Chapter Text
The chapel smelled of damp wood and melted wax, of hymnals long forgotten, pages swollen and stuck together, like old secrets refusing to peel apart. Laura Lee liked that. The decay. The devotion. The way faith held on, even when no one was looking.
Tonight, though, the air pressed too close.
She stood near the altar, the candlelight flickering against stained glass saints whose faces had warped over time, eyes stretched, mouths collapsed into silence. The shadows here weren’t the gentle kind. They draped themselves like veils.
She should’ve left earlier.
But something had kept her. A restlessness under her skin. A thought she couldn’t shake. She had been writing in her prayer journal, thinking about Lottie was one of them, of course. About the way Lottie said things that sounded like riddles but landed like truth. And perhaps about something else as well.
She’d scrawled a single sentence before the sound came:
“Maybe we don’t survive faith. Maybe we just carry it until it bleeds.”
The chapel door groaned open.
Laura froze. Her pen slipped to the floor.
“Father Francis?” she called, though she already knew better. No one had called this place holy in years.
Silence.
Then, the sound again.
A dragging. A dull, slow scrape of metal against stone.
Not footsteps. Not hesitation. Intent.
She stepped back toward the altar instinctively. “Is someone there?” she said again, but softer now. Almost like she didn’t want the answer.
And then she saw it. The shape.
Human, at least in silhouette. The face, obscured. Something pulled low over it. A hoodie? A mask? No way to tell. But what caught her breath mid-throat was what they held.
An axe.
Not new. Not shiny. A wood-handled, rust-bitten axe. The kind that belonged to a barn, not a church. Its blade was already dark. As if this wasn’t its first sin.
Laura stumbled backward, knocking over a pew bench with a splintering crash. The sound shattered the stillness like glass.
"Wait, please—"
But the figure didn’t wait.
The first swing came hard and fast, carving the air with a whistle. It clipped her shoulder, tore straight through the strap of her dress and deep into muscle. She screamed, high and raw—really screamed, like she never had before.
Blood hit the floor in a hot arc.
She ran. Or tried. Her shoes slipped on the stone. She turned the corner of the pews, heart pounding, breath ragged. Made it three steps.
The second blow hit her back, buried itself halfway through. She collapsed forward with a strangled sob, hands scrabbling against the altar steps, smearing blood across them like some obscene offering.
She gasped, tried to speak.
"Why…?"
The killer said nothing.
Just lifted the axe again.
And again.
And again.
The sound was worse than the sight. Metal crunching through bone. Wet. Hollow. Final.
Blood sprayed against the altar. Splashed the face of the Virgin Mary in the stained glass. Ran in rivulets between the floorboards like veins. It soaked Laura’s white dress until it clung to her body like a second skin.
Her hands twitched once. Then stilled.
And still, the killer didn’t stop. Not until the axe stuck for a beat too long in her chest, had to be yanked free with effort. A grunt. A pause.
Only then did they step back.
Breathing hard. Watching.
The candle on the altar still flickered, the flame dancing in the chaos, small and undisturbed.
The killer tilted their head, as if admiring the scene.
Then they reached down and plucked the gold chain from Laura’s neck. Snapped it. Pocketed it.
Left her body in the centre of the aisle. Arms splayed. Head turned. Eyes open.
The chapel swallowed the quiet again.
But it wasn’t holy anymore.
***
Lottie
I woke up choking on nothing.
No noise, no scream, not even a breath caught mid-throat. Just that sick, invisible feeling of being pulled out of something heavy and wet and wrong. My heart was pounding like it had somewhere to be and didn’t care if it took the rest of me with it.
The room was too dark, even with the streetlight outside filtering through my curtains. I could see the outline of my desk, the crucifix over the dresser, the messy sprawl of books and old Polaroids I never had the energy to sort. Familiar things. But the shadows felt deeper than they should’ve been. More patient.
I sat up slowly, pushing the sweat-damp hair off my forehead. My nightgown clung to my back like skin that didn’t belong. Everything was too quiet. I could hear the hum of the old fan in the hallway, the occasional hiss of wind through the cracked window. But nothing else.
Like the world had stepped out for a minute and forgot to leave the lights on.
I didn’t know what I’d been dreaming.
Just… something was wrong. I could feel it under my ribs, buzzing like a trapped fly. Not fear exactly. Not yet, just this horrible certainty that I had lost something I hadn’t even known I was holding.
I swung my legs over the edge of the bed, pressed my bare feet to the cold floor, and sat there for a while. Letting the chill bite at my ankles. Trying to pull the dream out of the corners of my skull like it might come if I stayed still enough.
Nothing came. No images. No faces. Just weight.
And—Laura Lee.
Not her face. Not her voice. Just the absence of her. Like walking into a room where someone’s just left and the air hasn’t figured it out yet.
I stood, crossed to the window, and peeled back the curtain. The street below was empty. Suburban night. Sprinklers clicking on somewhere in the distance. A flickering porch light three houses down. The usual things, all present and accounted for.
But the silence pressed against the glass like a hand.
I pressed back.
My reflection in the window didn’t look like me. Not really. My eyes were wide, hollowed out at the edges. My mouth was slightly open, like I was waiting for someone to speak into it. I looked like a girl mid-haunting, not the preacher’s daughter with straight-A grades and careful hair.
I didn’t know what I was looking for. A flicker of movement. A car driving too slowly. A shadow crossing the lawn that didn’t belong.
Nothing.
Still, I couldn’t shake it. The wrongness. Something had broken loose tonight. I couldn’t prove it, couldn’t name it, but I felt it like a bruise in the centre of my chest.
I thought of Laura Lee again.
