The Footsteps

“So my father just remarried. And shockingly my step-mother is not so fond of me. And I guess neither is my father, because he agreed to send me away, to a far away, white, rich all male boarding school. It’s such a fucking cliche, that’s almost embarrassing.”

My roommate laughed and smiled. He had a cute smile and kind eyes. A rarity at this school as I had come to find out. “Yep. That is pretty much everyone’s story here.”

“I bet” is all I said as I looked down at my hands. This was shit. I wanted my old life back. I missed my mum, terribly and all the time. I did not know what to do with myself anymore, so I did whatever crossed my mind, which usually got me into trouble. I could not care less. The meaning of my life was stolen and buried with my mother.

He gently patted my shoulder “It’s not so bad here” he told me. “I have survived for a year here. Just do your homework and follow the rules. It’s going to be fine”

I looked up to see him offering me a reassuring smile. I offered back a teasing one. “I don’t really like rules” I said. 

He looked serious then, his smile disappeared. A hint of fear found its way and settled inside the blue of his eyes. “You should follow these rules. For your own good. Most importantly never get out of this room after curfew. Ever”

Well, that was not ominous at all. But truth be told I did not intent on leaving my room after curfew. It was one of the first ground rules that the principal had told me and the only one that I planned on not breaking. There was such seriousness in the tone of his voice when he said it that he truly made me think that it was a matter of life and death.

What was even more persuasive than the principal was the sounds. From my first night here, I had heard weird sounds from the corridors of the school. Heavy footsteps, that I guessed belonged to the teachers, making rounds. But one night, I would swear that I heard more than one pair of feet and claws scratching on the wooden floors. Were they having dogs patrolling the grounds? It was creepy as fuck.

I could tell that the other students heard the strange sounds too. I could see it in their sleepy, watery eyes and their tired yawns. No-one said or asked about it though. There were rumours about students that did. My roommate had informed me about the ‘cat’ students. Curiosity killed the cat and all that. 

They disappeared in the night, is what he told me. And those nights the sounds of footsteps were accompanied by those of dragging and thudding. 

“What about the teachers?” I had asked.

“They are in on it, man” he answered. “They do not even mention the missing students the next morning. It’s like they never existed in the first place."

“In on what?” What could they possible have to gain by this? And what was this exactly?

“I do not know. But whatever it is, the teachers know and we don’t have a connection to the outside word and it’s not like anyone’s going to believe us. Certainly not our parents. We are stuck here.”

I could not understand, but also I did not want to find out who or what was producing the sounds. At mornings, when the light chased away the possible terrors of the night, I persuaded myself that it was all nonsense. It’s remarkable, how a little bit of sunlight can give us courage. 

The building was old, the wooden floors were creaking by the mere pressure of thin air. The pipes in the walls were unnecessarily loud, the water that traveled inside them could be heard all day long. So I reassured myself that the sounds were just that. An old building; heaving through the night by the tremendous effort of standing still one more day.  

But it wasn’t that.

***

I could not get used to it. An endless string of sleepless nights was driving me mad. I tried using earplugs, like my roommate did, but not being able to hear my surroundings was even more terrifying. Every time I closed my eyes I felt eyes on me. Watching, examining, lurking, waiting for me. And every time that I opened my eyes there was nothing there, but shadows that my paranoid and tired brain turned into horrific creatures. Until I blinked and the creatures were gone, only to reappear the next time that I closed and opened my eyes in the night.

I dreaded going to sleep, my heart was already heavy by sunset. Most of the nights, I stayed awake until the first morning light coyly crept through the windows to fight off the shadows. I could finally relax then, sure that no horrible creature of the night was lurking in my room and I could fall asleep for a couple of hours. All this paranoia and insomnia was slowly but steadily making me insane. I could feel my brain breaking.

***

After three months of this kind of lack of sleep and the waking nightmares that I lived through every night, I started losing all sense of reality. Whether I was awake or not made no difference to me, my everyday life felt like an endless circle of dreams.

There was one night though, that I was able to fall asleep. I had spent all my day, deliberately tiring myself out at the hope that I could finally sleep like a normal person. Even just for a night.

It worked. As soon as I laid down exhaustion traveled from my back through out all of my body, lastly reaching my brain and it took over. Exhaustion won over my fear and I blissfully fell into the welcoming unconsciousness of sleep. I remember thinking “finally” when I was sure that I would indeed fall asleep.

It did not last long.

I woke up in the middle of the night, shivering and disoriented. Why was it so cold in here? It was so cold that it kind of hurt to breathe, it was like inhaling the winter itself. I pulled the covers closer to my body and went back to sleep, too tired to care about the source of the unexpected cold. The moment I closed my eyes I heard it.

Footsteps, yet again. But this time they were coming from inside the room. Naturally my first instinct was to pretend that I was asleep, so I stayed perfectly still and kept my breathing as even as humanly possible, given that I was scared shitless. All the while the footsteps were coming closer and the floor creaked under their weight. I was sure that my erratic heartbeat could be heard outside of my body. Soon though it would stop; my heart would fail me at the face of fear.

And it did. For a few seconds it stopped when I felt a breath on my face. It was cold and it smelled rotten, like something dead was breathing on me. I held my own breath and waited for it to go away. As it didn’t a morbid curiosity started growing over me.

I had to see. I had to know what it was that had me and the whole school terrified at nights. Even if it meant that I would be added to a list of ‘cat’ students, forever lost into the night. I knew how stupid it was, but as the breathing continued, so did my growing curiosity. 

When I opened my eyes I found white, pale, dead eyes starring right back at me. It could have been human once, maybe a long time ago, but now its face was half melted off and its mouth was agape, showing off a few yellow, almost brown teeth. 

As it leaned closer to me I lost the last shred of sanity that I had left.