Crawlers

11:14pm

'Wow,' said Samantha. 'This is your way out?' 

Ben watched as her eyes flicked around the broom cupboard, taking in the details. 

She smirked. 'No offence or anything, but it's a bit crap, isn't it?' 

'I thought,' said Ben, attempting to regain some control over the situation, 'that the idea was that everyone was going to wait for my signal. What are you doing here?' 

'Fancied a change of scene,' said Samantha blithely. Then: 'Turn around.' 

'Why?' 

'Because I'm coming down, I'm in a skirt, and I don't want you eyeing up my knickers. Obviously.' 

'Oh,' said Ben, colouring slightly. 'Right.' He turned to face the door. He heard scuffling, wriggling, the slap of feet meeting floor, then Samantha was in the broom cupboard with him. 

'You can turn back now.' 

When he did so, Samantha was smiling and looking him straight in the eye. Both legs of her black school tights were laddered, exposing bare, pale skin. Her white school blouse was smeared with dust and dirt from the ceiling cavity. Her face was grubby. Her blonde hair was tousled. As she stood there, hand on hip, Ben was uncomfortably aware that the broom cupboard, no palace to begin with, seemed to have halved in size. 

'Look at this place,' said Samantha, still grinning. 'Lauren's going to freak. She's claustrophobic, remember?' 

'Lauren's coming too?' asked Ben, horrified. 'What for?' 

'Same reason as me,' said Samantha. 'Because we thought you'd found us a way out. Or were you maybe planning to ditch us all and go off by yourself, like your mate said?' 

'Josh isn't my mate.' 

'Is anyone?' asked Samantha, innocently. 

Ben frowned at her. 'I was just about to climb back up,' he said. 'I was going tell everyone this was a dead end.' 

'Whatever,' said Samantha, losing interest in him and looking instead at the surrounding shelves and their contents. 

'Can't you go tell Lauren to go back?' he asked. 

'She's probably halfway here by now. She'll have had a bad enough time just getting on the bar-thing. If I tell her to go back, she'll just freeze completely, then we'll be stuck here. In this cupboard.' Samantha smirked again. 'Just the two of us.' 

Ben was starting to get infuriated. Samantha was so impossible, he found himself wanting to say something - anything - to take that smirk off her face. 

'That stuff you said before,' he began. 'You don't seriously think Jasmine's got a crawler on her, do you?' 

Samantha's eyes glittered. 'Why? D'you fancy her or something?' 

'No,' said Ben. Then: 'Well, that's got nothing to do with it.' 

Samantha raised an eyebrow. 

'What I mean is,' said Ben quickly, 'was that stuff about Jasmine being a traitor just to wind her up, or what?' 

Samantha's eyes narrowed. 'You don't know Jasmine,' she said. 'You never laid eyes on her before tonight.' 

'That's true,' said Ben. 'But-' 

'I'm at school with her,' said Samantha. 'I tell you, she's changed.' 

Ben blinked. 'How do you mean?' 

Before she answered, Samantha looked quickly up at the hole in the false ceiling. Then she took a step closer to Ben. 

'I don't like her,' she said. 'That's no secret, you must have figured that out by now. But do you want to know why?' 

'If you like.' 

'She's cold,' said Samantha. She grimaced. 'Unfriendly. Her first day at Swatham I tried to get talking to her, we all did, but she blanked us. It's been the same ever since. Oh, in class she's always first with her hand up, always brown-nosing - but outside? Nothing.' Samantha sneered. 'Jasmine's too good for the rest of us. She's always kept herself to herself. Only, now...' She frowned. 

'What?' said Ben. 

'Now she won't shut up! The whole night she's yapping - we should do this, we shouldn't do that. Worse than your mate Josh.' 

'I told you,' said Ben, 'he's not my-' 

'Listen,' said Samantha, stepping so close to Ben now that he could feel the warm breath that came with her words. 'Something's definitely different about Jasmine tonight. The way she speaks, the way she's been acting - she's not normally like this. So watch her, that's all I'm saying.' 

Ben had heard almost the exact same words, he realized, from Jasmine herself. But he was distracted: over the last minute or so, while Samantha had been speaking, Ben had begun to hear a strange sound. It was a sort of low groaning, punctuated by moments of silence so regular that they seemed almost mechanical. 

'AWWW-huh-huh-hurr,' it went. Then again: 'AWWW-huh-huh-hurr.' 

The sound was getting louder as it came closer. It was coming from the ceiling. 

Lauren's face, when it appeared, was already a picture of misery. Tears and snot had left trails in the dirt on her cheeks. Her red eyes rolled in their sockets like those of a frightened horse. The journey through the ceiling cavity had obviously been rough on her. But then, as Samantha had warned, Lauren caught sight of her destination. Her lips puckered, trembled, then parted, releasing a high wail that set Ben's teeth on edge. 

'Quiet!' he barked, in a desperate stage whisper. 'The adults are just down the passage!' 

'Babes,' Samantha commanded. 

'But it's smaller than the other place!' Lauren moaned. 'I can't!' 

'Come on, babes. Come down with us, you'll be fine...' Samantha began to coax Lauren through the movements she would need to make to join them in the cupboard. 

Cursing inwardly, Ben turned to face the door again. 

'Where's Jasmine?' asked Samantha, once Lauren had dropped heavily to the floor. 

'Right here,' said Jasmine - startling Ben again. 

She slipped through the ceiling gap easily, landing neatly on both feet. 

And now there were four of them in there.