WHAT SLEEPS BENEATH

CHAPTER 5

309 days before I stopped trusting my own memories, I woke to a silence so thick it felt like sound had been scraped from the air.

No birdsong. No cars. Just the soft buzz of electricity and the eerie tick of the clock on my wall, like a countdown I hadn’t noticed was running.

I didn’t want to get out of bed. I didn’t want to move at all. The weight of the photo beneath my mattress made me feel like I was sleeping above a grave. Lana’s face hovered behind my eyelids, the same expression every time—terrified, as if someone had called her name just before the picture was taken.

I hadn’t dreamed. I hadn’t slept, not really. But somehow, I felt haunted.

And things only got worse when I checked my phone.

Eli:

Meet me behind the library at lunch. Don’t bring the photo.

I didn’t respond. But I’d be there.

⸻

At school, people moved around me like wind—heard, not seen. I passed Morgan in the hall and she waved, but I didn’t wave back. The silence inside me was louder than her greeting. I saw Mr. Graham yelling again, but his voice barely registered. Even the sound of lockers slamming felt like it came from underwater.

I walked slower than usual. I paid attention to the little things.

A girl scrawling something in her notebook with a shaking hand.

A boy leaning too far into someone else’s locker.

A shadow that flickered the wrong way when no one else was near it.

No one else seemed to notice.

⸻

I reached my locker and opened it.

There was something new this time.

A small black envelope, sealed with a red wax stamp.

My stomach dropped.

I looked around—no one watching, at least not that I could see—then carefully slipped the envelope into my sleeve and shut the locker.

I didn’t open it until I was in the bathroom stall on the second floor.

Inside was a note.

She screamed for you first.

No signature. No clue.

Just that.

I folded the note back up, hands trembling, and stared at the door in front of me. My reflection in the metal stall lock was warped—my face stretched, twisted.

“She screamed for you first.”

What did that even mean?

Guilt prickled under my skin.

I wasn’t even there when Lana disappeared.

Was I?

⸻

Lunch couldn’t come fast enough.

I slipped out of class early and circled around the east building until I reached the back of the library. There was a small brick path, mostly overgrown now, leading to the old staff garden no one used anymore. I found Eli there, seated on a moss-covered bench beneath the shadow of a dead tree.

He looked up before I could speak.

“You got another note, didn’t you?”

I sat beside him. “How do you know?”

He gave a faint smile that didn’t touch his eyes. “Because it’s always around the third message that they test you.”

“They?”

He nodded. “Whoever’s doing this. The first message is fear. The second is isolation. The third… guilt.”

I looked at him, uncertain. “And what comes next?”

His voice was so quiet I barely heard it.

“Despair.”

We sat in silence.

The wind stirred the brittle leaves around our feet.

“I went to the bus depot,” I said.

His gaze sharpened.

“There was blood,” I added. “Not fresh. Old, maybe. But it was there.”

He looked away. “They want you to find pieces. Fragments. But never the whole.”

“Why me?”

“I don’t know yet.”

I clenched my hands. “I keep thinking… what if I missed something back then? What if Lana tried to tell me something and I ignored her?”

“Do you remember anything strange before she disappeared?”

My breath caught.

Yes.

Something had been bothering me for days, something I hadn’t dared to examine too closely.

“Three days before she went missing,” I said slowly, “she left me a voicemail. I never listened to it.”

Eli looked stunned. “You still have it?”

I pulled out my phone. “It should be backed up. I’ll check tonight.”

“Don’t listen to it alone.”

The way he said it—like it was a warning, not advice—made the hairs on my arms rise.

⸻

That night, I waited until my mother had gone to bed. I sat on the edge of my mattress, legs tucked beneath me, and turned my phone screen to the lowest brightness.

The voicemail was still there. Dated eleven months ago.

I hit play.

[Voicemail recording begins]

Lana: Hey. Um. I don’t really know who else to call. I—

[static]

I think someone’s following me. Not just today. For weeks. I know how that sounds, Jas. I do. But it’s not just one person. It’s—

[static]

the thing in the hallway. You saw it, remember? The day we were late to French class and the lights flickered? You looked right at it. You saw it.

[shuffling noise]

Jas, if something happens to me, please don’t let them tell you it was an accident. Don’t believe them. It’s not what it looks like. None of this is. I—

[loud crackling, then silence]

[Voicemail ends]

I sat frozen.

The thing in the hallway.

I remembered that day. Barely.

The lights had flickered. I had laughed it off. Lana had grabbed my arm and whispered, “Do you feel that?” But I didn’t take her seriously. I thought she was just being dramatic.

