We have a group chat to figure out what to do about the scratching. Me, Maria, Cassie, and Daniel. Cassie asked why I didn’t invite Grayson and I told her I didn’t think that was a good idea right now. She didn’t question why, for which I was immensely relieved. I’m not a very good liar and I’m not ready to tell Cassie that Grayson is the son of the university’s president. He’s hidden that information for a reason and I want to know what it is, be it because he doesn’t want to be treated differently or for more sinister reasons. Besides, I swore I wouldn’t get my friends involved in this any more than I have to. Not with the devil, not with the administration.

Not after what happened to the Rain Chasers.

Because the more involved I get, the more I think I’m making myself a target.

(if you’re new, start here, and if you’re totally lost, this might help)

I’ve mentioned that the geology building is right next to the graveyard, right? I can’t remember. With the graveyard being in the middle of campus, there’s quite a few buildings right next to it, so maybe I didn’t list them all out. There’s not a lot of campus lore surrounding the graveyard, surprisingly, so I’ve been thinking that maybe it’s not accumulated its own creatures. It’s kept locked so students can’t get in, so it’s taken on the role of a landmark rather than a source of stories.

I’ve also been considering that perhaps it’s taken the role of sanctuary. Unfortunately I don’t have my own collection of fairytales to reference - and also I kind of have classes to study for and adding more work on top of that seems like a bad idea - so I can’t go back and figure out exactly what the conditions for that are. I just vaguely remember that sometimes the hero can find safety in the graveyard and there’s also creatures that actively protect graveyards from evil.

Okay the ones I’m specifically thinking of protect the graveyard from the devil so that might get awkward someday.

I don’t know if the graveyard is a source, shelter, or neither. But I do think it’s time to consider it as part of the big picture and figure out what its role on campus is.

I’m still clearing out a lot of general education requirements, but since I settled on a major I’ve got a handful of classes towards that end. The geology building isn’t that big. It’s sandwiched between the graveyard and the mathematics building, a narrow strip of a building with no interesting architectural features. It feels like it was added as an afterthought. The mathematics building was clearly designed with… something in mind. I’m not sure what their vision was, but its massive bulbous pillars flanking the entrance make me wonder if the architects went ‘hey what if we did classic ancient Greece… but warty?’ Then they all stepped back and realized there was a narrow strip of land they’d forgotten about and tossed a boring two-story rectangle into that space because they needed something to block the view of the graveyard from the Grecian toad next door.

I know two of the geology professors so I think that means I’ve met half the department now. There’s my current professor, who we’ll call Professor Monotone because that’s how he lectures. And then there’s my professor from last year, who we’ll call Professor L. because I don’t have a good nickname for him yet and I don’t want to use the real names of people who are easily searchable online. While I have some issues with Professor L., he’s still the more approachable of the two.

Also I think I’m his favorite student on account of being the only one to pass the midterm exam last semester and the only woman in the class that followed his field trip instructions.

I stopped by his office during his office hours to ask about the curriculum. I have an academic advisor but honestly I don’t feel like they’re actually giving me good advice. They’re just sending me the list of classes I need to have completed to graduate and I’m worried about which ones to take in which order and making sure I finish in the next three years. So I went to Professor L., because judging by how well my class did in terms of grades, no one else was making use of his office hours.

The building is divided roughly in two. On one side are the classrooms and the professor offices are on the other. I’m not sure what’s on the second floor. The big lecture hall - the one I struggle to stay awake in twice a week - is at the very end of the building. The classrooms are on the side of the graveyard so we get a scenic view of the gravestones during class. The professor’s offices are either against the main corridor and windowless or open to the lovely view of the behemoth mathematics building next door.

I’d just turned down the corridor that ran between the two rows of offices and was making my way to Professor L.’s room when I realized I wasn’t alone.

There were footsteps behind me. Not far. Close enough that I felt a jolt of fear, for I hadn’t heard them approaching.

I turned, like anyone would have. I turned, hoping that it would just be another student and I’d laugh at how I’d been startled over nothing and then go on about my day. But that’s not how it works for me. I was alone in the hallway and the sky was overcast and there’s something wrong with me, I’ve seen too much and now I was tied to the inhuman. I saw them wherever I looked and they saw me. We recognized each other and they were drawn to me like moths to a flame because they need people like me and you, people who make them real, who make them last, even as they consume us to sate their endless hunger.

