Lincoln Elementary stood on Youngstown’s west side like a brick-and-mortar ghost. Closed for fifteen years, its playground was rust and weeds, its windows mostly boarded, the remaining glass panes shattered or opaque with grime. It was a relic from the mid-century, built solid and imposing during the height of the Cold War, a time when duck-and-cover drills were as common as spelling tests. And like many schools from that era, Lincoln held a secret, mostly forgotten, beneath its foundations.
Rumors persisted among older locals and former students – whispers of a bomb shelter, a subterranean refuge hidden somewhere in the school’s bowels. Not just a reinforced basement room, but a dedicated, sealed shelter designed to withstand the unthinkable. Access points were supposedly bricked over, hidden behind boiler room machinery, or simply lost to time and neglectful record-keeping. It was a piece of Cold War paranoia buried beneath layers of dust and decay.
Alex, an urban explorer with a fascination for forgotten spaces and local history, heard the rumors. The idea of a sealed time capsule beneath the already atmospheric abandoned school was irresistible. After weeks of research – pouring over unreliable old blueprints found online, talking to former janitors, scouting the perimeter – Alex found a potential access point: a section of crumbling concrete floor in a disused storage area of the basement that sounded hollow when tapped.
Getting into the school was the easy part; a loose board on a ground-floor window provided entry. Navigating the decaying interior, flashlight beam cutting through dust motes dancing in the gloom, was an exercise in cautious exploration. Reaching the basement storage room took time, the air growing heavier, colder. Finding the hollow section of floor, Alex used a crowbar brought for the purpose, chipping away at the crumbling concrete, revealing a rusted metal hatch underneath.
It took considerable effort, straining against decades of rust and neglect, but the hatch finally groaned open, releasing a blast of foul, stale air. It smelled of damp concrete, mildew, rot, and something else… a faint, cloying, organic scent that prickled the back of Alex’s throat. Absolute darkness lay below. A steep, narrow metal ladder descended into the blackness. This was it. The forgotten shelter.
Taking a deep breath, Alex clipped a backup flashlight to their belt, checked their main beam, and began the descent. The air grew thicker, colder with each rung. Reaching the bottom, the flashlight beam cut a swathe through oppressive darkness, revealing a scene straight out of a post-apocalyptic nightmare. Rusted metal bunk beds lined the walls, their thin mattresses long since rotted away. Crates spilled their contents – cans swollen with botulism, medical supplies turned to dust and mold. Civil defense posters, featuring the unnerving grin of Bert the Turtle, peeled off the damp, sweating concrete walls. Pools of stagnant water reflected the flashlight beam like dead eyes. Strange, pale fungi grew in bizarre, branching patterns across the floor and walls, some emitting a faint, ghostly bioluminescence.
The silence was absolute, broken only by the drip… drip… drip of water and Alex’s own ragged breathing. It felt profoundly isolated, a tomb sealed off from the world for generations. Alex moved cautiously, flashlight beam sweeping across the decaying remnants of Cold War fear. There were signs of rats – droppings, gnawed materials – but fewer than expected, and strangely, none in the deeper sections of the shelter.
As Alex ventured further, following a narrow corridor, they began noticing things that didn’t fit. Strange drag marks in the thick dust, like something heavy being pulled. Small piles of bones – rat bones, mostly – picked clean and arranged in neat, almost deliberate piles. Odd scratch marks adorned a metal door, too deep and regular for rats. And the fungus… some patches looked almost… harvested, pieces torn away.
A faint sound reached Alex’s ears, cutting through the silence. A soft, rhythmic clicking, accompanied by a wet, shuffling noise. It seemed to echo from deeper within the shelter, down a branching corridor. Alex froze, listening intently. The sound stopped. Then, a single click, closer this time. A primal instinct screamed danger. They were not alone.
Sweeping the flashlight beam wildly, Alex caught a flicker of movement at the edge of the light. Something pale and fast darted behind a stack of rusted crates. It was too large to be a rat. The clicking sound resumed, now seeming to come from multiple directions. Alex felt a cold dread bloom in their chest. Whatever was down here had survived, adapted to the absolute darkness, the isolation, the scarce resources. And it knew Alex was here.
