The Tiled Labyrinth

The old junior high sat on the edge of town like a forgotten tooth. It had been built in the fifties, when the town had boomed with the promise of a factory that never quite delivered, and the building had kept its utilitarian bones ever since. The locker rooms were the worst, especially the girls’. They were a maze of institutional green tiles and rusted metal lockers, and the air always smelled of damp and old chlorine.

My name is Ellie, and in the fall of 1987, I was in seventh grade. The gym teacher, Mrs. Harvey, was a relic from the same era as the building, with a whistle that could shatter glass and a habit of making us run laps for minor infractions. The locker room was our only reprieve, a place to complain about homework and giggle about boys, but it was also a place I dreaded. It had too many corners, too many shadows, and a strange echo that didn’t always match what you said.

The layout was a puzzle. The main entrance was from the gym, a heavy door that swung shut with a pneumatic sigh. Inside, a long, tiled hallway stretched ahead, maybe forty feet. At the end, a T-junction. To the right, another hallway led to the main school corridor, supposedly for ‘convenience’ but it was always locked from the outside. To the left, a shorter hallway dead-ended at another door, which opened onto a narrow staircase. At the bottom of those stairs was the locker room proper, a cavelike chamber that felt even older than the rest of the school.

I first noticed something wrong on a rainy Tuesday. I was late, having dropped my books in the hall, and the gym was already empty. As I walked down the main hallway, I heard a soft humming. It was a tune I didn’t recognize, and it seemed to come from directly ahead, where the T-junction was. But there was no one there. The humming stopped when I reached the junction, and a chill ran down my spine. I hurried down the left hallway, through the door, and down the stairs to find my class already in their gym clothes.

My friend Maya saw my pale face. ‘What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost.’ I shook my head, not wanting to be mocked. But the humming stayed with me, a phantom melody that returned whenever I lingered in the tiled hallways.

Then the whispers began. Not words, just hushed breaths and giggles, always from behind me, always just out of sight. I started using the main hallway exit to avoid the T-junction altogether, but I still had to go down the stairs to get to the lockers. One day, I swore I saw a flicker of movement in the corner of my eye near the bottom of the staircase, a shape that darted behind the lockers. When I looked, there was nothing.

I told my mom, who thought I was being dramatic, and my older sister, who told me to ignore it. But the strangest thing happened on the last week of school. We had a swim unit, and our class was the last one of the day. The pool was in the basement, and the locker rooms were adjacent to the pool, but we still had to change in the old locker rooms upstairs. After our swim, we were exhausted, and I was the last to leave. I had to go back because I’d forgotten my towel.

As I descended the stairs, the lights flickered, and I heard the humming again, louder this time. It was coming from the locker room. I pushed open the door to find a girl I didn’t know, standing in front of a locker that was slightly ajar. She was tall, with long dark hair, and she wore a strange, old-fashioned gym uniform, gray with a white collar. She was humming the same tune, and she didn’t turn when I cleared my throat.

‘Excuse me,’ I said, my voice trembling. She stopped humming and tilted her head in a way that made my blood run cold. She turned slowly, and her face was completely blank, no eyes, no nose, just smooth skin. I screamed and stumbled backward, but when I blinked, the girl was gone, and the locker was closed.

I ran out of there, up the stairs, through the doors, until I burst into the main school hallway, gasping for air. I never set foot in that locker room again. I told my friends, but they laughed, saying it was just a trick of the light. But I knew what I saw. The school was built on something old, something that didn’t want to be forgotten. And that girl in the faded uniform, she was a sentinel of the tiled labyrinth, waiting for the next girl who lingered too long.