Her laugh, always slightly too loud in quiet places. Her certainty. The way she looked at me sometimes, like I was both puzzle and answer. She never said the words out loud. But she didn’t need to.
And now I couldn’t stop thinking: what if I never get to hear her laugh again?
I hated myself for it. For being dramatic. For letting the anxiety chew through me like it always did. I hated that I needed her to exist right now just so I could breathe properly.
I glanced at the phone on my nightstand. The old cordless kind with glow-in-the-dark numbers. I thought about calling her. Just to check. Just to hear her voice and pretend I had a normal reason for dialing at 3:21 a.m.
But I didn’t.
Because the part of me that knew things, that other part, the one no one else liked to talk about, was already grieving.
I sat on the floor beside my bed, knees pulled to my chest, and tried to remember how to pray. Not the kind with words. The other kind. The kind where you sit still long enough that the universe answers in pulses instead of sentences.
No answers came.
Only that feeling again, that something had been taken. That something was watching.
And I knew, even if I didn’t know how: Laura Lee was gone.
And the world had tilted slightly off its axis while I slept.
I noticed the vans first.
Three of them, lined up along the school sidewalk like vultures parked on the edge of a battlefield, gray and silent with those ridiculous satellite dishes like insect antennae, twitching at the sky. There were people with cameras, wires, boom mics. Reporters with perfect hair and grave faces whispering rehearsed concern into blinking red lights.
At first, I thought there’d been a fire. Or maybe another overdose. That wasn’t rare lately, this town had a way of swallowing its teenagers and spitting out cautionary tales.
But something in me said no.
This is different.
This is yours.
I tightened my grip on my bag and stepped onto campus. The usual voices, laughs, complaints, that god-awful morning bell, were still there, but they were warped somehow. Duller. Like the world was under glass. I walked faster.
Inside, the halls were weirdly still. There were clusters of students whispering, and eyes darting in every direction like flocks of birds startled by a sound no one else heard.
Where is she?
That was the thought. Laura Lee usually waited for me by the stairs outside the science wing. She always beat me to school, said early morning was when God paid the most attention.
But she wasn’t there.
I checked the chapel staircase, even though I already knew she wouldn’t be standing there either. That’s when the knot in my chest twisted. The dream I’d had last night, sick and black and thrashing, surged back like something alive.
Where is she?
So I made my way toward the field.
And I found them, my soccer teammates, the Yellowjackets—fractured now, half in uniform, half in disbelief. They weren’t talking loud. They weren’t really talking at all. Just... standing. Natalie was leaned against the bleachers, arms crossed tight across her chest. Her mouth was set in that crooked line she wore when she didn’t trust the air. Misty stood a little apart from everyone, hands fluttering uselessly like she didn’t know what to do without someone giving her a job. Shauna looked pale. Van looked pissed. Jackie had her arms wrapped around her torso like she was cold, and Mari had her face buried in her phone, though she wasn’t typing anything.
I jogged up to them. “Hey, what’s going on? What’s with the reporters?”
No one answered at first.
Natalie glanced up at me, her jaw clenched so tight it looked painful. She said nothing.
“Misty?” I tried. “Where’s Laura Lee?”
That name, it broke something.
Shauna turned away, covering her mouth like she might be sick.
I took a step closer. “You guys. Where is she? Did something happen?”
Misty’s voice was high and too fast. “They found her in the old chapel this morning. Father Francis did. There was… blood. A lot. It was…” she swallowed, “They’re not saying much but someone said the word homicide.”
I stared at her like the word didn’t make sense in English. Like it was a sound from another language someone had left in my mouth without translation.
Natalie stepped forward, slower than usual. Her eyes, dark and unreadable, met mine.
“They’re saying she was murdered,” she said, voice low. “With an axe.”
Something dropped out from under me.
I didn’t feel my knees go weak, but they did.
I didn’t feel myself breathing, but I must have, because the air was cold and it hurt going in.
“No,” I said. I shook my head hard. “No, I just saw her yesterday, she said she was going to pray, she always goes—”
“That’s where she was,” Van said. “Someone knew.”
For a moment, all I could hear was static. My brain, usually loud, too loud, went empty.
And then, slowly, my hands began to shake.
Not because she was gone.
But because I’d woken up hours ago with the feeling that something had already happened. Something irreversible. Something rotting at the edges of the world.
And now the world was catching up to it.
Jackie touched my arm. “Lottie…”
I shook her off.
Somewhere in the distance, another news van pulled up. Reporters started approaching the fence. Students were turning, whispering, recording. The campus was a crime scene pretending to still be a school.
The wind kicked up. Leaves skittered across the pavement like things trying to escape.
And through it all, one thought beat against my skull like a trapped moth:
She didn’t scream in my dream. She just… disappeared. And now she had.
The chapel air was still around me, but inside, something was unravelling. My knees fell to the ground. My hands were clenched in my lap, nails biting into my skin, but I didn’t even realize the trembling that had started beneath my ribs.
I was quiet. So quiet I didn’t hear myself breathe.
I didn’t notice the single tear that slipped free from the corner of my eye, tracing a slow, burning path down my cheek. It was only when another fell, then another, that the silence inside me cracked.
The tears came without sound, without warning, pooling in the hollow of my palms as if my body was trying to hold the ache itself.
I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to believe it. But it was coming anyway, a tide too strong to hold back.
Then, behind me, a shadow moved.
“Lottie?”
The voice was soft, hesitant, Natalie’s. She knelt beside me, careful, like she was afraid I might shatter.
I didn’t answer.
Natalie reached out, her hand brushing against mine, warm and steady. It was the first touch that made the dam break.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, voice cracking with a kind of quiet fury that had nothing to do with anger but everything to do with pain.
I let my head fall against her shoulder. The tears spilled faster now, ragged and raw, each one a piece of my heart breaking open.
