Five graduates stay late in High School No. 7 to rehearse for a science contest, but when the building falls silent, the locked B wing starts behaving like it has its own life.
It was one of those June evenings when the air stayed warm long after sunset and the school seemed to hold its breath. High School No. 7 was almost empty. The final bell had faded hours ago, the corridors were dim, and only the chemistry room in the B wing still had lights on.
Five graduates had claimed the lab tables for one last rehearsal before the science competition. Gosia sat at the centre of it all, bright-eyed and impossible to discourage, already acting like a team captain. Marek had spread notes and diagrams in front of him, calm and precise, the kind of person who could turn a mess of clues into a straight line. Natalia kept drifting to the window with her camera hanging from her neck, as if she expected the night to reveal something worth framing. Kuba leaned back in his chair with the look of someone determined not to be impressed by anything. Igor, who loved science with a seriousness the others found both useful and exhausting, was carefully measuring a sample under the lab lamp.
The caretaker had locked the front entrance at eight, just as he always did. Old protocol, he said, as if the school were a ship and not a building full of buzzing fluorescent lights and dusty trophies. He had let them stay because the competition mattered and because, in his words, someone had to prove the school still had use left in it after dark. Before leaving, he had pointed a finger toward the corridor and added, almost as an afterthought, “And stay out of the cellar.”
Kuba had grinned at that. “What, are they keeping the secret buffet yoghurt down there?”
“Or the missing exam papers,” Marek had replied.
Gosia had only snorted and gone back to the schedule. That was earlier. Now the lab smelled of chalk dust, old linoleum, ethanol, and something faintly metallic that none of them could place. The room felt sealed off from the rest of the world. Even their voices sounded smaller than usual.
Then Natalia stopped writing.
She looked up so quickly that her camera bumped against the desk. “Did you hear that?” she asked.
No one answered at first.
A soft thud had come from somewhere down the corridor. Not loud. Not enough to be alarming on its own. Just enough to make the silence after it feel wrong.
Kuba lifted his head. “Probably pipes,” he said, but his voice had lost its edge.
Another sound followed. A faint scrape, like a shoe dragging along tile.
Marek’s eyes moved toward the door. “There’s no one else in this wing.”
“That’s exactly what people say right before they’re proved wrong,” Kuba muttered.
Gosia pushed her chair back. The legs hissed against the floor. “Come on. We’re not twelve. Let’s check it out.”
They took their phones and stepped into the corridor, the pale beams from their torches cutting thin paths through the dark. The school looked older out here, older and stranger. Bulletin boards lined the walls, their pinned photographs faded by years of sun: olympiad winners from the 1990s, sports teams in stiff uniforms, a choir smiling in front of a painted backdrop. The farther they walked, the more the corridor seemed to narrow around them.
The noise had come from the adjoining hall. The door stood half-open.
Natalia slowed first. “That light was off when we came in,” she said.
It was on now.
Marek reached for the handle and pushed the door open.
Inside, the room was empty except for a desk standing under the lamp. On it lay an open notebook, pages spread as if someone had been reading it seconds ago. Beside it rested a metal sphere about the size of a plum, smooth and dark, catching the light in a dull silver glint.
No one spoke.
Then the door behind them slammed shut.
The sound cracked through the corridor like a gunshot. For one breathless second, nobody moved. Then came a long, dragging vibration on the other side, low and heavy, as if something had just been pulled across the floor.
Gosia turned toward the others, trying to keep her face steady. Igor had gone very pale.
“It wasn’t the wind,” he whispered.
Before anyone could answer, the interactive whiteboard on the far wall flashed to life.
A static burst filled the screen, then a blurred image began to form, bright and flickering, as if someone on the other side of the school was already waiting for them.