Three friends slip into an abandoned school at night to trace a missing teacher. The silence inside is wrong, and the building seems to be listening back.
Night had already settled over the shattered windows of the old Technikum No. 3 when Julia, Michal, and Lena stopped at the gates. The building rose out of the dark like something that should have been demolished years ago, its brick walls swallowed by ivy, its roofline jagged against the sky. Everyone in town knew the stories. After sunset, people said, the school whispered.
Julia lifted her phone, and the beam of light skimmed over broken doors, damp steps, and a trail of muddy prints leading inside. Fresh prints. That made her stomach tighten.
"We should go back," Lena said, gripping Michal’s sleeve. Her voice was low, but it still sounded too loud in the dark. "This was a stupid idea."
"We’re already here," Michal whispered. He kept his eyes on the doorway, not on Lena. "And if the teacher really disappeared here, there has to be something left behind."
They climbed the stairs one at a time, the wood groaning beneath their weight. The corridor on the first floor felt frozen in time: peeling notices, cracked lockers, a smell of wet paper and rust that clung to the back of the throat. Julia stopped in front of a corkboard. Most of the sheets were faded beyond reading, but one note had been pinned more recently, and someone had written on the back in a shaky hand:
Don’t go to the attic after dark.
Lena saw it too. Her face drained of colour. Then, from somewhere deeper in the building, came a slow, dragging sound, as if something heavy had just been pulled across the floor.
Michal swallowed hard and raised his chin toward the staircase at the end of the hall. The attic door stood half open.
A cold draft slid down the corridor. Julia lifted her torch, and for one heartbeat a shape moved in the beam at the top of the stairs. Not a person. Not quite.
Then a whisper brushed the three of them at once, close enough to feel against their skin.
You shouldn’t be here...