Witches were laughing at him through the pipes. Their voices were faint, far away, but there was no doubt they were talking about him.
“Look at him, so skinny!” they said. “And that long hair, what is he, a hippie?”
“He’s a little old for a hippie.”
“We’re old!”
And they cackled, cackled like the hag from Looney Tunes. Corey scrambled out of the shower so fast he slipped and fell hard against the toilet, catching himself just in time to avoid a head injury but bruising his ribs and his right knee that hit the tile floor.
“And those toes!”
“Fourteen toes, have you ever--?”
Like grabbing a hot poker, Corey shot his hand into the shower and turned the water off before snatching it back. He flung himself out of the bathroom still dripping and naked. His polydactyl feet left damp, fan-shaped footprints on the carpet.
Corey didn’t hear the witches for months because he didn’t go into the bathroom. He had a pot to piss in, and he could go down to the exercise room for everything else. It became so routine that he almost managed to forget about them, until a kid from down the hall came knocking on his door.
“Oh, hi… Professor.” The little snot looked Corey up and down, as if he didn’t have the right to be in a bathrobe in his own home after hours.
The kid told him that everyone was hearing voices from the next apartment over when they were in the bathroom: 2E could hear 2D, and so on. The two girls in 2D apparently could hear Corey moving around in his kitchenette.
2B had been empty all year. No one had come in or out, the door had no name on it and had never been open. Everything suddenly clicked into place. The witches were in 2B! Of course, it made perfect sense. Half-dressed and in unlaced boots, Corey threw himself into the hallway and began kicking and pounding on the blank-faced door of 2B. He hurt his foot, lost a boot, fell; it didn’t matter. Students came out into the hall to stare; he barely noticed. He had to get in. It finally occurred to him to try the handle. This gave way with only a little effort, and Corey entered the dark room.
He held the door open until he found the light switch in the expected spot. Only once the overhead light was on did he let the door slam itself shut behind him. No one was in the main area, which looked just like Corey’s apartment when he’d moved in last fall: an empty living/sleeping space with one bare picture window at the back looking out onto the snowy quad. The tiny kitchenette to his left by the front door. If anyone was in there, they were hiding in the bathroom. Corey glanced over to where the bathroom door was in his own quarters and saw two doors. One had to be a linen closet or something. He didn’t have a linen closet.
If he didn’t check behind both doors, Corey knew he wouldn’t be able to rest. He wished there were a handy kitchen knife to grab from the counter there, but on the other hand, that would have meant somebody was definitely living there. He took a deep breath, blew it out, and marched across the room in one boot.
The left-hand door had nothing but an empty bathroom behind it. There wasn’t even a shower curtain. The right-hand door was stuck; Corey couldn’t tell if it was locked or stuck for some other reason, but the keyhole was painted over and unusable even if he’d had a key or lockpick. He tried pulling on it anyway and almost dislocated his own shoulder before it popped open and he flew backwards, reeling. Behind the right-hand door was darkness.
On some instinct, Corey kicked off his remaining boot and padded softly up to the void behind the closet door. It was much too dark for a closet standing open in a lit room. He blinked, trying to resolve what he was seeing into something that made sense. Was it a flat panel of wall, painted jet-black? No; he put his hand in and the darkness swallowed it. He didn’t have a flashlight or a lighter or anything on him, and he knew if he went back for something now he’d never come back. But he had to know where the back was. Corey kept one foot on the carpeted floor of the main room and stepped his other foot into the dark, where it landed – not on carpet or hardwood or concrete, but on dirt. Somehow this closet on the second floor of a building had an earthen floor, like a barn. It felt cold and hard-packed. He leaned forward as far as he could, reaching a hand in, but touched nothing.
“Fuhfuhfuhfuhfuck,” said Corey, and stepped both feet into the closet. The door swung closed after him and clicked shut. He spun around and tried to push it, but it was firmly closed. He groped for an inner handle, but there was none. At that moment, Corey had a choice: he could begin screaming now, or he could find the back of the closet and then begin screaming. He chose to delay.
The problem was, he couldn’t find the back of the closet. Or the sides. He groped as far as his considerable wingspan would let him, but there was nothing. He took cautious steps forward and to the left and right, feeling carefully with his foot for some unexpected drop. The last thing he needed was to fall down a forgotten elevator shaft. But no matter which way he went, his hands touched air.
There was no draft, and no light coming from anywhere. He might as well have been blindfolded. After a minute he was so disoriented that he couldn’t even find the door. Then he began to scream. His voice should have echoed in such an apparently cavernous space, but it was as muffled as if he were standing in a foam cocoon. The panic that followed might have made him pass out, but then it got worse.
Someone grabbed his ankles. A pair of rough, bony human hands wrapped around his left ankle and another around his right. He flailed, bending down and trying to strike out at whoever it was, but lost his balance and fell on his ass. The pain shot from his tailbone through the rest of his body and past it. He was an explosion of pain. And that was before they started cutting at his toes.
Some unfathomable time later, they left Corey alone. He crawled in the dark, his mangled and bleeding feet dragging behind him on the dirt floor. He wondered how much blood he had lost. He wondered if he was going to die. He wondered if they’d ever find his body. The light appeared long before he consciously registered it; his body pulled him towards it, and eventually he was approaching a round opening ringed by tree roots and underground fungi.
“Great Dane! Is that Professor Abernathy?” Hands were reaching in through the hole, grabbing his hands and arms and shoulders and pulling him forth into daylight. “Oh, oh no,” the voices were saying. “The girls found him.”