I Don't Want To Be One Of Them
I’d gone to a Halloween party at my friend’s boyfriend’s flat in a part of the city I didn’t go that often, especially not at night. No particular reason, it’s just an area that sits farther out from the main shopping district and didn’t have any clubs I liked nearby. Anyway, almost all of the party had moved on to nightclubs, leaving me, my friend and her boyfriend to chill out and roll a few. I’d been standing for hours prior to this helping out at a university event, so this was exactly what I needed. We’d watched a couple episodes of Over The Garden Wall when I noticed my friend getting tired, so I decided to head on home to bed. They both tried to insist I stay, crash on their sofa or something, but I had people staying at mine who’d gone out with the party and I needed to be home to let them in.
The second my friend waved me off and
shut the door, I realised I had no idea how to get out of the building. Not
wanting to disturb my friends and their neighbours by knocking, I decided that
I wasn’t an idiot and that as long as I kept looking, I could figure the way
out. I knew I’d come in via an elevator, but I couldn’t see one nearby, so I
started walking in a random direction. The building was made up of a maze of
white-walled corridors and harsh over-head lighting, giving the place a bleak
and sterile vibe. There were no windows on the corridor I followed, not that it
would have helped, it being so late at night.
Eventually though, I passed a door with
windows built into the panels and no lock. A stairway. I was so smug at this point, even with such a
small victory, that I’d managed to find my own way and not ask for help. I
pushed open the door and stepped inside. When no lights automatically came on,
I fumbled across the walls for a light switch, but felt and saw nothing in the
dim light from the hall. I reasoned that the lights probably were
motion-sensored but that the sensor itself was further down the stairs. I
shrugged off my confusion and released the door to the corridor, and made my
way in the dark to the railing around the stairs.
I knew I was a few floors up, and didn’t
remember seeing a basement level in the elevator, so figured if I followed the
stairs to the bottom I’d find the ground floor. It wasn’t until I’d walked down
two flights of stairs that I heard the soft thud of the door closing, and
realised the lights hadn’t come on. I reminded myself I’m not a child and kept
going, but slowed my pace when I suddenly noticed how deathly quiet the
stairway was. I got this creeping sense of dread crawling up my back, all of my
muscles felt tense and I found myself desperately searching the darkness, for
what I wasn’t sure.
I can’t really explain why, but something
about that pitch-black stairway set my nerves on edge. Thoughts of the victims
described in podcasts I listen to swirled in my head, and I felt so ridiculous
for it, like a little kid who’d watched a scary movie then couldn’t sleep with
the lights off. But the feeling didn’t go away.
I decided that the next doorway to a
corridor I saw I’d go through it, if only to gather my bearings in the safety
of the light. All the time I’d been descending these stairs, I’d been passing
doors with similar glass panels lit up for different floors of the building.
They appeared every other turn of the stairs, so I knew that even if I couldn’t
see one now I would find one around the next bend.
As I turned the corner, I froze on the
step I’d half shifted my weight onto. I stared at the spot I knew there had to
be a door, but all I saw was the inky blackness I still hadn’t become
accustomed to. I rationalised to myself that the lights in that corridor were
probably just turned off, so I couldn’t see the lights through the glass
panels. There was almost certainly a door there, but the idea of releasing the
railing I’d been guiding myself with to feel blindly in the dark for a door
that may or may not be there, was a step too far for my already churning gut.
‘Two more turns and there’ll be another’
I thought, ‘there has to be another door’. I hadn’t thought the building that
big, so I had to be close to the ground floor anyway. I set off again, slower
than before. The darkness was stifling, I couldn’t tell the difference between
my eyes being open or closed it was so dark, and the missing door had thrown me
off. I toed down each step, both hands gripping the rail, my heartbeat filling
my ears. I counted each step as I went, not that I remember now. I just wanted
to feel like time was still moving. I was panicking at this point, cursing
under my breath how idiotic it was to let my phone die playing music at the
party. I felt the floor of the landing that turned before the second set of
stairs, resisting the urge to hurry in case I tripped up. My stomach dropped
when I turned the corner and saw- nothing. I stood there, blinking in dark in
the direction I knew the door should be. I even raised my fingers to my face to
feel if my eyelids truly were open, I was that convinced there should be a door
there.
That’s when I heard the sound of
something shifting. It was quiet, the kind of sound that if I hadn’t spent the
last however long in complete darkness and silence I would never have noticed,
but I heard it. The subtle grind of something hard against the bare concrete
floor. A shifting of weight. I’m not sure what it was, maybe a shoe, or
something brushing against the walls, but I know this for certain. I hadn’t
moved.
I stumbled backward, pulling myself back
up the stairs by the rail as fast as I could. I missed a step a few times,
landing hard on my knees, but I hardly felt it. I was so scared, every sinew
and fibre of my body was screaming, pushing me to leap up the stairs. I felt
like every hair on my body was forcing its way out of my skin. I ran like the
devil himself was chasing me. The second I rounded a bend and spotted the faint
glow of a door above me, I scrabbled on my hands and knees up the last few
steps and through myself through the door and into the light.
As I lay there, sprawled across the floor
staring back through the slowly closing stairway door, I thought about all
those murder victims in the podcasts I listened to. And I wondered, how many of
them might have got away if they’d heard their killer coming.
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