The Scratches in Wakefield Hall

The night was thick with the kind of silence that settles over old buildings like dust. I stumbled back into Wakefield Hall at three in the morning, my head ringing with cheap beer and the laughter of friends who had long since staggered to their own beds. The dormitory corridor stretched before me, dimly lit by flickering fluorescent tubes that hummed a low, uneasy note. My key turned in the lock with a click that seemed louder than it should have been.

I kicked off my shoes and collapsed onto my mattress, but as I reached for the lamp, a sound cut through the stillness: a dull, rhythmic BANG. It came from the wall behind my head, the wall shared with my brother’s room. BANG. BANG. BANG. Six, seven times, each thud vibrating through the plaster like a fist on a coffin lid. Then silence. My heart hammered against my ribs as I padded to the door and peered into his room. There he was, Conner, tangled in his sheets, snoring like a chainsaw. Not him. I shrugged it off, blaming the night’s excesses, and crawled back under my blanket.

I must have drifted off, because the next thing I knew, something nudged my side. Not a hand, not a foot. It was more like a pressure, a cold push that made my skin prickle. I gasped and shot upright, my eyes scanning the darkness. Nothing. No one. The feeling clung to me, a chill that wouldn’t leave, and I knew I couldn’t stay in that room. I grabbed my pillow and stumbled to the common area, curling into a ball on the old leather sofa. The clock on the wall ticked, each second an eternity.

At nine in the morning, Conner shook me awake. His face was pale, his eyes wide. ‘Look,’ he said, turning his back. My breath caught. Across his shoulder blades were four parallel lines, raw and red, as if someone had dragged sharp nails through his skin. The scratches were too precise, too deep to be self-inflicted; his fingernails were chewed to the quick, blunt as erasers. ‘What the hell did you do?’ I asked, but he just shook his head. ‘I didn’t do anything. They were there when I woke up.’

Our roommates, Maya and Jules, were clustered in the kitchen, whispering. Maya said she’d heard the banging in her room at the same time, six or seven heavy thuds from the ceiling. Jules swore she saw the door to the storage closet swing open on its own. We searched the entire floor, every room, every corner, but found nothing out of place. Yet the feeling of being watched never left me, a shadow that clung to the edges of my vision.

That night, we all slept in the common room, huddled together on mats and blankets. But at 2:30 in the morning, the banging returned. This time, it wasn’t from the walls. It was from the floor beneath us, a slow, deliberate pounding from the basement, which had been locked for years. And as we sat frozen, listening, I saw Conner’s back in the dim light: the scratches were glowing, a faint, sickly green, and they seemed to be moving, spreading like cracks in ice. And then, from the closed basement door, came a sound that made my blood run cold: a soft, wet laugh, and the unmistakable sound of something scratching at the wood from the other side.