An old high school chemistry room turns uncanny when a glass starts talking. Four teenagers are drawn into a secret that reaches far beyond their next exam.
As soon as I pushed open the door to the deserted chemistry room, the air hit me like a warning: sulphur, dust, and the sour edge of old cleaning chemicals. Pale sunlight leaked through the grime on the windows and stretched across the scarred tables in dull gold bars. In a week, we were supposed to sit our exam here. That day, the room felt less like a classroom than a sealed chamber holding its breath.
Lena was already inside, her red hair bright against the grey walls. Olek stood beside her, pretending to check his phone and failing miserably. Natasha lingered near the cupboards, quiet and watchful, as if she had already noticed something the rest of us had missed. We had all come after lessons for different reasons, but the same rumour had pulled us here: something in the old science wing had changed.
I was about to say this was stupid when a faint scrape sounded under the sink.
We all went still.
Then a sharp little voice snapped, "Careful where you put your shoes. You smell like chlorine."
Olek stared so hard at the floor that his phone slipped from his hand and hit the tiles with a crack. Lena's face drained of colour. Natasha's eyes narrowed, fixed on the sink as if she expected something to crawl out of it.
I moved first, because someone had to, and because the voice had come from somewhere too low and small to make sense. At the edge of the nearest table sat a dirty glass, its sides cloudy with old residue. It gave a tiny wobble, as if it had just spoken too loudly and wanted to pretend it hadn't.
"Who said that?" I asked, though my own voice sounded wrong to me, thin and far away.
"Me," said the glass. "Obviously. At last someone with a working pair of ears. I've been here for three years and not one of you looked twice. And now you've all arrived at the worst possible time."
Lena took one step forward, then stopped when the glass slid away from her, skimming the table on a tremor of fear.
"Don't come closer," it said. "If you want answers, you need to find the Cork Table before sunset. She knows why we're talking. She knows what started this."
"The Cork Table?" Olek echoed, like saying it aloud might make it less insane.
A noise cracked through the corridor outside the room. Footsteps. Slow, deliberate. Someone was coming.
The glass went rigid on the table. Natasha's hand closed around my sleeve. Lena whispered, almost too quietly to hear, "Tell me that isn't the caretaker."
The footsteps stopped right outside the door.
Then the handle began to turn, inch by inch, with a creak that sounded far too much like laughter.