Chapter 3: The Watcher in the Dark

Chapter 3: The Watcher in the Dark

The pact made on the ridge overlooking Havenwood was a silent one, but it settled over Alex and Jason with the weight of a physical object. The boyish excitement of a detective game had evaporated, replaced by a grim, cold purpose. They weren't just solving a mystery; they were hunting a monster who wore a janitor’s uniform.

“Tonight,” Jason had said before they’d parted ways, his voice low and devoid of any tremor. The fear was still there, Alex could see it coiling deep in his eyes, but it had been forged into something harder. Something like resolve. “He usually does a final check around eleven. We have to see what he does when he thinks no one’s watching.”

Sneaking out of his new house was surprisingly easy. The unfamiliar architecture was an advantage; his parents wouldn't recognize the soft creak of the third stair from the bottom or the sigh of the back door as it was eased open. The night air was cool and thick with the scent of cut grass. Under the watchful, indifferent gaze of a sliver moon, Alex wheeled his BMX off the lawn and pedaled towards their rendezvous point: the rusted bike racks behind the town library.

Jason was already there, a dark shape detaching itself from the deeper shadows. He didn't speak, just gave a sharp nod and mounted his own bike. They rode in silence, their tires whispering on the asphalt of the empty streets. Havenwood at night was a different entity. The quaint houses were sleeping beasts, the streetlights lonely sentinels in a sea of encroaching darkness. Every rustle in the trees, every clatter of a loose piece of gravel under their wheels, sounded like an alarm.

They ditched their bikes in a ditch a block away from the gym, the metal frames swallowed by overgrown weeds. The final approach was on foot, hunched low, moving from the shadow of one looming oak tree to the next. The gym was a hulking silhouette against the starry sky, its brick façade looking black in the gloom. A single, sickly yellow security light flickered over the main entrance, casting long, dancing shadows that looked like grasping fingers.

“This way,” Jason breathed, his voice barely a puff of air. He led Alex around the side of the building, to a dense thicket of overgrown azalea bushes that offered a perfect, dark vantage point with a clear view of the staff entrance and a grimy, ground-floor window that Jason said looked into the main hallway.

They settled into the scratchy foliage, the damp earth seeping a chill into the denim of their jeans. And then they waited.

The minutes stretched into an eternity. The initial adrenaline faded, leaving behind a cold, boring dread. A distant dog barked, a mournful sound that was quickly smothered by the oppressive silence. Alex’s legs began to cramp. Doubts, small and insidious, began to creep into his mind. This was crazy. They were two kids hiding in a bush, waiting for a janitor. Maybe Jason had been a terrified kid in a dark room. Maybe he’d imagined the smile, the strange reverence. Maybe Silas was just a weird old guy who liked his job.

He glanced at Jason. His friend was perfectly still, his body a tight coil of tension, his eyes fixed on the staff door with an unnerving intensity. This was no game for him. He was reliving the worst night of his life. Alex pushed his doubts away. He owed it to Jason to see this through.

Just as Alex was starting to think the entire night was a bust, a sound sliced through the silence.

Click.

It was the sharp, metallic sound of a key turning in a lock. The staff door creaked open. A tall, gaunt figure emerged from the darkness within the building, then turned to lock the door from the outside. It was Silas. But he wasn’t leaving. He turned back and began to walk along the perimeter of the gym, his footsteps unnervingly silent on the gravel path. He was making his rounds.

The boys held their breath, sinking deeper into the bushes. Silas passed their hiding spot, his long, pale face illuminated for a moment by the security light. His expression was placid, calm. He was just a man checking the doors. Alex felt a surge of anticlimactic disappointment.

Silas finished his circuit and returned to the staff entrance. He unlocked it, slipped inside, and the door clicked shut, plunging them back into near-total darkness and silence.

“What now?” Alex whispered, his teeth chattering slightly from the cold. “He just locked up.”

“Wait,” Jason hissed, his eyes glued to the grimy window.

They waited. One minute. Two. Alex was about to suggest they leave when a dim light flickered to life inside, illuminating the hallway beyond the window. It wasn't the bright, humming fluorescence of the main lights, but a small, weak glow, like that from a single bare bulb.

Silas came into view, but he wasn’t carrying a mop or a bucket. He wasn’t pushing a trash can. His hands were empty. He walked down the hall with that same silent, deliberate grace, his destination clear. He was heading for the locker room.

“I can’t see,” Alex breathed, frustration mounting.

“Move,” Jason ordered, already crawling on his belly along the edge of the building, towards another window further down, one that might offer a different angle. Alex followed, the wet leaves sticking to his clothes.

This new window was higher up and coated in years of filth, but by standing on an old, overturned paint can, they could just peer through a clean patch in the upper corner. The view was skewed, partially obstructed by a water fountain, but it gave them a sliver of the locker room. They could see the end of a bench and a section of the olive-green lockers. Including lockers 116, 118, and the blank, numberless space between them.

And Silas was standing there.

He wasn’t doing janitorial work. He was standing perfectly still in front of the Numberless Locker, his back to them. A low sound began to drift through the thick glass, a faint, rhythmic murmur. He was talking. Not into a phone, not to himself. He was whispering directly to the locker door. The words were indistinct, a sibilant hiss that made the hair on Alex’s arms stand on end. It sounded like a prayer, or a lullaby for something that slept inside.

Then, Silas moved. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, soft cloth. With a tenderness that was profoundly disturbing, he began to polish the blank metal face of the locker. His motions were slow, circular, reverent. He treated the scarred, dull metal as if it were a sacred altar. He wasn't cleaning away grime; he was anointing it, caring for it.

He leaned forward, pressing his forehead against the cold door, the whispering growing more intense, more intimate. It looked as if he was listening for a reply from within.

After a long moment, he pulled back. He turned his head slightly, and for one heart-stopping second, his profile was visible in the dim light. He was smiling. It was the exact smile Jason had described from the night his sister vanished. It wasn't a smile of happiness or humor. It was a look of serene, fanatical devotion. A chilling, absolute conviction.

The boys scrambled back from the window as if they’d been burned, tumbling into the bushes, their hearts hammering against their ribs. The initial bravado they’d felt, the idea that they were two detectives on a case, was utterly shattered. This was something else entirely. Something ancient and wrong.

They lay there in the dark, breathing in the smell of damp soil, until the light in the hallway went out and the click of the staff door locking echoed one last time. They didn’t move until the sound of Silas’s quiet footsteps had completely faded into the night.

They stumbled back to their bikes, their bodies shaking. The cold they felt now had nothing to do with the night air.

Jason finally broke the terrified silence, his voice a ragged, trembling whisper that was more horrifying than a scream.

“You see?” he said, looking at Alex with wide, haunted eyes. “He’s not a killer who hides things in a locker.”

He took a shaky breath, his gaze turning back towards the dark, sleeping gym.

“He’s a caretaker. He’s feeding it.”