was loud and crisp, full of anger. A dozen pairs of arms suddenly stretched through the wall, clouds of heavy vapour swirling around them as they broke through. Desperate fingers clutched at him dragging him away from the light and into
