In an old theatre on Oak Street, third-year students rehearse their final performance as hidden emotions start to surface and the building seems to answer back.
The theatre on Oak Street had been empty for years, but it still held onto its past like a grudge. Dust softened the red velvet seats, old paint peeled from the walls, and every step backstage came back with a hollow echo, as if the building were listening.
That was where the third-year class met to rehearse their final production of the year. Cuba ran the room like a director who refused to waste a second on anything ordinary. He wanted everything sharper, riskier, more alive. Sonia, cast as the lead, tried to keep her focus on the script, though her attention kept drifting toward him. Even her own thoughts felt too loud in that cramped backstage air. Igor, all easy smiles and careless jokes, took his place near the wings with the same confidence he used to hide everything else.
At first, the rehearsal was only tense in the usual way. Lines were missed. Voices clashed. Cuba stopped the scene twice to correct a gesture, then a pause, then the look on Sonia’s face. But the longer they worked under the dim stage lights, the stranger the atmosphere became. It was as if the theatre were pressing in around them, tightening every unspoken feeling until no one could breathe quite normally.
Then, in the middle of a scene, the lights cut out.
A sharp gasp ran through the stage. Someone knocked over a prop. Sonia froze, her script slipping in her hand, and from somewhere behind the curtain came a whisper so close it seemed to touch her ear. It wasn’t loud. It was worse than that. It sounded like it knew her.
When the lights flared back on, a figure stood at the edge of the stage where no one had been a second before. Sonia stared. Igor had gone pale. And Cuba, who never looked surprised by anything, took one slow step back as if he had just seen something he had been trying not to find.