A school sleepover. Not really anything out of the ordinary, at least not here. The high school juniors would spend a night at school to get to know each other and make new friends. As someone with difficulty socializing, I honestly appreciated this event. A few seniors and teachers set up events that we could do in groups. Things like hide and seek, crafting projects, soccer games, and so forth.
We arrived at about 5 PM, most of the events had already been set up and they were quick to split us into groups. The groups were themed after star signs, and I was in Pisces. We were warned not to go up to the fifth floor, it was abandoned and under construction, making it dangerous. The next few hours were spent taking part in those events, and nothing really of note happened. Not until 10 PM, at least. That’s when the events came to a close, the last game we played was hide and seek. They did a headcount, and three students were missing. We were still in our several different groups, they assigned a teacher to each group and made us into scouting parties.
They started explaining that we would go out looking for the missing students, but I wasn’t that worried. I figured these students were in on a prank of some sort the teachers had set up. They were likely waiting somewhere to jump out and scare us or something.
So we split into our groups and went looking for the missing students. Eventually, my group ended up at a stairwell with a locked gate, or it was supposed to be locked, but the padlock was broken and the chain that was wrapped around the bars laid on the floor, the gate itself had been pushed aside. I felt my heart skip a beat when I read the sign above the gate.
“Floor 5 - Do Not Enter”
The teacher paused a moment, then picked up the chain, presumably to lock the gate again. But as he was wrapping the chain around the gate, a scream rang out from the stairwell. He quickly dropped the chain, forcing the gate open and ran up the stairs. Some kids in our group started whispering among themselves.
After a little while, it was clear what they were whispering about. Following the teacher. Some kids tried to dissuade them, citing that we were strictly forbidden from going to the fifth floor, but as you know, kids are stubborn. And so, a few in our group would make their way up the stairs. Morbidly curious, and wanting to help whoever was in trouble, I followed.
In total, there were five of us. When we reached the top of the stairs, the hallway reached out into the darkness. The parts of walls we could see in dim light were cracked and full of graffiti, mostly with black and red paint. We heard another scream coming from within the darkness, but this time, it was our teacher. There was no mistaking it, that was an adult scream.
We quickly rushed into the darkness, towards the scream, but had difficulty seeing where we were going. As the others whispered, trying to figure out where to go, I took out my phone and turned on the flashlight, and my heart dropped.
My friends, who I had heard talking among themselves mere seconds ago, were gone. As if they were never here. No footprints, no distant whispers. No sign of them at all. It made no sense, I tried to rationalize it, tried to find an explanation for them being there one moment, and gone the next, but there was no logical conclusion.
Another scream.
I followed towards the source hesitantly, shining my phone’s flashlight in the darkness. The further I went, the worst it got. A horrible, decaying smell overwhelmed my senses and I noticed something awful. The graffiti on the wall wasn’t red paint. It was blood.
I don’t know why, but I kept going. I kept following the screams. Until I stood in front of a cracked door, the numbers painted on the door had decayed over the years, and looked like someone had tried to scratch them out at some point, but the little I was able to make out made me think this was room 13, further supported by the fact I had just passed room 12, with its number in pristine condition.
The door was open, and darkness flooded the room inside. I entered the room and hit the light-switch next to the doorway. The light flickered and died. But in that brief moment of light, I had glimpsed my worst nightmares. Trails of blood across the floor, as if a body had been dragged, towards the center of the room. On a table in the middle of the room, for a brief moment, I could swear I saw my teacher. I heard something drop and what sounded like glass shaterring. And I ran, down the stairs, towards the gate. I ran until I couldn’t anymore.
I never went back to that school. We moved a few weeks later, and I transferred schools. I never heard from those kids again. To this day, I have no idea what happened on the fifth floor, and I don’t think I want to know.