Westridge High was the kind of building that carried its years in silence. The bricks out front had darkened with rain and moss, and the windows were always a little fogged from the inside. That quiet seemed to seep indoors, the halls swallowing sound even between classes.

  Lisa reached the last few steps of the stairwell. The second floor opened wide into a corridor that wrapped around the central lobby below. A low railing ran along the balcony edge.

  She drifted toward it, her palms resting against the cool metal. From here, she could see the school as though it were cut open for inspection. Below, the lobby stretched like a crossroads: east and west wings branching long and narrow, north and south splitting toward offices, cafeteria, and the wide double doors of the entrance. Students trickled through those arteries in scattered drops. It all looked ordinary. Too ordinary.

  Her eyes caught on a square of laminated plastic taped to the wall. A fire drill map, much like the one she’d seen Theo studying earlier.

  She leaned closer.

  The diagram was simple. Blocky halls drawn in red lines, arrows pointing toward the exits. Each wing ended in a stairwell symbol, small black squares with arrows climbing between floors. One note at the bottom read: “In case of emergency, proceed to nearest exit in calm and orderly fashion.”

  Lisa’s eyes narrowed on the words. There was nothing calm or orderly about anything here.

  The science wing, Juno and Theo’s headquarters, was all the way in the west corridor. From here, she was cut off, stranded at the far end of the second floor. If the bell hit while she was in the meeting room, she’d have no cover, no shortcuts. She’d have to run. And she already knew how that usually ended.

  She stepped back from the map and turned down the corridor. The second floor was quieter than the first, the air dense and cooler. Doors lined both sides: locked classrooms, storage closets with blurred windows, bulletin boards yellowed with old flyers. Halfway down, a brass nameplate caught the light on a wide door.

  She hesitated, then raised her hand and knocked. A voice answered from inside, steady and familiar.

  “Come in,” it said.

  Lisa pushed the door open. The room smelled faintly of coffee gone cold and the lingering dust of chalk. It wasn’t a true office, she realized. More like a lounge dressed up with bookshelves and mismatched furniture. A record player turned on a side table, though no music played. Lamps burned instead of overheads, casting everything in a dim gold wash.

  Mr. Calder sat behind a heavy desk, posture too stiff, like he was posing for a photograph. His fingers steepled over a yellow notepad. When he lifted his eyes to her, they were sharper than she remembered from class.

  “Lisa,” he said, voice low but even. “Please, sit.”

  She obeyed, sinking into the chair across from him. It felt too low, the desk suddenly looming over her.

  “Do you know why you’re here?”

  “No.”

  “You’re adjusting,” he said simply. “I want to know how well.”

  She leaned back, restless. “I’m fine.”

  “That’s what everyone says. Usually it means the opposite.” His voice stayed even, but there was a weight behind it.

  Lisa’s fingers tightened around the armchair. “I didn’t ask to come here.”

  “No,” he said. “But you’re here all the same. And this place… it has a way of testing people. It’s been testing them for generations.”

  “Why do you care?” she shot back, feeling sudden heat rising in her chest. “What happens to me doesn’t matter to you. You don’t even know me.”

  Calder didn’t budge. If anything, he looked mildly amused. “That’s true. I don’t know you. Not yet. But I’ve seen your kind before. And I’ve seen what happens when they’re wrong.”

  He leaned back, studying her. “You know, I never had kids of my own. Too busy, too selfish, maybe. But I had a niece once. Bright girl. Loved books more than anything. I thought she’d carry that light forever.” He paused, and the silence stretched. “She was fifteen. Just like you.”

  Lisa moved uncomfortably in her seat. “Why are you telling me this?”

  “Because people here tend to forget,” he said quietly. “And because you’re not just another transfer, Lisa. You’ve walked into something older than you realize.”

  He opened the drawer and brought out a book, setting it gently on the desk. “Now, I know I’m not your parent. And it’s not really my place to hand you anything beyond homework and lectures. But I’ve seen the way you pay attention. The notes in your margins. The questions you don’t quite ask. Considering all that…” He slid the book toward her. “You might as well enjoy this.”

  Lisa hesitated at first, then reached for it.

  The cover showed the embossed outline of a bell tower rising over a green field, gold letters stamped across the front: Wailing Green: Founding Families and Their Legacy.

  “A book?” she asked.

  “History,” Calder said. “Our history. This town has always had its shadows. You’ve seen some of them already, though you might not have the words for it yet.”

  Her eyes dropped back to the title. Just beneath the embossed letters was a name printed in smaller type: By Edwin J. Calder.

  Lisa pulled the book into her lap and let it fall open. The pages whispered against each other with a dry, papery sound. On the inside cover, her eyes found a line written in fading black ink:

  For Eleanor —

  who asked the right questions before I could answer them.

