The Haunting at Kravis School of Fine Arts

You wind your way down towards the dorm section of the building, leaving the common area far behind.

A corridor stands before you, with rows of doors on either side; behind each door a room that would house two of the college’s young students.

You stroll down the corridor, trying to recall which one was rumored to be Alice’s. You pass by a dozen identical candidates before you find that someone has done the work for you! About half way down the corridor, on the left side, you come across a door quite unlike the others. Mostly for the fact that it’s has the words…

BURN IN HELL, YOU FUCKING BITCH!!
… carved into the wood of the door. Surrounding the main, vengeful and deliberate knife-carving are smaller sentiments expressed in pen. Crude drawings and threats of violence.

Opening the door to check inside, you see a room stuck in time. It’s… surprisingly pristine, like the room of a deceased child in a parent’s house. While many have marred the door to the room, it seems like none were brave enough to enter the space itself to spoil it.

The bed, similarly well-preserved, still seems to have the indentation of where the girl would have slept every night she spent at Kravis. The room is like a time capsule; a window into what kind of person Alice might have been. Neat, deliberate, everything has its place: Save for an odd stain on the wall above her bed.

It takes you a few moments to calm down, and extract yourself from the bedroom. Leigh leaves last, as she makes sure she’s got footage of every nook and cranny for post.

You make your way down the rest of the corridor of dorms, but none of the others draw your attention the way Alice’s did. You reach the end of the corridor, and meet a set of stairs: Up and down.

The final door on this floor creaks slightly, making you all look that way. Beyond the slightly opened door, you hear a soft

Plink…. Plink… Plink…

Like water dripping into itself. It’s constant, and rhythmic. It demands to be seen, to be confirmed. You push through the door, and find yourself in the communal bathroom for this floor of dorms. It’s a large space, with toilet stalls off to one side, and shower stalls off to the other.

In the middle, a circle of sinks and mirrors. Arranged around this centerpiece are strange mannequins, each acting out a different step in the morning routine. One holds a toothbrush up to its smooth face. Another looks to be crimping its eyelashes. Another checks for spots in the mirror.

Moonlight shines in from outside, casting off shadows on the floor, as a tree sways just beyond the window outside.

Fanning into the room proper, you see the source of the noise. Each of the sinks, all manned by their own mannequin, is full of red liquid, which drops in steadily from the tap. The old porcelain is marked red after seeming years of the stuff marking the inside, even as it steadily drips over the sink, making the flood beneath wet and red.

Justin eventually ceases his assault on his co-star, and you prepare to leave the bathroom for ‘greener pastures’.

You turn your backs to the room, leaving the mannequins in their place, keeping their vigil of the ever-dripping, rusty red water.

Just as Leigh puts her foot to the door, ready to usher the rest of you out on-camera, the room breaks out in a cacophony of sound behind you.

Suuuuurrrrshhhh…
Comes a wet, sucking sound from everywhere at once. The sinks empty themselves, with the wet sound soon being replaced by a hollow, hungry sound as the pipes yawn for more of the rusty red!

A second later, you hear a similar sound from the bathroom stalls, as the toilets empty themselves too. You cover your ears as the doors of the stalls start to hammer themselves against their place, slamming open and shut as it a tornado was whipping through the room.

Boom, Boom-Boom, Boom, Boom-Boom…
The large tree outside, the branches of which had been cast into the room by the moon beyond rattle powerfully against the window at the same time. Spindly twigs lash against the pane, like nails on a chalkboard, sending a shiver up your back.

And then a deep, mournful gulping of air fills your ears, as all other noises cease.

Uhhhhhhhhhhhh…
The sound is replaced soon after by a guttural death rattle, and then the room falls silent.

As soon as Leigh breaks the silence, an ear-piercing scream erupts:

EEEEEEEEEEAAAAAHHH…
It holds for so long that your mind turns to those old videos of glass breaking as an operatic singer wails nearby.

