Even if Monday nights tried their best, nothing could keep Toronto quiet.

  It was after-hours at the Royal Ontario Museum. The pce with dim with soft lights beaming over the building’s many artifacts and dispys. Footsteps echoed throughout the building, courtesy of the pce’s wat. Security personnel patrolled the floors, fshlights out in case one of them sensed something lurking in the shadows.

  Seldom did anyone sneak in without giving themselves away with some foolish fumble, like toug a dispy case rigged with a sensuarding the ROM was an easy job, so a lot of the guys took to rexing. Around the museum there were tables topped neers with chairs, if anyone wao take a load off a caught up on the news.

  The security office was in the basement. Vic, a middle-aged man with creases on his forehead, had his coffee cup in hand and his eyes on the many monitors taking in security footage from across the museum. He sat at the desk with the coffee maker and radio behind him, the radi sports talk out into the crete halls.

  Two hosts chatted on the programme.

  “ Monday is Thanksgiving. I don’t know about you, but in my family, we always hosted the big dinner on a Sunday.”

  “We do Saturday, actually!”

  “I’d prefer Saturday, holy, but it’s not my choice. I’m not going to pass up a Thanksgiving dinner because of a Sunday. My wife’s mom, she knows how to roast a bird.”

  Vic turhe volume down when he saw Raul approach the door, a tall & lean man with a trimmed but well-rounded beard.

  “How’s the night looking?” asked Raul, leaning into the door frame.

  “As lively as my mom’s retirement home!” said Vic.

  Raul caught that Vic was listening to sports radio and thought to stir up some versation. “Hey– who you rooting for iionals?”

  Viished a loud slurp of coffee. “The Cubs. The Marlins traded in some guy named Spooneybarger. Spooneybarger– you believe this? How am I supposed to take them seriously?”

  Raul chuckled and lifted himself off the frame a back out to watch the grounds, twirling a fshlight. Vic waited until Raul was twenty paces away before he turhe radio back up.

  The museum was not an easy pce to break into, but nobody repared for superhuman powers. Above the prairie animals exhibit, something rumbled in the vents. The subtle railed down from the roof until hit a grille above a dispy case for prairie rodents. Through the bdes of the gate, a purple liquid emerged and drained down on a roof of the case. Moonlight came in through the window and shimmered on the liquid as it poured out of the vent but instead of spreading over the surfad spilling over the edges, the puddle grew vertical, rising like bread.

  As it absorbed all of the purple water flowing from above, the puddle rose and developed a shape. Out of its form, the figure grew arms, legs and a head. The liquid on the surface of his body and legs solidified to make a tank top and pants in the same hue appeared on its body and two eyes appeared is head.

  He smiled. “I’m in!”

  It was Kay, water beiraordinaire.

  The boy hopped off the top of the dispy and hit the ground with a loud sp– louder than he felt fortable with. You got to keep quiet, he told himself. He peered down the halls to see if there atrolling security guards around, but he couldn’t see anything. Nor could he hear anything. As far as he ed, he was aloh all of the museum’s works for him to see.

  He rexed and strolled around the room, taking a ga a stuffed buffalo– or was it a model? Kay thought he heard footsteps ing up the way but when he peaked out into the hallways, he didn’t see anybody nearby. Although, he could hear some voices in the distance. He would have to be careful.

  He kept to the shadows and moved around the building, going down a floor to find the Egyptian exhibit. There was a security guard there so Kay waited in darkness until the guard took his walk away from the viity before Kay popped out and strutted around the flazing at items around the room.

  History and culture weren’t things Kay was ied in, but it was o be strolling through a famous museum when no other visitors were there. Aside from dodging security guards, he had the whole pself.

  He saw one of those faian coffins ying down in a dispy case. He walked up to it, reminding himself not to touything. He kept his arms– two extensions of his fluid body– at his sides.

  “Whoa,” said Kay with the volume a gentle breeze. “Fancy.”

  He looked around the room at all the pieces of Egyptian culture. The Egyptian exhibit was heavily promoted ba grade five when his css went on a trip to the ROM. Kay had to miss out because he got the flu that week. After all those years, he found his way to the museum and the Egyptian dispy lived up to the hype!

  Travelling around the museum, he turned a er and found the se with the prehistori exhibits. There were some dioramas, man-made pletely, but in some of the smaller cases an assortment of old tools, ons and clothing were dispyed– all of them sorted in varying gss cases.

