The Unlit Wing

The old brick dormitory at Northgate State had been converted from a tuberculosis sanatorium in the 1950s, and the conversion had done little to mask its past. Long corridors of rooms, each with a single high window, were connected by a central stairwell that smelled of mold and disinfectant, even in summer. The building was nearly empty for the week before fall semester, with only a handful of early arrivals: six resident assistants, a few athletes, and me, a transfer student who had nowhere else to go.

My boyfriend, Marcus, was the RA for the third floor, men’s side. His room was at the end of a long hallway, facing the back of the building, where a grove of dying elms cast skeletal shadows even in daylight. The other RAs were scattered: Derek on the first floor, Raj on the second, Tina and Yuki on the women’s side, and a quiet senior named Victor who had the ground floor. I had been given a room on the women’s third floor, but I spent most nights in Marcus’s room, because the building at night was like being underwater—silent, pressing, and full of unseen currents.

That particular night, about eight of us had gathered in Marcus’s room. The windows were open, but the air was heavy and still, carrying the distant hum of the interstate. We played cards, drank cheap beer, and told stories to fill the emptiness. The other RAs were absent: Derek was on a date in town, Raj was studying in the library, and Victor—I hadn’t seen him all day. The conversation drifted to the building’s history, how some believed the old TB patients still haunted the halls, how the room numbers were misaligned on the third floor, how certain doors refused to stay closed. I laughed, but I kept glancing at the door, which was ajar, the hallway beyond a black void.

It was nearly midnight when Marcus went to the bathroom. He was gone a long time. When he came back, his face was pale, and he closed the door firmly behind him. ‘The toilet in the hallway is stopped up,’ he said, ‘and the water is rust-colored. I used the one on the second floor, but the mirror there is cracked. When I looked in it, my reflection was wrong—it moved a second after I did.’ We all looked at him, waiting for the punchline, but he didn’t smile. ‘I think something is living on the second floor,’ he said, ‘in the east wing. I heard scratching from behind one of the locked doors.’

We decided to investigate, because what else do you do in an empty dorm? The east wing of the second floor had been closed off for years, the rooms used for storage of old furniture and filing cabinets. The door at the top of the stairwell was padlocked, but the lock was old and rusted, and Raj was a decent lockpick. He had the door open in minutes. The air that rushed out was cold and stale, with a scent like old copper and dust. The hallway was dark, the floor tiles cracked and stained. I flicked my phone light, and the beam caught a trail of dark liquid that led from a door at the end of the hall.

We followed it, our footsteps echoing too loudly in the empty space. The door at the end was slightly ajar. It was a room that had been used as a nurse’s station, with a desk, a swivel chair, and a wall of metal shelves. On the desk was a rotary phone, its cord severed. On the floor, a puddle of something dark and viscous, like used motor oil, but it shimmered with an iridescent film. As we stood there, the phone rang—a hollow, mechanical ring. It rang three times, and then stopped. No one touched it. The scratching we’d heard was coming from inside the walls, a rhythmic, deliberate scrape, as if something was dragging its nails along the plaster.

Then Marcus pointed to the floor. The dark liquid was moving, forming patterns that looked like letters, or symbols. It spelled out a single word: ‘VICTOR.’ We all turned and looked at each other. Victor was the RA we hadn’t seen all day. I called his phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Derek’s phone buzzed—a text from Victor, sent just moments before: ‘Help me. I’m in the basement. The door won’t open.’ We rushed down the stairs, past the second floor, past the first, to the basement door, which was locked. Raj had his tools, but the lock was new, and he struggled. The sound of frantic knocking came from the other side, then a voice—Victor’s—muffled, but close: ‘Let me out. There’s something in here with me.’

We got the door open. The basement was a warren of boiler rooms and storage closets, lit by a single bare bulb. Victor was crouched in a corner, his clothes torn, his eyes wild. He was muttering to himself, rocking back and forth. As we approached, he looked up and said, ‘I saw the old orderlies. They come at night, checking the rooms. They want to take us to the infirmary.’ I asked what he was talking about. He pointed to the far wall, where the words ‘ABANDON HOPE’ were spray-painted in large red letters. He said, ‘The door. The door in the wall. It wasn’t there before. It’s always been there. But it’s open now.’

We looked, and there was a door we hadn’t noticed—a steel door, industrial, with a small circular window. Through the window, we saw darkness, and something moving. It was tall, black, and formless, like a column of smoke, and it was pressed against the glass. The scratching sound, the one we’d heard upstairs, was coming from it. As we watched, the door began to move, as if the thing on the other side was pushing it open. A crack appeared, and a cold breath leaked out, carrying the stench of rot and old sickness. Victor screamed, ‘Don’t let it out! It’s the quarantine. They never left. They’re still in there.’

We slammed the door shut, and Raj called the campus security, but the line was dead. Derek tried his cell, but there was no signal. The lights flickered. The scratching grew louder, now coming from all around us—from the ceiling, the floor, the walls. And then, one by one, the doors along the hall in the basement began to open, one by one, slowly, with a creak, and from each doorway stepped a figure in an old-fashioned white mask, with black eyes. They stood there, silent, watching us. The one closest to us took a step forward, and I saw that it had no feet—it floated just above the ground.

We ran. We didn’t stop until we were outside, in the cool night air, gasping. But when we looked back at the dorm, the windows on every floor were glowing with a sickly amber light, and in each window, we saw a silhouetted figure, watching us. Marcus grabbed my hand and said, ‘We can’t go back in there.’ But he was shaking, and in his eyes, I saw that he knew something I didn’t. Then, from inside me, a voice—not my own—whispered, ‘We don’t need to go in. We’re already in.’ And I realized I wasn’t standing in the parking lot anymore. I was standing in the second-floor hallway, outside the locked room, and the door was open, and the phone handset was lying on the floor, still buzzing with a dial tone.

The next day, the university announced that the dorm would be closed for the semester due to a ‘maintenance issue.’ No one would talk about what happened. Victor transferred. Marcus and I broke up, and I moved across the country. But sometimes, at night, when I close my eyes, I see the steel door in the basement, and I feel the presence on the other side, patient, waiting. And I know that the doors in that place aren’t always locked, and the ones that are, can be opened—if you know the right word. The word the scratching spells. The word I never told anyone: ‘VICTOR.’ But he didn’t spell his own name. He spelled something else. Something that has been there longer than any of us. And it’s still there, in the unlit wing, waiting to be heard.