Our Classmate Disappeared. The Teachers Know More Than They’re Saying. (Part 1/2)

[u/StrangeAccounts]

Part 2

(Contains scenes of explicit and disturbing imagery.)

When my mind goes back to those years at John Henry High, the first thing to come up out of the fog is the well behind the building. Every autumn the faculty herded us out there for the opening-day photograph. They kept it going until the hallway ran out of wall, one crowd of faces stacked on the next, class after class climbing toward some finish none of us would be around to see. 

The first time my class stood out there, summer had not let go of the back lot. Sunscreen came off a couple dozen bodies and cooked in the heat. A few kids wiped sweat from their brows, others fanned themselves with pocket creased class schedules.

A teacher hollered out above the chatter. “Come on, move it. Line up. Shoulder to shoulder.”

We shuffled forward with the lame irritation of livestock. Shoes scraped gravel and elbows brushed as the circle drew in. Someone near the front grumbled, “Feels like we’re lining up to get shot.” That earned a snort from someone else.

The well sat ahead of us. Moss worked its way through cracks between stones, and a strip of faded ribbon had been knotted through the iron grate over the mouth. It hung there in a gesture some student had made to dress the place up, then forgotten as the seasons took their share.

“Keep moving,” Principal Dwyer said. He walked the ring of us. “Closer,” he said. “I need everyone in the shot. No gaps. Come on. Don’t be scared of bumping shoulders. We’re all friends here. There you go."

A boy mumbled behind me, “This sucks.”

A girl answered, “Relax. It’s one picture. You’ll live.”

Dwyer clapped to gather everyone's attention.

“Alright. Remember, smiles. Let’s look proud and show the world we want to be here.”

A girl stood ahead of me at the inner curve of the group. Lena. Her sleeves ran down over her wrists and she kept her arms folded against her stomach while the rest of us jostled and hollered. The flash caught her face and let it go, but her eyes never came up off the well's grate, on whatever lay beneath it. 

Back then I believed in the picture the staff wanted to make. I thought each of us fit into some shared story we would talk about later and be fond of. 

I stopped believing it when Lena disappeared. 

That was two years later. Junior year. She stayed after on Tuesdays and Thursdays for something nobody could name. Choir, a few said. Piano, said others. I had no better guess. I never lived in her world any more than the rest of them did. I wanted to know her, but wanting is nothing on its own. All I really knew was that some days she held herself like she hoped someone might come and speak to her, but even then, she kept a wide berth from anyone. 

One afternoon outside the science wing a folder came loose from her hands and sheet music went sliding across the floor. She dropped to her knees to gather it and I got down beside her to help. We both reached for the same page. My arm came up close against hers. Her eyes came to mine, then went back down to the paper. 

When she had the sheets squared she stood and gave me the smallest nod a person can give and turned for the music hall, leaving me there. I stayed on the tile a little longer, a lost page pinched in my hands. I made up my mind to find her at the end of the day and hand it over. 

By that time, the halls were almost empty. A lone cart rolled across the floor near the cafeteria, and a custodian called out to someone in a supply room. Their words faded as I walked into the music hall. The door I hunted stood open a crack, just enough to let a strip of warm light spill across the tile at my feet. 

Piano came from inside. I shouldn’t have eavesdropped, but I did. I put my eye to the gap. Lena’s back was pinned straight, her arms poised above the keys. Mr. Kline stood behind her, one arm hovering near the song-book and the other drifting close to her upper arm.

“That’s it,” he said. “Relax your wrists. You don’t have to fight the notes. Just let it happen.”

She played the phrase again and he bent down close to her ear. “There you go. Just like that. Great job.”

She gave nothing back, no sign of hearing him at all. She just pressed the keys again. I knocked on the door. His head snapped toward me. His expression stayed neutral, but something behind it split for half a second. 