  Kay walked up to a diorama with a couple prehistori attag a woolly mammoth. For a sed he wondered if the mammoth was a taxidermied one like the one upstairs but then he remembered that mammoth weinct long before taxidermy was a thing. Kay read the pque in front of the arra: Befriculture, human tribes relied on hunting and fing to survive.

  He looked at the mammoth, its front legs up– ready to crush the men attag it with spears and stone axes.

  Kay chuckled and turned away from the dispy. He pictured an imaginary crout his hand out, imitating the mannerisms of a schor. “Here we have early man hunting a mammoth, providing enough food to st them until the medieval age.”

  The boy smirked. He really had a knack for being funny when nobody was around. The boy’s smirk dropped and he looked around the museum, everything still and dead. He suddenly felt the emptiness of the pce.

  Vit over to the coffee maker to get himself another cup. The radio hollered in his ear as he took the cup underh the spout a his cup fill up with a bck pool. The night was young so he kept his hands off the sugar and milk. Bck as a midnight pool, but at a higher temperature. Vic took a good sip the back to his seat, staring off into space as he got the skim on hockey.

  “Looking ahead to the 2003-2004 season,” said the radio host, “the Leafs are adapting to the switch-up nicely, says new GM John Ferguson Jr. With Quinn fully focused on coag, he hopes to take the Leafs to the cup.”

  “When you got the guy that won ada gold at the Olympics,” said the other host, “that’s where you want him. On the ice, with whistle in hand.”

  Viodded, taking a sip from his coffee. His eyes sed the monitors, but everything seemed fine. No artifacts out of pce, and men walking their patrols. All the guards had their fshlights on, keeping the area safe. All but one, actually. Vic got up and looked closer at the fel walking through the Greek dispy: he was a little small for a security guard.

  Wait, he wasn’t a security guard!

  Vic grabbed his radio. “Report. We have an intruder wandering the Greek se.”

  “On it,” replied another.

  Vic kept the radio in hand as he watched the situation. He gazed at the perp: the intruder didn’t look like he had a real head. His arms danced in the light, too. Was something wrong with the camera, or was the museum utack by some kind of spectre?

  Kay didn’t have a furious i in a history but it was hard not to be wowed by the many pieces of Greek art occupying the gallery. He walked through the showcase a his eyes feast on the mahetic pleasures. Even the walls were decorated with murals. The most impressive sights were the statues though.

  The watery d looked over a headless statue. A Greece might have been old, old times but somebody knew how to put a statue together, even if that statue cked a head.

  Greek culture sure was nice when it wasn’t being pushed in Kay’s face.

  The aquatic boy went up to a vase with art painted on the side. It was a nice vase and the art was eye-catg. Between the man painted on the vase fully exposing himself and a particur statue of a dy with no clothing on, Kay could imagihere would have been some smirking and snickering on that fifth grade trip he missed.

  “Hey you!”

  Kay looked over to the gallery entrance see Raul, a security guard with a fshlight tight in his hand. The man approached.

  “Shooooot!” said Kay. He looked around for an escape and saw a vent in the er above a et of gssware. It was time to scram. Kay took off running, taking a mighty hop over a floor case full of Greek tableware.

  Raul went at Kay with a heavy dash and a fierce expression but that dash slowed to a stop and that expression of ferocity loosened as the man got a better look at who he was chasing. The intruder’s body looked to be made of some kind of psma. Raul had to rub his eyes as watched the intruder sink into a ball and then bst up on top of the et, its purple form shining in the light like a pond underh the moon.

  Isaac, a middle-aged guard of shorter stature, came running iher entrance, fshlight away and ready to grab a punk. He saw the perp moving across atop the et. “Get down from there!”

  He was w why Raul was staring and not doing anything but then Isaac got a better look at the creep and saw that the creep’s fad arms were looking more like slime than flesh, with light passing through the wobbly shapes. The creature hopped up into a vent, pushing itself through the gate and out of sight, at least that was until the slime creature dropped back out, falling on the et.

  That vent was blocked with a seal Kay couldn’t squeeze through.

  Kay reformed into his personable form. “Nuts!”

  Isaac walked up to the et and got Raul’s attention with a hand-wave. “Help me up.”

  Raul took Isaac’s side and held his hands out for Isaac to step upon. Raised up to the top of the et, Isaac had the intruder at arm’s length but when the man got a look at the creature– the humanoid stranger with a body made of some kind of alien substance– Isaac lost his nerve. He didn’t want to touch that.

  “Grab it!” said Raul, struggling to hold up the weight of his co-worker.

