What Ridgewood Keeps
1727 Words
The sky above Ridgewood looked normal.
Too normal.
Emily stood just outside the school gates, her breath uneven. The late-autumn wind carried the scent of decaying leaves and something faintly metallic—like old coins left in the rain. Around her, students moved in predictable patterns, their laughter sharp against the quiet. But their eyes...their eyes kept darting toward the auditorium's side entrance, the one that had been cordoned off with police tape yesterday.
A cleaning staff member knelt by the foundation, fingers probing at the mortar between bricks. When he caught Emily watching, he stood abruptly and walked away, leaving behind a single work glove dark with what might have been mud or something else entirely.
Like the school hadn't sealed its doors yesterday.
Like she hadn't discovered that hidden chamber beneath the auditorium—a space humming with ghostly whispers, that pulsating book, and the rasping voice from the recorder disclosing secrets no one dared acknowledge.
Her fingers spasmed. She checked her phone.
Blank. No calls. No messages. No alerts.
Yet the notification light blinked green—once, twice—before going dark again. When she unlocked the screen, nothing showed in the logs. Just static on the notification panel that cleared when she tapped it.
Yet the leather-bound book's weight still pressed against her memory. That recording's words still coiled around her thoughts:
"The school is the heart of it."
A shadow moved behind the frosted glass of the principal's office. Tall. Still. Watching. Then gone.
Movement flickered at her periphery.
Logan.
The reserved senior from English class lingered near the office, his gaze locked on her. His expression hovered between concern and something darker.
His right hand kept flexing, the knuckles scraped raw. Fresh wounds. When he noticed her, he shoved both hands deep into his pockets.
She turned away before he could speak.
Not yet. Not until she determined whether she was unraveling or if Ridgewood's pristine facade truly concealed something rotten.
That Evening
Her bedroom at Aunt Dana's felt unnaturally chilled. The beige walls seemed to lean inward, listening. Her laptop remained shut. Her textbooks are undisturbed. Outside, tree branches scraped the windowpanes like skeletal fingers begging entry.
The house smelled different tonight—not Dana's usual lavender detergent, but something earthy and thick, like turned soil. When Emily checked the hallway, she found all the family photos tilted at identical 15-degree angles. Dana swore she hadn't touched them.
But the photograph tormented her most.
That girl's face.
Her face.
Identical sharp chin. The same hesitant smile. Those same exhausted, searching eyes.
The photo's edges curled unnaturally when held too long, as if trying to roll itself shut. The back bore three words in faded pencil: "She's coming for you."
Yet the photo bore a date: 1998.
Impossible.
She'd never visited Ridgewood before this year. She'd remember.
Wouldn't she?
Sprawled on her bed, she tracked the ceiling fan's wobbling rotation. Her fingers tapped restless rhythms on the blanket. The house groaned softly, as if haunted by its own buried secrets.
At 2:17 AM, her bedroom door creaked open on its own. The hallway beyond was pitch black—blacker than possible, swallowing the light from her digital clock. Then, from that void, three distinct knocks. When she lunged for the light switch, the door slammed shut. Dana claimed to have heard nothing.
One thought eclipsed all others:
She had to return.
Answers wouldn't come to her.
And the questions—they were screaming now.
The Next Morning: A New Lead
Emily took the long route to school, navigating unfamiliar streets. She passed the shuttered church where the stained-glass windows showed faces turned inward, watching. The derelict theater's marquee now reads "SHE KNOWS" in broken bulbs. The antique shop's dust-choked windows displayed a single item—a music box with a ballerina whose face had been scratched away.
A black car idled at the corner, its engine silent despite the exhaust pluming in the cold air. The driver's face was obscured by glare on the windshield, but the hands on the wheel were bone-white, gripping too tight. It followed at a distance until she reached school property, then vanished.
Ridgewood resembled a photograph left to yellow in its frame—stagnant.
Too quiet.
Too static.
Even the sky seemed drained of color, like a faded watercolor.
When she arrived, the school was already abuzz with activity.
Logan waited by the bike racks. Motionless. Watching.
His usual gray hoodie was replaced by a black sweater that made him look older, harder. A fresh cut bisected his left eyebrow. When she approached, she noticed his backpack bulged with something angular and heavy.
This time, she didn't evade him.
"Are you okay?" he asked, falling into step beside her.
Emily hesitated, eyes darting toward the entrance.
"Something happened yesterday," she admitted. "In the auditorium. I found...a room. A book. A photo of a girl who looks exactly like me."
Logan didn't laugh. Didn't blink. Just tense.
"Positive it wasn't you?"
"Positive," she breathed. "It was dated 1998."
He froze.
"Still have it?"
"Gone. The notebook vanished when the doors locked."
His gaze turned razor-sharp. "Color?"
"Black."
Logan exhaled slowly. "Two years back, my brother found a notebook like that."
Emily's pulse stuttered. "You have a brother?"
