A chilling horror story set on the campus of BUas. What began as a late-night joke soon turns into a chilling lesson that Elena will never forget…

Truth be told, it all started off as a joke. Elena had been up late, way later than she usually was, sitting in the garden area of the Frontier building at Breda University of Applied Sciences, mindlessly scrolling through her unread emails full of no-reply system messages and spam from a scientific paper she stupidly signed up for. This time, however, something weird had caught her attention. Now that she thought about it, she did recall one of her professors saying that he would open some time slots for his new free elective class – what she did not expect to see, though, was the time of the class being at two in the morning. 

“He can’t be serious,” Elena chuckled, crossing her arms on her chest. Surely, it was a mistake, right?

On the other hand, Halloween was almost around the corner, so who knows, could it be some kind of secret party? If she remembered correctly that teacher did seem fairly young… If Elena had to expect something like that from one of her professors, it would definitely be him.

Without further thinking, Elena pressed the “sign up” button and leaned back on her chair, waiting for a confirmation email. It was almost ten in the evening anyways, she thought, so maybe if she hid somewhere in the bathroom, she would be able to attend the class without even leaving the campus. She couldn't help but think of the stories she would tell her friends in the morning, even if the class turned out to be nothing more than a system error. Just imagining their faces full of awe and respect made her giddy with excitement.

Staying at school for the night, of course, was a challenge on its own. First of all, Elena had to find a way to hide from security for four whole hours without getting caught. And then came the question as to how she will be getting out of the building in the morning. Can she play dumb and say that she genuinely thought that there was a class waiting for her in the middle of the night? Would they even believe her?

After packing her belongings, Elena quickly made her way to the bathroom on the second floor of the Frontier building, thinking that if the security were to search for intruders – they were more likely to look on the ground floor. She walked slowly with her eyes fixed on her phone in case that someone would see her, as if there was anyone around to begin with. The building was completely empty, and it wasn’t even ten in the evening yet.

Now that she was finally in her hiding spot, Elena sat down on the floor in the corner of the stall, trying to make herself as small as possible. She left the door unlocked so as to not raise any suspicion, but that also meant that anybody could just walk in. Elena felt goosebumps all over her arms and legs as her heart raced with adrenaline at the prospect of being caught. What would her friends say when they find out about this little adventure of hers? 

Unfortunately, the first hour went on to be quite uneventful. Breda University of Applied Sciences closed shortly after she entered the restroom and Elena was left on her own, watching tiktoks and playing games on her phone to pass the time. There were some odd sounds emanating from the toilet itself that she quickly dismissed as a plumbing problem, but that was about all that happened. It seemed like her dream of showing everyone how cool and badass she was was vanishing before her very eyes. No one wanted to listen about plumbing, after all. 

It was five minutes past midnight. Elena was dozing off with her jacket draped over her shoulders in complete silence, when suddenly she heard a sound coming from outside the restroom. Her breath hitched as she stared at the door and hoped that whoever was lurking around the building during the night wouldn’t care enough to check all of the bathroom stalls. 

Footsteps became louder and louder until they ceased, and Elena heard an old door opening with a screech. Whoever it was, they were now right outside of her stall, and Elena swore she could feel the eyes of that person staring at her through the wooden door. It felt like there wasn’t anything between them to begin with. Her panicked eyes watched as the doorknob was slowly pushed down. They didn’t even care to check the other stalls? Did they know that she was here? 

Million thoughts were circling in her mind of all possible excuses as to why she was still on campus, but then the doorknob went back up and the steady sound of footsteps resumed, before quickly growing faint and vanishing completely. 

Elena buried her face in her jacket, her back quickly moving up and down from how fast she was breathing. The danger was over now. She didn’t get caught, but she sure was starting to regret ever staying at school to begin with. 

There was only one hour to go. 

It took her some time to calm down. She even thought about staying in the stall till the very morning, but that would be a cowardly way out, so, as curious as ever, Elena left her hiding spot. The Frontier building was dead silent, with most lights off it seemed both eerie and peaceful at the same time. A place where her friends would usually hang out to chat after lectures was left abandoned and empty, and the more she stared at the dark corridors – the more uncomfortable Elena became.

Climbing up the stairs to the third floor, she felt a chill going up her back. It seemed like a cold breeze passed through her, but there were no windows that could open on this floor, so she just kept walking forward, speeding up in her steps. Elena didn’t like being late, and it was already almost a quarter past two…

To her surprise, though, there was absolutely no one in the classroom assigned to this course. Not a single soul, just an open window and a few papers laying on the floor, probably blown away from the desk by the night breeze. Elena tried opening the door, her hands shaky with adrenaline and frustration, but it was locked. There were only two options left: she could either wait in front of the empty classroom for an hour or two and risk getting caught by the security guard, or she could go back, collect her stuff and try to sneak back out of the building. After all the effort she went through to stay up so late, it ended up being just a stupid system mistake. She shouldn’t have been expecting anything special to begin with. What teacher would schedule a class at two in the morning?

As Elena was about to turn around and leave, her phone started ringing, startling her in her steps. With shaking hands, be it from cold or fright, she took the phone out of her pocket and stared at the Teams notification for a whole minute, before finally picking it up.

It was the professor of free elective calling.

Elena felt her legs shake so she leaned on the wall, before giving up and sliding down to sit on the floor. The hallway was completely empty and dark, but there she was, with a phone in her hand lighting her face up, but only slightly. The screen was initially blank, but after a while Elena noticed a few shadows move across it before it became bright. There he was, her professor, sitting on the desk in a lightly-lit classroom – the exact same one that Elena was sitting in front of, smiling at the camera.

“Good evening, my dear students,” he said, his voice slightly raspy. Now that she was looking at her teacher, his skin looked a bit paler than she had remembered. Hair that was usually neatly styled and combed seemed a total mess that resembled a bird’s nest more than it did a human head. On the other hand, it was in the middle of the night, so could she even blame him?

It was so cold on campus that it took Elena a good two minutes to turn her camera on. She tried warming her frozen fingers by rubbing them against each other and then burying them in her jacket, but nothing seemed to work. “Good evening,” she whispered, watching steam go out of her mouth as she spoke. The teacher smiled even wider.

“Welcome, welcome. I hope this class will be to your liking, Elena.”

To be continued...

Meanwhile, you can check out this article about cursed horror movies.

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