Episode 43 - Exit, Stage Lurch

Jack blinked at the figure now standing halfway between him and the front door.

“Uh… mate?” he asked, voice uncertain. “You okay?”

Lurch said nothing.

Just stood. Tall. Still. Eyes like grave dust under starlight.

Then, gently—impossibly gently—he reached out with one pale hand and gripped Jack’s shoulder.

Not hard. Just final.

“Out,” Lurch said again.

The effect was immediate.

The sound in the lobby changed. The air thinned and cooled. The lights dimmed—not darker, but quieter.

Jack tried to laugh.

It came out wrong. Like a bark in a vacuum.

“Alright, alright, I get it,” he said, tugging half-heartedly at his shoulder. “Joke’s over. I’ll go.”

Lurch did not release him.

Instead, he turned.

And walked.

With Jack.

Who followed.

Not by force. Not by fear.

By presence.

The front doors opened without a sound.

The wind didn’t blow.

The world outside seemed too bright now.

And Jack? He didn’t say goodbye.

He didn’t even look back.

The doors shut.

The air reset.

And Olivia sat very, very still.

“Who,” she said carefully, “was that?”

“The visitor?” Charles asked.

“No. The other one.”

The crew exchanged a glance.

Then Miss LaDonna said, serenely:

“That was Lurch.”

Bernard floated a little lower. “Maintenance. Janitorial. Mechanical.”

“And when needed,” Charles added, “Security.”

“He doesn’t say much,” LaDonna finished. “But he sees everything.”

Olivia’s ears flicked back once. “How long has he worked here?”

Charles snorted. “Longer than the building.”

Bernard added, “He keeps things clean. Spatially. Temporally. Emotionally.”

LaDonna sipped her tea. “And politely.”

Olivia looked at the front door.

At the hatch in the floor. Which had quietly sealed itself again. And was now just a rug once more.

“…I see,” she said.

“Do you?” Charles asked.

“No,” she replied. “But I’m sure I will.”

And from somewhere beneath the floorboards, a very faint voice—Jack’s—muttered:

“...how’d I end up in Adelaide…”