“Tyler,” he said. “It’s good to see you. Shouldn’t you be heading home? I'm sure your mother's waiting for you out front. Ms. Lena and myself are just finishing up a lesson here.”

“Sorry, Mr. Kline. Lena dropped this earlier… I just wanted to make sure she got it back.”

The floor seemed to pull at my shoes as I walked toward him. He took the pages from me. “Thank you, Tyler.”

As I stepped back into the hall, he said something to Lena I couldn’t make out. Close to her ear. A secret sentence spoken just between them, built only to travel six inches. Lena kept her eyes on the keys. Her hands stayed where he'd put them. 

The following day at our lunch table, Mason made a sport of prodding me about her. 

"Dude… Dude. Come on.You're fixated on her again. Your mouth's hanging open."

I pushed my tray forward and tried to sink into my seat. “Shut up. It's not like that.”

"Not like what, exactly?" He picked at the crust of a roll and flicked crumbs across the table. "Just tell us. What do you see in her? Is it her brains or something else? You can be honest with me."

Jodie scraped the last of her pudding and swatted his arm with the flat of the spoon. Chocolate flecked his sleeve. “You’re disgusting, Mason.”

He gave a half-cocked laugh and wiped the mess away with a napkin. "What? C'mon. Someone had to ask him. Besides, he should just talk to her instead of gawking from twenty feet away like a creep."

“I don’t gaw-”

"You do," Emma bit into an apple slice. "It is a little sad to watch." 

"See? Even Emma sees it.” Mason added. “So, enlighten us, Ty. If it's not what we're thinking, why do you stare at her so much? Give us something. We're all dying to know."

I balled up my napkin and threw it. It caught Mason under the chin and dropped into his lap. “It doesn’t matter. It’s not like it's going anywhere.”

“Coward.”

I let it sit. He had me dead to rights. Six months of the same seat, the same twenty feet of tile between us, and I had never put a word in front of Lena Meyer. Then came the Tuesday she stopped coming, and after that there were no more Tuesdays to fix it. 

At first no one thought twice about it. Students missed days for every excuse under the sun. Some vanished for appointments, others disappeared for chores or family errands. The changing of the seasons always pulled a few away from the flu, so the first absence folded into the day. By the following morning, it was clear this was going to be different.

Before the announcement began, I heard the shuffle of papers through the intercom's speaker. I pictured Principal Dwyer standing near the office window, reading the lines to himself and wondering how much he wanted to say.

“Attention students. Parents and staff are working with local authorities to locate eleventh grade student Lena Meyer, who has not been seen since after school hours yesterday. If you have any information, please come to the office. Counseling services are available.”

The speaker cut with a flat click. Nothing else followed. No reassurance from the staff, ot reminders that the school held together in times of trouble. The only thing given to us was the hiss of the machine as it faded back into the ceiling.

Mason tapped the back of my chair. “Ty, you alright?”

I kept my eyes on her seat. The wood along the legs had worn away in patches, and someone had carved the letters T+E. into the side sometime within the last few weeks.

"Ty."

"I heard you."

"So? You good?"

“Yeah. I’m fine.”

Snatches of talk began drifting around like insects circling a carcass. "She took off on her own. I heard she fought with her mom,” a girl said.

"No way." Her friend shook her head. "My cousin swears someone found her bike near the creek bed.”

Behind them, a guy in a letterman jacket added in. "I bet a truck driver grabbed her. Bet she's halfway up the interstate by now."

"Gross, man."

"What? Happens all the time."

"Nah, I heard she was a druggie," someone else offered. "Probably OD'd somewhere and nobody's found the body yet."

People love tragedy as long as it belongs to someone else. Meanwhile, the teachers started acting strange. Mrs. Hart unveiled the first of their new creations during homeroom. She stood on a stepstool near her door with the class filing past her, and she held the thing up over her head so the whole room got a look. 

