Kevin the Ghost Had a Performance Review. Upper Management Came in Person.
Part 1 https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/ocGLoQKhiy
Part 2 https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/Yn30Y1lKs2
Part 3 https://www.reddit.com/r/Nonsleep/s/TlcCGxMMoD
The phone inside the wall rang for eleven minutes.
Nobody answered it.
That sounds cowardly until you remember there was no phone inside the wall.
At least, there hadn’t been one yesterday.
Now something was ringing behind the communal noticeboard with the patient confidence of someone who knew we would eventually break.
Kevin had written one message across the black mould above it:
DO NOT ANSWER.
Linda stood in the middle of the lobby holding the Oakmere letter in one hand and her clipboard in the other.
It had arrived that morning, informing us that all “informal, unauthorised or deceased management arrangements” would soon be terminated.
At the bottom was a symbol made of three interlocking circles surrounding a small key.
Then the letters on the noticeboard had moved by themselves.
Not Kevin.
Something else.
They had rearranged into:
GOOD EVENING, KEVIN.
YOUR PERFORMANCE REVIEW IS DUE.
And the phone had started ringing.
Linda adjusted her glasses.
“Perhaps we should answer it.”
The mould shifted violently.
PERHAPS WE SHOULD LAUNCH LINDA INTO THE SEA.
“That’s unnecessary.”
SO IS THE PHONE IN THE WALL.
The ringing continued.
Old-fashioned.
Metallic.
The sort of ringing that made you picture an empty office at midnight, with someone sitting behind a desk facing away from the door.
Dave appeared at the top of the stairs wearing one slipper.
“Wasn’t me.”
Nobody looked at him.
He came downstairs anyway.
Flat 3 opened her door holding a mug.
Flat 5 emerged behind her with three tiny spoons in his shirt pocket, which he claimed were “for emergencies.”
Nobody had ever identified an emergency improved by a tiny spoon.
The phone stopped ringing.
The silence afterwards felt worse.
Then something knocked from inside the wall.
Three slow knocks.
The mould above the noticeboard began crawling backwards.
That concerned me.
Kevin had fought a corporate demon, possessed a toaster and once spent an entire evening criticising The Conjuring through our extractor fan.
Apparently, the ghost’s “hallway presence lacked commitment.”
Kevin did not usually retreat.
Three more knocks.
Then a woman spoke from behind the plaster.
“Mr Kevin?”
Polite.
Calm.
Close enough that it sounded like her lips were pressed against the other side of the wall.
The mould formed one word.
NO.
“Upper Management is ready to receive you.”
Linda stepped towards the wall.
A strip of mould shot across the plaster, wrapped around the back of her dressing gown and pulled her away.
She looked over her shoulder.
“Kevin.”
The mould wrote:
LINDA.
“You are stretching the fabric.”
THE WALL LADY WANTS TO EAT MY EMPLOYMENT HISTORY.
“You don’t have an employment history.”
The voice behind the wall replied:
“We have his complete file.”
The mould stopped moving.
I looked at it.
“What file?”
Nothing.
“Kevin?”
The mould slowly formed:
DUNNO.
“Kevin.”
LITERALLY DEAD MATE. MEMORY’S NOT EXACTLY CLOUD-BACKED.
A crack appeared behind the noticeboard.
It travelled from the ceiling to the floor.
Then another appeared beside it.
The section of wall between them swung inward.
There was no dust.
No broken brick.
It opened like a door had always been there.
Behind it was darkness.
A single red telephone sat on a small table.
The receiver was off the hook.
Beyond the table, a narrow staircase descended beneath Riverside Court.
Riverside Court did not have a basement.
Linda leaned towards the opening.
“We don’t have a basement.”
The mould beside her wrote:
FANTASTIC WORK LINDA. PROMOTE HER.
A fluorescent light flickered on somewhere below us.
Then another.
Then another.
Each one revealed more stairs.
They went down much farther than the building should have allowed.
A brass plaque appeared beside the doorway.
OAKMERE RESIDENTIAL SOLUTIONS
UPPER MANAGEMENT
STAFF ENTRANCE
Underneath, in smaller letters:
VISITORS MUST BE ACCOMPANIED BY THEIR DECEASED REPRESENTATIVE.
Dave looked into the darkness.
“Do we have to go?”
The disconnected receiver spoke.
“Attendance is mandatory.”
Dave nodded.
“Thought so.”
The mould moved onto the wall beside me.
JON.
“No.”
HAVEN’T ASKED.
“You’re going to ask me to enter the impossible basement.”
YEAH.
“No.”
EMOTIONAL SUPPORT HUMAN.
“No.”
I SUPPORTED YOU WHEN YOUR MILK WAS OFF.
“You informed me that my milk was off.”
SAVED A LIFE.
Linda picked up her clipboard.
“I’ll accompany Kevin.”
