Part 1 Part 2

“Petrov? What’s going on?” I gasped, as he came flying out of the vent, nearly knocking down a nearby shelf of Bluetooth accessories, “Are you alright?”

He certainly didn’t look alright. His blonde hair was disheveled and his forehead slick with sweat. Why was he running?

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” Petrov panted, “Are you okay? Why did you run off like that? Did you see something?”

I raised my eyebrow at the barrage of questions, “What are you talking about? I just went to the locker room to get my stuff.”

I raised the umbrella I was clutching to illustrate my point. What the hell was his problem?

But he stared at me as though I was the crazy one, “No, before that! In the carpet room!”

“What ‘carpet room’, Petrov, what did you find in there?”

He was trembling, although the temperature in the store was about 78 degrees, “It… It doesn’t matter. I’m just happy that…”

He reached out and cupped my hand in his, pulling my body towards him. My stomach lurched as I remembered I’d left my pepper spray in my jogging jersey this morning.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I demanded, in the most self-assured tone I could muster. Hesitation flashed in his eyes and I took the opportunity to snatch my hand away.

“But…” he stuttered, “But what about our kiss?”

On second thought, perhaps pepper spray wouldn’t have been enough anyway. Petrov had obviously gone batshit crazy.

“Petrov,” I began, taking a deep breath in hopes it would alleviate the lump of disdain rising in my throat, “Sit down. Let’s talk about this.”

As he perched on one of the swivel chairs at the counter, I fumbled in my handbag, pulling out a worn out-looking water bottle. He shook his head at it, “Why are you doing this, Ginny? I promise I won’t be upset if you just tell me why you ran away. If it got too much for you, I understand. We can take it slow. Just please…” Petrov made a defeated gesture with his hands.

I leaned on the countertop, wondering if he’d really lost it. Perhaps calling the authorities wouldn’t be the worst idea? I mean, who-

“Can you tell me the truth?”

“What truth, Petrov? I’ll be honest, you sound…” I bit my tongue before I could say the word ‘crazy’, not wanting to provoke him. I mean, who knew what he was capable of in his state? “You sound… hurt… Now, I’m sorry if I said or did anything to cause that, it was not my intention.”

“Then why did you run from me?” he persisted, wiping the sweat poking out above his upper lip, “In the carpet room?”

Ugh, not again with the carpet room.

“Petrov, I never went into any… carpet room. When you entered the vent, I went to the locker room to get my stuff. Then, you came out five minutes later, looking like this… Now, I don’t know wha-”

“You didn’t…” he swallowed, his eyes darting across the room, “Follow me?”

“No!” I cried with a little too much enthusiasm. His face fell, so I quickly added, “I was just in a hurry to meet my friends.”

“But then…” his expression shifted from dismay to alarm, “Who was with me in the…?”

He jumped up from his chair and charged towards the computer before I could stop him. When I circled the counter and joined him he was already clacking away furiously at the keyboard.

“What…what are you doing?” I asked carefully.

He grunted as though it couldn’t have been more obvious, “Rewinding the camera.”

I glanced at it. It was the same camera we’d watched the footage from only half an hour earlier. It was the same camera that was pointed directly at the gaping vent.

“Maybe…” I suggested, “Maybe if you go home and get some rest..?”

To say that Petrov was a hard worker would be a severe understatement. He always came to work before anyone else, and refused to leave until everything in the store was picture perfect. He took on every additional shift and responsibility, and took great pride in his career.

“Okay, so this is where I enter the vent,” he mumbled under his breath as his words were illustrated on the monitor.

I jabbed at the screen, “And this is where I walk towards the locker room, see?”

My camera counterpart rolled her eyes as she turned away from the vent. I prayed Petrov wouldn’t notice.

We sat in silence as the video footage played back to us, the seconds on the timestamp ticking by painfully slowly.

“Maybe if you fast-”

“No!” Petrov’s tone was suddenly irate, “As soon as we start meddling or interfering in any way, the authenticity is lost. I need to see the whole thing as is.”

I didn’t dare say anything after that. Not even when I appeared on the screen once more five minutes later, carrying my handbag in my right hand, and an umbrella in my left.

“Okay, here we go,” Petrov clenched his fist, leaving a pattern of perspiration on the surface of the computer mouse, “Moment of truth.”

I pursed my lips, suddenly dreading his reaction when he found out I wasn’t lying. Petrov must have felt it too, because his shoulders tensed up and a shadow of a vein bulged in his neck.

“Look…” I began, trying my best to think of a way to amend the situation, when a panic-stricken Petrov spilled out of the vent on camera, as though the devil himself was chasing him.

“GINNY!” he called.

“Petrov? What’s going on?” the image of me rushed over to meet him.

I diverted my eyes from the monitor to glance at Petrov. He was studying the screen, a droplet of sweat trickling down his right temple. His knuckles were white and his fingernails were digging into his palms.

“Listen,” I said, trying to distract him, “How about I ditch my friends and we go out for drinks again, hm? Just you and me?”

I flinched at how unnatural my tone sounded, but I couldn’t just leave him there. I knew if I did, he’d spend hours analyzing the same five minutes of tape over and over, zooming in and out, looking for invisible dots or ghost orbs or whatever it was that he was expecting to see.

I was hoping he would jump at the opportunity, but he didn’t even look at me.

“Ginny,” he said, his voice an indistinct mumble, “You don’t understand. What I saw in that vent…”

“Well, let’s go in and you can show me, then,” I interrupted. I was certain that whatever it was, was simply the product of Petrov’s weary mind and solitude. It wouldn’t happen again, I was sure of it.

He turned to face me, his eyes wide, “We can’t do that!”

“Why not?” I almost wanted to laugh, but felt like that’d be disrespectful.

For a moment he looked like he was grappling with the thought, “Because…because… I wouldn’t put you in danger like that, Ginny…”

The agitation in his eyes melted away and for a moment I caught a glimpse of tenderness in his gaze. It sent a shiver down my spine, which I shook off swiftly. I needed to get out of here, before it, whatever it was, got to me too. It was Petrov, for God’s sake.

“O-okay, well then how about those drinks?” I clasped my hands with an audible pop, hoping it would snap me out of this new feeling I didn’t care for, “Shall we go? We can talk more about it on the way.”

Petrov sighed. It was blatantly obvious he wanted to go, but was conflicted in his priorities. The video now depicted us talking over the counter, facing one another. I’d proved my point.

“Let me just turn this off,” he said, unclenching his fists and reaching for the mouse, “Can you close up the vent?”

But before I could take a single step, the video feed stopped me in my tracks. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Petrov was frozen too.

Something was making its way out of the open vent. We’d been too busy talking at the counter to notice it. It was alien, with sharp-looking limbs and long fingers, reaching all the way down to its knees. Its skin was white - almost translucent - and its bald head far too small to be human.

It slipped through the opening in a quick and effortless motion, almost as though it were gliding through air, and disappeared behind a row of shelves just as I circled the counter to join Petrov at the computer.

Then, the video cut out.

We stared at the black screen in silence. My heart was thundering in my chest and my eyes kept darting across the room to the shelves adjacent to the vent. There was no way. No way this could be happening to me. To us.

For the first time in my life, I clutched Petrov’s hand.