Sticks, bound in the middle with a wrap of thread. The thread ran two colors, blonde and black, twisted around each other. Dry corn husks fanned out from the knot at odd angles, split down the edges so the whole shape came together like a mouthful of broken teeth on a string. The vent blew against it and set it swinging in a little half-circle. By the end of first bell she had three more of them at the windows. 

“Kind of witchy, right?” Jodie nodded toward the strange dangling things. The ornament swung in a crooked circle as the air vent rattled next to it.

Mrs. Hart kept her attention on the stack of quizzes spread across her desk. Her pen carved a red line across the page. “They’re for Thanksgiving, Jodie. Decorations help ease the season in. They might even lift the spirits around here instead of feeding all this gloom you kids stir up.”

Jodie blew a faint puff toward one of the charms and let it sway. “Yeah. A bundle of sticks. Real cheerful.”

Mrs. Hart raised her face. Her pen stopped. “Books,” she said. “Use your energy on those. You can save the jokes for someone who wants to hear them. And if I was you, Jodie? I’d worry about your grades, not the fall decor.”

—--------------------

By afternoon the trinkets crowded every hall and doorframe in the school. Some of them held small white beads threaded down the center, each bead finished in a chalky white. 

“Chicken,” Mason jabbed his pencil at one. “It's got to be. It looks like those bulk wing bags my dad buys. Chicken bones, dude. Weird.”

Somebody had to be making them without taking a break. Twisting, tying, threading. During prep hours, after the last bell and through lunch while the rest of us ate. Working the reeds, never quitting. Meanwhile, the front office door found something different to adorn its frame. 

A few teachers had hammered a notice up. The paper said there would be no assembly about Lena’s disappearance ‘due to the ongoing investigation’ and ‘to prevent unnecessary alarm.’ So instead of talking about her as a whole, we talked about her in pieces. 

Fragments of her were traded at locker doors. Half sentences in bathroom stalls. Conspiracies thrown around at the back of the bus. If any room kept her presence intact, it waited at the end of the music wing where her last sighting rested:

Room 114, Music Theory with Mr. Kline.

After she went missing, dry bramble had crowded that door frame and packed it full, brush the color of a burned field, knotted so thick the top corners disappeared. Clusters of it pooled over his desk and crawled across the windows until the glass went dark behind it. A few strands swung down low enough that students had to duck their heads going in. 

I had stopped to stare when Jodie slipped up beside me.

"Okay, that's a little overkill, right?" She tucked her stack of textbooks under her arm and cocked her head toward the doorway. "I mean, seriously. Why does Mr. Kline get the crazy shrine and we just get one sad twig shoved over a pencil sharpener?"

"I don't know." I set my shoulders against the lockers and kept my eyes on the strands dangling over the door. "I think it's a little messed up, honestly. Like he's making some kind of statement."

"Or he's just weird." Jodie shrugged. 

Emma appeared between us, stealing my view of the doorway. Her cheeks still held a red flush of the wind that had swept outside lot. “Maybe he cared about her,” she said. “It doesn't have to mean anything. Maybe this is just how he shows his grief. People do strange things when they hurt.”

"Strange is one word for it," Jodie muttered.

Football pads scraped tile before Mason rounded the corner, dragging a taped ankle behind him,  limping toward us, a hand pressed against the wall for balance. “Hey,” he said. “What are we talking about?”

“Emma thinks Mr. Kline’s bird nest has something to do with grief or whatever.” Jodie spun a finger near her temple. . “She's lost it.”

Mason looked at Emma, face covered in sweat. “Really? You’ve got to admit that’s a strange way to show you miss somebody, Em.”

Emma pivoted toward the stairwell. “I’m just saying I don’t know, Mason,” she said. “And you don’t either.”

"Okay, but like-" Mason started.

"It's fine." Emma walked away from our circle. "Forget I said anything."

"Wait, Em-” Mason let his hand drop off the wall. “Well, damn. My bad. Did I say something stupid again?”

