SECOND NIGHT

RICH WAS roomed with Jimmy and two other students named Steve and Mitch. Mitch Dowell had the personality of... well, a dowel. He was a quiet, almost mouse-like kid with bad skin and a very annoying voice who kept mostly to himself. Steve Locaine, on the other hand, hadn't left Rich alone since he walked into the room.

"So, you're from Mass? You know Malcolm?"

"Kind of. My family has been in Nigeria for the past seven years."

"Oh, yeah! You're the kid whose dad was that one missionary who died."

"Steve!" Jimmy piped up at Steve, but Rich waved him down.

"No, no, it's all right. Yeah, it was a car accident."

"Hey, I'm sorry, dude," Steve stammered.

"Like I said... it's all good."

Steve and Rich sat down at the desk in the entryway and started to set up their computers while Jimmy hovered and listened as the two chatted about video cards. Every now and then, he would pipe up if he knew a thing, but only to mention that he knew about the thing.

"Hey, I've heard about Nvidia!" he said, pointing at the sticker on the side of the board Steve pulled from his box. The two looked back at him.

"...What?"

After a moment of the two staring wordlessly at Jimmy, Rich remembered he had something to ask him.

"Oh, hey, Jimmy... about that guy."

"The Nvidia guy?"

"No... You know... the Man in Black."

Steve unexpectedly grabbed his arm, and Jimmy, eyes wide, looked over his shoulder.

At Mitch.

"Yeah," Jimmy began, quietly, when he noticed Mitch was asleep with headphones on. "He used to be our friend, but he's become kind of... weird."

"We don't talk about him much," Steve added, slightly louder and over his own shoulder, back into the bedroom area where Mitch was sitting.

Suddenly, there was a loud screeching sound, causing everyone including Mitch to jump. Steve had accidentally plugged in his speakers to the microphone jack, causing a sudden loud feedback. As he scrambled to unplug it, Jimmy leaned in toward Rich.

"Grab your jacket," he whispered, just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony.

- - -

The three walked out of the dorms toward the cafeteria, the air crisp and fragrant in the way it only tends to be in Virginia during the Spring. The cold wind and the warm sun made for a lovely day, with birds chirping and fluffy white clouds passing quickly overhead. The heavy tree cover provided a full orchestra, with rustling percussion under whistling harmonies.

It was a great day to be alive at Ransom Baptist Seminary.

...and it would be the last such day there.

"Let's introduce you to the Waltons and see about getting you a job," Jimmy offered. Before too long, Rich had met the old couple he saw before at the lunch line, and learned they were from right here in Virginia. They had accidentally hit a young man fatally with their van a few years ago, and ever since they had been dedicating their time to feeding the young preachers at RBS. He shook both of their hands as the couple gave him rosy-cheeked smiles and an apron...

...he would be starting immediately.

Jimmy and Rich got to work washing the dishes for the dinner crowd as four large pans of lasagna baked on their watch. Steve sat propped up on the counter as they continued their chat from earlier.

"So... Ian."

Rich looked over at Jimmy, who was still staring down intently at the dishes as he spoke.

"Yeah. What about him? And why couldn't we talk in front of Mitch?"

"The Dowell is not on the level," said Steve.

"He's... one of Them."

"Them?" Rich blinked at both of them.

"He's a snitch," said Steve. "And a bad one, too. He got Ian suspended a few quarters ago for listening to Johnny B. Goode."

"Well, we are only supposed to listen to approved music here."

"Over Christmas Break," added Jimmy. Rich gave him a double-take.

"What?"

"He got him kicked out once before, for watching Jurassic Park on his computer," Steve said.

"Again, we can only watch approved films."

"But wait, there's more!" Jimmy intoned, "The only way he was involved was that we used his computer. I rented it. The entire dorm watched it, not just him."

"Listening to oldies and watching a movie with the guys doesn't sound like the guy I saw," Rich said. "He looks... mean."

Jimmy stopped washing dishes and breathed for a second before continuing.

"He used to roll across campus to get to class."

"What? That guy?"

"Yeah," Steve added, "that was my first experience with him. I was walking to my first day of class and here comes this guy, laying on the ground, just a-rollin' by. 'What's up?' he says to me, and just kept rolling on past."

"He once built an X-Wing cockpit out of cardboard and set it up in front of his computer so people could play Star Wars games and feel like they were really there."

"He used to host Risk games every Saturday night that would go until curfew."

"He..." Jimmy paused, and sighed. "He was my best friend."

"But then weird stuff started happening," Steve added.

"What kind of weird stuff?"

The guys stopped and looked at each other.

"You'll see," said Jimmy.

"It's better you see for yourself, so you don't think we're nuts." Steve looked away when Rich tried to make eye contact as he spoke.

"What are you talking about!"

A pause from both.

"You'll see," Jimmy reiterated.

- - -

Rich couldn't sleep. He looked at the note that had come in that evening's Night Mail... after a certain point, the phones were shut off, and the ladies' and men's dormitories would send each other one last round of notes before bed in a big cutely hand-decorated tupperware. His had come on a folded up piece of lined notebook paper with a minimalist drawing of a cat watermarked on the page. In a pink pen that made the note smell of jasmine was written "Tomorrow, 7 PM, the Gazebo. Be there or be [ ]. -J"

He looked over at his alarm clock. Bright, blocky red numbers spelled out "1:37."

