Three friends sneak into a sealed part of their school at night and find signs that someone, or something, is already waiting upstairs.
It was a little after nine when Igor, Lena, and Maks met behind the school playing field, where the floodlights no longer reached and the dark pressed close to the fence. Most of the building windows were black, but one section of the main block had stayed shut since the renovation began, its top floor sealed off behind warning tape and metal locks.
For a week, rumours had been spreading through school: footsteps in empty corridors, a flash of light in an upstairs window, an alarm that had gone off for no reason and then died just as suddenly. The teachers blamed old wiring. The police blamed draughts. Lena had found a blurred photo online anyway, taken at almost midnight, with something pale standing in the last-floor window.
Now they stood at the side entrance, each with a torch, Igor gripping the phone that still had the strongest battery. The door was not properly shut. It gave with a soft, stubborn creak, and the three of them slipped inside one after another, as if the building might notice them. Their footsteps sounded too loud on the cracked tiles. Every corridor seemed to stretch longer than it should have.
By the second floor, the air had gone colder. Near the locked door to the physics office, Igor stopped so abruptly that Lena nearly walked into him. Someone had carved a small star into the paint beside the frame. The lines were fresh. Maks bent closer, trying to laugh it off, but his voice came out thinner than usual.
They kept going. The stairwell narrowed, the lights failed completely, and the darkness above them felt heavy, almost waiting. When they reached the top floor, the dust was undisturbed, thick enough to show the shape of their shoes. Lena was the first to notice the old metal door half-hidden behind stacked cardboard boxes.
“There,” she whispered.
A tiny red light blinked beside the handle.
“That’s impossible,” Maks said, too fast. “This floor hasn’t had power for years.”
Before anyone could move, the handle shifted from the other side.