Dorm 7 Doesn't Sleep

If anybody had told me that Victory Girls Boarding School would feel like another planet, I would have believed them immediately. The sun was too bright. The air smelled like a mixture of disinfectant, sand, and beans. Girls were carrying buckets, shouting, laughing, running — everywhere I looked, something was happening. My mum squeezed my shoulder. “You’ll be fine, Halima,” she said. “Just be yourself.” Easy for her to say. The tall metal gate creaked open, and a senior in a brown hostel uniform pointed with her biro. “New student? JSS1 dorms are that way. Carry your box well o, before it embarrasses you.” I dragged my box across the compound. The buildings were arranged like stubborn siblings — the classrooms on the left, the dining hall facing them, and the long row of hostels stretching toward the back. The farthest one, where the corridor looked darker than the others, had a peeling sign that read: DORM 7 — JUNIOR GIRLS My chest tightened. Why did it look like a place where secrets go to hide? I wasn’t even close to the door when a girl suddenly appeared beside me. Short. Caramel-skinned. Round cheeks, tiny nose, bright eyes. Her braids were packed in a puff like she’d fought with it earlier and lost. She wasn’t the tallest in the world, but she had this sharp confidence like she could fight a lion if necessary. “Hello!” she chirped, smiling like we’d met before. “You must be the new girl.” I blinked. “Uh… yeah.” She grabbed the handle of my box without waiting for permission and started dragging it inside. “Let me help. These things are always heavy. I’m not your senior, don’t fear. I’m JSS2. I’m in this dorm.” “Oh. Thank you,” I said, still trying to keep up. She grinned. “My name is Rita. What’s yours?” Ah. That made sense. She didn’t magically know my name — she was just bold. “Hallie,” I replied. “Nice! You look like someone who arranges their locker with color coordination.” That made me laugh. “Not really.” The hallway of Dorm 7 was dimmer than outside. Not dirty… just old. The walls had cracks shaped like tiny lightning bolts. A faint humming sound came from the far end — like a generator that wasn’t sure if it wanted to work or faint. Rita leaned closer. “Don’t mind the lights. They flicker sometimes. Just old wiring.” Old wiring. Sure. Girls rushed past us, shouting about missing socks and stolen spoons. A prefect was banging a metal spoon against the railing, warning everyone to hurry up for evening prep. As we entered the room, I took in everything — eight bunks, green metal lockers, mosquito nets tied up neatly. My bunk was at the far corner near the window. “Welcome to your new home,” Rita announced, dropping my box with a dramatic sigh. “We’re bunkmates. I’m down bunk.” She started helping me unpack — not gently, but excitedly, talking the entire time. I liked her already. I sat on my new mattress, slowly breathing in the strange mix of perfume, dust, and mosquito coil. My body was tired but my mind was racing. New school. New dorm. New people. Nothing felt familiar. By lights-out, the hostel was quiet except for whispers, giggles, and someone snoring lightly from the next room. I lay down, stared at the ceiling, and told myself nothing weird was going to happen. It was just a normal school. But around 2am, something changed. The room went cold — the kind of cold that didn’t match Nigerian weather at all. The curtains moved like someone had touched them, softly, slowly. I opened my eyes. There was someone standing at the doorway. A girl. Or… a shape. I couldn’t tell. She wasn’t close. She wasn’t doing anything. Just standing. Watching. Still. My breath caught in my throat. I blinked once. Twice. When I opened my eyes the third time… the doorway was empty. Silence filled the room again. I wasn’t sure what I saw. Maybe my eyes were playing tricks. Maybe the darkness was just… dark. But deep down, something told me that Dorm 7 had stories. Long, quiet stories that didn’t like to stay sleeping. And tonight, one of them looked at me. I stayed frozen on my mattress long after the shadow disappeared, my eyes wide open in the darkness. The dorm was quiet again, but not peacefully quiet — the kind where you can almost hear the walls breathing. Every girl around me slept like nothing had shifted in the air. Like nothing had stood at our doorway. Like nothing had watched us. I wanted to nudge Rita, to whisper that something strange happened, but she was curled up like a small cat, the faint glow from her tiny rechargeable lamp casting shadows across her cheek. She looked too peaceful. I didn’t want to drag her into my fear. A mosquito buzzed near my ear, pulling me back into reality. I pulled my blanket higher, hugging myself and trying to pretend the cold air wasn’t real. But it was. I could feel it in my bones — an icy pressure that didn’t belong in a warm Nigerian night. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to sleep. But sleep didn’t come easily. Every time I drifted close, I heard something. A soft tapping. A distant shuffle. A faint hum coming from somewhere around the lockers. At first I thought it was the generator outside, but this hum was different — slower, like someone humming a tune without remembering the lyrics. I opened my eyes again. The room was still. Nothing moved. But that humming… it didn’t stop. I turned slowly toward the window. The curtain swayed slightly, even though the window was completely shut. I stared at it so long my eyes began to water. Finally, when my body could not stay awake any longer, exhaustion dragged me under. And when I woke up, the world had moved on — like nothing unusual had happened at all. The next morning was noise, noise, noise. Girls shouting over buckets. Seniors banging spoons on metal railings. Someone screaming because a lizard had climbed into her slippers. Rita pulled me out of bed before I could fully remember the night. But the memory came back in pieces — the coldness, the stillness, the shadow. A girl-shaped shadow. At breakfast, I kept catching myself glancing toward the dorm door, half-expecting the same figure to appear again in daylight. Instead, I found only gossip. Girls arguing about missing geisha, seniors complaining about juniors walking too slowly, and the matron yelling about dirty uniforms. Everything was normal. Annoyingly normal. But inside me? A storm was brewing. After breakfast, while girls were sweeping the verandah or rushing toward the tap, I found myself walking slowly across the compound, watching everything like a visitor from another world. The school suddenly looked different — sharper, heavier, more alive. Like it had been holding secrets for too long. Rita noticed my silence. “What’s wrong?” she asked, waving a spoon like a wand. “You look like you didn’t sleep.” I hesitated. Should I tell her? Would she think I was crazy? Or worse — would she laugh? Before I could answer, a loud whistle from a prefect interrupted us, and girls scattered in all directions. That was when I realized something else: Nobody told me what happens to girls who see things in the dorm. Maybe nobody wanted to. As we walked to class, the sun climbed higher, bright and harsh, almost as if it wanted to burn away the mysteries from the night before. But some things don’t disappear with sunlight. Some things stay. Some things follow you — in your thoughts, in your shadow, in the corner of your eyes when you’re not looking directly. Something had watched me last night. Something knew my name before the school even learned my face. And deep down, in the place my courage didn’t reach yet… …I knew this was only the beginning.