Come In

      The words transmitted by the device were crackly and overly harsh, a crude approximation of a voice that Kiyoshi knew well enough to find this new version particularly jarring. The Blue Shoyru took a moment to consider his immediate surroundings. It was a cool, quiet autumn evening in this part of Neopia Central, and now that the shops were closed the streets were all but deserted, which was how Kiyoshi preferred them. It was hard to ignore the obvious reason for the diminished nightlife scene, however, and even Kiyoshi was beginning to get bored of Neopia Central’s new look. He gazed up at the Fresh Foods store, reflecting on how he used to hate the tacky hamburger building; but somehow, it looked so much more pitiable in black and white.

      He raised the clunky, brick-like communication device to his face and pressed the button to talk. “I gotta be honest, Tyra,” he said. “It looks kinda bad. Over.”

      When Tyra’s next message came through, Kiyoshi caught the tail end of a laugh. “Yeah, I figured it would probably be the same as Kiko Lake. Grey and more grey. Guess there’s not much more to say about it. Over.”

      Kiyoshi wandered away from Neopian Fresh Foods, finding the stillness a little eerie as it settled over the greyed-out city. “You did say it wasn’t contagious, though, right?” he asked, checking the soles of his shoes for any new signs of discolouration. “I know I’m not exactly known for my vibrant aesthetic, but I still don’t think I’m ready to commit to a paint brush colour that gives you the seasonal blues. Over.”

      “I said no one knows whether it’s contagious yet,” crackled the response. “But I’ve been keeping up with the coverage in the Neopian Times, and so far I haven’t heard of anyone turning grey unless they were in the affected area when the Painter arrived to begin with. So let’s just consider ourselves lucky that when he decided to hit Neopia Central, the apartment happened to be outside the grey radius. Greydius? Greydius.” The device squealed, then an echo of Tyra’s voice began to stream from its speaker. “Greydius. Greydius. Greydius. Greydius….”

      Kiyoshi shook the device, then flipped a toggle near the antenna back and forth until the echo died. There was another mechanical squeal, and Tyra’s voice returned. “…there? Come in, Kiyoshi?”

      “Go for Kiyoshi. Sorry. The comm was just being weird again. Over.”

      “Weird how? Over.”

      “Kind of like an echo. I was just hearing your last word over and over again.”

      “Don’t forget to say ‘over’. Over.”

      “Oh. Sorry. Over.”

      “Interesting. But not unexpected. This technology is still very new, so there’s gonna be some kinks to work out before I roll these bad boys out to the public. But this has been very helpful!” Her businesslike tone perked up. “I’ve got plenty of new data to work with, so feel free to come back to the apartment whenever you’re ready. I’ll order some food and we can celebrate the completion of another test without anything blowing up. What d’you feel like? Over.”

      “Anything but burgers,” Kiyoshi said, turning and taking a step back the way he’d come before stopping suddenly.

      “You forgot to say ‘over’ again. Over.”

      “Sorry, I thought—” Kiyoshi was staring up at the Magical Bookshop, his eye caught by one of the side windows. It was dark inside, and yet….

      There it was. An even darker shadow flickered on the other side of the window, and for a second it seemed like it might be looking at him, although he couldn’t make out a face. Before he could react, the shape quickly withdrew from sight.

      Something about the way the figure moved made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. “There’s someone in there,” Kiyoshi said into the comm, more quietly. “Inside the bookshop. Over.”

      A pause. “Someone other than the shopkeeper? Over.”

      “The bookshop closed an hour ago. They all did. There’s no lights on or anything…” He stepped up to the door, peering in through the little window there.

      “You’re not the Chia Police,” Tyra’s words buzzed against his hand, bringing him back to reality. “If someone broke in, that’s too bad, but it’s none of our business. Over.”

