Chapter 11: The Forgotten Classroom
The next clue wasn’t a mural or a glitch or a message from a faceless number, it was a classroom, a real one inside their own school. And that’s what made it so unbelievable. Because how could something this strange be hiding in plain sight inside the place where Norah had spent years sleeping with her eyes open?
It started when Daniel said he’d overheard a janitor mumbling about a storage room on the third floor that nobody used anymore. Norah raised her eyebrows because their school only had two floors and Daniel just smiled like he’d been waiting for her to say that.
So the next afternoon while everyone else was yelling over sandwiches and gossip, Norah and Daniel sneaked into the back staircase. The one nobody used because it smelled like dead lizards and ancient socks.
They climbed past the second floor and saw it, a narrow cement landing that led to a wooden door with no number on it. It was just a faint handprint like someone had leaned on it too long ago.
They opened it slowly and inside they found rows of rusting benches and a blackboard covered in symbols. It didn’t seem like chalk, but like something carved into the slate. It felt like someone had tried to teach reality itself. In the corner there was a projector, the old reel kind, the one that shouldn’t be plugged into anything, and yet it buzzed softly like it was breathing.
Daniel said, “We should not stay too long here.” Norah nodded but did not move. Something about the room pulled her, like gravity made of memory.
Suddenly, the projector flickered on without anyone touching it. The reel began to turn. On the blank wall, it showed a recording. there was no sound, just grainy black and white footage of Norah sitting in that very room, looking straight at the camera and slowly smiling, as if she knew she was being watched.
The Norah sitting there now froze and whispered, “That is not possible.” Daniel just stared and said, “It is already happening.”
The film kept looping. Each time, the Norah in the footage looked more aware, less afraid. It was like she was remembering something that had not happened yet. Then, right before the reel stopped, she pointed directly at the camera and mouthed the words, “Don’t trust him.”
Norah felt her blood go cold. She turned to Daniel, who looked confused but not surprised. For the first time since they met, she wondered if she actually knew anything about him at all.
They left the room in silence, but the feeling followed them like static stuck to their skin. As they walked down the staircase, the walls felt tighter, as if the building had been holding its breath the whole time and was only now starting to exhale.
Outside, the sun looked wrong. It was too bright, too still, as if it had been paused mid-rise. Norah could not shake the feeling that she had just been warned by her own future, and that something or someone in this whole waking dream was not who they claimed to be.
And maybe she was not, either.
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