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| Free Story Friday: The Gap In Room 14 |
A new original tale every week—twisted, terrifying, and inspired by the darkest legends you thought you knew.
Claire Bennett unlocked Room 14 at 7:15 AM on a gray Monday morning in late February, earlier than she needed to be there. The hallway was silent except for the hum of fluorescent lights and the distant clatter of the janitor's cart. She pushed open the door and stepped inside, breathing in the familiar scent of dry-erase markers and old carpet.
The classroom was clean but oddly impersonal. No posters on the walls, no motivational quotes above the whiteboard, no plants on the windowsill. Just rows of desks arranged in neat lines and a tall storage cabinet standing against the back corner like a sentinel.
Claire's eyes caught on the narrow gap behind it—a vertical sliver of darkness where the cabinet didn't quite meet the wall. Just a space. Nothing unusual. Every old building had spaces like that, places where furniture and architecture didn't align perfectly.
She made a mental note to push it flush later and turned her attention to the lesson plans waiting on the desk.
In the office that morning, Principal Martinez had been frustratingly vague. "The previous teacher left suddenly," she'd said, not meeting Claire's eyes. "We appreciate you stepping in mid-year."
"What happened to her?" Claire had asked.
"She just... left. Personal reasons."
No goodbye letter to the students. No forwarding information. No explanation beyond those two words.
In the faculty lounge during lunch prep, Claire overheard two teachers talking in hushed tones.
"Room 14?" one said. "That's where Ms. Lin taught."
The other teacher's cup paused halfway to her mouth. Then she changed the subject.
Claire didn't think much of it then.
When the students arrived, she noticed the small things first.
Several glanced toward the cabinet as they entered, their eyes sliding away just as quickly. The desks near the back corner sat at odd angles, subtly turned away from the wall as if someone had shifted them incrementally over time. Lily Chen, a quiet girl with dark hair pulled into a ponytail, hesitated before taking her seat—the one closest to the cabinet.
Min Park, a boy who carried himself with careful precision, never once looked at the back wall. And Tyler Brooks, a nervous talker with restless hands, asked too casually, "Are you staying late today, Ms. Bennett?"
"Probably not," Claire said. "Why?"
Tyler shrugged too quickly. "Just wondering."
The gap remained, a thin line of darkness in the corner of her vision.
Over the next few days, the patterns became clearer.
No one sat near the cabinet. When Claire tried to rearrange the seating chart to create more space in the front rows, Lily refused to move closer to the back corner.
"I like my seat here," she said, her voice small but firm.
Min watched Claire whenever she walked near the back wall, his shoulders tensing almost imperceptibly. During independent work, the room felt heavier somehow, the silence pressing down like the air before a storm.
Claire realized they were afraid of the cabinet.
She just couldn’t understand why.
One afternoon, while students worked on a writing assignment, Min approached her desk. He spoke quietly, not looking up from his hands.
"Ms. Lin said not to move it."
Claire set down her pen. "Move what?"
"The cabinet." His eyes stayed down. "She said not to move it."
"Why not?"
Min shrugged, but his jaw was tight. "She just said not to."
Claire wanted to press further, but something in the boy's posture stopped her. Fear, maybe. Or something like it.
Over the following days, she began hearing pieces of something larger, fragments that didn't quite form a complete picture.
From Tyler, blurted out too loud during a bathroom break: "She heard it say her name."
From another student, whispered to a friend: "She leaned down."
From Lily, barely audible as she passed Claire's desk: "She thought it was a kid."
None of them looked at the gap when they said these things. They looked at Claire, as if checking to see whether she understood.
Claire started paying attention.
The darkness inside the gap absorbed light in a way that felt wrong. When afternoon sun streamed through the windows, illuminating every corner of the room, that narrow space remained black as deep water. Dust motes danced everywhere except near the cabinet, as if some invisible boundary kept them away.
Sound felt muted near it. When students spoke in the back row, their voices carried a strange flatness, as though something was dampening the acoustics.
One afternoon, while students were at recess, Claire found herself standing near the cabinet. She hadn't meant to walk over—her feet had simply carried her there while her mind wandered. She leaned closer, squinting into the darkness.
Behind her, a chair scraped. Claire turned to find Min standing rigid in the doorway, his backpack forgotten in his hand.
"Please don't," Lily whispered from beside him.
Claire stepped back. The entire class—when had they all come back?—exhaled as one.
That night, Claire couldn't stop thinking about it. She told herself she was being responsible, practical. What if there was a structural issue? What if something was wrong with the building?
The next morning, she brought a flashlight.
The classroom was empty when she arrived. She stood in front of the cabinet, measuring the space with her eyes. About three inches wide, maybe four. Deep enough to see nothing but shadow. She clicked on the flashlight and aimed the beam near the gap—not inside it, just close.
The light thinned as it approached the darkness, stretching like taffy before disappearing completely.
Claire's hand trembled.