The mould instantly wrote:
JON PLEASE COME.
Flat 3 put on her coat.
“If Linda’s going, I’m going.”
“I am perfectly capable,” Linda said.
“You once thanked a possessed security system for complimenting your leadership.”
“It was a difficult moment.”
Flat 5 selected his smallest spoon.
Dave said, “I’m not going.”
Something inside the stairwell spoke in Dave’s voice.
“Wasn’t me.”
Dave stared into the darkness.
“I’m going.”
The mould spread over the wall like someone throwing their hands up.
BRILLIANT. WHOLE CIRCUS.
The red receiver lifted into the air by itself.
“Please bring biscuits.”
Linda produced a packet of custard creams from beneath her clipboard.
The mould became perfectly still.
Then:
THAT IS THE MOST TERRIFYING THING YOU’VE EVER DONE.
We entered the wall.
The doorway closed behind us.
There was no handle on our side.
The staircase smelled of damp paper, burnt dust and something sweet that had been allowed to rot.
Fluorescent lights buzzed above us.
Each one went dark as soon as we passed beneath it.
The mould followed us along the walls.
Sometimes it formed a handprint.
Sometimes an arrow.
Once, it wrote:
HATE STAIRS.
“You’re floating,” I said.
EMOTIONALLY TIRING.
After five minutes, Dave asked, “How deep is this?”
The mould wrote:
STRUCTURALLY OR EMOTIONALLY?
“Structurally.”
BAD.
The walls were covered in framed photographs of apartment buildings.
Not normal estate-agent photographs.
Every building had been photographed at night.
Every window was black except one.
In each lit window stood a figure.
Some had their hands pressed against the glass.
Some had no faces.
One photograph showed a tower with hundreds of floors.
The same woman stood in every illuminated window.
Flat 3 slowed down.
The woman in the nearest window turned her head.
Not the photograph.
The woman inside it.
Her eyes followed us down the stairs.
Flat 3 lowered her mug.
“Did anyone else—”
“Yes,” I said.
The mould spread over the photograph, hiding the woman.
KEEP MOVING.
Something scratched behind the frame.
We kept moving.
At the bottom of the stairs was a door marked:
HUMAN RESOURCES
Someone had crossed out HUMAN and written RESIDENT beneath it.
The mould crept around the lettering.
HATE THAT.
Linda knocked.
Black mould erupted across the entire door.
WHY WOULD YOU KNOCK?
“It’s polite.”
IT’S HELL WITH A PENSION SCHEME.
The door opened.
A receptionist sat behind a curved desk.
At first, she looked normal.
Grey suit.
Hair tied back.
Small Oakmere badge.
Then she looked up.
Her eyes were stapled open.
Not metaphorically.
Small silver staples held her eyelids against the skin above and below them.
Her smile looked exhausted.
“Good evening.”
Nobody answered.
Her eyes moved across us without blinking.
“Name?”
The mould spread across the front of her desk.
KEVIN.
“Surname?”
DON’T HAVE ONE.
She typed on a keyboard.
The keys were made from small yellow teeth.
“Every asset has a surname.”
NOT ME. MYSTERIOUS.
“Identification number?”
The mould hesitated.
DUNNO.
The receptionist reached beneath the desk and produced a thick grey folder.
It was labelled:
KVN-014
The mould stopped moving.
She opened the file.
Inside were photographs.
I couldn’t see them clearly from where I stood.
Apparently, Kevin could.
The black mould began peeling away from the desk.
“What is it?” I asked.
No answer.
The receptionist removed one photograph and turned it towards us.
It showed a white room full of metal chairs.
Young men sat in them wearing identical grey tracksuits.
Each had wires connected to their head.
Some were screaming.
Some appeared unconscious.
On the back wall was the three-circle symbol.
One chair stood in the corner.
Empty.
Around its headrest hung a paper sign:
KVN-014 — ENTRY LEVEL
I stared at the empty chair.
“Is that supposed to be Kevin?”
The receptionist smiled.
“The photograph was taken after extraction.”
Flat 5 whispered, “Extraction of what?”
Her stapled eyes turned towards him.
“The useful part.”
Something scraped beneath the desk.
A pale hand crawled around one side.
Then another.
Fingers moved across the carpet like spiders.
The receptionist stamped a form without looking down.
The hands withdrew.
“Upper Management is waiting.”
She placed visitor badges on the desk.
Each one already had our names printed on it.
Mine said:
JON — RESIDENT / RESISTANT
Linda’s said:
LINDA — INTERIM AUTHORITY COMPLEX
Flat 3’s said:
RESIDENT 3 — AGGRESSION RESOURCE
Flat 5’s said:
RESIDENT 5 — CUTLERY DEPENDENCY
Dave’s said:
DAVE — RESPONSIBLE
Dave stared at his badge.
“That’s not fair.”
