The following morning at Harrington High felt like entering a different world. The sky turned purple with clouds, heavy and gray, as if by a suffocating ceiling overhead which hung low. Ethan stood at the gates, his backpack hanging over one shoulder, weariness etched deep into the lines under his eyes. He hadn't slept – not after seeing what he saw from his bedroom window.
That smile. That message: Let me wear you.
His phone is silent now: the message has disappeared, deleted or wiped from existence. There is no record of it, no screenshot, nothing.
As Ethan took a step into the hallway, the usual blasting din of morning conversation seemed exactly muffled. The kids looked... Off. Voices too low, eyes too distant. It was as though everyone had developed in unison the will to ignore something gnawing at their edges.
"Ethan!"
He turned at the sound of Olivia's voice. She jogged up beside him, clutching the books close to her chest.
"You look like hell," that sad face frowned. "You okay?"
Ethan nodded slowly. "I didn't sleep much. Weird dreams."
She studied his eyes looking for truth. "You saw something, didn't you?"
Ethan paused. Then gave a shallow nod. "In my window. Last night. Something... that looked like me. But it wasn't me."
Olivia looked pale. "You got a message too?"
He blinked. "You did?"
He leaned in, voice low. "Mine said, 'I'm already walking in your skin.'"
The bell rang, sharp and final. Students scattered to their first classes. Ethan and Olivia stood frozen, the air between them heavy with dread.
"Come on," Olivia said. "We need to find Grace."
Grace sat in the library, surrounded by old yearbooks, newspaper clippings, and a spiral-bound notebook filled with frantic handwriting. She barely looked up when they approached.
"You found something?" said Olivia.
Grace nodded and pushed a dusty folder toward them. "It's real. The Room 4A phenomenon has been going on for decades."
Ethan flipped the folder open and behold: a picture from 1986. Group of beaming students in uniforms, standing stiffly in front of a classroom door tagged 4A. One person had his face scratched out in ink.
"Four students vanished in 1986 after entering Room 4A. No one has found them. The year before that--enters more of the same. Only one is recorded to have escaped. He ended up in a psychiatric facility. Killed himself three weeks later".
Ethan's hands shook as he turned more pages. Articles. Obituaries. Student Names. Missing Reports. All connected to the same room.
"It's like the room chooses people," Grace said quietly. "It infects them. Very slowly. Doesn't actually kill you... it replaces you."
Olivia swallowed. "You think it's the same thing again?"
Grace nodded. "It already has. Kelsey didn't fall. She was pulled."
The room fell into silence; Ethan had remembered the scream, the crunch, and that awful emptiness that followed.
Grace looked at him. "What did it say to you?"
He hesitated. "Let me wear you."
She closed her eyes then. "That is always what it says before it takes someone."
Olivia whispered, "Then we need to leave. We need to tell someone."
But Grace shook her head. "If we talk, it gets stronger. That's what the survivor said before he died. 'Don't give it voice.' It lives in whispers."
They were interrupted by the shriek of the intercom, the static so loud it made them all flinch. Then there was that too-smooth voice, the kind too calm to be real.
"Would the following students report to Room 4A: Ethan West. Olivia Barrett. Grace Lin."
Boop. The mic went off.
They stared at each other.
"No," Olivia whispered. "That's not funny."
Ethan looked around. No one else seemed alarmed. Students continued walking past, oblivious. Nearby, a girl laughed from her phone screen.
"Do we go?" he asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
Grace stood slowly. "We don't have a choice."
They walked down the hallway, past Room 4A it seemed at every step somehow further. The building itself seemed to shift around them-light flickering, lockers buzzing in static, air turning inexplicably cold.
When they reached the door, it looked just like any other-unremarkable, plain wood, and had brass numbers nailed in place: 4A.
Ethan reached for the knob. "Wait," Olivia said. "We go in together. No matter what happens, we stick together." He nodded. Grace pulled out her notebook and tucked it into Ethan's backpack. "In case we don't come back."
The door creaked open.
The room was... empty. Old desks, dusty windows and a blackboard with chalk faintly outlining words too obscured to read. It appeared not to be used and abandoned.
There were no cobwebs, no dust on the desks. As if someone had just been in.
They stepped inside. The door slammed shut behind them.
There went the lights.
And they were plunged into darkness.