“I don’t understand,” I said, voice barely a whisper. “Why her? Why like this?”
Natalie said nothing. She just held me tighter.
Then Shauna was there, arms wrapping around us both, adding her warmth to the small, fragile island we’d made in the cold night.
Shauna’s arms trembled slightly as she held me, her usual fierce confidence faltering under the weight of it all. She swallowed hard, biting back the catch in her throat like she didn’t want to give in to the grief, didn’t want to be the one to fall apart first. But I could feel it, that tightness in her chest, the way her hands clenched just a little too hard.
Misty stood a little off to the side, her face pale and drawn, eyes glassy but fierce, like she was trying to hold back a storm. Her jaw twitched, her hands curled into fists at her sides. She didn’t say anything, but I knew her silence was loud, a silent scream bottled up and waiting to break free.
Van paced nearby, restless energy barely contained. Their usual easygoing smirk was gone, replaced by a somber shadow. They glanced at us, then away again, like they were trying to hold themselff together but didn’t know how.
Taissa bit her lip, staring at the ground like the earth beneath us might swallow her whole. Her fingers twisted a threadbare bracelet she never took off, a nervous tic I hadn’t noticed before. She didn’t speak, but when she finally looked up, her eyes were red-rimmed, and something fragile flickered there, disbelief, sorrow, fear.
Jackie, always the loudest of us, was silent too. For once, no jokes or bravado. Instead, she just leaned her body close, shoulder brushing against mine, as if that tiny touch could send some of her strength my way. Her lips were pressed tight, her eyes shiny with unshed tears, a warrior reduced to nothing but raw, aching sadness.
Mari hovered on the edges, her face unreadable but her fingers fiddling with the strap of her backpack like she was trying to anchor herself to something solid. When she stepped forward and rested a hand lightly on Shauna’s back, it was the kind of quiet comfort that felt like a lifeline.
All around me, the group was fractured, fragile, and silent, each of us lost in the same dark sea, different waves pulling us in separate directions, but somehow still holding on to the same fragile raft.
The world outside blurred. The stars hung like distant promises, and the chapel behind us was a shadow that wouldn’t fade.
For the first time, I let myself fall apart.
No words. No reasons. Just the hollow, aching truth that Laura Lee was gone, and nothing would ever be the same again.
***
They made the announcement during third period.
The intercom crackled like it always did, half-dead with age, suspended from the ceiling by tape and prayer, and then Principal Holzer’s voice came through. But it didn’t sound like him, not really. It was a strange, disembodied version, like his mouth was full of dust and regret.
“This morning,” he said, “we received the devastating news that one of our students, Laura Lee, was found deceased on school grounds.”
Deceased.
As if the word itself could make it softer.
There were gasps. Someone dropped a pencil. A few desks scraped against the linoleum as kids turned, whispering, speculating.
But I already knew.
I’d known before the sun came up.
“We will be offering grief counseling in the library and multipurpose room throughout the day. Students may be dismissed with parental permission…”
He kept going. But I wasn’t listening. My mind had gone strangely still, like a snow globe that had just been shaken and was waiting for the flakes to settle.
Across the hall, someone started sobbing. Wet, loud, ragged. It felt like it was happening inside my own chest.
The school day didn’t really continue, not in any real sense. People wandered through it like ghosts. Teachers gave up on pretending anyone could focus. The hallways smelled like hand sanitizer and stress. The bathroom stalls were full of girls crying into sleeves. The football team cancelled practice. No one touched the vending machines.
Time stopped having shape. It just folded in on itself.
By the time the candlelight vigil came together that evening, the sun had already dipped behind the trees, bleeding orange and purple across the sky like it couldn’t help but be beautiful, even now.
They held it on the soccer field. Of course they did. It was the only place big enough for everyone.
Someone had brought folding chairs. Someone else passed out cheap candles with those little paper guards to keep the wax from burning your fingers. The school choir sang a half-hearted version of Amazing Grace, their voices thin and uneven, like no one could find the pitch without her.
I sat on the cold grass next to Shauna, knees pulled up to my chest, the candle flickering in my hands like it wasn’t sure if it wanted to stay lit.
Natalie stood farther back, arms crossed, eyes hard. Van next to her, silent. Taissa’s jaw looked carved from stone. Misty flitted around trying to look useful, handing out tissues no one asked for. Jackie paced like she couldn’t stand still long enough to feel anything. Mari was live-posting about it, hashtags, broken-heart emojis, vague eulogies. I hated her a little for it, then hated myself for hating her.
There was a girl-shaped hole in the field that no one could fill, no matter how many candles we lit.
When her parents spoke, clutching each other, broken things barely stitched into people, the whole crowd leaned in. I didn’t remember much of what they said. Just the way her mother’s voice cracked on the word light. Just the way her father couldn’t look at the sky.
I thought maybe God couldn’t either.
Afterward, we didn’t go home. Not all of us.
Jackie said we should stay. That we needed to be together. She looked at me when she said it. I didn’t know what that meant yet.
We ended up in Misty’s basement. That’s where we always went when things got weird. It smelled like laundry and old carpet. We all sat on the floor in a loose, quiet circle, everyone facing inward like we could protect ourselves from whatever was out there if we just kept the shape.
Someone had brought snacks. No one touched them.
No one knew what to say. Everything sounded too small.
And then Jackie said it.
“I think we should try to contact her.”
Everyone looked up at once.
Shauna blinked. “What?”
“With a Ouija board,” Jackie said. Her voice was calm. Too calm. Like she’d rehearsed it on the way here. “We could talk to her. Maybe she could tell us what happened.”