Kevin’s badge was black.
KVN-014 — PENDING TERMINATION
The mould avoided it.
The receptionist looked at the desk.
“Your deceased representative must display his badge.”
Mould formed on the wall behind her.
DON’T HAVE A SHIRT.
“Visibility is mandatory.”
The badge lifted into the air.
For a moment, it hung there.
Then it pressed itself against nothing.
A faint shape appeared around it.
Not a body.
More like an absence shaped vaguely like a person.
A distortion in the air.
The receptionist nodded.
“Proceed.”
We did.
The office beyond reception was enormous.
Rows of cubicles stretched farther than we could see.
Fluorescent lights vanished into a low grey horizon.
The carpet felt warm beneath my shoes.
Not room-temperature warm.
Body warm.
Each cubicle contained a dead building manager.
I knew they were dead because several were transparent.
Others were much worse.
One man had a smoke alarm where his face should have been.
A woman typed using fingers that had grown into the keyboard.
Another employee sat completely still while black liquid leaked from his ears and filled the drawers beneath him.
None of them looked up.
They whispered as we passed.
“Complaint received.”
“Request denied.”
“Resident deceased.”
“Deposit retained.”
“Complaint received.”
“Request denied.”
“Deposit retained.”
The words overlapped into a low mechanical prayer.
Dave leaned closer to me.
“I don’t like this.”
From the nearest cubicle, a man with no lower jaw whispered:
“Feedback noted.”
Dave moved away quickly.
The Kevin-shaped distortion travelled beside us.
The badge floated where his chest should have been.
Until that moment, none of us had ever seen him.
Not really.
Kevin existed in speakers, mould, fridge magnets, phone screens and the occasional aggressive toaster.
Even the vague shape beside us felt wrong.
Too human.
Like somebody had cut his outline out of the world.
At the far end of the office stood a lift.
Its doors were dark wood.
The floor display above them changed constantly.
B4
B13
B-2
OTHER
The doors opened.
A woman stood inside with her back to us.
She wore a red suit.
Her hair hung to her waist.
She faced the rear wall.
There were no buttons.
The mould on the wall beside the lift wrote:
STAIRS?
The receptionist’s voice came through the ceiling.
“Attendance is mandatory.”
We entered.
The woman did not move.
The doors closed.
Something wet touched the back of my neck.
I turned.
Nothing.
Then I heard breathing directly behind me.
Slow.
Deep.
Everyone else heard it too.
The woman began humming a nursery rhyme I almost recognised.
The lift descended.
The floor display changed.
GRIEVANCES
EVICTIONS
RETENTION
RECOVERY
MANAGEMENT
The humming stopped.
The woman spoke without turning around.
“Which one of you brought biscuits?”
Linda held up the custard creams.
“I did.”
The woman’s head turned.
Only her head.
Her body remained facing the wall.
Her face was covered by a smooth layer of skin.
No eyes.
No nose.
No mouth.
The skin bulged as she spoke from underneath it.
“Custard creams?”
Linda nodded.
“Yes.”
The featureless head tilted.
“Good.”
The doors opened.
We stepped out.
Just before they closed, a mouth split open across the back of the woman’s head.
“Don’t sign anything.”
The doors shut.
The floating badge moved towards them.
The mould on the nearby wall wrote:
LIKED HER.
Upper Management occupied a single office.
The door was enormous.
Dark wood.
Gold lettering.
M. VALE
DIRECTOR OF RESIDENT RETENTION
Beneath the plaque, someone had scratched:
SHE KNOWS WHEN YOU ARE HOME
Linda reached for the handle.
Mould covered it.
MAYBE WE SIMPLY DIE?
“You are already dead,” I said.
EXACTLY. EFFICIENT.
The door opened by itself.
The office beyond was too tall.
Its ceiling disappeared into darkness.
Filing cabinets covered every wall, rising hundreds of feet upwards.
Some drawers rattled.
Others whispered names.
A conference table stretched through the centre of the room.
Six chairs waited on our side.
One empty space remained where Kevin’s floating badge hovered.
One chair stood at the far end.
Something sat in it.
Ms Vale looked almost human.
That was the problem.
The longer I looked, the less she did.
Her grey hair was immaculate.
Her suit was perfectly fitted.
Her hands rested neatly on the table.
There were too many joints in her fingers.
Her face changed every few seconds.
An old woman.
A young man.
A crying child.
Gareth.
Derek.
Me.
Each face surfaced briefly, like something drowning beneath thin ice.
Then it settled into the pleasant face of a middle-aged woman.
“Kevin,” she said.
Every filing cabinet whispered with her.
“Kevin.”
“Kevin.”
“Kevin.”
The floating badge edged backwards.
Ms Vale smiled.
“No.”
A chair formed beneath it.
Not pulled out.
Formed.
The wood grew from the floor like bone pushing through skin.
