The Intermittent

I’ve never thought of myself as psychic, not in the way the movies show. I don’t get cold chills or hear creepy whispers. I just… see things sometimes. It’s like a broken radio that picks up a station for a few minutes, then goes back to static for months, even years. When I was twenty, I took a gap year to save money for college, and I got a job as a computer lab tutor at a boys’ boarding school in the damp, foggy coastal town of Marrow’s End. The school, St. Aldric’s, was a grim Victorian pile of bricks perched on a cliff, its halls smelling of old wood, bleach, and adolescent sweat. My lab was in a converted attic on the third floor, a long, narrow room with a low ceiling crisscrossed by pipes, lit by flickering fluorescent tubes, and lined with outdated desktops that hummed like a hive of trapped bees. The windows were old leaded glass, streaked with grime, and looked out onto a courtyard that never got direct sunlight. It was the kind of place that feels temporary, like the school had forgotten it existed. I was hired to supervise the boys during their ‘computer assisted learning’ sessions—basically, they played educational games while I sat at the front desk, trying to look busy. The year had been uneventful, save for the occasional strange noise from the floor below, which I chalked up to the building settling. But in late November, the fog rolled in thick, and the radio in my head crackled to life.

It started with a smell—a sweet, cloying scent of rotting flowers that would waft through the lab for no reason. Then I began to see a boy out of the corner of my eye. He was always at the far end of the room, near the window that faced the sea. He was about twelve, thin, with pale hair and a neat school uniform that looked too white, too crisp. When I turned to look directly, he vanished. At first, I thought it was a trick of the light or a student from the lower grades sneaking in. But the boys I tutored were all older, fourteen to seventeen, and they were required to wear their blazers even during sessions. This boy’s blazer was an older style, with a badge I didn’t recognize. I mentioned it to the other tutor, a jittery man named Edgar, who told me that the lab used to be the sick ward back in the early 1900s, after the Spanish flu. He said that some of the boys who died were never claimed, and the school just… buried them in the yard behind the chapel. He laughed nervously, then went silent, and I felt a cold spot near the window.

The sightings became more frequent. I’d see the boy standing at the window, his forehead pressed against the glass, fogging it with his breath. Once, I walked past him, and he turned his head. His eyes were black, not just dark, but like wells that sucked in the light, and his mouth was open in a silent scream. I stumbled back, and he was gone. I mentioned it to the groundskeeper, an old man named Mr. Hoyle, who had worked at the school for decades. He told me that the boy’s name might be Tommy, a kid who died in 1918 of the flu, and that the old headmaster used to lock the sick boys in the ward to keep it quiet. ‘He was a nasty piece of work,’ Mr. Hoyle said, spitting to the side. ‘Used to say that the dead were just forgotten, and the living had no business with them.’ I didn’t sleep well after that.

By mid-December, the other tutors had started to avoid the lab after dark, but I had no choice; the evening sessions were part of my contract. I began to notice that the boy was always near the same window, and he seemed to be trying to show me something. I finally got the courage to press my face against the glass, and through the fog and the night, I saw a small wooden shed at the edge of the property, half-hidden by cypress trees. The shed had a rusty padlock, and the grass around it was dead. I knew I had to go out there.

The next night, after the last boy left, I grabbed my coat, a flashlight, and a crowbar from the maintenance closet, and I made my way through the dripping corridors and out into the storm that had blown in. The wind howled, and the rain stung my eyes, but I found the shed. The lock was corroded, but a few whacks with the crowbar broke it. Inside, the air was thick with dust and decay. The flashlight beam swept over rusty bed frames, dusty glass vials, and old ledgers. I opened one ledger, and the pages were so brittle they crumbled at my touch. But one entry, dated November 1918, caught my eye: ‘Tommy R. – died 14th, buried in the shallows. Ward closed.’ I also found a small, decaying wooden box. Inside was a silver cross, a photograph of a boy who looked exactly like the ghost, and a letter, yellowed and water-stained. I unfolded it, and the handwriting was shaky, but legible: ‘To anyone who finds this, I am Tommy R. I was locked here. I promise I wasn’t sick. I saw the others being taken, and they never came back. I tried to run, but they caught me. Please tell my mother I did not die alone. I have waited for someone to hear me. It has been so long. Let me go home.’

I dropped the letter as if it were on fire. I heard a scraping sound behind me, and I spun around. The boy was standing in the doorway of the shed, dripping wet, but his mouth was open in a silent gratitude. The air grew cold, and for a moment, I saw the outlines of other boys behind him, all staring at me. I bolted. I ran through the storm, back to the school, and locked myself in my room. The next morning, I reported to the headmaster what I had found. He paled, and for a moment, his eyes darted nervously. Then he forced a smile and said, ‘Nonsense, that shed is just for storage. You should not have gone out there. You’re fired, effective immediately. Pack your belongings.’ I didn’t argue. I packed my bag while the lab remained empty, and as I walked out, I passed the window where the boy had stood. The rain had cleared, and the sun was shining through the grime. I saw his reflection only for a second, and then it was gone. I left Marrow’s End that day, and I never saw him again. But sometimes, years later, I wake in the dead of night, and I see his face in my mind, his mouth still open in that silent plea. And I wonder if my seeing him was a gift or a curse. I still don’t know.

I have not told this story to anyone until now. I do not know if the school ever did anything about the shed or if they simply forgot about it again. But I carry with me a copy of that letter, and I have tried to find Tommy’s mother’s family, to give them closure. But my search has been futile. All I have is this memory, and the unsettling fact that my ability, that intermittent radio, chose to turn on at that time and in that place. I have not seen any ‘friends’ since that day. And I am almost grateful for it. But sometimes, when the fog rolls in over the city where I now live, I catch a whiff of rotting flowers, and I know that he is still out there, waiting to be heard. And I wonder if I failed him.