      “What if it’s…” Kiyoshi’s stomach tightened. “This was one of the shops that ghost came through everyday. You know, back in the summer. I was sure that he’d finally passed on, but… what if that’s still not over?” He paused, and then when there was no response, added, “…Over.”

      “Doesn’t change anything,” Tyra said bluntly. “It’s not like you’re gonna break in yourself just to find out. Over.”

      “Door’s unlocked,” Kiyoshi said, surprised even as he said it. The doorknob turned easily in his hand, and he was able to crack open the door without resistance. “Over.”

      “I swear, in another life I went into security systems instead of communications and revolutionised this ridiculous city. Seriously, Kiyoshi, for once, just walk away. Over.” Tyra’s voice sounded exasperated.

      He turned down the volume on the comm. “This shopkeeper was literally the only one I talked to that day who was even remotely helpful,” Kiyoshi said in a low voice as he unclipped his lantern from his backpack. “I feel like I owe him at least, like… a ghost-chasing followup. You know. For quality control. Over.”

      ”You’re not doing this for him,” Tyra said tiredly. “You’re doing this for you. Over.”

      Kiyoshi decided not to tell Tyra that he had already stepped inside. The fading light from the doorway didn’t reach far, but thanks to his lantern he was easily able to find a small panel of light switches on the wall. When he flicked the first one up, there was no visible change in the darkened shop interior. “…Hm.” He flicked the others one by one. Nothing.

      He pressed the talk button on his comm. “Power’s out. Maybe the shopkeeper really is still in here? I feel like it would be easy to get trapped behind all these bookshelves if the lights went off all of a sudden.”

      He released the talk button and decided to try calling out. “…Hello? Anyone in here?” But all was silent, at least until Tyra’s next transmission came through.

      “That sounds like a great reason for you to not go any further. Further. Further. Further. Further….”

      Kiyoshi flicked the toggle and lightly smacked the comm. The echo stopped abruptly. “I’ve got my lantern,” he said. “Lemme just check that window, it shouldn’t be too far in.”

      The shadows of the bookshelves leaped and wavered in the pool of light as he passed them. He had the uncanny impression of walking through a grove of trees at night. When he reached a wall, he frowned, squinting into the dark beyond his lantern light. If there were windows anywhere along here, shouldn’t he be able to see at least a little light through them? Kiyoshi followed the wall for a few dozen steps until the light fell on the edge of something that was neither book nor bookshelf: some kind of draped, grey fabric. He couldn’t stop his breath from hitching at the sight, half-expecting it to be a person standing there in the dark — but he quickly realised that it was actually a heavy velvet curtain, drawn across the wall. He exhaled slowly and brushed aside the curtain, letting grey light spill into the bookshop from the large, arched window on the other side. Flecks of dust floated in the narrow aisle, which suddenly seemed very small and mundane. There was another window a short ways down the wall, also curtained. Otherwise, the aisle was deserted.

      “Tyra to Kiyoshi. Still alive? Over.”

      He was beginning to feel a little silly for letting himself get so jumpy. “Kiyoshi here,” he said, checking behind the other curtain for good measure. “All good. There’s no one here. Over.”

      Crash.

      He whirled in the direction of the noise. It had been the sound of something heavy and solid falling over — or being knocked over. He raced to the end of the aisle and saw a door hanging open, just at the end of the checkout counter. Beyond the door, stairs led down into a darkness that neither the light from the windows nor his lantern could reach.

      Tyra had been talking. “Sorry,” Kiyoshi said into the comm, trying to regulate his breathing. “Didn’t catch that. Could you repeat?”

      “I said, ‘Great, so you’re coming home now, right?’ Over.”

      Kiyoshi hovered at the top of the stairs, bouncing on his heels. “Right,” he whispered to himself. “Right…” The light from the windows would be no help down there, but he had to admit he was feeling a little braver with the curtains open. There was something about those curtains that was nagging at him, but he put the thought aside for now.

      “Right away,” Kiyoshi said into the comm. “Just gotta check one more thing before I go. Over.”