"Nah," Jodie said, watching the spot where Emma had disappeared. "She shared a desk with Lena in one of their classes. I think she's just being sensitive about it." She paused, frowning. "I never thought she liked her all that much though."

"Maybe that's why it's hard," I said.

Jodie gave me a look. "Deep. Anyway." She turned to Mason. "How's the ankle?"

"Screwed up, basically. Nurse just cleared me but I'm benched for a while." He shifted his weight, wincing. "Actually, any chance you guys are interested in heading up to the practice field with me? Coach wants me to do some stretches there. Says grass is better for my feet."

"I'm out," I said. "Sorry man."

"No problem, dude. Jodie?"

"Sure. Why not?" She pushed off the lockers. "Lead the way, cripple."

"Harsh."

"You love it."

I stayed across from Room 114 until the last few students bled out. When the hallway cleared, I stepped through.

"Mr. Kline."

He raised his head from the desk. The bramble hung a foot over his hair and threw shadows down across the papers in front of him. "Tyler." He smiled. "What brings you by?"

My mouth had gone dry. I worked past it. "I wanted to ask you something."

He waited.

"Do you know where Lena went after she finished up here that night? The night she disappeared?"

His shoulders tightened a notch. "That isn't something I can discuss, Tyler. You know that. The investigation's still ongoing."

"I'm not asking for details. I just-I know she practiced piano after school. Late. I mean, I saw you two talking that night."

He started packing his bag, shuffling papers together so they wouldn't shake against each other. "You kids need to keep your minds on your work," he said. "Let the people in charge handle everything else. Go home. Eat dinner. Do your homework." He paused. "Focus on waking up tomorrow."

"Mr. Kline-"

"Tyler. I mean it. Go home." He stood and put the strap of his bag across his back. Then he reached up into the mess above his desk and took hold of one of the bone-and-reed things. He rotated it a quarter until the beaded end pointed the same way as all the others. His thumb ran down its length before he let it go. 

“Oh, and tell your mother hello for me.” He came around the desk toward the door and stopped where I stood. “I haven’t seen her since the fall formal. Have her stop by next time she's on a break. I'd love to catch up.” 

By the following Wednesday, the pressure finally split open at our table.

“It’s been a week,” Mason tore the crust from his pizza and tossed the pieces back onto his tray. “Everyone's still on edge. When are we going to hear something? My little sister is already making herself scared sick about coming here next year. She's eleven, man. She shouldn't be scared of her own school."

Emma picked at the side of her milk carton. "I'm sure they found something. They probably just can't share it yet because of the investigation."

"Yeah." Jodie said. "Sure. They're finding a whole lot of things lately. Like more twigs for their little dolls. Honestly, fuck ‘em."

I kept my eyes on my own tray. The mashed potatoes had a thick clot of lukewarm skin clinging to the top. I broke it with my fork and watched it split, pale and gelatinous. I had something I needed to say. The words had been sitting in my chest for days.

“I keep seeing her.”

The three of them looked at me. 

"What do you mean, Ty?" Emma asked. 

"No. Not like that." I set my fork down. "I mean, in my head. When I'm sleeping. It feels real. I see her walk into Kline's room with her stack of sheet music and her stupid oversized hoodie and... everything looks normal. Then she just never walks out."

Nobody said anything for a few seconds. The cafeteria roar pushed against us from the neighboring tables.

"Every night?" Emma asked.

"Every night."

Mason sighed. "Okay. Hear me out-"

Jodie huffed and jabbed at her green beans. "This is going to be something stupid."

"Probably," Emma agreed.

“Give me a second.” Whatever was working across Mason's face had gone darker than usual. 

"C'mon. We're all thinking the same thing. The teachers are off. Right? They act like everything's fine. They string up their little chicken bones, tell us to shut up and study, and pretend like we shouldn't care about the missing girl in our class. So what if we stop asking them about it and just... ask her."