“That’s insane,” Natalie said immediately. “She’s dead. You think she’s just... floating around waiting for us to ask her questions like a Magic 8-Ball?”
Jackie didn’t blink. “If someone killed her, don’t you want to know who?”
Taissa ran a hand over her face. “Jesus, Jackie.”
“We owe it to her,” Jackie insisted. “She was our friend.”
Van snorted. “Since when were you and Laura Lee close?”
That landed like a slap. Jackie’s jaw twitched, but she didn’t rise to the bait.
“I’m serious,” she said, lower now. “You all want to sit here and act like things are gonna go back to normal? Like next week we’re gonna be in study hall and this won’t still be in our blood? You really think whoever did this is just gonna confess?”
The room fell silent again.
I stared at the carpet.
I hated the idea. But I hated the silence more.
Misty piped up, of course. “I have a board,” she said, voice breathless. “My grandma gave it to me, but I never—”
“No,” Taissa snapped.
Misty flinched.
“No one’s asking a dead girl to come back just to satisfy our guilt,” Taissa said. “It’s gross.”
Jackie tensed. Her shadow spilled across the rug like a fracture.
“Well, I’m doing it. Misty, please grab the board.”
Natalie looked at me, her eyes unreadable. “Don’t,” she said. “You don’t want to open that door.”
But it already felt open. Just a crack.
And the dark behind it had a heartbeat.
We sat in a ragged circle on one of Misty’s many patchwork rugs, surrounded by dusty filing cabinets, medical posters, and a giant papier-mâché skeleton wearing a feather boa. Natalie flicked her lighter absently, like she was seconds away from burning this whole place down just to escape the mood. Shauna was curled up beside me, hugging a throw pillow that might’ve once belonged to a couch from the Nixon era. Van and Taissa leaned against a stack of beanbags, legs tangled together, eyes wide but trying to play it cool.
The ouija board was definitely older than any of us. Faded letters, weird scratches on the wood, the kind of thing you’d find in your grandma’s attic next to her cursed wedding dress. Misty laid it down like she was presenting a roast chicken at Thanksgiving.
“Okay,” she said, sitting cross-legged and way too excited, “rules are simple. Don’t ask when you’re gonna die, don’t be a dick, and if someone gets possessed, you perform the exorcism, not me. I don't do puke.”
The ouija board lay in the middle of the rug like a joke we weren’t sure we were ready to laugh at.
We weren’t really ready for anything.
Not for the candlelight vigil where people spoke Laura Lee’s name like it belonged to someone already turning into a myth.
Not for the look on my father’s face when he told me not to “get involved.” As if that weren’t already impossible.
I sat down with palms resting in my lap. My fingers were trembling and I hated that everyone could probably see it.
I placed my fingertips on the planchette first. The others followed, some rolling their eyes, some holding their breath.
“I’ll do the talking,” I said, surprised by the steadiness in my own voice. “She would’ve listened to me.”
No one argued.
Misty looked pleased.
I stared at the board. I didn’t believe in this kind of thing, not really. But belief felt irrelevant now. Something had cracked open in the world, and if this was the only way to speak to her, then I’d take it. Even if it was stupid. Even if it was fake. Even if all we did was make each other cry a little more.
“Laura Lee,” I said. Her name caught on my tongue. “Are you here with us?”
The planchette didn’t move.
A long silence.
Then, slowly, as if being pulled by hands we couldn’t see, it began to shift.
YES.
Jackie muttered something under her breath about coincidence. Van elbowed her.
I swallowed. “Do you know what happened to you?”
The planchette stilled, then moved again.
YES.
“Do you know who did it?”
This time it moved slower. Like it was thinking.
Then: NOT YET.
Mari leaned forward. “What the hell does that mean? Like she doesn’t know, or we don’t?”
“Shh,” I said. “Let her speak.”
I didn’t know who I was saying it to, Mari, the board, or the girl I still hoped was somewhere, watching.
“Laura Lee,” I whispered, “do you want us to find them?”
YES.
I blinked, and my eyes stung. But I wouldn’t cry. Not here. Not in front of them. Not while she needed me to stay clear.
One more question. I had to ask one more.
“Are we in danger?”
The planchette jolted.
YES.
Something in my stomach dropped so hard it made my bones ache.
Natalie whistled low. “Well. That’s comforting.”
Taissa shifted. “Okay, but like, demon danger? Or serial killer danger?”
“Or emotional instability danger,” Jackie added. “Which, let’s be real, covers half this circle.”
“No offense,” she added, glancing at me.
“None taken,” I said automatically, even though it stung.
I closed my eyes. Thought about her laugh. Her hands gripping mine when she was nervous. Her voice at choir practice, bright and trembling with belief.
I opened my eyes.
“Laura Lee,” I whispered, “do you remember who it was? Anything?”
The planchette paused.
Then it jerked.
R
It stopped.
Just one letter. R. Hanging in the air like a hook waiting for meat.
“R?” Shauna said softly. “What the hell is R?”
“Red?” Mari offered. “Rage? Regret?”
“Ravioli,” Van muttered. “Spirits get hungry too, y’know.”
Natalie cracked a dry smile, but her eyes were still locked on me. “Real helpful, Van.”
Suddenly, the planchette slid to the center.
GOODBYE.
And just like that, it stopped.
We all sat there, stunned. Still touching the board, as if letting go would break something we couldn’t name.
“Okay, but are we sure it was actually Laura Lee we talked to?” someone said.
I didn’t even look up to see who, it sounded like Jackie, but it could’ve been Mari. The voice had that skeptical, mascara-smeared tone unique to girls who’d watched too many slasher movies and never thought they’d end up in one.
The planchette still sat in the centre of the board, unmoving, like it knew better than to get involved in this part.