"Had one."
Silence thickened between them.
"What happened?"
Logan looked away. "Disappeared. No witnesses. No evidence. Ridgewood was his last known location."
"They found his backpack in the woods," he continued, his voice dropping. "Inside was a black notebook filled with names. All crossed out except one." He met her eyes. "Emily Parker."
Emily's skin prickled. "You think the notebook's connected?"
"I think everything in Ridgewood connects."
The Archives
The school day passed like ice cracking underfoot—fracture by fracture.
Lockers shut with unnatural quiet. The teachers' glances lingered too long. The hallway air carried an unseasonable bite.
Between the second and third periods, every locker Emily passed vibrated faintly, as if something inside was scratching to get out. When she mentioned it to Logan, he just nodded and showed her his arms—fresh scratch marks raking from wrists to elbows.
Between classes, Brooke glided past, her scarlet scarf and polished smile forming perfect armor.
"Still playing detective?" she purred.
Emily remained silent.
Brooke leaned close enough for her whisper to draw blood:
"Curious girls don't last here."
As she pulled away, Brooke pressed something into Emily's palm—a single piano key, yellowed with age, the ivory surface carved with a date: 10/17/1998. When Emily looked up, Brooke was already turning the corner, but not before Emily saw the bloodstain blooming through the back of her white blouse.
Then she was gone, her heels hammering warnings into the linoleum.
At lunch, Logan faced her across untouched food.
"What'd she say?"
"Nothing useful."
"She never does. But she knows."
"She's involved."
"She's protected."
Emily locked eyes with him. "Then we worked around her. Find the truth ourselves."
A beat. Logan bent closer, his voice dropping:
"There's a place. Off the record. Below the east wing. Called the Archives."
"What's there?"
"Old yearbooks. Staff records. Things the school buried."
"And other things," he added. "Things they couldn't destroy. My brother's last text mentioned a wall of names. Said it breathed."
Her heartbeat accelerated. "How do we access it?"
"North stairwell. Final period. Bring a light."
"And salt," he added. When she frowned, he shook his head. "Just trust me."
3:05 p.m. – The North Stairwell
Emily hovered by the door, her flashlight concealed in her jacket. Her grip on her backpack strap turned her knuckles white.
The hallway lights flickered in a steady pattern—three flashes, then darkness for exactly seven seconds. When the pattern repeated for the third time, she realized: 3-7. March 7th. Her birthday.
The hallway behind her held her breath.
Then Logan materialized, moving with controlled urgency. A nod.
They slipped into the maintenance stairwell. The temperature dropped with each descending step. At the bottom: a steel door.
No handle.
No marking.
Just a hairline glow beneath.
The concrete walls wept condensation that smelled faintly of copper. Logan pointed to symbols etched near the floor—three overlapping circles with a line through them. "They tried to seal it," he muttered. "Didn't take."
Logan knelt, retrieved a key taped beneath the bottom step, and slid it into an almost imperceptible lock.
The door sighed open.
Frigid air rushed out, reeking of mildew, aged paper, and something more ancient.
Beyond, flickering fluorescents illuminated narrow aisles crammed with filing cabinets, sagging shelves, and decay-labeled boxes.
Emily crossed the threshold by entering another dimension.
"It's real," she whispered.
"Told you," Logan muttered.
The floor tilted slightly as they entered, as if the room had been built on a slope. The air pressure made Emily's ears pop. Somewhere in the maze of shelves, something scuttled—too large to be a rat, too quick to be human.
They worked fast, swiping away cobwebs and wrenching open drawers.
A cabinet marked "Yearbooks: 1995–2000" snagged Emily's attention.
Logan pulled it open.
They sifted through brittle pages, faded portraits, and disintegrating notes.
Then—Emily stiffened.
The photo.
The same students. Same backdrop. Same girl.
Her.
But now, no sticky note—just an attached list:
Missing Students—See Principal's File
Her whisper frayed: "Check the names."
Logan's eyes darted across the page. Then widened.
His finger stopped on
Tyler Mitchell—Class of 2021—Disappeared: October 17
Emily checked her phone.
Today's date: October 17.
She looked up at the grime-caked clock.
3:33 p.m.
The second hand stopped. The minute hand twitched backward. The temperature plummeted. From deep in the Archives came a sound like a hundred pages turning at once.
The lights stuttered.
A subterranean growl vibrated through the floor.
The shelves began to tremble. Boxes toppled. Somewhere, glass shattered. The yearbook in Logan's hands burst into flames—cold blue flames that didn't burn his skin but made the missing names glow like embers.
Emily's voice cracked: "We need to go. Now."
She seized Logan's wrist as the door crashed shut behind them.
The last thing Emily saw before the darkness swallowed them whole was the wall at the Archives' far end—covered not in names, but in photographs. Hundreds of them. All the same, girl. All dated decades apart. All her.
- Writer
