It was 3:07 pm when The Messenger sent me and my partner into the Garfield basement to investigate some minor noise disturbances, armed only with flashlights. It was 3:07 pm when we stepped across the threshold of that cursed basement; a decision that would come to be the worst mistake of our lives. We heard it for the first time only five minutes into our investigation. At that point, it was only a soft whisper, but that whisper was our first warning. We followed the whisper down to the boiler and kept walking. That was our first mistake of the afternoon, but it certainly wouldn’t be our last.

We pushed through dusty wooden shelves, rows and rows of disciplinary records placed randomly. “A-L: 1943. M-P: 1924. P-Z: 1965” These records traced back to the very beginning of Garfield High School. It was certainly interesting, but not what we were sent down to investigate. We continued on, and just steps after we had turned a corner past the records we heard another whisper, louder this time, and papers rustling: it had warned us again. My partner commented on the noise, and we followed it. The possibility of finding something extraordinary outweighed our growing fear. We looked around corners, nooks, and crannies for any sign of something that could be responsible for such sounds. As we rounded a corner, I saw an old tape recorder on top of a box labeled “memories”. I bent down to pick it up, but just as my finger touched the smooth plastic of the long-dead tape we heard it again. The creak of a bookshelf, records rustling, and unintelligible whispers seemingly coming from all directions at once. This was our third warning, and our last chance at escape.

We didn’t take the chance. The whispers scared us however our minds were set. We would find the source of the whispers. Even then, we had no idea of the price we would pay for our foolish curiosity. We made our next mistake of the afternoon soon after. We found a crawl space just large enough for us to fit through. This time, our foolishness was fatal. Immediately as I crawled off the crawlspace below, we received our next warning. We heard papers fall, the crash of bookshelves, then the voice now louder, sharper, scarier, and more real: “This place belongs to me trespasser.” The darkness enveloped us, our flashlights began to flicker, and we could only slightly make out a dim red glow at the end of the crawlspace.

We kept crawling, and we heard a bell upstairs. It was 3:40, school was out, and we were on our own in the dark. At this point it had scared us enough that we wanted to run, but we had ventured too far. We couldn’t fit back through the crawlspace. We were stuck, pinned right where it wanted us. The air felt different in the crawlspace: thicker, suffocating. It felt as if we were in a space that was not our own; in a realm that was not our own. The dim glow at the very end of the crawlspace was our only hope for a chance to return home ever again. For the first time this afternoon, we made the right decision. We screamed and crawled desperately for the light. My partner crawled behind me and screamed at me to crawl faster because something was coming; it was coming. Not far behind us we heard it laugh. We were out of chances: “This is my realm, prey,” it said. I crawled as fast as I could, and I finally made it out of the crawlspace, but I heard my partner falter behind me and scream. It laughed again. One glance back was enough to scar me forever; only my partner’s bones remained, as if it had picked him clean of any human flesh in an instant. I sprinted through the rest of the basement and slammed the door behind me. It was 4:04  pm and I had escaped, but it had claimed my partner.

Graphic by: Nathaniel Myers