She heard something then. Not quite a voice. More like a pressure in her ears, the feeling of someone speaking just below the threshold of hearing. Almost her name. Almost Claire.
Her weight shifted forward.
She didn't decide to crouch—her knees simply bent, her center of gravity pulling toward the gap as if the darkness itself had mass, had gravity. The flashlight beam wavered as her hand dipped lower. Her other hand reached out, fingers splaying against the wall for balance, but the balance kept shifting, kept drawing her down and forward.
What if there's a child?
The thought came from somewhere outside herself, urgent and compelling. What if someone was hurt? What if a student had dropped something precious into that space and was too afraid to ask for help? Ms. Lin might have heard the same thing, felt the same pull—
Her shoulder tilted. Her face moved closer to the gap. She could feel the coolness radiating from it, a temperature that had nothing to do with the room's climate control. The pull was gentle but inexorable, like the moment before stepping off a high ledge, that split second when your body leans into empty air and gravity begins its work.
Before she could lean any closer, something grabbed her wrist.
Lily Chen, breathing hard, her small hand locked around Claire's arm with surprising strength. Behind her, Tyler slammed his backpack against the cabinet, making it rattle loudly. Min stood in the doorway, his voice sharp with fear.
"Ms. Bennett. Don't."
The moment shattered. Claire jerked backward, her body suddenly her own again, and the flashlight clattered from her grip. The three students watched her with wide eyes, waiting.
"I just—" Claire started, but the words died in her throat.
She didn't know what she'd been about to do. Look inside? Reach in?
The thought made her stomach turn.
That evening, Claire didn't Google "gaps in walls" or "school hauntings." She didn't try to rationalize what she'd felt or explain away the wrongness of that narrow space.
She simply listened to what the students had been trying to tell her all along.
The next day, she arrived early with a maintenance request. Together with the custodian, she pushed the cabinet flush against the wall, wedging it tight. He secured it with brackets, drilling into the baseboard to keep it from shifting.
Claire stood close, listening. When the cabinet finally settled into place, she heard it—a soft exhalation, wet and organic, like breath released from lungs that had been holding it too long. The sound made her skin crawl, but it also meant the gap was gone. Truly sealed.
Min whispered as he entered the classroom that morning: "It can't see us now."
Claire wanted to believe that. She chose to believe it.
The room felt lighter after that. Lily relaxed in her seat, no longer glancing over her shoulder between lessons. Tyler stopped talking about Ms. Lin. Min's shoulders loosened, and he started raising his hand more often.
Ms. Lin was never mentioned again, not by the students, not by the other teachers. It was as if she'd been erased, her absence filled in like spackle over a crack.
Claire finished the year without incident. She even accepted a permanent position at the school, though not in Room 14.
The gaps started appearing at home throughout the spring and summer.
The first one was behind her bed. Claire noticed it while making the sheets one Saturday morning—a thin vertical space where the headboard didn't quite meet the wall. She was certain it hadn't been there before. The bedroom was small; she would have noticed.
She pushed the bed closer, straining until the wood pressed tight against the wall. Then she waited, listening for that sound—the faint, damp sigh that meant it was sealed. When it came, soft as a whisper, she shuddered but felt relieved.
Problem solved.
But more appeared. A seam between bathroom stalls at the grocery store that seemed too deep. The space beside the refrigerator that shouldn't have been wide enough to see through but somehow was. The gap between the doorframe and wall in her closet, dark even when she shined a light directly at it.
All too dark. All too deep.
Claire never looked into any of them. She closed them when she could—with furniture, with books, with careful pressure. She learned to wedge things tight, to listen for that wet release of air that meant something was sealed.
She became practiced at it.
On a Sunday evening in early autumn, Claire knelt in her living room, pushing a bookshelf against yet another gap that had appeared behind the couch. She pressed her shoulder against the wood, feeling it shift those last crucial inches until it sat flush.
She held her breath and listened.
The sound came—a soft click, almost organic, like a joint settling into place beneath skin.
As she stood, brushing dust from her knees, she realized she hadn't thought about Ms. Lin in weeks.
That frightened her more than anything else.
She understood now. Why Ms. Lin had stayed late. Why she'd leaned down. Why she'd tried to make it safe, tried to seal something that couldn't be sealed, only moved. Delayed.
Claire walked to her bedroom and checked the space behind the headboard. Still tight. Still sealed.
She listened, just in case.
Silence.
But she knew it wouldn't last. The gaps would keep appearing, in classrooms and homes and all the thin spaces where walls didn't quite meet. And eventually, someone would look. Someone would lean close enough to hear their name whispered from the darkness.
Someone would answer.
Claire turned off the light and got into bed, pulling the covers close.
In the darkness, the gap behind the headboard was invisible.
But she knew it was there.
Waiting.
© 2025 Karen Cody. All rights reserved.
This original story was written exclusively for the Urban Legends, Mystery, and Myth blog.
Do not copy, repost, or reproduce without permission.
This tale may appear in a future special collection.
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