With a shiver up your spine, and the feeling of being pursued quickening your step, you race away from the bathroom. Now, after the thumping you’d experienced, every creak and croak of the old place feels deliberate; targeted and direct.

The feeling isn’t helped by the unsteady way you have to make your way to the attic; the steps a little too close together, making your ascent a noisy one, as you scuff your shoes against the next step. A hollow dnng, dnng, dnng announcing your climb.

You reach the attic, and feel immediately how shut off it feels up here; how lonely and isolated it is. Not to mention how clawing the air feels. No light penetrates through the skylights set into the roof. It looks like they’ve been painted over on the inside. Pulling a string ushers a single harsh light into life. You hold your hand against it, blocking its blinding rays from your eyes.

The coating on the windows… it looks wet, or thick, or waxy. Touching it would answer the question. It looks fresh, somehow too.

The floor is no steadier up here, and you feel like you have to tip toe across onto the space, conscious not to put your full weight in any one spot. Like explorers forging a path through heavy snowfall, you follow in each other’s steps, as the wood below you sings out even still.

The room, once again, is set in a circle. The circular carving in the recreation room below, the bathroom above that, and now here. This one is the most… intimate of all. Again, the mirrors. A ring of mirrors. And inside them, a ring of candles. Many rings in fact - Nine. The nine circles of Hell springs to mind. In the middle, an overturned stool, the implication of which draws your gaze to the pointed roof. A noose, thankfully free of occupants.

Stepping into the circles, you notice the mirrors distort your bodies, like fun-house mirrors from some circus show, though none of the distortions bring childish joy to the heart.

The ghost screams; a sound terrible enough to send your hands to cover your ears. The glass of the mirrors shatters, but hangs suspended in the air. The ghost cuts off her scream, and with a flick of her wrist, she commands the glass shards to shoot out towards the door! Several pieces implant themselves in the wood surrounding the door.

Others, however, are aimed precisely at Joe Glickmann’s back, and approach with speed…

SAVED
ME
YOU
COULD
HAVE
SAVED
ME
YOU
COULD
HAVE
SAVED
ME
YOU
COULD
HAVE

Words form in the mirror; desperate messages from beyond the veil. They shift constantly, barraging you with angry accusations and mournful pleas.

Ricky smashes one, setting a mannequins head through the glass. Large shards fall to the ground, though the messages form across the broken glass even still.

The ghosts close in from corners of the room, until the Professor pulls some powder from his case.

Onward the ghosts come, hands reaching out as if to grasp you by the throat. Justin’s face is contorted in rage, his visage alternative between whole and wholly broken.

Just as the ghosts step into the ring of mannequins, the powder goes up in a cloud. It stings the eyes, and you taste it on the tongue.

A menacing shriek rings out, full of venom and the promise of things to come.

GRAAAAHHHHHH!!
The sound snarls about you, as the two ghosts are forced away to some realm unknown for a moment. The room falls quiet, save for the door creaking open.

Escape!

The Professors dreadful prediction in your minds, you set off running out of the bathroom. You run through the course in your head, though somehow sure it wouldn’t be the same on the way out as it was on the way in.

The hallway of doors, and Alice’s room. You had crossed this hallway from the recreational room. You start running down the hallway, frantic as you are to escape the clutches of the ghosts.

Doors upon doors upon doors; it feels as if you pass by a hundred or more. You watch the hallway extend before you a hundred more, with no signs of stopping.

You hear the slamming of a door behind you somewhere, and a low, wet growl. Another slam, and a gust of wind sends a shiver up your back. You race on. Fifty doors more, maybe a hundred, and you finally see the exit. You know it’s the way out; something inside you tells you as much.

It’s Alice’s door, with the vicious taunting scraped into the wood dancing about in your vision; the cruel words now aimed at you rather than her.

You barrel through the knife-marked door. The whispers you were sure you had heard before is now a chorus of mocking jeers. The stain in the wall seems to ooze, or set the air shimmering, as it was moving, hot, rippling.

The indent in the bed seems to widen; growing deeper as you enter, as if ravenous at the promise of a meal.