Leather straps hung from its arms.
The vague distortion that represented Kevin stopped moving.
Mould spread over the table.
I’LL STAND.
“You will sit.”
The room darkened.
The distortion dropped into the chair.
The leather straps snapped shut around empty air.
Then Ms Vale placed one hand flat on the table.
“Employees must be visible during formal review.”
Something screamed.
Not Kevin.
The room itself.
Every filing cabinet shook.
The air inside the chair folded inward.
The distortion thickened.
A shoulder appeared.
Then an arm.
A knee.
A head bent forward.
For the first time, Kevin became visible.
None of us spoke.
He looked about thirty.
Maybe younger.
It was difficult to tell because half his face flickered in and out of focus.
He wore a faded tracksuit top from around 2008, grey joggers and one trainer.
The other foot was bare.
His hair floated slightly upwards, as if he were underwater.
His skin was translucent, but not cleanly.
Dark shapes moved beneath it.
Fingerprints.
Faces.
Letters.
For one brief second, I could see the wall behind him through his chest.
Then a rib cage flickered into place.
Then vanished.
Kevin looked down at himself.
He turned his hands over.
Wiggled his fingers.
Touched his own face.
Then looked at us.
“oh,” he said.
His voice did not come from a phone or speaker.
It came directly from him.
It sounded younger than I expected.
Rough.
Human.
“sick. elbows.”
Flat 3 stared at him.
“That’s what you look like?”
Kevin looked offended.
“give me a second. first body in years.”
Linda studied him.
“You only have one shoe.”
Kevin looked down.
“that explains the cold foot.”
Even Ms Vale seemed disappointed by the response.
“This is your first formal performance review.”
Kevin looked at her.
“could’ve sent an email.”
“We did.”
“went to spam.”
A folder slid across the table.
KVN-014: PERFORMANCE SUMMARY
Ms Vale opened it.
“Initial placement: unstable shared accommodation.”
“successful,” Kevin said.
“The property was severely damaged.”
“team-building exercise.”
“One primary resident was lost.”
Kevin’s smile disappeared.
Derek.
Ms Vale noticed.
Her own smile sharpened.
“Do you miss him?”
Kevin looked away.
One of the filing cabinets rattled.
From inside came Derek’s voice.
“Mate?”
Kevin’s head snapped towards it.
Another drawer shook.
“Kevin?”
It sounded exactly like him.
Tired.
Scared.
Alive.
“Mate, can you get me out?”
Kevin rose against the straps.
“Derek?”
The drawer slammed shut.
Ms Vale wrote something in the file.
“Attachment to residents. Significant weakness.”
Kevin’s visible hands curled into fists.
“Where is he?”
“Not relevant to your review.”
“Where is he?”
Her face became Derek’s.
“Five stars,” she said in his voice.
Then changed back.
Kevin stopped struggling.
Hatred made him quiet.
Ms Vale continued.
“Secondary placement: Riverside Court.”
Linda raised her hand.
Ms Vale looked at her.
“This is not a participatory meeting.”
Linda lowered her hand.
Then raised it again.
“I have procedural concerns.”
The office went silent.
Even the drawers stopped whispering.
Ms Vale stared at Linda.
“You have what?”
Linda placed her clipboard on the table.
“A performance review should allow the employee to respond to evidence, submit mitigating circumstances and bring representation.”
Kevin looked at her.
“linda.”
“I have also prepared notes.”
Ms Vale’s fingers bent backwards one joint at a time.
“Your procedures do not apply here.”
Linda adjusted her glasses.
“Then your process lacks transparency.”
The lights flickered.
Flat 3 whispered, “She’s doing admin at death.”
Kevin whispered back, “always knew she’d go out like this.”
Ms Vale’s face cycled rapidly.
Woman.
Corpse.
Child.
Gareth.
Something with antlers.
Then back.
“You may speak when invited.”
Linda wrote on her clipboard.
Ms Vale’s eyes narrowed.
“What are you writing?”
“Tone concern.”
Kevin made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a choking cough.
Ms Vale turned another page.
“Kevin’s Riverside placement demonstrates repeated failure.”
Images appeared on the wall behind her.
Kevin stealing yoghurt.
Kevin insulting Linda.
Kevin firing toast at a demon.
Kevin writing LANDLORD BOY in mould above Dave’s bed.
Kevin biting Gareth.
Flat 3 pointed at the final image.
“That one was good.”
Ms Vale ignored her.
“Unauthorised intervention. Disobedience. Emotional contamination. Resident loyalty.”
Kevin shrugged as much as the straps allowed.
“sounds like I’m smashing it.”
“You misunderstand your purpose.”
Ms Vale leaned forwards.
Her neck stretched across the table.
It lengthened until her face hovered inches from Kevin’s.
“You were not created to protect residents.”
Her mouth opened.
