Chapter 1
the School Vanishes
It felt like a normal and peaceful Friday. We were waiting for the PE teacher for about 10 minutes for PE. I decided to call him. I was the academic monitor; the teacher was in the football ground. So, I decided to call him. But when I neared him Suddenly the ground started shaking out of nowhere. The teacher's hands were trembling. And not only that, I saw a Nameplate (the ones in graveyards) in front of me saying Stephany Sequeira "This whole school, it was built on top of a graveyard." I ran to the principal's office to inform her what was happening. The principal's office and the school building were somehow not shaking. So now, I informed the principal everything that was happening in the ground. She said "Oh no, it's happening again." I replied "What is happening, I!?" She replied "Nothing. You do not need to know! "And the PE teacher was new so he had no idea what the principal was talking about either. Leave all that for now. 5 minutes later the fire emergency bell started ringing and it was manual one. I checked where u had to ring it but NOBODY was near it. it was ringing by itself and it wasn’t a windy day either. Everyone came down thinking it was a fire since we didn’t do fire drills AT ALL. Everyone were slowly going inside but I LITERALLY saw a FIRE when I looked at the top floor. I told everyone to come back. Then they called firefighters. We waited for 5 minutes but the firefighters? NOWHERE to be seen and guess what? The fire station was only 15 yards away. So, a group of students went to check including me. NOBODY was there. So, we came back and guess what? Everyone had literally DISAPPEARED. We stood frozen, staring at the empty schoolyard. A terrifying silence had replaced the noise of a thousand students. Instinct took over: we had to get out and see if this was just the school. The street was the same. No cars moving, no buses, no distant sounds of life. There were vehicles parked haphazardly, some with doors left open, but absolutely no one. The disappearance wasn't just limited to the school; it had swallowed the entire block. A cold spike of dread shot through me. If the town was empty, what about my family?
Chapter 2
The principal’s file cabinet
We rushed back inside the school grounds. If the world was gone, the answer had to be here, where it started. The principal had known something was happening again. "The principal knew this was coming." The computer was locked, so we searched the principal's desk. We found a small key stuck under the desk with old chewing gum. Gross, but it opened the file cabinet. We grabbed the bottom drawer labelled 'Property records.' Inside, there was an extremely old, folded map. It wasn't a map of the school but a map of the ground before the school was built. "This whole school, it was built on top of a graveyard." It had names of all the people buried. I pointed at the football field, the exact place the ground had started shaking. The name written there: "Stephany Sequeira" My heart froze. "This whole school, it was built on top of a graveyard." It started becoming nighttime but we didn't have any food because everyone's houses were locked so we decided to sleep in the school starving. "This whole school, it was built on top of a graveyard."
Chapter 3
The next day
I woke up the next day seeing only 6 of the 7 people with me being Daisy, John, David, Diana, Arhaan, Samar. and Pranav who is now MISSING. How did he get missed? What happened to him? Mysterious, right? But now I looked out the window seeing STAIRS going underground. I was curious where it led to. But I was scared that if I'd go alone all the people in my class would Disappear. "This whole school, it was built on top of a graveyard." I stood at the window longer than I should have, staring at the stairs. “These stairs weren’t here yesterday,” I said “No, they weren’t” Diana replied. She threw a small pebble from the window. We watched it bounce, once, twice, then disappear down the steps with a dull clack that echoed longer than expected. The sound told us two things: the stairs were real, and they went deep. Pranav hadn’t screamed. No noise, no sign of struggle. No explanation. “That’s the first clue,” John said quietly. “Whatever took him didn’t rush.”
Chapter 4
The meet
We gathered in the library, the one room that still felt normal. Sunlight filtered through the high windows. The clock still ticked. If not for the empty world outside, you could pretend this was just another school day. We discussed the matter and, more importantly, survival. Panic wouldn’t help us, and everyone seemed to understand that. “Food first,” Samar said. “If this doesn’t end today, we’ll need a plan.” John nodded. “And rules. No one goes anywhere alone. No one argued. Pranav’s disappearance had made that rule obvious. We divided tasks. Daisy and Diana looked for food. Arhaan and Samar looked for supplies. John and I focused on information. The library computers were useless without the internet, but books didn’t need a signal. We searched through old school magazines, anniversary souvenirs, and yearbooks.
Chapter 5
We find out
Then John found something odd. “Everything skips a year,” he said, pointing at a row of yearbooks and magazines from the school library. 1997. 1998 1999. 2000 2001 2003 “No magazine No yearbook, nothing,” he said. “It’s like the school didn’t exist that year.” Meanwhile, Daisy returned with bad news. “Almost everything’s locked. Houses, shops, even the canteen store. It’s like everyone just vanished.” That explained the parked cars outside, doors left open, bags abandoned. “Which means,” Diana said slowly, “whatever happened here happened everywhere around us too.” As night approached again, we locked ourselves into one classroom and arranged desks against the door—not because we expected something to break in, but because doing something felt better than doing nothing. We took turns staying awake. During my watch, I noticed something strange. The school bell rang once. Just once. Not loud. Almost like a reminder. I checked the time. 11:47 p.m. Exactly thirty-six hours after the ground had shaken.
Chapter 6
We find out
One WHOLE day passed but nothing special that we found. THE day after that I woke up before anyone else. I was just seeing the stairs when SUDDENLY At the bottom of the stairs, where yesterday there had only been darkness, I could see light. A faint yellow light, like a bulb that had been on for years and never replaced. I checked my watch. 7:47 a.m. Exactly thirty-six hours after the bell had rung the previous night. I stepped back quickly. “Guys,” I said softly. “Wake up.” One by one, everyone sat up. Daisy rubbed her eyes. John immediately checked the time. Diana came to the window beside me. “You see it too?” she asked. I nodded. “The light wasn’t there before,” Samar said. “Was it?” “No,” Arhaan replied. “Yesterday it was completely dark.” We stood there, staring. “This is the next stage,” John said. “The bell was the signal. This is the response.” No one argued.
Chapter 7
something
We went back to the library to think. The yearbooks were still on the table, open to the same pages. 2001. 2003 And nothing in between. “If this started in 2002,” Daisy said slowly, “then maybe Day 4 is important too.” “How?” I asked. “Maybe that’s how long it took last time,” she replied. “Maybe they waited too.” The thought made my chest feel tight. “What if,” Diana said, “the students in 2002 noticed the same things we are noticing now but went down too early?” No one spoke after that. I picked up my notebook and wrote: • Day 1 morning: Ground shakes • Night 2: Bell • Day 4 morning: Light appears “This isn’t random,” I said. “It’s following the same steps.” Outside, the light at the bottom of the stairs stayed on. It didn’t flicker. It didn’t move. It waited.