I blinked hard. My fingers had started to go numb. Maybe I’d been holding my breath.
“She spelled out R,” Shauna said, as if that proved anything.
“Yeah, and maybe that stands for Random basement ghost with nothing better to do,” Van muttered, flicking a piece of lint off her jeans.
Natalie, seated across from me, tilted her head slightly, the corners of her mouth pulling up in a tired, bitter smirk. “Or maybe it’s Regina George and she’s mad we stole her board.”
Misty gasped, clearly offended on the board’s behalf. “Excuse me, this is an authentic Parker Brothers edition from 1986, thank you very much. And spirits don’t lie.”
“That’s literally the tagline for most liars,” Taissa said.
I didn’t laugh. None of it was funny. Not to me. Not yet.
Maybe not ever.
“Why would she lie?” I finally said, and my voice cracked around the words like something brittle. “Why would Laura Lee, if it was her, come back just to screw with us?”
No one answered right away.
The silence was full of shifting denim and the soft sound of someone biting a nail. Natalie, I thought. She had that habit when she was thinking too hard. Or hiding something.
I rubbed my hands together. They were still cold. My palms were damp.
“She wouldn't lie,” I said. “Not to me.”
Misty leaned in, eyes too wide. “Unless something was keeping her from saying more.”
Everyone glanced at her like she’d suggested sacrificing a goat, which honestly, wouldn’t be out of character for Misty. The basement had that vibe.
“You mean like, what? Ghost censorship?” Jackie rolled her eyes. “Come on. If she knew something, why didn’t she just spell it out? Why not say who it was?”
“Maybe she can’t,” Natalie said softly. Her voice was different then, less sarcastic. Like she'd pulled a curtain back for just a second. “Maybe the dead don’t get it all figured out either.”
I looked at her then. There was something about the way she said it, like she knew. Like she’d lived with that kind of silence before. The haunted kind.
Taissa rubbed her forehead. “This is getting us nowhere.”
“Yeah,” Mari said, already pulling her phone back out. “Let’s not turn Laura Lee into a campfire story.”
“She’s not a story,” I snapped before I could stop myself.
Everyone froze.
“She’s not a story,” I repeated, quieter this time. “She was my best friend. And she’s dead. And someone did it. So if this,” I jabbed a finger at the board, “is the only way to get answers, then we do it. Again. As many times as it takes.”
Misty practically glowed.
Jackie crossed her arms. “Or we could just… call the police?”
“You know they’re investigating,” Van said. “They're still ‘gathering leads.’ Which is code for: they don’t know jack.”
“Besides,” Misty added with a shrug, “ghosts don’t need warrants.”
Natalie laughed. Just once, low and dark and tired. “Great. We’re ghost-hunting a murderer now. What could go wrong?”
“Everything,” I said.
But I didn’t get up.
Because if Laura Lee was trying to talk to us, if, then the least we could do was listen.
And maybe I was scared. Not of the board. Not of ghosts. Not even of the killer, not really.
I was scared of forgetting her voice.
Of her fading into just another article, another face on a poster, another warning whispered in the halls.
I was scared of how fast we all move on.
And maybe this, sitting here in a too-bright basement, with a half-burnt candle and a creaky board, was the only way I could still hold on.
“Let’s try again,” I said.
And I reached for the planchette.
We all hesitated, and then one by one, fingers fell back into place on the planchette.
The board creaked slightly as the table settled. Misty lit another tea candle with a weird amount of ceremony. I didn’t ask why she had so many. I didn’t want to know.
“Okay,” I whispered. “If it’s really you, Laura Lee… please. Just give us something. Anything.”
For a beat, nothing happened. A car passed outside, headlights sliding like ghosts across the narrow basement window. Someone upstairs flushed the toilet.
Then, the planchette twitched.
Just a flick, like a shiver.
“Did you do that?” Shauna asked, eyes wide.
“No,” I said. “Shut up. Everyone shut up.”
We stared.
The planchette moved again. Slow. More certain. It glided toward a letter.
B.
“Oh god,” Mari muttered. “It’s spelling BRB.”
“Seriously?” Jackie groaned. “Laura Lee’s a millennial now?”
Misty shot her a look like she’d just insulted the entire afterlife.
But then the planchette jerked again, faster this time.
B – U – R – N.
The room shifted. The candles flickered. Something crept under my skin like static.
“Burn?” Natalie said. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“Like… hellfire?” Van offered weakly.
“Or maybe someone tried to burn the evidence?” Shauna said, her voice barely above a whisper.
I didn’t say anything. My stomach dropped.
The planchette moved again.
L – A – B.
We all leaned in.
“Lab?” Taissa asked. “What lab?”
“There’s no lab at school,” Misty said, frowning. “Not unless you count the chem room. But that’s not even a real lab, it’s just,”
2 – 1 – 4.
Room number.
We all looked at each other.
“That’s in the old wing,” Jackie said, suddenly serious. “Nobody uses that room anymore.”
“It’s where they used to do science stuff in the ‘90s,” Mari added. “Before the new building went up.”
Shauna swallowed hard. “Do you think that’s where..?”
The planchette stopped moving.
Dead centre. We waited. Nothing.
And then, without warning, the candle closest to Misty sputtered and died.
Just one. The others burned steady.
Natalie looked at me. “What the hell was in 214, Lottie?”
I shook my head.
Burn. Lab. 214.
The pieces were starting to move.
“Tomorrow,” I said, rising to my feet. “We go there. After school.”
“No one goes to the old wing,” Misty said nervously.
“They will now,” I replied.
We all stood there in silence for a beat, the board still between us, like it was waiting for one of us to say something stupid and ruin it.
Then Natalie let out a sharp breath and muttered, “Well… at least it didn’t spell RUN.”
