The Thing In The Vents

My neighbor was the first to go missing.

I didn’t pay much attention to the others on my floor, so it wasn’t until the police showed up outside her door, the one just across from mine, that I knew something was wrong. The woman’s son had called the landlord, Mrs. Fisher, when his mother failed to answer her phone. Sadly, the investigation was over before it even began. The police had zero leads, and there was no real “incriminating” evidence to speak of. Just another unsolved case.

The situation became much more odd about three weeks later. Somehow, the woman’s mail ended up in my mailbox by mistake. I didn’t know what else to do with it, so I took it over to Mrs. Fisher so she could take care of it. She looked confused as she read the address.

“B16? That’s strange,” she said. “No one’s lived there for years.”

“That can’t be right,” I replied. “What about that woman who vanished a few weeks back?”

Mrs. Fisher looked at me as if I were from Mars. “What woman?”

I pointed to the envelopes on her desk. She turned to her computer, quickly typing in the woman’s name before turning back to me.

“I don’t have that name on file. Maybe it was meant for a different building.”

The maintenance man came next.

I was leaving for work when I saw him enter the now empty apartment. I knew why he was there; tenants were complaining about noises coming from the air vents, mainly in the vacant space, and Mrs. Fisher was surprised to find they hadn’t been serviced in quite a while.

I returned from work to find one of my other neighbors arguing with her.

"There’s something in those vents, I tell you!” he shouted. “Can’t get any damn sleep because of it!”

Mrs. Fisher simply nodded, typing away at her computer. “I understand, Bob. I’ll call maintenance as soon as possible.”

“Didn’t you just call them today?” I piped up. “I saw a guy go in there earlier.”

Both Bob and Mrs. Fisher agreed that no maintenance man had come to the complex. Mrs. Fisher recalled phoning someone, but after checking her most recent calls, she decided it must have been someone else.

The noises in the vents got louder and more frequent as the weeks went by. More maintenance workers entered the empty apartment, and failed to come back out. Eventually, the company just stopped answering Mrs. Fisher’s calls.

Bob was furious. I didn’t know him all that well, but I’ve spent enough time in the building to know he was the type of person to take matters into his own hands. I was pulled away from a movie by the sound of his attempts to break down the door across the hall. Being a rather bulky guy, it didn’t take him long. I knew it wasn’t my business to interfere, but I knew something wasn’t right about that apartment. The least I could do was watch his back for him; buddy system and all that.

The first thing I noticed when I stepped in was the dust. It covered nearly every surface in a thin coat, and the air was just as musty and old. I could even make out the outlines of some footprints, likely left behind by the missing maintenance men. Everything except the furniture was gone, the woman’s belongings having been passed on to her son.

“Damn, this thing’s spacious,” Bob’s voice rang out.

I turned the corner just in time to see his shoes disappear into the vent, the cover sliding back into place.

Instinct took over, and I quickly ran to the vent and yanked the cover off.

It was definitely a face that greeted me, and it was definitely human, but it definitely wasn’t Bob, a maintenance man, or the poor old woman.

It was rectangular in shape, taking up the entirety of the vent is resided in. There were two eyes and a mouth, but no nose. It just sat there, smiling at me with its bright white teeth. Slowly, an arm, too much like a baby’s arm, emerged from underneath it, before putting a chubby pink finger to its lips. Another arm, a much more gangly one, squeezed out from above it, stretching out towards the vent cover in my hand. I let the object slip out of my hand, watching as the thing pulled it back over its face, disappearing from view.