  “What happened to her?” The words slipped out before she could stop them.

  For the first time, Calder looked away, his eyes settling on the yellow notepad, then the window beyond. “The thing about history, Lisa… it isn’t just a story told once. It circles back. Patterns repeat. Mistakes echo through time, waiting for someone to make them again. Sometimes you see the chance to break them, and you hesitate. And when you do, they slip away.” His voice lowered, the faintest crack in it. “I missed them. And I missed her.”

  This content has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Lisa closed the book, her fingers firm on the cover. “Then maybe you’re wrong about me,” she said.

  Behind them, the record player gave a sudden click. The turntable shuddered back to life, spinning without a hand to set it. A faint, distorted melody crept from the speaker. Thin violins, scratchy and uneven.

  Lisa froze. “Did you—?”

  But Calder hadn’t moved. His eyes stayed on her.

  The music swelled in the room, bending and warping as though the record itself were fighting to be heard. Lisa’s pulse jumped. She lowered her gaze, thumb brushing her phone awake. The screen glowed in her lap.

  11:29.

  Her breath caught.

  “You should go,” Calder said, his voice quieter now. “Classes are still waiting for you. But don’t mistake my words for warnings alone. They’re an invitation. Read. Learn. Ask better questions than Eleanor did. Because when the bell rings”—his eyes lingered on the book in her lap—“you’ll want the right answers ready.”

  Lisa rose, the chair legs scraping against the floor. She didn’t thank him, not out loud, but the book stayed in her hands as she walked to the door.

  At the threshold she glanced back. Calder still hadn’t moved. He sat as he had when she entered, staring not at her but at something she couldn’t see.

  She stepped out and pulled the door shut.

  Standing in the hallway now, she held the book close to her chest. The embossed bell tower gleamed clearly in the yellow light. Perhaps it wanted to ring on its own.

  And then it did.

  Not from the book, of course, but from above. The school bell shrieked to life, echoing down the corridors with a metallic clang that rattled her bones. Lisa knew it was coming, yet the noise still drove a shiver through her.

  The sound rolled on, heavy and merciless. At first there was only silence in answer, then movement. Doors slammed open all along the first and second floors. One after another, in no particular order, like a chain of locks being snapped.

  Footsteps followed. Dozens. Then hundreds. Shoes squealing against waxed tile, a chorus of hurried, frantic strides. Voices rose in scattered cries, some laughing, some already screaming. The quiet of Westridge High fractured into chaos.

  Lisa looked around her, then calmly slid the book into her bag.

  She turned toward the stairwell. Her legs wanted to run. But something tugged at her. Curiosity, sharper than fear. She looked back at Calder’s door.

  What if she opened it again?

  Would he still be there, waiting? Or would she see something else?

  Lisa’s hand hovered over the handle. She breathed, then pushed the door open a crack.

  The lamps still burned, casting that same golden wash, but the desk chair was pushed back, unoccupied. The yellow notepad lay blank on the surface. The record player still spun, the needle grinding in endless circles, but the sound had stopped. Silence.

  Calder was gone.

  She slipped in, leaving the door open. For a moment she just stood there, listening, half expecting him to step out from behind the shelves. When nothing moved, she crossed to the desk.

  Her eyes swept the surface. Papers neatly stacked, drawers slightly ajar. She reached into one and closed her hand around a slim letter opener, its weight cool and solid in her palm. She slid it into her bag beside the book.

  Something else caught her attention. A porcelain vessel on the corner shelf, oddly out of place among the books. She lifted it, and beneath the hollow base was a small metal piece. Lisa turned it over in her fingers. A key? I wonder what it opens. She pocketed it before setting the vessel carefully back.

  And then she heard it.

  “Help! Please, help me!”

  The voice came from below, thin and breaking, the sound of someone running for their life. Lisa rushed toward the balcony railing. She leaned over.

  The lobby stretched out beneath her like a stage. A boy sprinted across the tiles, his bag bouncing against his back. His voice cracked as he shouted again.

  “It’s Mrs. Greaves! She’s after me! She—”

  Something struck him from behind.

  Lisa gasped. It wasn’t Mrs. Greaves, not the kindly old librarian who always smelled of peppermints.

  What came storming from the shadow of the office wing was something entirely different. Its legs were jointed too many times, bending like rusted knives. Its body was swollen, hairy, pale as spoiled milk.

  The creature lunged, and white webbing shot from its maw, wrapping the boy’s arms before he could scream again. He staggered, struggled, kicked, but the threads tightened.

  In seconds he was plastered against the wall beneath the lobby bulletin board. Flyers flapped uselessly around him. Colorful hearts, announcements about bake sales, dances, visitor days.

  “Please!” he cried again, muffled now. His face twisted with terror, only his eyes free as the threads crept higher.