Inside were rows of tiny office doors.
Behind each door, someone screamed.
“You were created to soften them.”
Kevin stopped smiling.
Ms Vale’s neck retracted.
“Entry-level hauntings generate anxiety. Anxiety generates dependence. Dependence increases acceptance of monitoring, subscriptions and controlled living environments.”
The SpookMe app.
The smart security system.
Oakmere’s Harmony Hub.
“You frighten people,” I said, “so they’ll pay Oakmere to protect them.”
Ms Vale smiled.
“An excellent summary.”
“That’s insane.”
“Is it?”
Every filing drawer opened at once.
Inside were thousands of photographs.
Homes.
Flats.
Hospitals.
Schools.
Care homes.
Every photograph contained the three-circle symbol.
Hidden on a router.
A smoke alarm.
A tenancy agreement.
A child’s night-light.
Something moved behind the photographs.
Hands pressed out from inside the drawers.
Hundreds of them.
Fingernails scraped metal.
“Fear is the oldest property management tool,” Ms Vale said.
“People accept remarkable restrictions when frightened.”
A drawer near the ceiling opened.
A woman fell halfway out.
Her mouth was sewn shut with a charging cable.
The drawer closed on her fingers.
None of the dead employees reacted.
Ms Vale looked at Kevin.
“Your purpose was never to become part of a community.”
The straps tightened.
“You were meant to destabilise it.”
Kevin stared down at the table.
Ms Vale opened the final page.
“Instead, you encouraged resistance.”
Dave raised his hand slightly.
“He also improved the recycling.”
Ms Vale turned towards him.
Dave swallowed.
“Wasn’t me.”
She wrote something down.
“Resident Dave: denial reflex remains intact.”
Dave looked proud.
Ms Vale placed a silver pen beside Kevin.
“Your position is being terminated.”
The filing cabinets began whispering.
“Terminated.”
“Terminated.”
“Terminated.”
The table split open beneath Kevin.
Not mechanically.
The wood parted like wet skin.
Black hands reached upwards.
Kevin shouted and pulled against the straps.
I forced myself forwards.
My body stopped working.
No pain.
No struggle.
My muscles simply ceased to belong to me.
My knees bent.
I hit the floor.
“Termination,” Ms Vale explained, “does not mean release.”
The hands grabbed Kevin’s legs.
“It means reassignment.”
A filing drawer high above us slid open.
Inside was darkness.
Something enormous shifted within it.
Kevin’s visible body flickered.
His face became transparent.
Then solid.
Then briefly something else entirely.
A screaming man strapped into a metal chair.
“Where?” he asked.
Ms Vale smiled.
“Complaints.”
The drawer opened wider.
A smell poured from it.
Rotten carpet.
Old breath.
Wet hair caught in a drain.
Thousands of voices spoke from the darkness.
“My heating doesn’t work.”
“There’s mould in my child’s bedroom.”
“You kept my deposit.”
“Someone is inside the walls.”
“I’ve reported this six times.”
“Please help me.”
“Please.”
The hands dragged Kevin lower.
His one trainer scraped across the floor.
Linda stood.
Ms Vale looked at her.
“Sit down.”
Linda remained standing.
“I am Kevin’s workplace representative.”
“You have no authority here.”
Linda lifted the packet of custard creams.
“I also brought refreshments.”
Ms Vale’s eyes moved towards them.
The office lights dimmed.
Something rustled inside the walls.
The featureless woman in the lift had warned us not to sign anything.
She had also specifically asked about the biscuits.
Linda placed the packet on the table.
“Would you like one?”
Ms Vale stared at it.
Every face beneath her own pressed towards the surface.
Hungry.
Flat 3 understood first.
She picked up the packet and tore it open.
The smell of cheap vanilla filled the room.
Every filing drawer rattled.
The dead employees stopped typing.
One by one, they looked up.
The woman fused to her keyboard opened her mouth.
“Biscuit.”
The man with the smoke alarm face turned towards us.
His alarm began beeping.
The jawless employee whispered:
“Custard.”
Ms Vale stood.
Her chair scraped backwards.
“Put those away.”
Kevin looked at Linda.
Then at the biscuits.
Then at the hundreds of dead employees.
“no way.”
Flat 3 threw a custard cream into the nearest cubicle.
Chaos followed.
The employee caught it.
Another employee climbed over the cubicle wall.
A third pulled himself through the computer monitor.
Phones began ringing.
Drawers slammed.
The whispered corporate prayer broke apart.
“Complaint—”
“Biscuit—”
“Deposit—”
“Mine—”
“Request—”
“Give—”
Linda threw the entire packet into the office.
The dead surged after it.
Not walking.
Crawling.
Dragging desks behind them.
One employee moved through the ceiling with his head turned backwards.
Another unfolded from inside a filing cabinet despite being nearly eight feet tall.
