The Last Quarter

The autumn term at Westbrook High had a way of swallowing the daylight by four in the afternoon. The parking lot was mostly empty when my friend Marcus and I decided we weren’t ready to call it a day. The gym was unlocked, a forgotten ball resting near the bleachers, and we thought a game of Horse would be better than the silent bus ride home. We had invited a few others, but they’d texted excuses about grabbing burgers or needing to finish essays. So it was just Marcus, my girlfriend Lena, and me, bouncing a basketball off the polished wood, the echoes of our sneakers filling the cavernous space.

By five, the light through the high windows had turned a sickly amber. Marcus, ever the early bird, said he needed to get home for dinner. He grabbed his bag, waved, and disappeared through the double doors. Lena and I lingered, tossing the ball lazily, enjoying the rare quiet of a school that usually buzzed with a thousand voices. The air felt still, heavy, as if the building itself was holding its breath.

As we gathered our things, I noticed a strange thing: all the wall clocks in the gym were stopped at 4:47. But the more unsettling detail was the scoreboard. We hadn’t touched it, but it flickered with the numbers 99 to 99, and a timer stuck at 0:00. I pointed it out to Lena, who shrugged it off. ‘Probably a glitch,’ she said, pulling her jacket on.

We stepped into the hallway, and the silence was oppressive. The janitor’s cart was parked near the main entrance, laden with cleaning supplies, but no one was around. The usual hum of fluorescent lights was there, but beneath it, I caught a faint rhythmic thumping. It was soft, like a heartbeat from deep within the building. Lena heard it too; she paused, tilting her head. ‘You hear that?’ she whispered. I nodded, and we moved toward the sound, our footsteps careful.

The thumping led us to the basement stairwell. The door at the bottom had a chain and padlock, but the lock was snapped open, hanging loose. The air was musty, cold. Lena grabbed my arm. ‘We should go,’ she said, but I was already stepping through the door. The room beyond was a forgotten storage space, racks of old desks and boxes. And there, in the center, stood a decrepit piano, its keys yellowed with age. The thumping, I realized, was not a drum. It was the rhythm of something walking above us, in perfect time with the seconds ticking in my head.

I was about to turn back when I noticed a stack of old yearbooks on a shelf. The top one was from 1972. I flipped it open, and there, in the class photo, was the face of a boy who looked exactly like Marcus. Same sharp features, same slight smirk. The caption read ‘David Kline.’ But beneath it, in shaky pencil, someone had written: ‘He’s still here.’ A chill slithered down my spine. Lena saw it and her face drained. ‘That’s Marcus’s last name,’ she said. His full name was Marcus Kline. I hadn’t made the connection until now.

Suddenly, the piano in the center of the room emitted a single, discordant note, as if struck by an invisible hand. We spun around, but nothing was there. The note was followed by a soft, childlike giggle that echoed off the concrete walls. The giggle morphed into a low chuckle, warping into a deeper, more sinister laugh. And then, from the speakers in the hallway, the school’s PA system crackled to life. A voice, crackly and ancient, said, ‘You’re early for detention, Mr. Kline. And you’ve brought friends. Perfect.’

Panic seized us. We bolted back up the stairs, the doors slamming shut behind us, one after another, like a cascade of gunfire. We reached the main entrance, but the doors were locked. The windows, too. The lights began to flicker, and the thumping returned, louder now, descending the stairs toward us. We ran to the gym, thinking of the exit there. But as we burst through the doors, the scoreboard changed: 98 to 99. The clock read 4:47. The ball we’d left was bouncing by itself in the center of the court.

I grabbed Lena’s hand and pulled her toward the fire exit. We pushed the bar, and the alarm blared, but the door swung open to a hallway that shouldn’t exist—a long corridor lined with lockers, darker than the one we’d just left. The alarm cut off. The hallway smelled of dust and old wood. In the distance, a figure stood, flickering like a faulty projector. It looked like Marcus, but his eyes were black voids, and his mouth stretched too wide. He sang a lullaby in a voice that was Marcus’s but layered with others, all out of tune. ‘Come, play again. The game’s not over. We waited so long.’

Lena screamed and wrenched her hand free, running the opposite way. I went after her, but the corridor twisted, and she vanished around a corner. I called her name, but only my echo replied. Then the lights went out. In the darkness, I felt a cold hand grip my shoulder. A voice, softer now, almost childlike, said, ‘Otto Jenkins died on this court a hundred years ago. He wanted someone to play with. All the children run away. You were so kind to stay.’

I woke up outside, on the front steps of the school. It was morning. My car was there, covered in dew. My phone showed it was the next day. Lena was never found. Marcus never came to school again. The school was closed for a week, then reopened as if nothing had happened. But they bricked up the basement door and tore down the gym, replacing it with a library. The detective told me it was ‘an unfortunate accident,’ but I know the truth.

Now, whenever I walk past a school, I hear that faint thumping, like a heartbeat, and I see a flicker out of the corner of my eye: a boy in old-fashioned clothes, holding a basketball, waiting for the next student to stay late. The scoreboard in my mind never changes, always 99 to 99, always tied. And I know that somewhere, in a building that was once my high school, the game continues. And Lena is there, laughing with a boy who looks just like Marcus, forever shooting hoops in the dark.