The Second Shift

It was the winter of 2018, and I was a senior at St. Aidan’s Academy, a boarding school nestled in the hills of Vermont. The campus was a maze of red-brick buildings and winding paths, and the quarters for faculty were divided into three tiers: Ridge, Vale, and Hollow. My father, a mechanical engineer, had been posted as the head of maintenance, and we lived in a Hollow unit, a modest two-bedroom cottage with a view of the old chapel.

My pre-board examinations were looming, and I had been attending extra tutorials with Dr. Marsh, our physics teacher. On the night of December 14th, I was late, as we had been solving a particularly tricky problem on angular momentum. The clock on the chapel tower struck ten as I hurried along the gravel path that cut through the central park, a sprawling green with a playground at its heart.

The park was empty, as expected for a freezing night. Frost had dusted the grass, and the only light came from the moon and the distant security lamps. As I approached the playground, I noticed something odd: the old iron swing, which had been out of use for years, was swaying gently back and forth, as if a ghost were pushing it. The merry-go-round, a heavy metal disc designed to hold a dozen children, was rotating slowly, its bearings creaking. And the seesaw, a long plank balanced on a central fulcrum, was tilting up and down in a steady rhythm, as though two invisible children were playing.

I stopped, my breath pluming in the cold air. There was no wind. The air was still and dry. I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature. I recalled that the playground was decommissioned two years ago after a child had fallen from the merry-go-round and broken her neck. The equipment was supposed to be dismantled, but the contract had been delayed.

I wanted to run, but my legs felt rooted. I watched the seesaw move up, down, up, down, perfectly synchronized. Then, the swing stopped mid-arc, and the merry-go-round began to speed up, faster and faster until it was a blur. A high-pitched laugh, like that of a child, echoed from the hollow center of the carousel. I finally broke free and sprinted towards the faculty quarters, my heart pounding.

When I reached home, my father was reading in the living room. He looked up, surprised. ‘You’re late. Everything alright?’

I told him what I had seen. He frowned, set down his book, and went to the window that overlooked the park. ‘Probably just some kids playing,’ he said, but his voice was uncertain. ‘We got a complaint about loitering, but I sent the security guard home. I’ll check in the morning.’

I didn’t sleep. I lay in my bed, replaying the sight of that spinning carousel. And then I heard it: the creak of the swing, the rhythmic thud of the seesaw. They were right outside my window. I pulled the blanket over my head, praying for dawn.

The next morning, my father and I walked to the playground. The equipment was still, covered in frost. But on the ground, in the fresh snow that had fallen overnight, there were footprints. Small, child-sized footprints, leading in circles around the merry-go-round. They stopped abruptly at the edge of the playground, as if the child had vanished into thin air.

My father called the security office. The guard, a man named Jenkins, came over. He examined the prints and shook his head. ‘There was no one here last night. I checked at midnight. The gate was locked.’

I told him about the laugh. Jenkins muttered something about the accident. ‘That girl, Melissa, she used to play here every day. She was a nine-year-old, always on that merry-go-round. Her favorite game was to spin it as fast as she could and then jump off. The day she died, she pushed it so hard it threw her off. They say she died instantly.’

But that wasn’t the end. The playground remained active. Every night, at exactly ten, the equipment would come alive. I couldn’t sleep, and I couldn’t stay away. I began sneaking out, standing at the edge of the park, watching. The laugh would come, and I would feel a growing dread, but also an inexplicable pull.

One night, a week before my physics exam, I decided to get closer. I walked up to the merry-go-round as it spun. I saw a figure—a little girl in a yellow dress, her back to me. She turned her head, and her face was a blank white mask with two dark hollows for eyes. She smiled, and her mouth opened wide, and she spoke in a voice like wind through rusted pipes: ‘It’s your turn now. Push me.’

I stumbled back, fell, and crawled away. The next day, I missed my physics exam. I told my father everything, and he finally believed me. We moved out of Hollow quarters two weeks later, transferred to the Ridge, but the image of that girl stayed with me.

I later learned that the playground was finally dismantled in March 2019. The workers found a child’s hair ribbon in the concrete base of the merry-go-round, wedged between the turning mechanism. They also found a journal, owned by Melissa, with a final entry: ‘I will find someone new to play with. The maintenance man’s son looks lonely.’