The candles flickered again.
We all stared.
“Okay, who said that?” Mari asked.
Van pointed at the board. “That wasn’t funny.”
“Guys,” Shauna’s voice went tight. “Seriously.”
The planchette moved.
R – U – N.
The room dropped ten degrees in an instant. Or maybe it was just my spine.
No one moved.
“Okay,” Jackie said slowly, lifting her hands off the board like it was about to bite her. “Well. That’s comforting.”
“Did someone just do that as a joke?” Mari asked, looking at all of us, but mostly at Van. “Because if this is a bit, congrats, it’s working. I’m peeing a little.”
Van raised her hands, eyebrows raised. “Don’t look at me. I don’t mess with dead girls or boards that spell RUN. That’s, like, a horror movie sin.”
Natalie leaned back on her elbows, eyes narrowed at the board like she wanted to flick it across the room. “I knew I shouldn’t have come to this séance. I knew it. Dead best friend or not, once the ghost starts giving running instructions? That’s my cue.”
Shauna looked pale. She glanced over at me. “Do you think… she was warning us?”
My throat tightened. I hadn’t realized how hard I was clutching my knees until my nails left little half-moon marks on my skin.
“She wouldn’t hurt us,” I said quietly. “Not Laura Lee.”
“But maybe she’s not the one in charge,” Misty whispered. Her voice was high, and kind of breathy, like she was thrilled and horrified at the same time. “Sometimes spirits come through that aren’t who you think they are. There are… interferers.”
“Jesus, Misty, can you not?” Jackie snapped. “Save the demon TED Talk for later.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, sharper than I meant. Everyone turned to me, surprised.
I ran a hand through my hair, dragging it out of my face. “Look. Whether that was Laura Lee, or something else, or just our hands twitching, it doesn’t matter. What matters is that she was trying to tell us something. Burn. Lab. 214. That’s the point. Not the board’s dramatic exit.”
“I dunno,” Natalie muttered. “If my dead best friend spelled out RUN, I’d be sprinting before I asked follow-up questions.”
“You’re still here,” I said.
She met my eyes. Didn’t flinch. “Guess I’m curious. Or stupid.”
“Or both,” Van offered.
Natalie shrugged. “Yeah. Both checks out.”
Misty reached out, brushing her fingers along the edge of the board like it was sacred. “Maybe the message wasn’t for us.”
“What?” Taissa asked, still looking like she wanted to set the whole basement on fire and walk away.
“I mean,” Misty went on, “maybe it was a memory. Something she was told. Right before it happened.”
That silenced the room for a second.
It hadn’t even occurred to me.
What if the board wasn’t a message to us, but a replay of something Laura Lee experienced? A last word. A final warning.
“Who would tell her to run?” Shauna said quietly.
I felt something twist in my gut.
“Maybe someone who didn’t want her to find what she found?” I said, it was more like a question.
Misty grinned a little, like she loved this part. “Which probably means we’re close.”
Jackie looked around at all of us. “Okay, let’s just pause for a second and ask the real question here: are we seriously doing this?”
No one answered.
Outside, the basement window darkened as a cloud passed. One of the candles guttered.
Then Natalie sighed and stood up, brushing crumbs from her jeans.
“Yeah,” she said. “We are.”
Her voice was firm, maybe too firm, like if she stopped being sarcastic for one second too long, everything would collapse.
The rest of us followed, wordlessly, the séance breaking up like the end of a weird sleepover no one wanted to admit they enjoyed.
But I didn’t move right away.
I sat there, staring at the board.
RUN.
I wanted to believe it was just a fluke. A scare. A malfunction in the cosmic Wi-Fi.
But I felt it in my chest like a bruise.
Laura Lee was trying to help us.
And something out there wanted us to stop.
I touched the planchette one last time, like I was saying goodbye. But the chill it left on my fingertips lingered all the way through my veins.
No one wanted to go home. Not after what the board said. Not after that word, RUN, got clawed into our brains like it meant something deeper than just fear.
Van was half-asleep, draped over Shauna’s legs like a content cat. Jackie was scrolling through her phone with her earbuds in, pretending she wasn’t refreshing every local news app for updates. Taissa sat cross-legged, staring at a candle like it owed her money. Misty was weirdly chipper, offering people more juice boxes and granola bars like we were all eight.
I sat by the water heater, curled in on myself. I didn’t feel like talking. The hum of the pipes filled the silence behind my ears.
I didn’t notice Natalie until she dropped down next to me, stretching her legs out with a groan.
“Nice party,” she said. “Ten outta ten. Would conjure the dead again.”
I looked at her. “Is that your version of checking in?”
Natalie shrugged. “I mean, it’s either that or, ‘Hey, you good after your dead best friend told us to sprint?’”
A weak laugh slipped out of me before I could stop it. “Yeah. No. Not good.”
She glanced sideways at me, then plucked a lint ball off her sock and flicked it across the room. “You were really close with her, huh? Laura Lee.”
I nodded, and for a second I couldn’t talk.
It hit me again, not just the loss, but the way the world felt tilted now. Like someone had taken the map and crumpled it. Nothing was where it was supposed to be.
“She was the only person who didn’t treat me like I was weird,” I said. “Or… like I was broken.”
Natalie picked at her chipped nail polish. “Well. You are kind of weird.”
“Thanks,” I muttered.
“But,” she added, “not the worst kind. You’re the kind of weird that makes other people uncomfortable because you actually mean the shit you say. That’s rare.”
I turned toward her, trying to decide if that was an insult or not.
She smirked, reading my expression. “You’re welcome.”
For a moment, it was quiet. The kind of quiet that felt dense, like it could collapse into something if you breathed wrong.
