The ink shimmered in the notebook like it knew she was watching.
Harper Quinn – 10/7
Two days.
Two days until what?Disappearce? Forgotten?
Jamie stood by the window, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the moonlight pooling through the blinds. He hadn't said much since Eva left—her warning replaying on a loop.
Before it comes looking for you again.
Harper closed the notebook carefully, like it might bite if she wasn't gentle enough.
"We have to figure out what happens when the date hits," she said quietly.
Jamie didn't turn around. "What happened to you last time, Harper? That week you vanished."
She hesitated.
"I don't remember it all. Just fragments. The hum from the walls. Whispers at night. The same dream on repeat. Me, running through the West Hall, but it never ends. I keep turning corners, but I'm back where I started."
Jamie finally looked at her. "Like a loop?"
She nodded. "Like the school folded in on itself. Like Room 13A was still there, just not… aligned."
Jamie frowned. "Eva called it a bridge."
Harper stood, walking to her desk. She flipped through the notebook again—looking for a clue, a key, anything.
"What if these names… aren't just warnings?" she whispered.
He raised a brow. "Then what are they?"
"Markers," she said slowly. "Markers for who gets shifted nextt. Maybe it's a pattern. Maybe the room doesn't erase us—it moves us."
"some kind of markers interesting?"
"Exactly."
Jamie rubbed his jaw. "And Eva remembered you because…?"
Harper shrugged. "She could be tied . Still half between."
Silence stretched between them.
Then a loud, mechanical sound echoed across the room.
Ding-ding.
The old grandfather clock in the hallway struck midnight.
Once.
Twice.
Harper blinked. "That's not right."
Jamie tensed. "It's supposed to chime once."
They both looked toward the door.
And that's when they heard it.
A second chime.
But not from the hallway.
From inside the room.
They didn't scream—but they were close.
The sound pulsed from behind Harper's wardrobe. She stepped forward, pressing her ear against it.
A soft hum.
Exactly like she remembered.
Jamie opened the door. The wardrobe was empty. But at the back, the wooden panel had cracked slightly—just wide enough to see something beyond it.
A hallway.
Dim. Twisting. And completely wrong.
"Is that…?"
Harper grabbed her phone and turned on the flashlight.
What lay beyond wasn't part of the dorm floor.
It looked like a narrow corridor lined with broken mirrors, each one reflecting versions of herself—but none of them quite right. One had her wearing her old uniform. Another had her hair shorter. One of them wasn't looking at the flashlight at all—she was looking straight at Harper, smiling.
Harper stumbled back.
Jamie caught her.
"Okay, I'm officially creeping out."
She slammed the wardrobe shut.
"That was a portal," she said, breathless.
"No," Jamie whispered. "That was Room 13A."
The next morning, Harper woke up to find the wardrobe sealed. Not locked. Just… like it had never opened in the first place.
She touched the back wall. Solid wood.
Jamie's voice rang through her head: "That was Room 13A."
She checked the notebook again.
Her name now had a red circle around it.
Like it was next.
Harper stuffed the notebook into her bag and headed for the library.
If the school wouldn't give her answers, she'd find them buried in the past.
She made her way straight to the Archives—down the spiral staircase, past the locked faculty records, into the section no one used anymore.
Shelves towered above her like the skeletons of forgotten stories. Dust hung in the air like secrets.
She searched everything: past blueprints, enrollment records, incident reports.
And then, in a slim leather folder labeled Architectural Anomalies – Bellridge Academy, she found it.
A floor plan. Dated 1962.
And there it was.
Room 13A.
Right after Room 12 . Exactly where she remembered.
But something was off.
A red stamp covered the label. Faded but legible.
"Denounced. Closed after disappearance – 1963."
Harper's heart thudded.
Another paper was clipped behind it—a newspaper article, yellowed with age.
"Local Girl Vanishes at Boarding School: Katherine Quinn, age 16, last seen entering dormitory hall."
Harper dropped the file.
Quinn.
Not just a name. Her name.
But this Katherine was from 1963.
She grabbed the article, hands trembling.
Was she related? Or… something worse?
Her thoughts spun as she realized something even more terrifying.
In the old photo—black and white, grainy—Katherine stood in front of the academy gates.
And she looked much like Harper...not harper