It wasn't the note that kept him from sleeping, though, although his mind was set on it. More so, however, he had been using it as an anchor of sanity, as the wall right next to his head had not stopped thumping for an hour.

He could hear snoring coming from Steve's bunk above him, and the clunky hum of Jimmy's CPAP machine. Looking over in the dark, he saw Mitch lying board straight in bed, his hands folded over his lap as though in prayer, his eyes wide open, spots of white in the dark.

"Mitch?" Rich tried.

Knock... Knock...

"Mitch? Do you hear that?"

There was silence for a moment, then...

Knock. Knock knock.

"Mitch!"

"I don't hear anything," said Mitch in a very calm, very straightforward voice. "And neither do you. Go to sleep."

Rich rolled over to face the wall, and as soon as he did, the knocks happened again. He rolled again onto his back and looked up to where the sounds of Steve's dynamic wood-sawing could be heard.

The knocking seemed to stop. He waited a moment.

It was definitely stopped...

He counted...

5...

...10...

...20...

...30...

One minute with no sounds. Rich breathed a sigh of relief and closed his eyes.

Then the footsteps started.

Like hollow, stone steps down a great corridor, the footfalls rang out loudly down the hallway. One after another, slowly trudging from the far side of the hall toward the front door.

"Nobody's supposed to be in the halls right now, right?"

No response. He looked over to Mitch, who promptly pulled hiss blanket up over his head.

Rich flung off his own blankets and got up.

"What are you doing!" Mitch's voice came, stifled by the heap of fabric over his head.

"I've got to go to the bathroom," Rich said, looking over to where Mitch's bed should have been. He could see him somewhat clearly before, but the entire room had become solid black. He felt Mitch might be talking to him, but the words seemed much farther away than just behind a blanket.

In the time it took Rich to fumble his way through the darkness to the door, there had been three more of the loud, steady steps. Rich reached the door, just as the third ended right in front of him, and as he reached for the handle, he pulled away with a start.

A shadow had appeared under the other side of the door.

He inhaled, steeling himself. He looked back to Mitch, who was just a lump of blankets, board-stiff.

He turned back, breathed, and then quickly reached out and threw open the door, putting his shoulder into it to teach whoever was messing with him a lesson.

A second later, Rich spilled out into the hallway, doing everything he could to keep from falling to the ground.

There was nobody there.

He turned right and started heading down the hall toward the bathroom. As he did, a door opened up further down the hallway, the last door on the right.

He breathed deeply. He knew who was going to be coming out of that door.

Sure enough, the Man in Black, still clad in his full daytime array, including his hat, stepped out of the room, gently closed it behind him, then turned to walk toward Rich.

They were not supposed to swear in seminary, or even in private life, so Rich felt ashamed that the first thing that came into his head was Damn it.

He continued walking (after a brief stall), and the Man in Black continued down the hall, this time not locking glances with him at all, but intent on his destination. Rich tried not to sigh a visible sigh of relief as he walked past the bathroom door... but where could he be going? The only place students were allowed after lights out at 11 was the bathroom.

Rich reached the bathroom door, turning to it and extending his hand to the handle. As he did, he looked down the hall to the right, toward the entrance. Toward the Man.

The Man in Black was entering the last room on the right. Who roomed in there? Bubba?

Gary, maybe?

As he tried to remember, his eyes focused, and the Man was staring straight at him.

Rich hurried to open the door, bursting into the room in no less fashionable way than he had entered the hall.

The bathroom was quiet, stalls all around painted a sickly teal over shiny black and white tile. The electric lights hummed loudly, but were the only detectable sound in the room.

Immediately upon entering, he knew something was wrong.

The air felt stagnant in the room, but beside that, the only other thing that made him feel something was wrong was the sudden dropping sensation in his stomach, like there was a bowling ball sitting in his gut. He'd never felt that way before, and it took him by surprise the second he walked through the door.

Breathless, Rich just looked into the room, unmoving, unblinking. He kept seeing flashes in his mind of himself blinking, and immediately being torn to shreds by the darkness hiding behind every stall door.

So he did his best not to for about ten seconds.

That's when every stall slowly creaked open, the doors coming to rest in a position where they were pointed straight at him.

Rich pressed his back against the wall, blinking madly now to try to cast away what he hoped to be an illusion. He found himself gasping quickly, his lungs trying to keep up with the speed of his heart. This was only compounded when the main door into the bathroom burst open.

Rich gasped and sank against the wall, only to look over and see the last person he wanted to see walk into room.

Rich almost shouted, but thankfully he found himself unable to. He merely stood there, watching as the man strode into the room, stopping in the middle, and looked around at the emptiness under furrowed brows.

"Enough," he growled.

And whatever was in the room listened.

After a moment, Rich's odd symptoms started to fade in time to the swinging of the stall doors back to their neutral positions, but then the man turned to him and extended a hand, and a lump began to form once more in his throat.

"Ian. Ian McDermott," he said.

Rich ran out of the bathroom as quickly as he could, and leapt straight into his bed, throwing the blanket over his head and hoping not to hear any more knocking tonight... from anywhere.

A minute passed, but to Rich, it felt like hours, waiting for the Man in Black to walk in, rip his covers off, and suck out his soul.

When, after an eternity, this didn't happen, Rich lifted the blanket off his face just high enough to see his clock.

It was 3:30 AM, almost two hours after he'd gotten out of bed what could only have been about ten minutes ago.