The Cold Behind the Screen

In my second year at Meridian University, I was a broadcast media student stuck in the basement of the old Humanities Hall, a place we nicknamed ‘The Vault’ for its windowless, tomb-like corridors. Our classroom, B-12, was a cramped, sloped auditorium with cracked leather seats and a control booth at the back, packed with outdated video equipment. The air was perpetually chilled, as if the room itself had a fever, and the only ventilation was a pair of rattling exhaust fans that did nothing to disperse the cold. I always felt a prickling at the back of my neck when I stepped inside, a sense of being watched by something that resented my presence.

One afternoon, I arrived thirty minutes early for our editing workshop. The hallway was empty, and the lone fluorescent light above the door hummed with a dying buzz. I was about to lean against the wall when my classmate, Lena, appeared, her keychain clinking. She was a practical girl, grounded in logic, and she rolled her eyes at my hesitation. ‘You’re not afraid of a little cold air, are you?’ she joked, unlocking the door. We walked in together, and she headed straight for the control booth to set up the editing software for our project.

I stayed in the seating area, organizing my notes, when I noticed a faint, repetitive sound from the booth—a soft, rhythmic tapping, like fingers drumming on a wooden desk. I assumed Lena was testing the microphones, but as I listened, the pattern changed, becoming more deliberate. Tap-tap-tap… pause… tap-tap. It almost spelled something. I called out, ‘Lena, you messing with the audio?’ No answer. The tapping stopped.

Then I heard her voice, but it was muffled, as if she were speaking through a thick cloth. ‘Nadia… the camera… it’s on…’ I walked up the aisle to the booth, my footsteps echoing in the empty room. The door was slightly ajar, and I pushed it open. Lena was standing perfectly still, her back to me, staring at the small CRT monitor that was connected to a security camera mounted in the corner of the classroom. The screen showed a grainy, black-and-white feed of the room, but something was wrong. In the feed, the seats were filled with shadowy figures, all facing the front, all motionless.

I stepped closer, my heart thumping. ‘What are they?’ I whispered. Lena turned slowly, and her face was pale, her lips trembling. ‘They’re not in the feed, Nadia. They’re behind us.’ I spun around, but the classroom was empty. The cold air pressed against my skin like a wet shroud. The exhaust fans groaned, and the lights flickered. When they steadied, the monitor showed a different view—the control booth itself, with Lena and me standing there, both looking at the camera. Except in the feed, a third figure was between us, a tall, gaunt silhouette with elongated limbs, its head tilted as if examining us.

I grabbed Lena’s arm and hauled her out of the booth, down the aisle to the door. I yanked the handle, but it wouldn’t budge. The door was locked from the inside, and my keys were on the floor near my bag. The cold intensified, and I could see my breath. Lena began to sob, ‘It’s in the room.’ I didn’t want to turn around, but a primal instinct forced me. There, in the center aisle, stood a figure—not quite solid, but I could see its outline, like a heat shimmer. It had no face, just a smooth, pale oval. And it was holding a small, old-fashioned video camera, the kind with a shoulder strap and a blinking red light.

It raised the camera to where its eyes would be. I heard a whirring sound, and a cold, white light washed over us. In that moment, I felt a tearing sensation in my chest, as if something were being peeled away from my memory. The light passed, and the figure was gone. The door creaked open. Lena and I ran out into the hallway, gasping. We didn’t speak for a long time. Later, when we regained our composure, we went to the administration to complain about the faulty lock and the creepy, malfunctioning equipment. But the security tapes from that hour showed nothing—only us sitting in the room, alone, for the entire time.

Weeks later, I began to notice a strange anomaly. Whenever I looked into a mirrored surface, I would catch a glimpse of the corner of the room, but it was dark, and there was a faint, red blinking light. And sometimes, in the dead of night, I would hear a faint tapping from my laptop, the same rhythm. Tap-tap-tap… pause… tap-tap. It was only when I finally decoded it that I understood. It was Morse code: ‘YOU ARE NOW ON AIR.’