The Pen That Fell Twice

Six months ago, I was a sophomore at Ashford Academy, a boarding school nestled in the hills of Vermont. I’d been there since sixth grade, and the old dormitory, Meriwether Hall, had always felt heavy with history. It was built in 1862, and the walls seemed to breathe with whispers of the past. I roomed alone that semester because my roommate had transferred, so when my friend Eliza asked to crash for the night, I was glad for the company. We’d been up late talking about exams and rumors about the hall’s ghost—a former student who’d vanished in the 1920s. Around midnight, I woke with a full bladder. The bathroom was at the end of the hall, and I shuffled there in the dim, flickering nightlight that barely pushed back the darkness. I sat in the third stall, groggy, when a low growl rumbled from somewhere behind me. It was deep, like a dog’s, but muffled, as if it came from inside the pipes. My breath caught. I froze, listening. The sound didn’t repeat. After a moment, I finished, then checked every stall and the shower stalls at the end—all empty. The air smelled faintly of mildew and old wood. I shook off the unease and walked back to my room, the carpet muffling my steps. Eliza was still asleep, a lump under her blankets. I slid into bed and closed my eyes. Just as I was drifting off, I heard a soft click, like a pen dropping onto a paper. I ignored it. Then it came again—a definite patter, as if something small had fallen on my desk. I tensed, my heart starting to hammer. The room was pitch black; we kept the lights off because we couldn’t sleep otherwise. I reached for my phone to check the time—1:07 AM. I whispered, ‘Eliza, did you hear that?’ No response. I lay still, ears straining. A third time, the sound, closer now, like it was on my nightstand. I slowly turned on my phone’s flashlight. The beam swept the room: Eliza’s still form, my desk with a stack of textbooks, a scattered pencil, and there, on the floor by my bed, was a single pen—a cheap blue Bic—lying on the carpet. I hadn’t put it there. I didn’t even own a blue pen. I sat up, my skin crawling. The pen was dry, but as I watched, it twitched, sliding an inch toward the bed, as if nudged by an invisible foot. Then the room’s temperature dropped, and I heard a growl again, right under my bed. I scrambled out, almost tripping over the blankets, and hit the light switch. The room flooded with sterile light. I yanked the blankets off the bed, peered underneath. Nothing but dust bunnies. Eliza sat up, blinking. ‘What the hell?’ she said. I told her about the growl and the pen. She frowned, then pointed at the desk. ‘That pen? It was on the floor when I came in. I thought you dropped it.’ I shook my head. Something was wrong. We stayed up the rest of the night, lights blazing, but the pen didn’t move again. The next morning, I told the dorm supervisor, Mrs. Kline, about the incident. She gave me a knowing look. ‘The pen,’ she said, ‘that’s old Mary. She writes letters to folks who don’t listen.’ She explained that a girl named Mary had died in that room in the 1930s, a suicide, and her ghost was known to ‘drop pens’ to get attention. But what she said next chilled me: ‘She doesn’t just drop pens. She drops them twice. Once to warn you. Twice to mark you.’ I looked down at my hand—there, on my palm, was a faint blue ink stain, like someone had drawn a line across it. I hadn’t touched the pen. I scrubbed at it, but it wouldn’t come off. That was six months ago. The stain is still there, and sometimes, in the middle of the night, I hear that soft click of a pen falling on paper. And I know Mary is still writing, waiting for me to reply.