Ms Vale screamed.
Her pleasant face split down the middle.
Beneath it was not a skull.
It was a building.
Tiny windows covered the inside of her head.
Figures hammered against the glass.
“Security!”
The filing cabinets opened.
Things climbed out.
Tall, narrow figures in black suits.
Their heads were security cameras.
Red lights blinked where their eyes should have been.
Kevin was still being dragged into the table.
“jon!”
“I can’t move!”
“try harder!”
“Excellent advice!”
Flat 5 pulled out one of his emergency spoons.
I stared at him.
“You cannot be serious.”
“It worked last time.”
He ran towards Kevin and jammed the spoon beneath one of the leather straps.
The metal hissed.
The strap loosened.
Flat 5 gasped.
“Silver-plated.”
Kevin looked at him.
“tiny spoon king.”
Flat 5’s face lit up.
The security figures moved towards us.
Flat 3 threw her mug at the nearest one.
It smashed against its camera head.
The red light went out.
“Mine,” she said.
Linda used her clipboard like a shield.
Dave stood frozen.
A security figure leaned down towards him.
Its camera lens adjusted.
“Resident Dave. Multiple unresolved incidents.”
Dave’s entire body shook.
Then he shouted:
“IT WAS ME!”
The figure stopped.
Dave continued, louder.
“The pizza box! The oven! The wet washing! I broke the lobby plant! I took Flat 5’s parcel once because I thought it was protein powder!”
Flat 5 looked horrified.
“It was me!”
The office trembled.
Dave’s visitor badge cracked.
DAVE — RESPONSIBLE
The word RESPONSIBLE flickered.
Then changed.
DAVE — ACCOUNTABLE
The security figure’s camera lens shattered.
Dave stared at his badge.
“I feel sick.”
Kevin yelled, “personal growth later!”
Flat 5 forced the spoon beneath the second strap.
It snapped.
Kevin pulled one arm free.
The black hands climbed higher, gripping his waist.
His visible form flickered violently.
The mould started spreading across the table beneath him.
For a moment, he existed in both places.
A frightened man in a tracksuit.
A black stain crawling through the wood.
He shoved his free hand through the tabletop.
Not into the hole.
Through the solid surface.
His fingers emerged beneath the table and grabbed something.
A cable.
He pulled.
The conference table screamed.
A black wire ripped from its underside.
The hands gripping Kevin spasmed.
“router,” he gasped.
“Where?” I asked.
Kevin pointed towards Ms Vale.
Her chest had opened.
Inside her rib cage sat a small black router.
Three green lights blinked between her lungs.
Of course.
It was always the router.
Ms Vale noticed where we were looking.
Her building-face twisted.
“No.”
Flat 3 charged first.
Ms Vale swept one long arm across the room.
Flat 3 flew into a filing cabinet.
It opened behind her.
Hands grabbed at her coat.
She smashed them with what remained of her mug.
Linda followed, wielding the clipboard.
Ms Vale’s fingers wrapped around Linda’s throat.
Linda did not panic.
She pressed a printed form against Ms Vale’s face.
“What is this?” Ms Vale hissed.
“Formal grievance.”
Ms Vale recoiled like she had been burned.
Linda slapped another sheet against her chest.
“Data access request.”
Ms Vale screamed.
A third sheet.
“Appeal against termination.”
The router lights inside her body began flashing.
Kevin looked genuinely impressed.
“weaponised admin.”
Linda shoved the entire folder into Ms Vale’s open rib cage.
“Please respond within twenty-eight working days.”
Ms Vale convulsed.
Her grip loosened.
I could move again.
I ran.
One of the security figures grabbed my shoulder.
Cold spread down my arm.
Its camera lens showed me an image of my own flat.
I was asleep in bed.
Something stood beside me.
Watching.
The footage was dated tomorrow.
I hit the camera with Dave’s badge.
It cracked.
Dave shouted, “Why have you got that?”
“Be accountable later!”
I reached Ms Vale.
The router sat inside her chest, wrapped in pulsing black cables.
I grabbed it.
Every light in the office went red.
The building inside Ms Vale’s face screamed through hundreds of tiny windows.
“You will lose him,” she said.
I pulled harder.
“Who?”
Her face changed.
Derek looked back at me.
“He is still subscribed.”
I hesitated.
The router’s lights blinked.
One green.
One red.
One blue.
Alexa blue.
From somewhere inside the filing cabinets, Derek shouted:
“Jon!”
Kevin froze.
“Derek?”
“Don’t unplug it!”
Ms Vale smiled with his face.
Kevin looked at me.
For the first time, I could properly see fear in his expression.
Not comic panic.
Not Kevin pretending everything was stupid.
Real fear.
“If we unplug it,” I said, “what happens to Derek?”
Ms Vale answered.
“All retained residents will be disconnected.”
