Free Only Darkness by Danuta Reah

stairs to the top corridor – there was a story here – and began a narrative in her head in which someone was standing where she was standing, her back against the window, watching through the crazed glass in the swing doors, the shadow of
something
stalking her, knowing she was trapped in a dead end with no way out but the eighty-foot drop through the window behind her.
    Footsteps beyond the doors brought her back to earth – the sound was heavy and solid. A man, then. She peered backdown the corridor into the shadows, and saw a shape loom against the glass. The door opened, and Les came through, carrying a bunch of keys. He looked at Debbie.
    ‘Morning,’ he said. Should she explain what she was doing? He didn’t seem curious, but he must have wondered. As he came towards her, she said, ‘I was just looking at those places that you tell the stories about, you know, the ghosts.’
    ‘Not me.’ Les looked dour. ‘It’ll be one of those young ones telling you a lot of nonsense. I’ve worked here near on forty year, and I’ve never seen any ghosts.’
    ‘But they’re good stories. I was trying to remember that one that was supposed to have happened one Christmas – I’m sure it was you that told me.’
    ‘Oh, you mean the footsteps on the long staircase.’ Les seemed reluctant to tell the story at first, but Debbie had remembered it as soon as he mentioned the staircase.
    The long staircase was originally a fire escape. It ran in a spiral down the inside of a tower-like structure built at the point where the corridors ended. An external fire escape now served the building. The doors that led on to the long staircase were nailed up and had been since before Debbie started work at the college. The only way on to it now was through the IT resource centre. At the back of the room was the old fire exit with a push-bar handle. Students no longer used the long staircase which led out into the lane behind the college, and now it was mostly used for storage. It was dark even on the sunniest day.
    The story that Les was telling was about a caretaker who had gone down the staircase one night to check that the outside door was locked. He went down the stairs and checked the door. He didn’t check anything else, because there was nothing else to check. As he was climbing back up the staircase, slowly, because it was late and he wasn’t a young man, there was a sudden draught, the door above him slammed shut and the light went out. He stopped, because it gave him a shock to be suddenly in the dark, then went on, a bit more quickly now. It was cold and somehow unpleasant, at night, on the stairs, in the dark. Then he stopped again. Down below him, on the stairs he’d just climbed, he could hearsomething, something that sounded like footsteps coming lightly and quickly up the stairs behind him, from where there had been nothing but an empty staircase and a locked door. He didn’t wait. He ran as quickly as he could in the dark, up the last two flights to the door that was hard to open from the inside. As he struggled with it, he could hear the footsteps getting closer and moving more quickly as they came towards his landing. He managed to get the door open, was through it and had it shut and bolted behind him more quickly than he thought was possible. He was leaning against the door getting his breath when something struck it with such force he was knocked to the ground. But nothing was ever found on the staircase to account for it.
    When Debbie had first heard the story of the footsteps that came from nowhere, pursuing their victim in the dark, the hairs had stood up on her arms. That would be an excellent story to tell the students. She could take them on to the stairs, show them.
    The double doors were pushed open, making them both jump, and Les fumbled with his key ring as Rob Neave came into view. ‘On the warpath today,’ he muttered.
    Neave saw Debbie, and made some attempt to hide his irritation. ‘I want you