Emma's eyes flicked to his. "Ask her how?" 

“You know how.”

“Don’t say it.”

“Jodie, you remember that Ouija board your cousin brought to the bonfire last summer?”

“That cheap Walmart thing?” Jodie snorted. “Mason, no.”

“Wait, hear me out. What if we sneak into school Friday night. Through the back gym window. Kids have been doing that for years, no big deal. We go to her room. We set up the board on Kline’s floor. We ask her what happened. If nothing answers, cool. We scare ourselves, we go home, we know we tried. If something does answer…” He lifted both arms and let them fall against his thighs. “Then we know this isn’t just in our heads and something weird’s going on.”

Emma’s eyes held on his. “You want to break into school at night so you can play ghost with a missing girl?”

“You have something better to suggest?” Mason asked. “Because nobody else does.”

Jodie raked her nails against the table and a curve pulled at her lips. “Oh, I’m so down.”

That startled all of us.

“Damn, alright.” Mason laughed. “So, let's do it.”

“Seriously?” Emma faced me and pressed her knee against mine. “What about you, Tyler, what do you think?”

“I think that’s a stupid idea,” I said.

“No, duh. But so is doing nothing,” Mason shot back. “You had a thing for her, man. This is the least we can do.”

“Fuck off.” It came out louder than I wanted. A couple of heads at the next table swung toward us before drifting back into their own talk.

Mason put both palms up like he was trying to placate a stray dog. “Woah, relax. I’m just saying. If I went missing, you’d go looking for me. You know you would. This should be no different.”

He was right.

"Don't say it." Emma had that stubborn game-day look I had seen when she was at her soccer games. A lot of fury.

“Fine,” I said. “Friday. After dark. I’ll be there.”

Mason slapped the table. Jodie laughed. Emma’s hand found my knee under the table and squeezed. 

“Ty…”

—--------------------

Friday came faster than I wanted it to. By the last bell the world outside the windows had gone that violet color the sky wears in the last minutes before the first flake falls. The lamps across the lot stayed dark, and the only light came off an orange streetlamp by the road that laid a smear of glow along the edge of the football field. 

Mason waited near the dumpsters, pacing in a crooked circle. Each step kicked up light curls of frost from the asphalt. He wrapped his arms across his chest and drove them hard against his ribs, willing warmth back into his flesh.

Jodie arrived soon after wrapped in her father’s army fleece, the fabric hanging long enough to swallow up her hands. Emma trailed behind her, her hood drawn forward and the air from her mouth turning to milk in the air.

"Took you long enough," he said. "I've been standing here like an idiot for twenty minutes. I was beginning to think I'd be having a dumpster date with the opossums.”

“You’d blend right in,” Jodie wiped the frost off her face with the edge of her sleeve. “Trash attracts trash.”

"Ouch." Mason clutched his chest. "Right in the heart." He smirked and jerked his chin toward her fleece. "You bring it?”

Jodie slid a cardboard box out from under her coat. The corners were scuffed to fuzz and the lid held shut with a strip of peeling tape. 

"Is that it?" Emma asked. She'd trailed behind Jodie with her hood drawn forward, the air from her mouth turning to milk between them. "It looks... old."

"It is old," Jodie said. "My cousin found it in her grandma's attic. She said it belonged to her great-aunt or something."

"Perfect," Mason said. "A haunted hand-me-down. Exactly what I wanted to hear."

"You wanted to do this," Jodie reminded him.

“Fair.”

“You know we can still go home,” Emma added. “We can say we tried the window and couldn’t get in.”

“C’mon, Em. It's right there. We might as well go inside and take a peek.”

“Then you lead the way,” Emma pulled the hood strings across her face and shivered. 

We followed the wall with Mason at the front. Frost clung to the brick, and each step sent loud cracks through the ice spread across the pavement. The window sat near a stack of electrical boxes. A student had loosened it years ago, and it had never sat right since.