Kevin’s body flickered.
The black hands pulled him lower.
The complaints drawer yawned above us.
Derek’s voice came again.
“Mate, please!”
Ms Vale extended one hand towards Kevin.
“Return to service and he remains accessible.”
Kevin stared at the filing cabinets.
“Accessible?”
“Retained.”
“That means trapped,” I said.
Ms Vale’s face returned to normal.
“Terminology varies.”
Kevin closed his eyes.
The mould spread beneath him.
Then he looked at me.
“pull it.”
“What?”
“router.”
“But Derek—”
“that’s not him.”
The voice from the drawer shouted:
“Kevin, don’t!”
Kevin flinched.
Then his visible face hardened.
“Derek never called me Kevin when he was scared.”
The drawer went silent.
Kevin looked at Ms Vale.
“He called me dickhead.”
From somewhere much deeper in the cabinets, barely audible, came another voice.
“Dickhead?”
Kevin’s eyes widened.
That one was different.
Fainter.
Real.
Ms Vale lunged.
I ripped the router from her chest.
The office went black.
Something hit me.
Something else screamed.
For several seconds, there was nothing but noise.
Metal drawers slamming.
Phones ringing.
People crawling.
Ms Vale shrieking through a thousand borrowed voices.
Then the router in my hands spoke.
“Connection lost.”
Kevin shouted from somewhere in the dark:
“smash it!”
I threw it onto the floor.
Flat 5 raised his emergency spoon.
“No,” I said.
Dave brought Linda’s camping chair down on it.
The router shattered.
The entire office folded.
Not collapsed.
Folded.
Cubicles bent upwards.
The floor rolled over itself.
Filing cabinets twisted into the ceiling.
The dead employees fell sideways into darkness.
Ms Vale stood at the centre of it all.
Her body split into hallways, offices and stairwells.
Every part of her was a building.
Every door inside her opened.
Hands reached out.
Faces screamed from windows.
She pointed at Kevin.
“You belong to us.”
Kevin had pulled himself free from the table.
He stood unsteadily on one trainer and one bare foot.
His body was fading.
Already becoming less human.
Mould spread along his arms.
His chest turned transparent.
He looked at Ms Vale.
“performance feedback?”
Her many mouths opened.
Kevin smiled.
“management’s a bit top-heavy.”
Then he kicked the broken router into her.
The green light flashed once.
Ms Vale imploded.
Every door slammed at the same time.
The sound hit us like a physical force.
Then the office vanished.
We fell.
Not far.
About three feet.
Onto the lobby carpet at Riverside Court.
Linda landed upright.
Somehow.
Dave landed inside the suggestion box.
Flat 5 landed on me.
Flat 3 landed on Flat 5.
Kevin landed nowhere.
Because Kevin was gone.
The hidden doorway had vanished.
The noticeboard hung normally on the wall.
No impossible basement.
No red phone.
No brass plaque.
Just Riverside Court.
The hallway carpet.
The washing machine.
The faint smell of someone’s dinner.
I pushed Flat 5 off me and stood.
“Kevin?”
Nothing.
Linda looked at the noticeboard.
“Kevin?”
No mould.
No moving letters.
No sarcastic message.
Dave climbed out of the suggestion box.
Its little voice whispered:
“Boring.”
We all looked at it.
Then black mould began forming around its slot.
Slowly.
Painfully.
One letter at a time.
OW.
Linda released a breath.
Flat 3 laughed.
Flat 5 gripped his tiny spoon.
The mould continued.
HAVE LEGS AGAIN?
A shape flickered in front of the noticeboard.
Kevin appeared for half a second.
Tracksuit.
One trainer.
Confused face.
Then vanished.
The mould wrote:
NOPE.
He flickered again.
This time only his upper body appeared.
He looked down.
“why am I just torso?”
Then vanished.
The mould formed:
HATE THIS.
I started laughing.
I couldn’t help it.
After the office, the photographs and the thing inside Ms Vale’s face, watching Kevin struggle to load his own body felt like someone had opened a window.
He appeared a third time.
Fully.
Still translucent.
Still wearing one trainer.
He looked around the lobby.
Linda studied him.
“You’re shorter than I imagined.”
Kevin vanished instantly.
The mould wrote:
BODY PRIVILEGES REVOKED.
Flat 3 said, “Come back. I want to see the tragic tracksuit again.”
NO.
Dave asked, “Why only one shoe?”
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS.
Nobody pushed him.
Not yet.
Linda called an emergency residents’ meeting.
It began at 2:17 in the morning.
She still had the custard creams, although the packet was empty.
Dave confessed to three additional building offences while his accountability window was apparently still open.
Flat 5 demanded the return of his protein powder.
Flat 3 kept asking Kevin to show us his face again.
Kevin communicated exclusively through the noticeboard.