Then Natalie said, more softly, “I get it, though. Losing someone like that. When it’s messy. Sudden.”
I looked at her again. Her eyes were on the floor now, but they weren’t really focused on anything.
“Who did you lose?” I asked.
She hesitated, then shrugged. “My mom. When I was nine. Drunk driver.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. She wasn’t exactly mom-of-the-year material.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “Still. Death’s weird like that. Even when they sucked, you still feel… I don’t know. Hollow.”
I nodded. “Yeah. Like you’re walking around with someone else’s shadow.”
“That’s exactly it.” She bumped her shoulder against mine, light but deliberate. “You’re not alone in it, Lottie. Even if it feels that way.”
I let that sit there for a second. Her presence. The warmth of her beside me in this weird, too-bright basement that still smelled vaguely like bleach.
“Thanks,” I said. “For not making fun of me for crying.”
“Oh, don’t get too comfortable,” she said, smirking. “I’ll probably make fun of you tomorrow.”
I snorted. “Fair.”
She leaned back against the wall, eyes on the low ceiling. “Hey. If this is gonna turn into a murder mystery thing, like, full Scooby-Doo, I get to be the one with the van.”
“You don’t have a van.”
“Minor detail. I’ll find one. Steal Misty’s mom’s Honda or something.”
I smiled. For the first time that day, it didn’t hurt to.
“Just don’t make me be the dog,” I said.
Natalie grinned. “Deal.”
And in that moment, I knew she meant it. Not the van thing. The staying part.
Even if everything else was falling apart, maybe, just maybe, this was where something could start.
***
The cafeteria was loud, too loud, and yet everything felt hollow, like I was watching a movie where the soundtrack was out of sync. Everyone was talking, but no one was really saying anything. The usual cliques laughed and shoved trays around like nothing had changed, but I saw the undercurrent, the way people’s eyes flicked away when Laura Lee’s name came up, the way whispers curled around the edges of conversations like smoke.
I sat by the window, the sunlight cutting sharp lines across my face, but I couldn’t feel the warmth. Around me, Natalie, Misty, Jackie, Shauna, Van, Taissa, and Mari settled like a loose constellation, all of us orbiting the same heavy silence. The night before, the Ouija board had spelled out R–U–N, and it felt like that word had hung itself around our necks, tightening with every passing second.
Misty stirred her coffee absentmindedly. “So, the board said we should run. But run where? School’s not safe, home’s not safe. What’s left?”
Jackie scoffed, her eyes rolling but not enough to hide the unease. “Or maybe it just means run from all this drama. Like, stop digging.”
Van leaned in, voice low. “You guys see the reporters outside? The cops poking around? The principal’s trying to keep it together, but you can feel it, something’s wrong, deep wrong.”
Shauna bit her lip, eyes darting. “It’s like we’re all pretending, but we’re not fooling anyone. This thing... it’s inside the school now too.”
Mari was scrolling her phone, shaking her head. “Social media’s a circus. People talking cults, gangs, all kinds of nonsense. But none of it explains why Laura. Why here.”
I swallowed hard, the memory of Laura’s last night flickering like a ghost behind my eyes, the chapel, the shadow, the axe. I shoved the thought down. “We need to find something real. The board pointed to the old wing.”
Natalie smirked, that sarcastic edge I’d come to expect. “Because sneaking into a creepy abandoned lab sounds so smart.”
Taissa’s eyes darkened with worry. “Why there? What’s so important about that place?”
Jackie shrugged. “Could be nothing. Or maybe it’s where it all started. If we want answers, we have to look.”
My fingers drummed on the table. “I want to find Laura. Find out if she knew something… if she found something before…”
The table went quiet. The cafeteria’s noise faded into a dull hum, like the world was holding its breath. The light outside dimmed, shadows stretching long and cold.
Misty finally broke the silence, setting down her cup. “Tonight, after school, we check out the lab. Together.”
No one argued. No one wanted to be alone with their fears. We were all tangled in this mess, the only family left in the middle of a nightmare.
I looked out the window at the bell tower, standing like a silent sentinel over the town. The day went on around me, but I knew, something was already unraveling, and there was no turning back.
***
The school looked different at night, quieter, sharper, almost like it had been waiting for us.
We stood just outside the fence, huddled in the shadows behind the gym where the floodlights didn’t quite reach. The hum of distant traffic barely touched the edges of the silence between us. I could hear someone’s breath, maybe mine, maybe Shauna’s, coming out quick and foggy in the cool night air.
From here, the windows of the old wing looked like eyes. Lab 214 sat somewhere in there, wrapped in decades of dust and whatever secrets no one had bothered to sweep out. My palms were cold. Not with fear exactly, more like the weight of knowing we were stepping into something we couldn’t undo.
“We can still back out,” Van said, their hands shoved deep into the pockets of their hoodie. “Just say it was a bad idea and pretend none of this ever happened.”
“But it did happen,” I said, my voice low. “Laura’s dead. We can’t just… pretend.”
Misty, beside me, adjusted the thick flashlight in her grip like she’d been waiting her whole life to say: “I brought gloves. And masks. Just in case of asbestos.”
Natalie snorted. “Of course you did.”
“I’m just being thorough.” Misty gave her a look.
Then Jackie let out a long sigh and started climbing the fence. “Come on, Scooby Gang. Let’s break into our haunted high school and get murdered. Can’t wait.”
One by one, we followed her, awkward and slow, our footsteps crunching on gravel as we crept through the overgrown side yard toward the back entrance. The metal door to the old wing had been chained shut once, but someone had already cut it, maybe years ago, maybe last week. The lock hung loose, the chain pushed aside like it didn’t matter anymore.
