The moonlight spilled in silver puddles across the Bellridge courtyard, ghosting the ivy-covered walls and silent archways. Harper kept low, moving like a shadow. Her flashlight stayed off until she was deep enough inside not to be seen from the windows.
This time, the halls felt colder. Not just the kind of cold you blame on bad heating--this was deep, bone-hollow cold. The kind that presses against your lungs.
Her shoes made almost no sound, but the silence still felt wrong, as if it were listening.
She reached the barricaded corridor.
The West Hall.
The yellowed caution tape fluttered slightly, and the air smelled faintly of ozone and damp stone.
Harper took a breath, ducked under it, and stepped into the dark.
Back to the Beginning
Everything was as she remembered.
Cracked floor tiles. A wall of faded lockers, some still marked with long-erased names. A broken clock frozen at 3:14. Her flashlight beam bounced off peeling walls, sweeping across broken glass and discarded folders.
And then—there it was.
Room 13A.
Still not on the school map. Still scratched out of reality. But standing here, its door creeked on rusty hinges, Harper felt the full weight of its presence. The quiet around it felt heavier, as if the air forgot how to move.
She stepped closer.
The door creaked open with a sigh.
Inside Again
The room smelled like old paper and something metallic. Dust clung to every surface. The bunk bed was still there, its mattress missing. The ceiling still had those odd, faded symbols, some barely visible now.
Harper stepped inside slowly, heart pounding.
She reached for the underside of the top bunk, where she used to tape secret notes to herself last year. Maybe one would still be there.
But instead, her fingers brushed something new.
Fresh paper.
She tugged it free, unfolding it with trembling hands.
The note was written in the same hurried scrawl she remembered from Jamie.
"They know you're looking. You're close. Room 13A doesn't erase. It stores. And not just people--versions. Don't trust reflections. They remember differently."
She stared at the paper.
Versions.
Versions of who?
The Wall
Then she saw it.
The back wall.
It hadn't been like that before.
Now, smeared in something brownish-red--maybe ink, maybe not--was a message written across the plaster:
"SHE'S STILL HERE."
The words were uneven, like someone had written them while shaking or in a hurry.
Harper's breath hitched. Her flashlight flickered, then steadied.
She turned slowly, every part of her screaming to run-but she didn't.
Instead, she pulled out her notebook, wrote down everything-every symbol on the ceiling, the message, the note from Jamie.
And then-
From behind the wardrobe, a whisper.
Soft. Childlike.
"…Harper?"
She froze.
"Jamie?"
No answer.
She stepped forward, heart thudding in her ears, and pulled open the old wooden wardrobe door.
It was empty.
Except---
At the bottom lay a torn scrap of photo. Old. Faded.
Two children stood smiling, holding paper lanterns.
One of them was Harper.
But the other…
His face was scratched out.
"Who was he? who is this guy? Why is this guy with ME??" all these questions round her mind what can it be...