THE WOMAN IN white was eating lightbulbs.

Simon couldn’t take his eyes off her. It was horrible. She had found a cupboard on the third-floor corridor—six meters from the closet in which Simon was hiding—and had begun rifling through its contents.

Linens had been experimentally sniffed and idly tossed aside, forming lonely snowdrifts on the floor. A first-aid kit had been emptied out, its contents separated with a toe and then methodically stamped apart. Now she was opening boxes of lightbulbs, shaking the spheres out into her palm and peering into them before closing her teeth round their fragile domes.

Crunch.

It was dawning on Simon that she hadn’t been searching the cupboard; she was just destroying whatever she found. There was no urgency in her movements, and a strange look of amusement creased her skin. Unfortunately, that meant Simon had no idea how long she might stay there, blocking the corridor—his only access to the classroom wing.

It was pure luck she hadn’t seen him. An unexplainable feeling of dread had made him seek refuge in a broom cupboard, cracking the door open a hair just in time to see her appear at the top of the stairs.

Maybe he had heard her without even realizing it. Maybe he’d felt her presence or the air her movements displaced. Maybe the animal part of his brain was taking over—all the prehistoric instincts you didn’t use in the modern world.

Simon didn’t know or care. All that mattered was that he hadn’t been caught.

Suddenly, the woman’s head jerked to one side, as if she smelled his relief. She spat out a dry clot of glass and carefully closed the cupboard door, head cocked like a hound’s.

Simon froze, taking his hand off the door so it settled back against the jamb, hiding her from view. His heart pounded, louder and louder—Stop, stop, she’ll hear it!—and the floor creaked as she took a step toward him.

Don’t panic.

With the door closed, she was more of a collection of sounds than a physical presence, sounds that Simon had to assemble in his head—a process that wasn’t doing anything for his heart rate.

Periodic creaks. Steps. She doesn’t care about being quiet—why would she? A drawling rasp—breathing roughened by glass. A cascade of stiff, mechanical pops that Simon realized in horror were her fingers clenching and unclenching. Had he not seen her with his own two eyes, he wouldn’t have believed it was a person out there at all—just a machine, gaunt and terrible, bearing down upon him.

More terrifying than that, though, were the silences. Silence meant he had no idea