Thump. Thump.
Heavy footsteps. They were unmistakable. Then he heard something else. It sounded like waves sloshing against a boat. He could even hear the creaking of wood.
Slowly, he turned around. The noises all seemed to be coming from the eyewash station. The taps had turned back on again. Water gushed out and started filling up the sink. It overflowed onto the floor. Something was clogging the drain.
“H-hello?” he called out.
The water pooled around his sneakers and flooded the floor. He could hear and smell the ocean, even the faint cries of seagulls. How was that possible?
Slowly, he leaned over the basin, trying to see what was clogging the drain and causing the sink to back up like that. The water was murky and impossible to see through, just like the ocean. Pulse pounding, Barrie reached down into the sink, feeling around for the drain. The water swallowed his arm all the way up to the shoulder. It felt cold and smelled like the sea—brackish and alive.
His fingers snagged on something.
It was stuck to the drain, blocking it. It felt long and scraggly, like seaweed.
He retracted his arm, pulling it out of the sink. It was…hair. Long, curly, black. He kept pulling and pulling and pulling, and it kept coming out of the sink. Finally, he reached the end.
He held the matted clump of black hair in his trembling hands, staring at it in shock. How did the hair get into the sink? He was sure it hadn’t been there before.
There must be a perfectly logical explanation, he decided. Just like the kid detectives in his books, he would find it. He just needed to investigate it. He turned back to the sink, which was still full of murky water, when suddenly—
A sword slashed out at his face.
The sword whizzed past his ear.
It just missed his neck.
But not by much.
Barrie didn’t wait for the sword to stab at him again. He flung the gross, wet hair back into the sink, turned, grabbed his backpack, and bolted from the science lab, slamming the door behind him. The image of the sword slashing out of the sink kept replaying in his mind as he dashed down the hall, just trying to get away. His heart jackhammered in his chest. “It’s not real,” he whispered to himself. “It can’t be real.”
He sprinted with his backpack bouncing on his shoulders. The fluorescent lights beat down on him. The halls were deserted, and everything felt eerie and unsettling. Where was everyone?
And then he remembered—the final bell was about to ring. And he was running away from his classroom.
A new wave of panic crashed through him. He couldn’t afford to be marked tardy. He turned around, his sneakers squeaking on the linoleum, and slammed right into somebody.
Actually, two somebodies.
“Whoa, watch where you’re going!” Michael yelped when Barrie barreled into him, knocking him back into John. His two friends bumped heads.
“What’s wrong?” John said, rubbing his forehead and grimacing in pain. “Uh, you look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Dude, yeah,” Michael added, eyes wide. “You haven’t looked this freaked out since we made you watch that scary clown movie.”
“And we all know the circus is your worst nightmare,” John added with a snort. “Oh, and giant killer sharks. But that’s Rita’s fault. We do not accept the blame for that phobia.”
Barrie stared at his friends in confusion. Their usual banter felt out of place in the midst of his panic. He couldn’t tell them the truth—that it was possible he had, in fact, seen a ghost. Of course, he knew ghosts weren’t real. Even in his books, the brothers always ended up discovering the real explanation for the haunting. But he also couldn’t explain what had happened in the lab.
At least, not yet.
“W-what’re you doing out here?” he stammered. He still felt adrenaline coursing through his veins.
“Uh, looking for you, obvi,” Michael said with a worried frown. “Don’t want you to miss the bell. Or you won’t be able to go to the concert. Your parents will ground you faster than you can say…Never Land.” That was the hit single from the Lost Boys’ first album.
“Yeah, we’ve gotta hurry,” John said, tugging his arm. “It’s about to ring any second.”
Barrie followed his friends back to class. They dashed through the door right as the final bell rang. Mr. Bates shot them a chastising look from the front of the room. He’d scribbled a bunch of horrible-looking fraction problems on the board. They looked like a foreign language.