      “That’s what you’ve been saying this whole time!”

      The first stair creaked under his weight, and he winced. What am I doing? He wasn’t exactly an expert on Neopia Central laws, but surely this was a whole new level of trespassing. The unlocked door was one thing, but the basement? What was even down there? Overstock? Living quarters?

      The comm was still buzzing with Tyra’s voice. “It’s incredibly frustrating to do this when I can’t see your face. I can tell you’re not telling me everything, and I’m sure there’s a reason for that, but right now I’m just kind of annoyed. Over.”

      Kiyoshi had reached the bottom of the stairs, and was momentarily stunned by what he saw. The basement, it seemed, was indeed used for overstock. But if the bookshelves upstairs had been a grove, then this was a forest. The massive storage units in front of him were so tall he couldn’t see the tops before they were lost in shadow. Miles away from the handsome, well-polished bookcases upstairs, these units were starkly utilitarian and crammed full of too many books to count. He could tell that there were at least a half-dozen rows like this — probably a lot more. And while he couldn’t see the ends of any of them, something about the way this space felt — the way even his softest footsteps produced an echo, the way the glow of his lantern seemed to be almost sucked into that black unknown — made him believe that it was very, very large.

      Hadn’t Tyra once told him there used to be a lot of catacombs in use under the city?

      “I promise it’s not that deep,” said Kiyoshi into the comm. He moved slowly along the ends of the aisles. He stopped in front of one, where a long wooden ladder was lying diagonally, half suspended against a low shelf. It was surrounded by a loose pile of books that appeared to have been knocked from the nearby shelves. “I’m not trying to trick you or anything. The power’s out, I have a lantern, and there might be somebody who needs help—“

      This time Tyra didn’t even wait for him to say ‘over’, cutting him off with a shrill squeal of feedback from the comm. “Yeah, and if you’re not careful, it’s you who’s gonna be that somebody! Body! Body! Body! Body! Body! Body—“

      Kiyoshi jammed the toggle back and forth with so much force that he fumbled the device and almost launched it straight out of his hands. But while the comm was spared, the same couldn’t be said for his lantern, whose handle slipped from his grasp just as he got hold of the comm. He flinched as the lantern met the concrete floor with a crash and a tinkle, and the sole source of light in the basement was instantly extinguished.

      Kiyoshi dropped and felt around on his hands and knees for his lantern, sucking in a sharp breath as his fingers found the jagged edge of one of its shattered glass panes first. He clicked the dial in vain, trying to switch it back on — until his hand brushed the open battery compartment, and he sighed. He searched the floor desperately with stinging fingers. Where had those batteries gone….

      Wait. Kiyoshi froze, listening. Was that… music?

      It was coming from his pocket, where he had unthinkingly stuffed the comm. Dumbfounded, he pulled it out, and the mellow but grainy sounds of smooth jazz drifted into the narrow space between the bookshelves. Did he change the channel by accident when he lost hold of it earlier? What were the other channels even used for? He turned the dial up a channel, and an unfamiliar monotone voice was reciting, ”Two, five, two — two, five—“

      Impatiently, Kiyoshi turned the dial all the way down and started clicking up from the start. He was pretty sure he remembered Tyra saying Channel Four….

      “Kiyoshi to Tyra? Tyra, you there?” He held his breath, then breathed a sigh of relief when her voice crackled to life.

      “Kiyoshi, what happened? You went silent, so I thought — I’m already halfway out the door, are you okay? Should I come meet you?”

      “No, don’t worry, I’m fine, just dropped the comm, but it… it seems to be okay.”

      ”Kiyoshi, I’m not worried about the comm, I’m worried about you! What are you still doing down there?”

      Why was he still down here? a reasonable part of his mind was asking. He had no light and this whole situation was feeling increasingly wrong. But the bigger, more stubborn part of his mind was winning as long as he still hadn’t found what he came here to find. He pulled himself to his feet with the aid of the bookshelf next to him. “I’m just—“ he started, then stopped with his finger still on the talk button.

