The Fungus on the Test Tubes

My primary school, St. Aldric’s Academy, perched on a hill above the old mill town of Greyhollow, was a sprawling Victorian relic that had once been a cholera hospital. By the time I was in fourth grade, it had been expanded into two wings, but the original building, with its peeling paint and crooked floors, held the classrooms for the lower grades. The science lab, a dank, windowless room at the end of the second-floor corridor, was rumored to be haunted, but we kids mostly thought it was just creepy because of the formaldehyde smell.

I was a quiet kid, often the target of the popular boys—the ‘Ferret Gang’ they called themselves, because of their sharp noses and sneaky ways. My only friend was a girl named Mira, who was as shy as I was. We spent recess in a forgotten corner of the playground, near the overgrown hedge that bordered the old cemetery plot, a fact we only learned later.

One afternoon, while Mira and I were sharing a bag of stale crackers, the Ferret Gang burst through the door of the science lab, their faces white as chalk. They were gasping, their eyes wide, and one of them, a boy named Vincent, was clutching his crotch. ‘There’s a ghost in the lab!’ they screamed. ‘A ghost! A ghost!’

Mira and I exchanged glances. We weren’t sure whether to believe them, but their terror was palpable. The teacher, Mr. Halsey, ran towards the commotion, his bald head gleaming. ‘What’s all this?’ he demanded. But the boys just pointed, trembling, towards the lab.

We all crowded around the doorway, peering into the dim room. The lab was a long, narrow space with high windows that let in a sickly green light from the overhanging elms. There were wooden benches with sinks, and shelves of dusty jars filled with preserved specimens. But what caught my eye was the far corner, where a bank of incubators hummed. On one of the shelves, near a row of test tubes, something moved.

It was small, dark, and quivering. At first I thought it was a spider, but it was too large. It looked like a lump of black mold, pulsating slowly. As we stared, it seemed to grow, spreading over the test tubes, reaching towards a beaker of murky liquid. Then, from the depths of the lab, we heard a sound—a low, wet gurgling that made the hairs on my arms stand up.

Mr. Halsey pushed past us, his voice stern. ‘Nonsense! You boys have been watching too many horror films.’ He strode into the lab, but as he approached the incubator, the gurgling grew louder. The black mass suddenly leapt from the shelf, splattering onto the floor, where it began to ooze towards the drain.

Mr. Halsey stumbled back, his face draining of color. ‘What in the world…?’ But then, from the vents above, a shower of fine, grey dust descended, coating the benches and the floor. The dust seemed to writhe, and I realized it was made of tiny, squirming worms.

We all ran. The corridor echoed with our screams. Behind us, the science lab door slammed shut on its own, and we heard a thud as if something heavy had been thrown against it. The Ferret Gang had vanished, but Mira and I hid in the library, trembling.

That night, I couldn’t sleep. I kept hearing that gurgling sound in my head. The next day, the science lab was sealed off. The faculty said there had been a gas leak. But the Ferret Gang was never the same. They became quiet, jumpy, and within a month, three of them had transferred schools.

Years later, I learned that the old cholera hospital had a mass grave beneath the parking lot, and that the science lab had been built over the very spot where the bodies were dumped. The janitor, a man named Old Crum, once told me that the test tubes used to grow cultures of bacteria for experiments. He said that sometimes the cultures would turn black and start to ‘scream’.

I never forgot that day. And whenever I smell formaldehyde, I remember the sight of that black mass, pulsating, and the wet gurgle that seemed to come from the depths of the earth. I know now that it wasn’t a ghost in the traditional sense. It was something older, something that had been feeding on the dead for over a century, waiting for the right moment to emerge. And I fear it’s still there, growing, in the sealed lab, among the test tubes that will never be cleaned.