This wasn’t just an animal. Decades sealed in pitch blackness, feeding on fungus and vermin… what would that do to a creature? Alex imagined something pale, eyeless, its other senses heightened to an unbearable degree. Hearing, vibration, smell… Alex’s heartbeat, breathing, the crunch of debris underfoot, the beam of the flashlight – all were betrayals in this realm of silence and darkness.
The hunt began. Alex tried to move silently, back towards the entrance ladder, but the floor was littered with debris. Every step seemed to echo. The clicking sounds followed, sometimes seeming to come from ahead, sometimes behind, sometimes from vents in the ceiling. It felt like being stalked by multiple entities, perfectly at home in the darkness that blinded Alex.
The flashlight became both shield and liability. Its beam offered precious sight but also announced Alex’s position. Turning it off meant succumbing to the terrifying, absolute blackness, relying only on hearing the clicking, shuffling hunters. Alex tried it for a moment – flicking the light off. The darkness was total, disorienting. The clicking intensified, closer now. Panic surged, and Alex flicked the light back on, sweeping the beam desperately.
In the cone of light, for a split second, Alex saw one. Clinging to the ceiling directly overhead. Pale, almost translucent skin stretched over an emaciated frame. Limbs too long, jointed at unnatural angles, ending in sharp, chitinous claws. Its head was smooth, featureless, except for a gaping, vertical slit of a mouth that opened and closed, emitting the soft clicking sound. It had no eyes. It dropped from the ceiling with terrifying speed, landing silently just beyond the flashlight’s beam.
Alex scrambled backwards, heart hammering. They were fast, silent, and there were more than one. Alex ran, stumbling through the decaying shelter, flashlight beam bouncing wildly. Behind them, the clicking and shuffling intensified, the sounds of pursuit. They rounded a corner and skidded to a halt. Another one stood in the corridor, blocking the way, its eyeless head tilted as if listening.
Remembering the bioluminescent fungus, Alex wondered if they were sensitive to light. Alex aimed the powerful flashlight beam directly at the creature’s featureless head. It recoiled violently, letting out a high-pitched hiss, and scuttled backwards into the darkness, claws scraping on the concrete. A weakness. Light.
Alex used the flashlight as a weapon now, sweeping the beam, holding the creatures at bay, pushing forward towards the memory of the entrance ladder. They passed a small, locked room, the door heavily scratched. Peering through a crack, Alex saw inside… nests made from shredded mattresses and debris, and small, writhing, grub-like forms. They were breeding.
The escape was a frantic scramble through a labyrinth of decay, punctuated by terrifying glimpses of pale limbs and clicking mouths in the flashlight beam. Alex used the light defensively, forcing the creatures back, but they were relentless, flanking, trying to get behind, their clicks echoing from all sides. Alex’s backup flashlight was knocked from their belt in a near-miss, clattering away into the darkness.
Finally, the base of the ladder. Alex scrambled onto the rungs, flashlight held precariously, shining it down into the darkness where multiple pale forms gathered, clicking in frustration, their eyeless faces upturned towards the light. Alex climbed, faster than ever before, not stopping until bursting through the hatch into the relative brightness of the school basement.
With trembling hands, Alex slammed the heavy hatch shut, jamming the crowbar through the handles, hoping it would hold. They didn’t wait around. They fled the school, not stopping until they were blocks away, gasping in the cool night air, the phantom clicks still echoing in their ears.
Sleep offered no escape. Nightmares filled with absolute darkness, clicking sounds, and pale, eyeless things haunted Alex for weeks. Claustrophobia became intense; darkness felt threatening. Alex debated reporting the discovery, but who would believe it? And what if reporting led to an official investigation, potentially unleashing the creatures? The shelter was a sealed tomb that Alex had breached.
Alex never knew if the crowbar held, if the shelter remained sealed. The thought that those things, adapted to darkness, might find another way out, might crawl up into the abandoned school, or even beyond… it was a fear that lingered, cold and persistent.
Sometimes, during a power outage, plunged into sudden darkness, Alex hears it. Or thinks they hear it. A faint, rhythmic clicking from the shadows. A reminder that darkness is not empty. It adapts. And it waits.