  Kay looked around. He saw another et against the wall across the room he could jump– although it would take a mightier kind of jump. He pressed himself down, his body features dissolving into a ball of water, then sprung out, firing himself across the room and over to the wall.

  “Oh for the love of Pete!” said Isaac.

  He hopped down from Raul’s grasp and the two rao Kay, Raul rotating his arms to twist out the pain he garnered holding up his co-worker.

  Kay walked dowop of the seal wall, passing over pipes and dug under vents. The Greek se was on one side of the wall with the security guards closing in on Kay’s distance from below, and oher side was anallery although Kay didn’t have the time to see which theme it was going with.

  “You there!” shouted another security guard, looking up at Kay from the gallery below, “Stop!”

  More security personnel were gathering and it was only going to get worse the longer Kay stayed. He saw another duct with its opening hanging above the gallery. The water boy swung off of a pipe onto the top of that vent’s end, rattling it with his body weight. He had to arc his body down into the grille, but he pushed his aquatic body through the slots and after his head rematerialized oher side, he saw that nothing was blog the vent, so that was his way out.

  The security guards looked up at a monster, its body pressing through the shutters. It was a couple metres off the ground; nobody was going to be able to reach it. Isaac looked around and saw a dder resting by the water fountaiook it over beh the dud snapped out the legs so that it could be pced. Raul and the uy pressed down the hooks to sturdy the apparatus and also to voluhemselves to hold the dder, leaving Isaac the one who would actually climb up and nab the creature.

  Isaac was regretting not taking that job at that pig farm out of Listowel.

  Kay had his head in the vent, but getting the rest of his body inside was going to be a challenge. If he dropped his legs, it likely would have pulled him out of the vent and had him crash to the floor. Not ideal, especially since bickering was heard below and it sounded like the security guards were right there waiting to capture him.

  What to do… what to do…

  If he trated, Kay could melt his body so that he could slip right into the vent a out of there. He wasn’t good at doing something so intricate with his watery form and he was feeling the heat ing up from below, so he didn’t have the time to pull off that maneuver. Instead, he put one of his arms– his shoulders still outside the duct– up to the gate a seep through to join his head ihe vent. He gripped the vent as best as he could from within– pushing his arm up into the top er of the corridor– and snapped his other arm through the gate. There wasn’t a lot of room in the vent but when you were posed of magical water, getting squeezed together wasn’t as unfortable as it would be if flesh.

  His legs, liquid feet pnted on top of the duct, were curved around the edge of the vent so tightly that his feet lost grip, slipping off the edge of the top of the vent and flopping out over the room.

  The vent ed and Kay yelped, the weight of his legs pulling his body out of the vent.

  Isaac took another slow step up the dder, ready to grab the psma being hanging out of the vent– kig its legs in all dires like a chi with its head cut off. He didn’t know what he was going to do if he actually got a hand around the creature’s body, but that roblem for future Isaac. At the moment, he was still climbing steps.

  Kay pushed his arms out and pressed against the duct ers hard to slow his fall out of the vent. With the grille sliding up his torso towards his head, Kay raised his ko the gate, but couldn’t get them high enough to ehe gate. Even pressed hard against the walls, his body drifted out of the vent.

  “No, no, no, no!” said Kay.

  In one final try, he whipped his knees up ahem break apart into a liquid spsh so that they smacked oe aed into the rest of his body. The weight dragging Kay out of the vent rexed and he was able to climb himself back up into the duct while his melted legs draihrough the gate. Once most of his form had passed through into the vent, he let his entire body melt into a slime ball and he glided through the vent, looking around for a.

  Isaac sighed and climbed down from the vent. Raul kept his ears open to hear where the intruder was going but the vents quickly went silent. The spectre has disappeared.

  The uard got the radio. “The intruder slipped into the vents, heading up to the roof.” He put the radio on his belt and ran off, leaving Isaad Raul behind.

  The two guards couldn’t believe what they had seen. Was someone pulling a prank on them? Was it a magic trick or some kind of new hologram teology?

  Isaac looked around at the room, looking over the gallery’s assortment of statues, jars, and art. He gestured a finger around the room. “Y-you don’t think one of these things could be haunted, do ya?”

  “I don’t know, Isaac,” said Raul, pg his hands on sides and looking up above the gallery, retrag the path that the intruder took on its way out. The thing moved like a living ball of Silly Putty.

  Isaac remembered when he walked in the Greek gallery Raul was standing there, staring at the creature. Isaac spped Raul on the shoulder. “Hey! You got a good look at it. What did it look like?”

  Raul shook his head, staring into space. “I don’t know. It was some kind of ghost thing!”