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It was the gym coach’s radio, no doubt left on by a custodian after cleaning up the locker room. Jacks relaxed his grip on her hand.
“Ain’t gonna just stand around while you run off with somebody new-ew-ew.”
Then, from the opposite side of the gym, they heard the click of the door latch. This was no radio, no TV. Something was trying to get into the locker room.
Maddy pulled Jacks through the dry showers.
She could see, for the first time, a glint of fear in his eyes.
The door to the gymnasium began to open. Whatever was out there, in another second, it would be in the room with them. They rounded the shower stalls and Maddy spotted the door at the end of the short corridor. It had a small, square window in it, which let in light from the hallway outside. They were close. And that’s when Maddy heard it.
Footsteps in the locker room behind them. Panic surged up her throat. Whatever it was, it had feet. There was a thump, followed by two clicking sounds, like knife blades against the linoleum tile.
Step, click click. Step, click click.
Jacks squeezed her hand and mouthed a single word.
“Go.”
They glided over the floor in silence. Maddy reached the door and applied just enough pressure on the handle to check the lock. The handle depressed and the door moved effortlessly out of the jamb. It was unlocked. She swun
g the door open and they slipped through, leaving whatever it was—the thing—behind them in the locker room. They emerged into the hallway next to the vending machines. The whir of the refrigerators made it impossible to hear behind them. Maddy scanned down the stifling hall. The heat and humidity had fogged the windows to the classrooms. There was no way of seeing inside them.
“Come on,” she whispered, moving to the nearest door. “I have class in this room. I think it connects to the bio lab. The lab goes to a hall that can take us to the other side of the school.”
“Go, go,” Jacks whispered urgently. They went.
Maddy put a hand on the door handle and steadied her trembling heart. Cracking it open, she peered inside. Silent. Nothing. She swung the classroom door open. The empty desks cast long shadows in the light from the hallway. It was her AP History class. On the board the assignment for the weekend was still written there:
Read New History of Angels, pages 220–256
They moved into the classroom and Jacks shut the door silently behind them. Maddy could almost hear the chatter of her classmates as she moved through the desks and the drone of Mr. Rankin at the board. They were the sounds of safety, the sounds of wonderfully commonplace well-being. If she ever got out of this alive, she promised never to take those mundane sounds for granted again.
They passed Mr. Rankin’s desk and suddenly Jacks grabbed Maddy by the hoodie and yanked her down to the floor. His eyes darted to the window, where a black silhouette moved across the light. It was large, taller than the windows. Big. Maddy held her breath as it passed the classroom. Her heart was pounding. Then it stopped and came back, shadowing the windows again. It was smelling, Maddy thought. Hunting. The latch on the door began to turn.
“Don’t look back,” Jacks whispered as they moved toward the door at the far end of the classroom. Jacks pulled the door shut behind them just as the entrance to the hallway swung open.
It knew where they were now, Maddy thought. It was closing in.
Jacks pulled Maddy down behind a long counter. She listened to the sound of her shallow, quick breaths, trying to control them. The lab was divided by four counters running the length of the room, bordered by narrow alleys on either side. Test tubes, beakers, and other glassware sat atop the tables awaiting next week’s use. Maddy peered at the far door, across the room. She could see the hallway through the door’s square window. The hallway, she knew, led directly out the school’s side entrance to the street.
“Let’s go,” Maddy said. “We can make it if we run.” Jacks held her arm with an iron grip.
“No. We can’t,” he said quietly.
“Why not?” she whispered, almost pleading.
“Because it’s in here with us.”
Maddy heard the door to the classroom click shut. The darkness felt suddenly alive all around her. Then she heard it. The faintest sound of air.
She could hear the thing breathing.
A suffocating heat permeated the darkness like growing fire that gave off no light. The pungent smell of earth, decay, and something worse wafted out of the darkness toward her. It smelled like death, Maddy thought. Stinking death itself.
A scream rose up her throat and she slapped her hand over her mouth. It took all her strength to stop it.
Maddy listened as the thing began to move through the room.