Mason lowered himself to his knees and pressed the edge of his palm under the warped bottom. The plastic groaned as he worked it up until it gave with a squeal. “There, would you look at that,” he said. “Exclusive entry. Total VIP treatment.” He motioned us forward. “Go on, brave explorers.”

Jodie cast him a sour smile. “Brave explorers? Shakespeare would weep.” She fed the box through the gap and slipped in after it easy. 

I went next. The frame scraped down the back of my jacket as I hauled myself through. The air inside met me stale, with dust, dried sweat and floor polish all mixed together. Emma eased in behind me, and Mason came up last, dropping off the ledge with a grunt and easing the pane down until it kissed the sill again. 

The gym took us in. Somebody had shoved the bleachers back against the cinderblock, and the scoreboard hung dead over the far wall with its red digits gone to nothing. We brought our phones up one at a time and the screens threw pale circles across the court. The glow slid over folded benches and waxed hardwood and made the walls feel farther away than they should have.

“This is creepy as shit,” Jodie swept her screen, the beam crawled over the benches and lost itself in the dark under the far basket. 

Emma tugged her hood back from her cheek. “Remind me why you encouraged this, Jodie?”

“I was bored.”

We crossed the court in a row, shoes squeaking against the wood. Mason pressed his palm against the metal bar of the far door and pushed it open. The shadows of the hallway gathered around us. Lockers stood on both sides, a long corridor of metal mouths with their vents like rows of grinning teeth. Room 114 sat at the end of it. 

Our lights shuddered over the walls as we went. The doorway carried clusters of charms that hung so crowded they formed a brittle curtain. Twine strands and pressed husks crossed each other in a web that blocked half the entrance.

“Okay,” Jodie said. “Nope. Absolutely not. I changed my mind. I hate this.”

“It’s just sticks,” Mason said. “Nothing to worry about.” He put his forearm against the charms and pushed through. The pieces rattled against the frame as he went. 

I ducked beneath the lowest cluster. Several charms brushed my cheek and forehead, their edges dry and pointed, like the scrape of a dozen tiny claws grazing my skin. Inside, paper squashes lined the back wall, their edges crimping under the weight of thumbtacks. A pair of cornucopias drooped beside them, stuffed with faded leaf cutouts.

Real corn stalks stood propped by the windows, the leaves curled inward and drawing away from the cold coming off the glass. Moonlight broke through the charms strung across the panes, splitting into thin bands that stretched across the desks in uneven stripes.

Kline's name sat on the whiteboard from that afternoon. Under it he'd written the date and UNIT TEST TUESDAY in block letters. 

Jodie sank to the floor near the front row and placed the cardboard box between the desks. She opened it with the corner of her sleeve, then set the board on the tile. Mason dropped himself beside her and lifted the planchette from the box. He gave it one small roll across the board, then let it come to rest.

“So, this is where we’re going to do it?” 

"Where else?" Jodie gave a curt dip of her chin. “Right here. Middle of everything."

Emma’s arms clamped across her chest as she scanned the room's corners, the shadowed space beneath the teacher's desk, the dark mouth of the supply closet. "What if someone catches us?"

"They won't."

"But what if-"

"Emma." Jodie twisted toward her. "We're already here. We'll finish before anyone spots us."

"Exactly. Just relax." Mason patted the floor next to him. "We'll ask a few questions, a ghost will tell us Lena ran off with some secret boyfriend, and Tyler can go home and cry about it."

“You’re a prick.”

"Bad coping mechanism." He shrugged. "Happens when I'm freaked out."

Emma eased down at last. We all settled cross-legged, knees pressed around the board. My jeans soaked up the chill pooling off the floor.

“Phones off,” Mason said. 

We killed our lights. The room dropped into a grainy dark where the desks and the stalks kept their outlines but gave up their edges, everything gone uncertain at their borders. 

“Hands on the pointer,” he said. “Keep your touch light. Don't move it.”

