The 1907 Schoolhouse

You could look into the windows of the historic 1907 schoolhouse, but not enter. And if you knocked on the door or rapped on the windows, the children inside ignored you.

That’s what everyone said about the place, though few ever bothered to prove it. The old school sat at the far edge of the county, where the land dropped into marsh and mist.

The road that led there was older than the town itself, and perhaps the idea of the town. And each autumn, when the fog crept inland and the reeds turned black, the stories resurfaced.

I wasn’t one for ghost tales, but the schoolhouse had an irresistible pull. It wasn’t just the building’s date, carved above the door, but the precision of the stories.

Everyone who’d tried to enter said the same thing: you could look in, see the children, but they would not see you. You could hear faint laughter, the scrape of chalk, the teacher’s soft voice, but if you touched the knob, the door was cold as stone and would not turn.

So one evening, I went.

The sun was low, a dull coin sinking into fog. The schoolhouse crouched at the edge of the marsh like something that had grown there, its walls streaked with centuries of damp.

The windows were tall and narrow, clouded glass but intact. I brought a lantern, though its light felt somehow muted, like the air itself resisted illumination.

When I reached the front steps, my pulse fluttered in my throat. I’d expected silence, but faint sounds drifted from within, a rhythmic murmur, like recitation.

I climbed the steps and peered through the nearest window. Inside, the classroom was whole.

Desks lined in neat rows, blackboard swept clean, sunlight slanting through curtains that no longer hung in reality. The children sat upright, their small faces pale and indistinct, as if drawn from memory rather than life. The teacher, a woman in a long gray dress, traced letters on the board with a piece of white chalk that never seemed to wear down.

They moved, but not quite naturally. Each gesture seemed delayed, a heartbeat too slow, as though caught in some ancient mechanism grinding through time.

I tapped the glass. No reaction.

I knocked harder, the hollow sound vanishing into the still air. The children kept their heads bowed, lips moving silently. The teacher turned, and for a moment, I thought she looked at me, but her eyes were unfocused, gazing through me at something farther away.

A prickling chill crawled up my neck. I tried the door.

The handle did not move, though the metal was faintly warm, like something breathing beneath it. I should have left then, but curiosity, that thin cousin of madness, has its own gravity.

I circled to the back, where the brick had crumbled away in patches. Through another window, I saw the same classroom, though the angle was slightly off.

The children appeared again, but seated differently, as if the lesson had somehow shifted. Yet when I looked closer, the details disagreed with memory: the teacher’s dress, darker now, her hair pinned higher, the letters on the board not letters at all but strange loops and lines, shapes that defied my eyes to settle on them.

They pulsed faintly, as though written in light instead of chalk.

A whisper seeped through the glass, soft, measured, rhythmic. A language that felt older than the human tongue. The children chanted it in perfect unison.

I took a step back, and the scene wavered, as though water rippled between us. The fog thickened, pressing close. When I turned to find the road again, it was gone, no path, no tracks, only gray marsh stretching to the horizon.

Then came a sound from within: chairs scraping, feet moving. I looked again.

Every child had turned toward the windows. Their faces were blank, eyes like pale marbles reflecting the lantern’s glow.

They saw me.

The teacher raised her hand, and the chanting stopped. Silence gathered like a held breath. Then she smiled, a faint, distant smile that carried neither kindness nor malice, only recognition.

A crack zigzagged across the glass, though I hadn’t touched it. Another, then another, spreading like a web.

The children’s mouths opened in perfect unison, and the sound that poured out was not a scream, but something boundless. A resonance that vibrated through my bones, through the marsh, through the air itself.

My lantern flickered and went out. I stumbled backward.

The building flickered, walls thinning into transparency. For an instant, I saw what lay behind the schoolhouse, not landscape, not sky, but a vast, swirling geometry of impossible depth.

Something vast pressed its shape against reality, curious, patient, waiting. Then, as suddenly as it began, the sound stopped.

The schoolhouse was solid again, and the windows dark. My lantern relit itself with a hiss of oil.

The fog thinned, and the road appeared where it had always been. I walked home without looking back.

Now, when I pass through the county and see the sign for the old schoolhouse road, I keep driving. But sometimes, on still nights, I dream of it.

I stand before those tall, narrow windows, and the children are there again, watching me, waiting for something. And always, the teacher at the front of the room lifts her hand, points to the board, and begins to write those same impossible shapes.

Each time, I wake with the taste of salt and iron in my mouth, and the faint sound of chalk scratching, somewhere just beyond my bedroom walls.