The Intermittent Current

It was the third week of the new semester at Cedar Ridge High, a sprawling glass-and-steel structure that had replaced the crumbling brick of the old Hillman High, now buried beneath the football field. During second period English, Mrs. Vance assigned us a chapter from ‘The Haunting of Hill House’, and as usual, I was pulled into the resource room with the other ‘special ed’ kids, mostly because I refused to do the work. I sat apart, in a molded plastic chair by the window, watching the sun glint off the parking lot while the para, Mr. Delgado, read in a monotone. I had finished the chapter during the first ten minutes, so I rested my head on the desk, letting the drone of his voice lull me into a restless sleep.

I woke with a start, my cheek wet with drool, the afterimage of a dream dissolving like smoke. The classroom was quiet except for a boy’s voice, reading haltingly, mid-sentence. I blinked, trying to focus. The voice was coming from the group, a kid named Danny, who had a bad stutter. But then, in the middle of a word—’the cl—’ —he stopped. The silence that followed was heavy, like the air before a thunderstorm. Then I heard it: a high-pitched buzz, sharp and piercing, in my left ear. It lasted for a few seconds, then cut off abruptly, only to start in my right ear, an exact replica of the sound, as if a switch was being flipped. The buzzes alternated, left, right, left, right, each time growing slightly louder, more insistent, like a trapped fly circling my skull.

I sat up, rubbing my ears, but the buzzing didn’t stop. It was synchronized with something—I couldn’t tell what. The other kids were still, frozen in place, their eyes vacant, their mouths slightly open. Mr. Delgado was standing by the whiteboard, his hand gripping a marker, but his knuckles were white, and his face was slack, as if he were in a trance. I called out, ‘Hey, what’s going on?’ but no one responded. The buzzing grew louder, and I felt a vibration under my feet, a low hum emanating from the floor. The fluorescent lights flickered, and for a split second, I saw a dark shape in the doorway—a tall, thin figure, too thin, with elongated limbs, its head tilted at an unnatural angle. It was there and then gone, like a glitch in reality.

Panic seized me. I tried to stand, but my legs felt like lead, as if the buzzing was pinning me to my chair. I forced myself up, stumbling toward the door, expecting to see the hallway, but instead, I saw a wall of rippling heat, like the air above asphalt in summer. The buzzing was now a cacophony in both ears, but strangely, it was no longer switching—it was constant, and it was getting lower in pitch, descending into a growl. I turned back to the group, and they were now all staring at me, their eyes dark, sunken, and their mouths stretching into impossibly wide grins, revealing rows of teeth that seemed too many. I screamed, and as I did, the buzzing stopped. The room was silent, and everyone looked normal again, as if nothing had happened. But the skin on my arms was crawling, and I knew it wasn’t a dream.

That day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the school itself was cursed. I learned that the old Hillman High was built on top of an old mining site, and there were rumors about an accident that had killed several miners in the 1920s, their bodies never recovered. Some said the new school’s foundation had cracked and settled into the shafts below, and that sometimes, during certain hours, the ground would hum with a strange resonance. I started to notice that the buzzing came back, always around 9:45, always when I was in that same classroom, and always accompanied by that dark shape watching from the periphery. I tried to tell Mr. Delgado, but he just said I was having ‘sensory episodes’ and that I should see a doctor.

A week later, I was in the library during study hall, and I found an old map of the original mine tunnels, drawn in 1923. The shafts ran directly under the new school, and there was a notation: ‘Danger: Unstable ground, intermittent electrical currents.’ The word ‘intermittent’ struck me—that was my buzzing. The more I read, the more I learned about the miners, particularly one named Elias Thorne, who was rumored to have been buried alive in a collapsed shaft, but his body was never found. Some said his ghost still wandered the tunnels, trying to escape, and that his spirit manifested as a whispering buzz that switched from ear to ear, a cry for help or a warning.

Now, I sit, waiting for the buzz to come again. The other kids are reading, Mr. Delgado is nodding, but I know that at any moment, the lights will flicker, and I’ll see that dark shape again, but it’s getting closer each time. Last time, it was only a few feet away, and I could see its face—a hollow mask of skin, with a gaping mouth that was not screaming, but humming. It’s as if the ground itself is alive, and it’s trying to tell me something, but I’m too terrified to listen. I don’t know how much longer I can endure the intermittent current, the switching of sounds, the visits from something that should not be. But I know one thing: that school is not just built on a cursed ground; it’s built on a threshold, and the darkness below is waiting for the right moment to rise.