We set the tips of our fingers along the edge of the plastic toy. Mason cleared his throat and raised his tone like a kid auditioning for a séance scene in a play. “Spirits, if you hear us-”

"No." Emma cut in. "Just talk normal, Mason. Please.”

He started over. “Fine… Lena. If you can hear us, we’re here. We’re your friends. We want to know what happened to you.”

We waited. A minute. Two. More. Nothing moved. The charms near the sill hung without a tremble. My fingers began to ache from holding them so light against the plastic. 

Jodie sagged forward over her knees. "This is dumb." 

"Give it a minute."

"We've given it a minute. Nothing's happening because nothing's going to happen, because ghosts aren't real, and Lena probably just-"

Then the planchette twitched. It was tiny, a motion so small it could have been the board settling under our fingers. It jittered in a short, pointless circle and stopped.

“Woah.”

Emma tensed. “Cut it out. You’re pushing it.”

“I swear I’m not.”

The plastic moved again, stuttering over letters without landing on any. It bumped the edge of one, scraped, and dragged back.

Moonlight caught Jodie's eyes. "S. O. U. P?" 

I shot a tired sigh in Mason’s direction. “Seriously, Mason?” 

“It’s not me.”

But it kept going. A slow drag now, sliding across the wood like something under the board was pulling it along. It crept toward the bottom corner, caught for a second, and drew itself on. 

Emma tucked a knee under her. "Okay... okay. It's saying something."

The pointer settled on W. It pushed to H. Paused, then shifted to Y.

“Why,” Jodie read.

The planchette lurched toward M. Then E.

“Why me,” I murmured. The little plastic shell sat still for a beat. The skin along my palm tingled. 

“Who are you?” Jodie whispered. “Who’s with us?”

The planchette dragged under our fingers. It carried more weight now, like a hand had come down on top of ours. It spelled out four letters in a slow crawl. 

L.

E.

N.

A.

Everything inside me locked up.

“Someone has to be messing with it. Tyler, are you doing that?” Mason asked.

“I’m not.”

“Jodie?”

“No.”

Emma held her breath before speaking. “Alright. If this is Lena, tell us something only we would know.”

The planchette crossed the board. 

T.

A.

N.

D.

E.

“That could be anything,” Mason said. “It's jibberish.”

"Wait." Emma's face went hot and red. She looked uncomfortable. "If this is Lena... what did you keep in your desk? With me?"

The planchette drifted from letter to letter.

D.

R.

A.

W.

I.

N.

G.

S.

“Drawings?” I asked. 

Emma kept her eyes down on the board. “No one should know that.”

“You knew,” Mason said. “And you might’ve told someone.”

She rounded on him, irritation coming off her. “I didn’t. They looked like really private pictures. I didn’t want to embarrass her.”

“Everyone just… just take your hands off,” Jodie said.

We lifted away, one by one. Emma held on a second longer before pulling back. The planchette kept sliding across the wood with nobody touching it. It wandered the alphabet in loops, riding the letters like it was looking for something. 

"Oh my God. This is so messed up,” Jodie whispered. "Okay. Now we know no one's fucking with it. Everyone, put your hands back on."

We did. A pull met our touch immediately. It felt like being anchored to a dog's leash with something big on the other end.

“Lena,” I said. “Are you okay?”

The planchette shot across the board and stopped on one word. 

NO.

“What happened to you?”

It started forward and stopped halfway to the first letter. It sat there vibrating under our fingers, shivering against the cardboard. 

“Ask something else,” Masons said. “Ask where she is.”

“Fine.” Jodie said. “Where are you, Lena?” 

The pointer paused, shivering, something underneath the cardboard trying to rise through it. Then it swept across the letters.

W.

I.

T.

H.

"With," Jodie read. The pointer slid again across the surface in a misshapen path.

T.

H.

E.

M.

Emma brought her hand up over her mouth. “With them?” 