But now—

Now I wondered if she had been the only one truly awake.

I stared at the phone until the screen dimmed.

⸻

Later that night, I dreamed of her.

Lana stood at the foot of my bed, soaked from rain, barefoot, and pale as bone. Her mouth didn’t move, but her voice echoed inside my skull.

“You left me there.”

I jolted awake, heart punching against my ribs.

I checked the time.

3:33 a.m.

Outside, the wind was howling.

I sat up slowly, reached beneath my mattress, and pulled out the photo again.

This time, something was different.

A word had appeared in the corner, etched faintly in ink that hadn’t been there before.

SHELTER.

I stared at the photo.

The word wasn’t just written—it was burned into the image. Faint at first, but the longer I looked, the darker it became, as if the paper had remembered being marked and was now revealing the truth beneath its surface.

SHELTER.

I whispered it aloud, and it sounded like something ancient. Not just a location—but a warning. Or a command.

I turned the photo over, hoping for more.

Nothing.

I held it up to the light. Still nothing.

But something about that word itched behind my eyes. A place? A name? A code?

I didn’t sleep the rest of the night.

⸻

The next morning, I looked like something washed up on the shore.

Even my mom noticed.

“Are you okay, Jasmine?” she asked from the kitchen table, stirring her coffee slowly, like she was afraid to hear the answer.

I shrugged. “Didn’t sleep.”

“You’ve looked pale for days. You sure you’re eating enough?”

“Yep.”

She studied me, like she was trying to recognize a version of me she hadn’t seen in years. Maybe the version of me that had once smiled on family vacations or sung out loud to terrible radio songs.

I avoided her eyes and pulled on my jacket.

“I’m leaving early.”

“Don’t forget we have dinner at Aunt Tara’s tomorrow.”

My brain barely registered it.

“Sure.”

⸻

The air outside felt like static—humid, restless, electric.

On my walk to school, I tried typing “SHELTER” into my phone. Not just the word, but phrases like “Shelter facility,” “Shelter bus depot,” “Shelter town building.”

A few results popped up, mostly useless. Old shelters for animals. Some abandoned buildings marked in the archives of the local historical society. One entry stood out:

SHELTER – Civil Defense Bunker, built 1961. Location unlisted.

No link. No map. Just the title and a date.

I copied it into my notes app, the one I’d started labeling “LANA.”

⸻

At lunch, I met Eli behind the library again. The same dead tree. The same bench.

This time, he looked worse than I did.

Dark circles under his eyes. Dirt beneath his nails. His hoodie smelled faintly like damp leaves.

“I think they’re watching me again,” he said before I even sat down.

I glanced around. Nothing unusual, but the air felt heavier.

“I found something,” I said. “The photo changed. There’s a word now. ‘Shelter.’”

Eli’s face went still. “Are you sure?”

I nodded.

He pulled out a folded piece of notebook paper and handed it to me. “This came under my door last night.”

I opened it.

No words. Just a crude hand-drawn map with a giant X marked in the forest beyond the edge of town.

I stared at him.

“You think this is connected?”

“I think we’re being led somewhere,” he said. “And they want us to follow.”

“But who’s they?”

He looked at me, eyes hollow. “The people Lana was afraid of. Maybe worse.”

I clenched the map in my hand.

“We should go,” I said. “After school.”

Eli hesitated. “It’s not just about finding something, Jasmine. Whatever’s out there… it might not want to be found.”

“I know.”

I didn’t care.

I needed answers more than I needed safety.

⸻

We waited until the sun began to set. Packed water, flashlights, and left separately.

I told my mom I was studying at the library. I hated lying. But I hated not knowing even more.

We met at the edge of the woods near Pike Hill, where the trail curved into the old quarry path. The woods here felt denser, older. Like they remembered things.

Eli held the map and led the way. I kept checking behind us, even though I saw no one. But I felt something. Like a shadow just out of sync with the trees.

Thirty minutes in, we found it.

A hatch.

Half-buried under ivy and dead leaves. Metal, rusted, with a wheel in the center.

Just like something from a horror movie.

“This wasn’t here last year,” Eli whispered.

I didn’t speak. I reached forward and gripped the wheel.

It didn’t move at first. Then it groaned like a dying animal and turned, slowly, reluctantly, like the earth itself didn’t want us going down there.

When the hatch opened, the smell of damp concrete and iron rushed up to meet us.

I flicked on my flashlight.

Stairs led down.

“Jasmine—” Eli started.

But I was already going in.