Then whispering started.
Faint. Indecipherable. Growing louder with each breath. Ethan could feel it crawling across his skin, like invisible fingers brushing over his cheeks, curling around his arms.
"Don't answer it," Grace said. "Don't speak."
But something moved in the corner.
A figure.
Yes, Kelsey it was.
Except that it wasn't.
Her limbs seemed to be too long; her mouth, too wide. Her head jerked as though her neck were broken. And her eyes—those weren't Kelsey's.
"Ethan..." and then she spoke in a wet, gurgling voice. "You left me there."
He stepped back.
"She's not real," Grace said through clenched teeth. "It's mimicking her."
Kelsey-thing reached out.
"I'm cold. Let me in."
Olivia screamed.
Lights flickering into being-and the figure was gone.
They were alone again.
Not entirely alone.
The air buzzed with presence.
Then something slammed into Grace from behind.
She hit the ground with a gasp.
"Grace!" Olivia rushed to her, but Ethan grabbed her arm.
Grace's eyes widened. Her mouth opened-but no sound came out.
Something invisible was pressing down on her chest.
Then-snap.
Her body jerked. Her head twisted at a sickening angle.
Ethan froze.
Grace was dead.
Olivia screamed, tears spilling down her cheeks.
Behind them, the door burst open, and light flooded in.
They didn't hesitate. They ran.
Down the hall. Through the stairwell. Past confused students and oblivious teachers.
When they finally stopped, gasping for breath, Ethan looked back.
Room 4A's door was closed again.
And no one else had noticed anything.
No body. No blood.
Grace was gone.
Just like the others.
But as he checked his backpack, he felt the weight of her notebook still inside.
The last thing she ever wrote:
It doesn't just want to kill you.
It wants to become you.
And it's already started.
It has already started.
Ethan stared at the scrawled sentence, ink smeared as if Grace had written it in a hurry-or while her hands were trembling. The notebook smelled faintly of dust and something metallic, like blood that had dried long ago. The last page was crinkled, the corner at the bottom torn away a little. And underneath those last words, written in an even smaller hand, was yet another barely visible end to those last words at the overheads from the hallway lights:
You'll forget me soon.
Ethan slammed the notebook shut-heart pounding. Forget her? How could he? Her neck had snapped like it was nothing. She hadn't even screamed. He could still hear the soft crack of her spine, feel the way Olivia's arm trembled beneath his grip as she reached for their friend-too late.
They had run. Like cowards. But it was the only thing they could do.
"What do we do now?" Olivia whispered, her eyes glassy with shock. There was a hollow ring to the words, as if she weren't quite in her own body.
He tried to think, but like trying to wade through molasses. "We... we got to go to the police. To the principal. Any adult."
"And say what? A ghost just snapped our friend's neck in a room that doesn't even officially exist anymore?"
"What do you mean?"
Olivia gestured behind her, where a student leaned against the bulletin board, absorbed in typing on their phone. She stomped over.
"Hey," she said, attempting a calm voice. "You know where Room 4A is?"
The girl blinked. "4A? What's that? There is no 4A around here."
Olivia's voice cracked. "There is! There has to be!"
The girl's shrug told all. "I've been here from freshman year onwards. We just moved from 3C to 4B. Maybe it used to be something, but not anymore."
Ethan's stomach sank.
The girl ambled off.
He stared at Olivia. "They can't remember. Grace said it erases itself."
He opened the notebook again. The text on one of the earlier pages-a paragraph about the disappearances of 1986-was gone. All that was now written across the blank page was a single scribble at the bottom.
"Do you remember her name?"
He shied away.
"Grace," he said aloud. "Grace Lin. Our friend."
Olivia nodded. "Of course, I remember-why would I forget-"
She stopped.
Her expression froze.
Ethan's breath caught. "Olivia?"
She turned to him. "Who's Grace?"
The world seemed to tilt.
"You were just crying for her! You held her!"
"I... I don't know what you're talking about." She back away a step, confused and afraid. "Ethan... what's happening to us?"
Ethan clutched the notebook to his chest.
It was happening already.
The room had not only taken Grace's life but continued to take her memory. Erasing from everyone including him.
He was the witness.
And he knew, with sudden, horrifying certainty, that it wouldn't stop until all of them had been taken.