This is what I fear. That there’s no going back once you cross that threshold and I crossed it long ago. I never stood a chance at an ignorant and happy life.

So I turned and at the end of the hallway stood the creature whose steps had echoed just behind me moments before.

It was at the very end of the hallway. It took a step and I heard the shuffle of its feet on the linoleum far down at the end of the corridor, no longer directly behind me. I stumbled backwards, looking to the left and right desperately, searching for an open office door, because I did not want to be here when that thing caught up to me.

It was a student. Or… it used to be a student. I couldn’t tell the gender, because its body was covered in clotted blood. Thick streams that all joined together until it formed one solid sheet, soaking their jeans until the fabric dried and cracked. The blood came from dozens and dozens of wounds, the handles of the weapons used to create them still sticking out of the pallid flesh.

I think they were butter knives from the cafeteria.

They covered the student’s torso and face, jutting out haphazardly. A handful protruded from its limbs and one in particular was angled just below the knee so that the leg wouldn’t bend. Its steps were agonizingly slow, but it was determinedly shuffling towards me.

I stared at it for a long moment, my brain slowly churning through what I was seeing. Slowly, it came around to the conclusion that I needed to leave, and quickly. I almost turned my back on it to run when another thought tumbled loose and stopped me.

I’d heard its footsteps right behind me right up until the point I turned around.

What if it could catch up the moment I wasn’t watching it?

I walked backwards instead, heart pounding, casting furtive glances at the doorways as I passed them. I counted the numbers. Professor L.’s office was only a few doors down. These were his listed office hours. He had to be there.

He was not there. His office was shut and the door was dark.

Did I keep going? Continue backing away until I reached the other end of the hallway? I didn’t know where it led. I didn’t think it looped back to the main corridor, as I didn’t recall seeing it when I went to the lecture hall at the end of the building. Then I’d be lost in this building with that creature inexorably pursuing me, its pace slowly strengthening and its footsteps coming quicker the closer it got. Would I be able to outrun it when it began to sprint?

I put a hand to the side and pushed on the door.

My professor had the poor sense to leave his office unlocked.

I didn’t hesitate. I dove inside and shut the door behind me as quickly as I dared, trying not to make any noise. It didn’t have eyes, but that wasn’t a guarantee that it couldn’t see me. I had to balance speed with silence and hope for the best. I quietly crawled away from the door, putting the desk between me and the entrance. I listened intently to the shuffling footsteps out in the hallway. They were coming closer. They were definitely coming closer. I clasped both hands over my mouth to stifle my breathing.

Quiet. I had to be quiet.

It couldn’t see me, I desperately told myself, trying to hold back panic. It sat thick in my throat like a stone.

The footsteps continued to approach. They paused just outside the door. It was like everything went blank in my head. I sat there, not thinking, not feeling, lost in my own private world of helpless terror. For the door handle was turning and then a sliver of light spilled into the office.

Then Professor L. turned the light on and screamed a little when he saw someone huddled inside on the other side of his desk.

We sorted it out when we both stopped freaking out. I told him I’d heard footsteps behind me and panicked and found a place to hide. I didn’t mean to startle him. He had no problem buying my story, probably because I was still pale and shaking and stumbling over my words as the adrenaline crashed out of my system.

“Oh, that’s just how this building is,” Professor L. laughed once I was done explaining. “There’s a hallway upstairs directly over this one and the footsteps carry through the ceiling. It can sound like someone is behind you, but it’s actually just someone walking around on the second floor. I hear it all the time.”

“I was really scared,” I mumbled.

“It’s a quirky building and makes a lot of noises, but I’ve been working here for long enough to know there’s nothing out there. See?”

He stood and walked to the door. I watched numbly as he opened the door to the hallway and stepped out. I wanted to believe that everything was fine now. I really did. He’d showed up and I guess that frightened off the creature - strength in numbers and all - and he’d open the door to an empty hallway and it would all be fine.