      There was no light in the basement. That was an inconvenient but indisputable fact. So when Kiyoshi stood there, staring straight ahead down the long, pitch-black aisle, transfixed by what he saw there, he realised two things very quickly.

      For one thing, this must have been what he wanted. The truth of that thought settled in his stomach like poison, making him feel disgusted with himself. This was what he always wanted, what he had been hoping to find all along, in some morbid way. He never really thought that shape in the window had been the shopkeeper or a sad lost ghost. He hadn’t known what it was, knew it could be dangerous, hoped it could be… because that was who he was, the kind of idiot who let his curiosity drag him into the worst kinds of trouble even when all traces of common sense, even the voice of his best friend, were begging him to stop….

      And secondly, it occurred to him just what had been bothering him about the curtains upstairs. He had found them closed, even though the mystery intruder seen near the window had obviously had every opportunity to leave them open. But if whatever was in here had ever really wanted out, why would they have removed their only source of light?

      There was something deeply unnatural about the elongated yellow eyes that smouldered in the darkness scarcely ten paces in front of him. It wasn’t just that they were glowing, it was that they were glowing darkly somehow — that despite their intensity, they didn’t appear to give off any light of their own that might illuminate their surroundings. It seemed distinctly unfair. Cruel, even.

      Kiyoshi raised the comm. He still hadn’t released the talk button, and his finger was beginning to cramp. “Tyra,” he said, as casually as he could, “out of curiosity, what do you know about the Shadow Usul?”

      The eyes didn’t move. Neither did Kiyoshi. It seemed like hours before Tyra’s next response came through. ”Okay, that’s it, I’m coming to get you—“

      The eyes flickered a little, as if annoyed, and Kiyoshi scrambled to cut Tyra off. “No, don’t! Don’t, just—“ He took a deep breath to calm his voice, and the strange light in those almond-shaped eyes seemed to settle down. “Just. Be cool. Please. I’m leaving now, I promise.” Very slowly, he took a step backwards. “But uh. If you could look up the Shadow Usul in the meantime, that would be appreciated. Don’t make a big deal about it. Please, just trust me.”

      A pause. “Okay.” There was a scuffling sound over the comm. “I think I have a copy of the Gallery of Evil around here somewhere….”

      Kiyoshi moved backwards until he could feel the end of the row with his hand. Then, he bolted.

      There was no way to tell which direction he was running. He could only hope it was back the way he’d come, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was being swallowed up even further into the black. Since it didn’t matter whether he faced the front or not, he kept frantically searching the darkness around him as he ran, heart skipping when he saw those eyes again for half a second before they quickly disappeared within the dark rows — they were following him, keeping pace with him—

      He tripped over something that felt a lot like a fallen ladder and went sprawling, books falling like rubble on top of and all around him. And then, miraculously, there was light.

      Almost as blind with the sudden brightness as he had been without it, Kiyoshi fumbled for its source and grabbed a chunky board book that was shaped like a Quiggle — Quiggle Bedtime Stories, its cover proclaimed in fun block lettering — with two big white balls on the top for eyeballs. The eyeballs were lit up, and a cutesy nursery tune was playing from some kind of speaker inside the book. Kiyoshi seized the book, whipping it around just in time to hear a sound somewhere between a hiss and a scream as what looked like a living shadow melted back into the darkness beyond the Quiggle’s protective aura. Kiyoshi scrambled to his feet and was immediately running again. It wasn’t much, but thanks to the Quiggle he could see at least far enough in front of him to avoid running into any more furniture….

      ”Wow. Okay. You’re not going to like this,” Tyra was saying.

      “Hit me with it,” Kiyoshi said, hoping she couldn’t hear him panting.

