[ IP ] The darkness extends itself ever welcomingly ...

The dark-skinned boy in the green hoodie stood under the harsh, flickering fluorescence of the empty nurse's office, magazines scattered about the room in haphazard piles and dust-motes dancing languidly in shafts of sunlight above wilted, potted-plants; his enraptured gaze drawn to the news story playing out on the TV above the vacant reception desk. A scrolling, flashing marquee ran along the screen's bottom and an excited newscaster clad in blue pin-stripe relayed a tale of soldiers and secrets, of deserts and ruins and things long buried'neath twisting sands and forgotten oases. 
 
 So engrossed in conjecture and excitement was he, that when the steel-shod, double-doors leading within the infirmary's sterile embrace squealed open, he almost did n't notice. The boy glanced towards the portal and back to the television... and then back to the doors and what lay beyond them. 
 
 Darkness greeted him beyond that threshold, an oubliette instead where shifting, dappled shadows and familiar shapes ought to be. Hackles standing and goose-flesh rising, the boy took an unconscious step back from that unnatural blight. No mere absence of light was this, an inky blackness so dense and uniform that his eyes could not pierce it as if it had never touched the warmth of the sun and rejected the very concept of luminosity. Long he stared into that liquid dark, like the sheen of crude over pristine waters. The boy's head spun and his breath caught in his throat and he was overcome by a terrible sense of vertigo as if he were being pulled into that dread night and pushed away from it all while the floor tilted under his feet towards that great, glooming wall of purest black. 
 
 Another step backwards he took and then another still, backwards near the door behind that lead to sanctuary's hallowed halls. The darkness pulsed and pulled and quivered in the blotted threshold and then, the blackness spoke. 
 
 `` Well, what luck I must have! Saved! By young Wick no less, it seems. Here boy, come to me, please. Oh wo n't you lend your light to me? Trapped I am, you see. Locked inside this dreadful box, I stood and took stock and the lights gave out above,'' beckoned the darkness' familiar voice, to Mr. Phrastus, the nurse it appeared that it belonged. 
 
 Wick stood still, peering into the mouth of that abattoir, trying in vain to see the white-haired, old man inside the darkness and failing. He swallowed around his dried-out tongue and passed the lump forming in his throat, hands-shaking, stomach clenching. 
 
 `` M-Mr. Phrastus? Ca n't you just use the light on your phone, uh, sir?'' asked Wick quietly, instincts screaming at him to run, to not get an iota close to that all-consuming, maddening dark. 
 
 The darkness paused, thoughtful, and spoke once more, its voice echoed strangely as if from across a great divide. `` Ah, embarrassing though it is, Wick, truthful I shall be. I forgot my phone at home and have no light at all by which to see. You though, vibrant, virile youth, have light yet to spare within. It's outline in your pocket plain; wo n't you please lend that light to me? Here, come closer child, and let us speak of what together we could be.'' 
 
 Wick wanted to turn and run, terrified as he was. The blackened maw shimmied and shimmered and the room grew cold enough for the boy's breath to cloud and swirl in the air. The light further dimmed and he shivered as crackling frost climbed the walls and his worn shoes. The darkness pulsed and four-fingered hands erupted from its rippling surface. They slithered across the walls, and floors and ceilings, all towards the frozen boy, the clawed fingers grasped and squeezed, clutching, their desire made apparent. Ten-thousand lambent, yellow eyes opened in the shadowed pool and their baleful gaze swept across Wick and there they stayed, wide and staring. 
 
 The boy screamed and turned to run as the darkness laughed behind him. His heart's erratic thumping hammered in his ears and his blood flowed like ice through his veins as he struggled for breath, shaking, his fear-slicked sweat frozen to his skin... he made the exit door and slid to a stop, confused. In the threshold's light of day, stood Mr. Phrastus' beaming face, a bagel dangling from his munching mouth. 
 
 `` Hello there, child,'' the aging nurse mumbled round his breakfast, `` what troubles you today?'' 
 
 Wick swayed, quavering and trembling, breathing hard, eyes wild and afraid. He spun about to the infirmary doors, to where the monstrous blackness had lain, and found nothing save for dappled, shadowed light. 
 
 EDIT: Clarity of purpose