We hesitated at the threshold, all of us pressed in close. The hallway beyond was a tunnel of dark, thick with that strange metallic scent old buildings had, part rust, part mold, part memory. It smelled… forgotten. Like the air hadn’t been breathed in years.
“This is such a terrible idea,” Shauna muttered.
“Probably,” Natalie said, flashing her phone light ahead. “But I’ve done worse.”
Jackie took a breath and stepped into the dark.
The hall swallowed us whole. Our lights danced over peeling paint and long-dead bulletin boards, the kind with faded construction paper shapes still barely clinging to them. Someone had left a teacher’s mug on a desk, half-shattered, like the place had been evacuated mid-sentence. Time didn’t move here, it settled. Stagnant.
We moved quietly, past old classrooms filled with overturned desks and empty bookshelves, until we reached it.
Lab 214.
The plaque was barely legible, the numbers warped with heat damage or time. The door looked... wrong. Warped. Like it had once been pried open and forced shut again. Natalie reached out first, because of course she did, and touched the knob.
It turned too easily.
Inside, the room was cold. Not just old-building cold, different. Heavy. Like the air had mass.
Our lights swept over long, blackened counters, rusted gas valves, and scorched tile. In the back corner, a section of wall had burned away, revealing cracked brick and a strange, dark smear that might’ve once been soot… or something else.
Someone had drawn a symbol on the far wall. Not spray paint, older. Etched, maybe. Circular, jagged at the edges, like a sun turned inward.
Jackie’s voice cracked the silence. “This is where someone died, isn’t it?”
No one answered. But the room felt full, like something had been waiting. Watching.
I stepped forward, my breath shaky. “This is where she wanted us to go.”
“You think Laura knew about this?” Mari asked.
“I think,” I said, surprising myself. “She mentioned she would go to a room in our school to think. To pray. She didn’t say exactly where.”
"Why the hell would she went here to think and pray?" Someone asked, I ignored them.
Misty was already scanning the room, eyes sharp behind her glasses. “There’s something under this counter.”
She crouched, reached into the shadowed space, and pulled out a box. Not locked. Just dusty. She set it down gently, and we all gathered around it like it was a bomb.
Inside:
- A Bible, its spine cracked and pages stained.
- A rosary, broken, the chain snapped.
- A notebook, leather-bound, initials scorched at the corner: L.
My chest constricted. “That’s hers.”
Natalie reached for it. “Do we open it?”
I nodded.
She flipped it open. Inside were pages of cramped handwriting, most of it scripture or notes about dreams. But on the last page was something different. A drawing.
The same symbol from the wall, etched in pencil.
And under it: “It’s starting again. I saw him in the fire.”
“It’s starting again. I saw him in the fire. What does it mean?” Shauna asked, her voice just above a whisper, like anything louder might make the shadows press in closer.
None of us answered at first.
The silence felt thick. Not dramatic, not cinematic, just real. That awful kind of real where nobody wants to admit they’re freaked out, so everyone just stares at the page like maybe it’ll change if we look hard enough.
Natalie broke it with a dry laugh that didn’t quite land. “Well, that’s definitely not creepy at all.”
Misty was the only one who didn’t look freaked. She was already analysing the handwriting like she was going to CSI her way through trauma. “Maybe it’s just metaphorical? People say weird things in journals all the time.”
“She literally said again,” Mari pointed out, her arms crossed. “That means something happened before. Something bad.”
“Yeah, and ‘saw him in the fire’ doesn’t sound like a metaphor for, like, puberty,” Van muttered.
“I mean,” Jackie offered, raising a hand halfway like she was in class, “it could be religious. You know, hellfire. She was pretty into God.”
My fingers curled tighter around the edges of the notebook. I hadn’t said anything yet. I couldn’t. My voice was buried somewhere behind the sharp ache pressing in my chest. It was Laura Lee’s handwriting. Laura Lee’s voice.
I kept staring at the sentence, trying to decode it like it was some holy text she left just for me. She always talked about signs. She believed in that kind of thing. Believed that God talked in dreams, in burning bushes, in whispers during late-night chapel prayers.
But this didn’t feel divine.
It felt like a warning.
“I don’t know what it means,” I finally said, and my voice cracked in the middle. “But she wrote it down for a reason. She wanted someone to find it.”
“Us,” Misty said, a little too quickly.
“Then why not just say what she meant?” Shauna asked, frustrated now. “Why be cryptic if she knew something bad was going to happen?”
“Because maybe she didn’t know,” I said, louder than I meant to. “Maybe she just… felt it. Like something was coming.”
That shut everyone up.
For a moment, all we could hear was the low hum of Natalie’s phone flashlight and the distant creak of the building settling. The air in the room had a way of closing in around you, like it didn’t want us here. Like it was holding its breath, waiting.
“Should we tell someone?” Jackie asked finally. “The cops? The principal? I don’t know, somebody?”
“And say what?” Natalie said. “That a dead girl might’ve predicted her own murder and left behind cryptic Catholic poetry?”
Jackie sighed. “When you say it like that, it sounds kinda dumb.”
“It’s not dumb,” I said. “It’s just… incomplete.”
Van ran a hand through her hair. “Well, whatever it means, this place is giving me the creeps. Can we get out of here before something jumps out and eats us?”
“Nothing’s going to eat us,” Mari said, but she still started backing toward the door.
Shauna closed the notebook gently, almost like she was afraid it might scream. “Let’s go. We can look at the rest of it somewhere safer.”
As we filed out of the room, Misty lingered, her flashlight beam dragging slowly across the walls one last time. I watched her eyes catch on something scratched into the doorframe, just a single letter, half-burned away.
Another R.
She didn’t say anything. Not yet.
And neither did I.
But something had started, even if we didn’t understand it yet.