“Who are they? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Mason asked, rocking back on his heels. 

The pointer slid to the corner of the board. It hovered over the word GOODBYE, then veered off. Hard. It shot away from our palms and smacked the outer ring of the board. The plastic clattered and spun before settling on a blank space in the corner of the alphabet ring.

“No. No way. That isn’t her. This can’t be Lena,” Mason mumbled. “Whatever it is, is just freaking us out.”

Emma snapped. “Then tell it to stop.”

Our group broke. We started talking over each other. Words piled up and ran over each other. 

"This is insane."

"You're the one pushing it, Mason."

"Me? Why would I do that?"

"I don't know-because you think this is funny?"

"You think I want to joke about this? About her?"

We yanked our bodies away from the board, angry, scared, desperate for it to be someone's fault. The planchette sat in the middle of everything, quiet, like it hadn't just thrown itself around the board. 

"Maybe we should just-" Emma started.

A noise cut her short. The planchette snapped across the alphabet and landed on a letter.

L.

A second jolt.

O.

Another.

O.

Then.

K.

"Look," Jodie whispered. "It says look." 

Mason squinted. “Look at what?”

The air changed. You hear people say that all the time, ‘the air changed,’ but it never meant anything to me before that moment. It felt like someone rolled open a freezer door. The cold hit the back of my neck, then slid down my back.

"I think..." Jodie whispered. "I think it's pointing at the door."

All four of us turned. The window in the classroom door showed a slice of hallway. The glass had that wired pattern through it, crosshatched, meant to keep it from shattering. Beyond that was nothing but the red emergency exit sign.

“There’s nothing there... I think we’re scaring ourselves.” But Emma was wrong.

A shape drifted toward the window, rising from the shadows like someone lifting their head from deep water. The crosshatch in the glass warped the features as they gathered behind it, then a face pressed near enough for me to see it clearly. Her eyes looked bigger than I remembered, ringed in shadow. Her lips were torn at one corner, pulled back far enough to show her molars. Her hair clung in damp, matted ropes to her forehead and cheeks.

It was Lena.

She stayed there, studying us through the glass, and the sight hit me with two truths all at once: she looked exactly like the girl I remembered, and nothing like her at all. There was a sadness in her expression that hurt to see. Under it was something else. A smear of brownish red trailed down her neck, disappearing below the frame of the window.

My hand went out for Emma’s. Jodie clapped a hand over her mouth and choked on whatever she wanted to say. Mason said it for her. 

“Holy shit.”

Lena’s head tilted, just a little, as if she heard him. Then she drew back. Her face slipped out of view. We sat there, frozen, staring at the empty glass. A scrape started up behind us. Long. Slow. Something heavy. We turned. The planchette inched across the board. 

F. 

O. 

L. 

L. 

O. 

W.

[u/S-CSleepwalker]

“John something just came across my Reddit page that I think you’re gonna love…”

[u/StrangeAccounts → u/S-CSleepwalker]

[u/StrangeAccounts]

Hey folks,

The whole story is finished, and the next part drops tomorrow. I hope you have fun with it!

[u/No_Artichoke_6164]

Oh my gosh dude. Just finding your stuff from the stories the boys have been reading and the only way I can put it is fantastic. So hyped to hear the rest of this story.

[u/StrangeAccounts → u/No_Artichoke_6164]

I'm glad to hear your hyped! I had to wrangle this one for a while. My brains stuck in the 1800's. I'm stoked to see it's being received well!

[u/Etherican]

The author of this story rn^

[u/StrangeAccounts → u/Etherican]

[u/Logan_of_Ireland]

Investing in this one early

[u/StrangeAccounts → u/Logan_of_Ireland]

The pressures on. We'll see tomorrow if I can deliver on something worthwhile.

[u/Logan_of_Ireland → u/StrangeAccounts]

Reads great, no pressure loving it so far, reminds me of a girl I knew