Leigh points at the bed; and even as she does, you hear a wet murmuring coming from somewhere inside the hole. A spectral hand climbs out of the dark indent, grabs on to the bed frame, and then the ghostly figure of Alice hoists herself up.

She grabs the front of Joe Glickmann’s shirt, and begins to drag him towards the yawning portal…

Ricky works the window, finding it jammed fast! He wriggles it again, frustrated at being robbed of an easy escape. Something flashes outside, and then Justin is on the other side of the glass, looking in at you all.

You all, but one of you in particular: the Professor. Enraged at being sent elsewhere by the Professors powder, Justin passes through the glass, through Ricky and, suddenly corporeal, grabs the Professor by the back of the head.

He yanks the man about, and then forces his head towards the noxious, heady gas. It fills the Professors mouth and nose. It’s enough to make the mind swim after only a few seconds. You’ll pass out before long!

Fire licks at your skin as the heat in the room dramatically increases when the gas takes light. The ball of fire catches in a dozen different places, as the pristine furniture of Alice’s dorm starts up in a blaze.

The window gives at that moment, gifting precious oxygen to the gathering flames. Ricky slips the pane up, and begins to crawl out, looking at the distance between him and the ground below. He slips a leg over the edge…

The others feel the heat on the back of their necks, as Glickmann’s tie pays the price for their escape. The trio race down the stairs, sure in the knowledge that the Professor’s pyrotechnics will spread behind them.

Down you go, until you reach the Common Room! The sigils carved into the wooden boards on the floor hum with a gentle red light, mirroring the flame’s engulfing the room above you.

Something dreadful growls at you from the corner of the room; the corner which seems to swallow light! You sense something there… Something waiting to pounce on you as you try to cross the space to the Foyer!

Ricky puts a leg over the windowsill, and sits on the thing. He braces himself, ready to jump.

Three… two… one…

He pushes off. His feet hit the glowing wooden floor of the common room half a second later. The others watch on as they see Ricky Dijkgraf jumping out of the student scoreboard…

Leigh lines up a wide shot; one that shows a defiant Joe Glickmann standing against the shadow.

He makes his battle cry, as the thing from the corner snarls in response! Justin takes shape amongst the darkness there, and steps towards his Co-Star. The ghost cocks his head, looking at his old coworker and then to the weapon in his hands…

Her attention captured by Joe’s stand against the ghost, Leigh doesn’t get a shot of Alice appearing up through the sigils in the floor, like some summoned entity from beyond. Ricky and the Professor watch on as Alice extends her hand and lifts, like some poltergeist Jedi.

Leigh feels herself lifting away from the floorboards, slowly at first, but then slamming with some force into the student scoreboard. The impact knocks the wind out of her, as the ghost approaches, holding its force-choke. She feels the fire from the room above licking at her through the strange portal Ricky had used. The smell of burning hair fills her nostrils; her hair.

Her camera falls to the ground with the suddenness. Miraculously, it keeps Joe and Justin in frame, though lopsided now. Something to be fixed in post.

Justin steadily approaches the man. You don’t need to be a good shot if you’re close enough! With a few steps remaining, Joe fires the flare into the chest of Justin…

It goes through the spectral figure. Or rather… the ghost contorts its chest cavity to create a black hole for the flare to pass through. It streaks across the room in a brilliant light, into the corner.

The corner which swallows light, and the flare is no different. In a breath, the light fizzles to a nothingness, and along with it so fizzle Joe’s hopes of a heroic self-sacrifice. Justin, the thorn in the side of Mr Joe Glickmann, continues its approach, a cruel smirk on its face now. He puts a tender hand to each side of Joe’s face. You all look on for a moment, wondering what is being communicated in the gesture. Then the ghost yanks and twists terribly.

Not chance for a final quippy remark; a final spark of resistance or spite. A quick twist, a terrible crunching snap, and the body of Joe Glickmann slumps to the floor, his dead body illuminated by the pulsing of infernal light from the sigils.