Hi! I’m Liz; I’m a third-year college student at a university, and I just want to share this here in hopes that it will somehow make me feel like I’m not a crazy person. So, let me begin my story with the first time I met Kaela or as i would like to call it, the visitor. I was on my way to school; I believe it was a Friday in November; I can’t recall the exact date, but I recall it being a Friday because we have exams every Friday.
I entered the class, and I saw my friend Celine on her desk besides mine. I went over to my seat, then I immediately started complaining to her about how I didn’t study and how I’m sure I’m not going to pass the exam. Normal stuff… Then I heard the door open, and I saw someone I did not know walk inside the classroom. Celine, my friend, greeted the girl, “Hey Kaela!” “Did you study?” It was in a very familiar tone of voice, like they’d known each other for a long time.
Is she Celine’s friend? a new classmate? But we are about to end this semester; that’s kind of weird. I thought at that time, but I stayed quiet because I did not want to interrupt, and I also didn’t want to butt in on their conversation because I’m not familiar with the girl. Then I noticed some of my other classmates were now communicating with the new girl about the topics for our exam.
It was just weird how it seemed like everybody knew that girl, but I didn’t; I can’t remember having her in our class. But I held back my inquiry because our teacher had already arrived. It wasn’t until after our exam that I was able to ask Celine my question alone. So, I ask, who was Kaela and when did she transfer into our class? When I tell you that Celine looked at me like I was crazy, she really looked at me like I was growing two heads in my body.
She jokingly slapped me in the shoulders and said, “Stop with the joke,” then proceeded to laugh. Then I told her I was serious; I don’t know the girl… We were walking on the hallway at the time when this conversation happened, and Celine literally stopped walking just to look at me dead in the eye, as if she wanted to know if I was joking or not. “You’re crazy, Liz” “Kaela has been our classmate since our first year, what’s wrong with you?” “Are you sick?”
I was stupefied… “Are you kidding me?” “There’s no Kaela in our class, even in our synchronous classes in our first and second years.” Celine rolled her eyes at me. “Haha, very funny Liz, now let’s go, I’m hungry.” She ended our conversation that way. I did not ask again for the remainder of the day, but I was weirded out by how everyone was so familiar with the new girl.
When I reached my boarding house, I immediately went to our Google Classroom and our school learning website, where students were enrolled. I went back through my previous courses from my first and second years and checked the students under that course, and… Kaela was there in every subject that I had taken. She was also in our Messenger group chat, and it wasn’t like she had just joined—she had been there for a long time. She also had chat records in the messenger going back two years ago.
I thought I had amnesia or was going insane at that time. How could I forget one person in our class? I mean, if we have been classmates for almost 3 years, even if we are not close, I’m bound to have some sort of recognition or familiarity with her, right? but no, I don’t remember her at all. For the following classes, I couldn’t seem to stop thinking about this girl; my eyes would always follow her around; I was wary of her; I would get nervous whenever she talked to me or to someone near me… Then that happened…
It was Thursday; our lab classes for our microbiology ended quite late, around 7 p.m. on that day. I was about to reach the gate of our school when I remembered I had left my lab report notebook on my teacher’s desk in the lab room. I needed that to answer our lab exercise when I reached my house. So I went back into the lab room, and I also asked the guard if I could borrow the key in case the room was locked.
While I was walking in the hallway leading to the lab room, it was very dark; somebody must have turned the hallway light off, so I turned on the flashlight on my phone and put my hand on the wall, searching for the switch to turn the hallway lights back on. When I found it, I turned it on, but the light was very dim, like the bulb was about to die.
It was unusually cold at that time, but I paid it no heed and continued walking till I reached the lab room. I turned the door knob, and as I was about to open the door, I had this moment of pause; my heart started beating so fast that it was hard to breathe, and my palm was sweating.
I decided to trust my gut instinct and did not continue to open the door. Instead, I peeked inside the lab room with the help of a square glass imbedded in the upper middle part of the door. At first, I could see nothing, but as my eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness, I saw our long, rectangular tables, our chairs, the dry heat oven, and the black board. Then, at the very corner of the room, a figure appeared. My hair stood up, and I could feel the cold sweat on my neck. I immediately sat down so that the figure wouldn’t be able to see me.
I was terrified at that time, but I reasoned that it could have been one of our classmate or that I was hallucinating, so I waited for a while, trying to calm my heart, and then slowly stood up, about to look inside the lab room again, but I froze in fear. I recognized Kaela—she had her face pressed against the door’s glass portion.
She had a wide grin on her face, her usually perfect set of white teeth was jagged like the tooth of a chainsaw. Her eyes were unusually large; there was no iris, just black, and her skin was pale gray, like the color of a corpse.
I couldn’t move; I watched as she licked the glass as she stared at me, and then the door knob began to move. That was when I woke up and ran. I knew I should not have looked back, but I did, and I saw Kaela crawl on all four of her limbs, her neck bent at a very strange angle. She was crawling, but her speed was faster than mine. I stumbled and screamed, and before her hand could reach me, the school guard came.
He saw me crawling on the floor with my snot and tears. He helped me up and asked if I was okay. I was so disoriented, but I still remembered to look around, trying to look for any sign of “that” creature, but it was nowhere to be seen.
The security guard asked me what happened, but at that time I was so scared that I could not talk. I just wanted to go home. The guard helped me stop a taxi outside the school, and when I returned home, I turned on all my lights and refused to look at any corners in my room. That night, I was plagued by nightmare after nightmare.
I could not sleep because every time I closed my eyes, all I could see was that wide grin and those unusually large eyes. I did not sleep that night, but I still had to go to school the next morning; it was Friday, and I could not skip classes because I needed to maintain my grade so that I could maintain my scholarship for the free tuition in this college. This is also one of the reasons why, despite me thinking a hundred times that I want to transfer, our financial capability would not allow me to do so…
I went to class still disoriented, and all I hoped was not to see Kaela again. I would just avoid it. The class began, and Kaela did not come. I was thankful but also curious about why it did not come. So, I asked Celine why Kaela was absent. “Who’s Kaela?” she answered. I paused but did not continue asking.
After that, I asked a few of my other classmates and even my adviser, and they could not remember any Kaela in our class. I went to check again our group chat and Google Classroom, and there was no trace of Kaela. It was as if everything from that time had been a figment of my imagination, but I know it wasn’t because I still have the scratches on my knees and palm from when I stumbled and fell while it was chasing me.
I asked Celine if she could come with me into the lab room to get my lab notebook. During the time when we were walking down the hallway, I could not help but imagine that “that” creature was still at the end of the hallway, crawling on all of its four limbs. When we reached our lab room, I could not look directly at the glass on the door because I was scared that I would see its face in there.
Thankfully, there was another class doing their lab in the room, so I just asked someone to get my lab notebook on the teacher’s desk. When we passed by the school guard who helped me the night before, I remembered I hadn’t returned the key to the lab room, so I checked my bag, where I had put the key, but I could not find it. I was scared that I had lost it, or maybe I had returned it to the guard and just forgotten. So, I asked the guard if he remembered me borrowing the key and returning it the night before.
I was confident he would not forget me after seeing me in “that” situation, crawling on the floor with tears and snot on my face… But the guard said nobody borrowed the key to our lab room the night before. I even went as far as narrating how he saw me and how he helped me take a taxi outside the school. But the guard kept on saying that there was no such thing. He was on duty all night the night before, and no students had ever approached him at that time.
Until now, I still don’t know what that creature was, but I do know that I don’t ever want to see “that” again, whatever it is…and I hope it wont decide to visit our school again, at least not until I graduate…