Instead, I sat there in the office, frozen in place, unable to even speak. For directly overhead hung the creature. It clung to the ceiling with cracked fingers and pointed toes, belly almost touching the tiles. Its head was rotated about on its neck, staring down at the top of the professor’s head. If the wounds hadn’t clotted long ago, it would have been dribbling blood directly onto his face.

“See?” he proclaimed. “Nothing there.”

Then he stepped back inside and shut the door.

He hears footsteps all the time, he’d said. Does he not look up? Can he not see it? How long has this been going on?

“So are you okay now?” he asked.

No. Not really. I didn’t want to go out into the hallway again. Fortunately, I’d come to see him with a specific purpose in mind and that could buy me more time. I asked him about my schedule and he was happy to go over what classes I’d need to take and we even had a great conversation about what career opportunities exist after graduation. It was reassuringly normal.

But eventually I ran out of questions and it was time to leave. I stalled, trying to turn the conversation back to the footsteps, trying to learn more about them in the hopes that I could get out of there without encountering that thing again. I had to learn how to navigate around it, after all. This was my major. I’d be in this building quite a lot.

But Professor L. just brushed my concerns off.

He didn’t want to indulge my fears, he said. Thinking overly much about the things we’re scared of just makes it worse, he continued. It was better to just acknowledge the thought, then set it aside and not give it any more space in my head.

Which I suppose would be good advice, if it wasn’t also so patronizing. Set my teeth on edge. I think it was only my lingering fear of talking back to a teacher from my elementary days that kept me from saying something dumb. That or my fear of confrontation.

Probably more of the latter.

“How about this?” he said. “I sympathize with you being afraid, but you can’t let that get in the way of your life. So let’s start getting over these superstitions, okay? I won’t walk you down the hallway, but I’ll stand by my door and watch your back so nothing can follow you.”

‘I’m not imagining things!’ I wanted to scream. ‘There’s monsters out there! This building is right next to a graveyard and now there’s a dead student lurking in the hallways that was stabbed to death and maybe you can’t see it but that your ignorance won’t protect you forever and it sure as hell won’t save me!’

Instead I just nodded like an idiot.

I’m sure he thought he was being very clever, giving me a way to confront my fears without wholly giving into them. It seemed like that was the best concession I’d get from him, so I’d have to take it and hope that he didn’t do anything sneaky like go back into his office and then tell me later that I’d walked down the hallway all by myself and wasn’t that easy and isn’t there nothing to be scared of???

Well, he didn’t do that, because at the end of the hallway I couldn’t take it any longer and I turned back to look. He was still there, standing in the hallway, waving at me cheerily. And the student was on the ceiling above him, its broken face staring down at where I stood at the other end.

I turned the corner and broke into a run. I ran out of the geology building, to the overcast sky outside and into the scattering of raindrops that were starting to fall. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything. I ran, through puddles that kicked up rainwater to soak my jeans, through the stinging raindrops, mindlessly running away from there without any idea of where I was going.

Why is this so hard? I have three years to figure my entire life out and isn’t that plenty of time? I grew up around the inhuman, so shouldn’t I be able to handle this? Why does everything feel so overwhelming all the time?

I found myself at the student union. I was breathless and my heart pounded in my chest like it would burst. I found myself drawn to the second floor for reasons I don’t fully understand. I hadn’t been there since the end of the spring semester. The hallway seemed to twist in front of me, like it wasn’t there or perhaps I wasn’t there, and I knew it wasn’t anything unnatural, it was just because my mind was in a strange place and I knew this was wrong, that this wouldn’t help, that looking at the room where the Rain Chasers all sat and talked and where Patricia convinced all of them to follow her to their deaths wouldn’t do a damn thing for me.

I went anyway. And when I reached the room with the windows opening into the hallway, I stopped dead in my tracks and stared.

It should have been empty. Maria hadn’t renewed the club’s paperwork and this room and this timeslot wasn’t in demand enough that it would have been taken over by another club.

Yet there were a handful of students in there and from the handful of words I could hear through the thin walls I could tell they were talking about the graveyard and whether they could get inside after dark to see what might be lurking inside. I didn’t recognize any of them but I knew exactly why they were here.

Someone had found new recruits and rebuilt the Rain Chasers. [x]

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