Twigs snapped, feet pounded, the forest whizzed by in gasps as I dodged from tree to tree, palms outstretched to make sure I didn’t plant face first into a trunk. Aleah said I’d know it when I saw it. What was I looking for? I inhaled as I ran, forest air scraped through my throat and barely inflated my lungs. I thought the endless expanse of trees and briar patches would extend forever, but I was wrong. It ended. I burst into a clearing, stopping short as if I’d just found myself on the edge of a cliff and pressing my hands to my knees as I bent over in exhaustion. I coughed and gagged toward the grass below me as I tried to catch my breath, only looking up ahead after a full minute or two. There was a building there, maybe two hundred yards away. It was big, made from red bricks beneath a black metal roof. Around it I could see playground equipment, a rusty swing set, the seats rotted from their chains long ago. A jungle gym that had once stood level but was sinking into the ground at an awkward angle.

“Don’t go in there,” I whispered to myself. Everything within me was telling me to stay out of that building; the dread building up in the pit of my stomach was almost too much to overcome but I couldn’t just stand here and I couldn’t keep running – I needed to hide from whatever was coming. I had to stay alive, for Aleah. Why for Aleah? What was special about her? I’d just met her, for the first time? I had to go, had to go. I forced myself forward, raking the overgrown grass beneath my feet and propelling myself toward the back door of the school. The sound of my footsteps changed as I transitioned from hard dirt to pea gravel and then to asphalt. The playground blacktop had seen years of use; cracks had formed and weeds had sprung up. Nature in defiance against man’s attempt to seal it out. Nature always wins.

My hand slammed against the doorframe while with the other I grasped the metal handle and tried to pull it open. Nothing. Shit. Right. I pushed on the release just above the handle and heard a click as the latch released. Throwing the door open, I hurled myself inside and slammed it behind me, pressing my back to it and breathing heavily in a hallway filled with red lockers. Beside me, daylight shone through the slit of a window just above the door handle, segmented by the wire lattice embedded in the glass. So far, other than being abandoned, there was absolutely nothing strange about this school, in fact it was a lot like one I’d attended years ago. I felt a little more at ease stepping away from the door and passing through the row of lockers, the only company being the sound of my footfalls against checkered tile.

At the end of the hall I came to a curved incline on the floor leading down into a sort of lobby area. To my right were a set of bathrooms, to my left, a trophy case. The case, mounted on the wall was filled with dusty awards for basketball, football, even cheerleading. I squinted in the darkness, trying to read one of the engravings:

Kentucky Middle School Basketball Champions
Chippenwood Middle School
1967

As I started to examine the other trophies, I stopped short hearing a noise from behind me. A soft click, like a pencil bring dropped. A normal sound but in this place it rang out like a beacon. It was trouble. I slowly turned around, the hair on the back of my neck rising, my hand trembling as I set my sights on the direction of the noise: the boy’s bathroom. The entrance sat at the bottom of the curved incline, just before the lobby area. It had no door; the frame held indents for hinges, but it had been taken down and carried off long ago.

“Hello?” I called out as I made my way toward the entrance. I probably shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have even been walking toward the door; I just felt…compelled to do it. I don’t even know how to explain it. Before I knew it I was passing right through the steel doorframe, emerging into a dark tiled hallway. Up ahead was a turn, probably leading into the bathroom itself. I took it slowly, running one hand along the tile as I moved forward toward the opening. It didn’t take long, I found myself standing at the mouth of the bathroom entrance, and my anxiety couldn’t have been higher. The cramped hallway was safe, I knew what was in it. The bathroom beyond was an open space, anything could be lurking behind the corner. I should run, I should do something, anything other than being in this building. Why had I come in here anyway? Nevertheless, against all my better judgement I pushed forward, slowly peeking around the corner. It wasn’t completely dark in here; there were a set of windows high up, just wide enough to illuminate a portion of the bathroom in a dull light. Four of the window panels were intact, one was covered in electrical tape with only a few dots of light poking through. I returned my attention to the room ahead of me. In the center of the floor I saw the pencil that had fallen, sitting against the bare concrete floor, the light from the overhead windows bathing it. A yellow #2 pencil, nothing special.

The bathroom seemed empty so I moved forward, painfully aware of every sound I made. My feet on the concrete, the rustling of my pants, the brief sliding of my hand off of the hallway partition. The room was dead silent, not even the sound of water dripping from the sinks. Had the pencil just dropped? How long had it been there? Why was it there? All at once, and to my utter surprise, the lights came on, white washing the room in fluorescent light. The yellow and white tiles blinded as I cried out and stumbled backward against the urinal.

“Hey hey, look at that, it’s Makayla!” A voice goaded. I looked up, straight ahead, it was a boy, about Makayla’s age, maybe a little older. “You know what my dad told me? He said you like girls because you ain’t never had a man inside you!”

The boy began to laugh. I pressed against the urinal and looked to my left, toward the exit. It was like riding one of those tilt-a-whirls at the fair, my body felt like it was pressed against the wall, the room was spinning as the boy continued to laugh. I screamed as he walked toward me.

“I bet you’ll change your mind, when you’ve had me,” He said, a devilish grin on his face. “Maybe your daddy will like you better when-“

The bathroom went dark again, the boy disappeared. I exhaled heavily and dropped to the floor, hyperventilating as I sat just out of reach of the light streaming down from the windows. I wasted no time, I scrambled to my feet and fled from the bathroom as quickly as I could, bursting out into the lobby area. On either side of me, a set of glass and steel doors, one leading back to the playground, the other leading to what looked like an abandoned parking lot out front. I should just go. I should just…I stopped short again, there was something laying on the floor in front of me, just down the hall leading from the lobby to yet another row of lockers. As I walked closer, I could see it was a book – no, a notebook. One of those gray composition notebooks. I moved closer, bent down and took it in my hands. The front of the book spelled out ‘Makayla’ in black sharpie, written in the ‘name’ section of the cover. Was this my notebook? No, it was Makayla’s. I was Michael. I would always be Michael, god dammit. I flipped through the pages, it was some kind of journal, I’d have to read through it later when I had better light.

“Hey!” A voice rang out from behind me, echoing loudly and rudely down the brick and tile hall. I spun around on my heel, keeping a firm grip on the journal. It was the man from the woods, the man that Aleah had taken down. He rested the grip of his rifle in the palm of his hand and slowly brought it to bear. “You thought you got rid of me, didn’t you?”

All of a sudden, the door to my left opened, Aleah stepped through and thrust the pink backpack into my arms.

“Hi,” She said, almost cheerfully. “We need to run now.”