  Lisa gripped the railing.

  “I’ll be right down!” she shouted before she could stop herself.

  The boy’s eyes snapped to her, wide with hope. But so did the creature’s.

  It turned its head, every eye focusing on her at once. For a heartbeat, it was still. Then it moved.

  The sound was indescribable. Similar to nails on glass. Its legs carried it upward, too fast, bounding toward the second floor.

  Lisa pushed herself away from the balcony. The stairwell loomed to her right, dark and yawning. The creature could be climbing already, slipping from sight to ambush her at the landing.

  Or worse, it could come through another stairwell entirely. There were four of them. Four possible paths. Four chances for it to be waiting just beyond her view.

  Her pulse hammered in her ears.

  Run? Hide? Or fight?

  With no time to think, she chose the left stairwell. She threw herself down the steps two at a time, gripping the railing hard enough to burn her palm. Every shadow along the walls felt alive.

  The lobby opened up below.

  “Over here!” the kid cried. “Please, hurry!”

  He was younger than she’d thought from above. The thin nylon of a windbreaker shimmered bright on his shoulders. One of the Juggernaut boys, most likely. Hair stuck to his forehead with sweat. His eyes found her and latched on like a grip.

  Lisa reached him and stopped roughly on the tile. Up close, the stuff holding him wasn’t tape. It had the sheen of wet thread, strung over and over itself until it made rope. When she touched it, it gave a little, sticky and fibrous, resembling cotton candy made of fishing line.

  She tore open her bag, pulled out the letter opener.

  “Hold still,” she said, and set the blade to the strands near his wrists.

  It was like sawing old rubber bands. The blade slipped at first, then bit. The webbing parted with a soft snap. The boy screamed anyway.

  “Quiet,” she hissed. “I’m trying to help you.”

  “She’s here,” he babbled. “She’s right—she’s—”

  “Quiet.”

  She cut lower, angling the sharp edge away from his skin, sawing at loops that bound his chest. The smell of it rose sweet and sour.

  “Almost—” She hooked the blade under one last band coiled across his ribs and sliced hard.

  He fell.

  His full weight hit her and drove her down. He slid off the board and collapsed to the tile in a tangle, gasping. For a second they were just two kids on a school floor, breathing like they’d sprinted a mile.

  Then he moved quick.

  His hand shot out, tearing the blade from her grip. Before she could get up, his arm locked around her waist, pinning her elbows. He hauled her onto her toes, holding her tight. The letter opener in his other hand came up, not at her, but out, pointed at the corner she’d watched.

  Lisa twisted in his hold, straining to break free.

  “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Don’t,” he said, raw and breathless. “Don’t move.”

  From the end of the hall came a sudden rasping sound. Rapid scratching that bit at a door. Sparks spat quick and bright, flashing across the lobby floor like fireflies.

  “I’m not dying here,” he said. “I’m not— I’m not—” He sucked air in short gasps. “Back off!” he shouted to the empty corner, the blade trembling in his fist. “Back off!”

  From the shadow the thing answered.

  One articulated leg slid into view. Pale, ending in a black hook that tapped the floor and stuck, tapped and stuck. Then another leg came, and another, splaying wide as the head eased around the corner, eyes like beads of oil scattered in no pattern across a face that wasn’t human.

  “Mrs. Greaves?” Lisa breathed.

  It tilted. Something pulsed under its pale hair, a slow, obscene beat.

  “You see it,” the boy hissed into her ear. “Good. Then you get it. If it moves, I throw you and run. I swear to God I will.”

  The creature stepped into full view, massive as a compact car. Its black eyes caught the fluorescent light, threads dangling in slow strands from its mouth. The hooks at the end of its legs clicked once against the floor.

  The boy panicked.

  “You want her?” he screamed at the thing. “Take her! I’m out of here!”

  He shoved Lisa into the open. Her feet slipped on the tile, and she fell to her hands and knees.

  She couldn’t move. Couldn’t even breathe. Behind her, the boy’s footsteps were already echoing down the hall.

  Poor Lisa squeezed her eyes shut, bracing for the inevitable. Her body stayed locked in place, but her mind fled, slipping into fragments of warm memories. Her mother humming in the kitchen, her father’s hand on the wheel during long Sunday drives. Little things. All she had time for.

  But nothing came.

  Her chest ached from holding still, from forcing the breath not to escape her throat. Finally, she risked opening her eyes.

  The creature hadn’t moved. It loomed above her, legs splayed wide, threads dangling from its mouth, swaying with each rasp of breath.

  It was watching her. Measuring her.

  Lisa’s stomach turned cold. Why wasn’t it attacking? The thought came unbidden, sharp as glass. Was it waiting? Waiting for a word, a signal?

  A command?