MEETING AGENDA:
NEVER GO IN WALL AGAIN
BISCUITS ARE POWERFUL
OAKMERE EVIL CONFIRMED
JON SCREAMS LIKE KETTLE
“I did not scream like a kettle.”
The letters rearranged.
WHISTLING LITTLE BASTARD.
Linda tapped her clipboard.
“We need to discuss what we learned.”
The mould stopped moving.
The lobby became quiet.
Oakmere had created Kevin.
Or changed him.
Used him.
They had done the same thing to others.
Possibly hundreds of others.
And somewhere inside their system, Derek might still exist.
A drawer.
A file.
A retained resident.
I looked at the noticeboard.
“You heard him too?”
The mould slowly wrote:
YEAH.
“The second voice?”
YEAH.
“Was it really him?”
The mould hesitated.
Then:
HE CALLED ME DICKHEAD.
“That sounds promising.”
BEST EVIDENCE WE HAVE.
Linda wrote something down.
Flat 3 asked, “So what now?”
The mould remained still for a long time.
Then it spread across the entire noticeboard.
Large black letters appeared.
WE FIND DEREK.
Nobody joked.
Not even Dave.
Then the communal printer started making noises.
We did not own a communal printer.
Paper slid from beneath the suggestion box.
One page.
Then another.
Then dozens.
Photographs scattered across the lobby floor.
Buildings.
Hundreds of them.
Each marked with the three-circle symbol.
On the back of every photograph was an Oakmere site number.
Flat 5 picked one up.
“This one’s nearby.”
Linda picked up another.
“So is this.”
The printer produced one final page.
A staff directory.
Most names had been blacked out.
One remained visible.
KVN-014 — ENTRY-LEVEL RESIDENT DESTABILISATION
Status:
ROGUE
Beneath it was another record.
DRK-001 — PREMIUM VESSEL / FAMILY PLAN ADMINISTRATOR
Status:
ACTIVE
Kevin appeared in front of us again.
Fully visible this time.
For nearly five seconds.
He stared at the page.
His face looked younger when he wasn’t joking.
More frightened.
More human.
Then his body flickered.
The mould on the wall wrote:
ACTIVE IS GOOD RIGHT?
I didn’t know.
Nobody did.
Before I could answer, the lift doors opened.
The featureless woman in the red suit stood inside.
She held a fresh packet of custard creams.
Her smooth face tilted towards Kevin.
The mouth on the back of her head opened.
“You broke Upper Management.”
Kevin’s body vanished.
The mould wrote:
SORRY.
The woman stepped into the lobby.
“Do not apologise.”
She placed the biscuits on Linda’s clipboard.
“Promotion is available.”
Linda looked at the packet.
Then at her.
“For Kevin?”
The woman’s head turned all the way around.
Her mouth smiled.
“No.”
Every phone in the building buzzed.
A notification appeared from an app none of us had downloaded.
OAKMERE INTERNAL VACANCY
DIRECTOR OF RESIDENT RESISTANCE
APPLICANT NOMINATED: LINDA
Linda stared at the screen.
Kevin’s mould spread violently across the wall.
ABSOLUTELY NOT.
The lift doors began closing.
The woman in red stepped backwards into the darkness.
Just before she disappeared, she pointed at the staff directory.
“Find the administrator.”
The doors shut.
Linda looked at us.
Flat 3 looked at Kevin’s mould.
Dave looked guilty despite having done nothing.
Flat 5 opened the custard creams.
I looked down at Derek’s record.
ACTIVE.
Then my phone rang.
The caller ID said:
DEREK
I answered.
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then a familiar voice whispered:
“Mate?”
I couldn’t breathe.
“Derek?”
Something scratched against the other end of the line.
He spoke quickly.
“They know Kevin got out.”
The mould on the wall went still.
“Where are you?”
“I don’t know.”
A door slammed somewhere behind him.
Derek lowered his voice.
“I think I’m inside an app.”
“What?”
“There are other people here.”
Another door slammed.
Closer.
“They keep making us leave reviews.”
The line crackled.
Then Derek said:
“Whatever you do, don’t update SpookMe.”
My phone screen went black.
A loading bar appeared.
SPOOKME UPDATE AVAILABLE
INSTALLING: 1%
Kevin’s mould exploded across the entire lobby.
TURN OFF WIFI.
Dave ran towards the maintenance cupboard.
Flat 5 grabbed his emergency spoon.
Linda raised her clipboard.
The update reached two percent.
Then three.
From somewhere inside the wall, hundreds of phones began ringing.
And for the first time, Kevin appeared without being forced.
Full body.
One trainer.
Faded tracksuit.
Terrified expression.
He looked at me.
“Jon.”
It was the first time he had said my name without a joke attached.
“What?”
The update reached four percent.
Kevin turned towards the wall of ringing phones.
Then back to us.
“Derek’s bringing something with him.”