The Lane of Unfinished Games

The old school in northern Minnesota wasn’t built on a bowling alley, but on the site of a demolished one. The ‘Strike Zone Lanes’ had been a beloved local hangout until a freak accident in 1979, when a young prodigy named Danny, just ten years old, was found dead in the back room, crushed by a pin-setting machine that had somehow activated on its own. The building stood empty for years before the school board bought it for a bargain, renovated it, and turned it into St. Ignatius Elementary. But they never fully exorcised the past.

My name is Clara, and I was in the fifth-grade spring musical, ‘A Prairie Home Companion: The School Edition.’ It was a disaster waiting to happen. We rehearsed in the gym, which was the old bowling alley’s main hall. The wooden floor still had the faint outlines of lanes, and the back wall, where the pins used to stand, was now a stage. Our director, Mr. Henderson, was a stickler for precision, so we ran the same numbers over and over.

One afternoon, during a break, I needed to use the restroom. The nearest one was the boy’s bathroom on the lower level, which everyone said was ‘creepy,’ but I had to go. As I pushed open the door, a smell hit me—old oil and dust, like the bowling lanes had been freshly polished. The lights flickered, casting long shadows. I did my business quickly, but as I was washing my hands, I heard a faint, rhythmic sound behind me: a slow, deliberate rolling, then a thud, then silence. I spun around—nothing. The bathroom was empty, the stalls open, the tiles gleaming under the buzzing fluorescent light.

I shrugged it off and returned to rehearsals. But when I got back to the gym, I noticed something odd. A single bowling ball, heavy and black, sat in the center of the stage, which was not there before. No one claimed to have put it there. Mr. Henderson cursed and had it removed. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone was playing a game with us.

The second encounter happened during the dress rehearsal the night before the show. We were doing a full run-through, and as the chorus sang ‘Goodnight, Irene,’ the lights began to dim randomly, and the temperature dropped so fast that I could see my breath. I saw a figure out of the corner of my eye—a small boy in a striped shirt, standing by the curtains, wearing a bowling glove. He was gone in an instant. When I blinked, he had vanished. Mr. Henderson noticed the lights flickering too and paused the rehearsal, muttering about faulty wiring.

But the truly horrifying event occurred on the night of the performance. The show had to be flawless, and I was nervous. As I stood in the wings, waiting for my solo, I heard a voice, clear and close: ‘It’s your turn.’ I turned, but there was no one. The stage lights glared, and the audience sat in a blur. I walked out and began singing, but my gaze was drawn to the back of the gym, beyond the rows of folding chairs, to a dark corner where the old bowling lane markers might have been. There, I saw a silhouette—the same boy, now holding a bowling ball. He raised his arm in a motion to roll, and as he released the ball, the lights went out completely.

Chaos erupted. Parents screamed, kids cried, someone knocked over a speaker. When the emergency lights clicked on, the audience saw me, frozen on stage, my mouth open. The lights had failed because the main breaker had been pulled. But what made my blood run cold was when they found the breaker room door locked from the inside. And on the stage, in the center where I stood, there was a single, perfectly polished bowling ball, still warm to the touch, as if it had just been rolling.