      ”Okay, well. It says not much is known about her, but she supposedly lurks in the shadows around Neopia Central at night, like you’ve probably heard. She’s been responsible for a number of disappearances and other disasters over the years. No one knows what she’s after, but there are some theories.”

      The stairs. Kiyoshi just caught a glimpse of them before the light suddenly vanished, along with the music. “Night-night!” the book said happily. Cursing, Kiyoshi shook the book vigorously, then desperately splayed the pages open, cracking the spine. The lullaby started again, and the light flicked back on. He heard a sinister giggle from somewhere above him as he sprinted towards the staircase.

      ”She always starts by luring her victim into an isolated location.”

      Kiyoshi clambered up the stairs, almost on all fours. Why hadn’t he ever bothered learning how to fly….

      ”She removes all light from the area. The process requires total darkness.”

      The door at the top of the stairs was closed, but unlocked. Kiyoshi almost laughed with relief, launching himself through it.

      “Night-night!”

      “No, not night-night!” Kiyoshi snapped, beating on the book until it lit up again. This time, the hiss was almost directly in his ear as the shadow withdrew. It was pitch-black up here without the book’s light; had she blocked the windows again?

      ”She traps you there, because what comes next takes all night. Better to make sure all the windows and doors are closed, so no one can hear the screams.”

      The door. The door to the outside world. It was so, so close….

      ”It says the Shadow Usul isn’t limited by physical form. She can slip through even the tiniest crack. She can even slip inside your skin.”

      Kiyoshi yanked on the front door, but it didn’t budge. There was no sign of a lock on this side for him to mess with. His heart plummeted as he turned around.

      “Night-ni—“

      Kiyoshi rattled the book violently. This time, however, the eyeballs just flickered weakly for a moment, as if in protest. Then, to the Shoyru’s horror, the lights fizzled out, and the darkness closed in around him completely.

      A perfect silence pounded against his eardrums as those yellow eyes wavered in front of him. They took their time as they floated closer, seeming to relish their victory.

      Kiyoshi tossed the book into the dark. His lips were dry as he raised the comm. “…What happens then?”

      ”…Well, then the Shadow Usul gets what she wants more than anything. A body.”

      The eyes hung in front of him, so close their faces should have touched, if she had a face to touch him with. The Shoyru pressed himself back up against the door. He could call for help. But it was too late now. By the time Tyra got here, who knows what state he’d be in….

      “Sometimes she gets that far. But she’s always been disappointed, because she never gets to command the body for very long. But still, she keeps trying, because who knows, maybe the next one….“

      The door opened.

      Expecting literally anything before that, Kiyoshi fell backwards. There was a yelp as he toppled into the person on the other side, sending them both tumbling onto the cobble-lined street.

      “Ah — what, Kiyoshi?” A familiar split Aisha was gingerly picking herself off the ground, blinking at him like she couldn’t believe her eyes. “What are you — are you okay? What happened to your hands?”

      The sun had long since set, but the grey street was well-lit by several nearby street lamps, letting them see each other clearly. The Shoyru staggered to his feet, staring at the door to the bookstore, which had somehow closed behind them. “How did you do that? How did you open it?”

      “I told you, security around here is garbage,” Tyra said with a roguish grin, waving a small, bent piece of wire in his direction. “Don’t tell the Chia Police.”

      Kiyoshi’s head was reeling. “How… how in Neopia did you get here so fast….”

      Tyra looked at him, then shrugged. “I mean, I came as fast as I could after you stopped responding. You end up on the wrong channel or something?”

      “N…no, it was Channel Four, right?”

      Kiyoshi felt very unsettled by her stare. The Aisha stepped forward, and Kiyoshi offered no resistance when she pulled the comm from his grip. She frowned, clicking the channel dial down a notch. Then she placed it back in his hand.

      “We’ll work on your ability to follow simple instructions during the next test,” Tyra said. “But for now, let’s go home. It seems so much darker around here with all this grey.”

     The End.