Room 313
“We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” ~ H. P. Lovecraft
In the University District of Seattle, there is a peculiar little bookshop. It is a haven for bookworms and comic enthusiasts alike, tucked away on a side street lined with charming stores.
On a sunny spring afternoon Sarah, a college student, was walking through the Quad, feeling restless. She had been dumped a week ago by Bob, her now ex-boyfriend, and she was now going through a bit of a melt-down. Not a full-blown meltdown, for Sarah was not the type to display emotion, just an uneasy feeling. Bob had a habit of criticizing her for her neatness, “Do you even live here?” he had said about her dorm room. Sarah had always taken pride in her organizational skills, and if Bob didn’t like it she thought it was his problem, not hers. “If it bothers you so much you can leave,” she had said. Still, a seed of doubt had been sown in the well-cultivated garden of her psyche.
“Perhaps,” she thought, “
something off-beat would help me get back on track.” She left the Quad, crossing over to a side street with a diverse jumble of small shops and restaurants. She rounded a corner and a book shop, one that she didn’t remember seeing before, caught her eye.
“This looks like a good place to explore the esoteric.”When she entered the scent of old books seemed like insence.
Wandering through the aisles, Sarah pondered the garish covers of comic books and graphic novels. Nestled amongst this trashy pop was an old leather-bound tome. It seemed out of place among the colorful books. Its spine was adorned with faded runes and symbols. Intrigued, she took it down and gently traced her fingers over the ancient markings. Upon opening it, Sarah felt a shiver of energy pulse through her hands. “
This might be just what I’m looking for.”
There was no penciled-in price on the flyleaf, so Sarah took it over to a bewhiskered clerk at the checkout desk.
“Excuse me, do you have a price for this book?”
“Huh,” said the clerk, flaring his nostrils as if the book stunk, “I don’t recognize it, let me see if it is our computer.”
“Is there a problem?” Sarah said, experiencing a mini-panic attack seeing the clerk frown as he looked his computer’s screen.
“No, sometimes books aren’t in the system,” said the clerk, “There is no ISBN, no date or publisher either. It’s probably from a vanity press… How about eight bucks?”
All Sarah had was seven dollars. “I can’t do it. Maybe five?”
“Seven,” he said with a grin.
Still too much. “Six?”
“Six and a quarter. My last offer,” said the clerk, with a pained grimace.
“Okay…”
“With tax it comes to $6.66”
Sarah paid for the book and headed for the door. As she stepped out of the quaint little shop, clutching the ancient tome she had just purchased, she again felt a strange tingling up and down her spine. The book seemed to vibrate faintly in her hands, as if whispering secrets to her fingerprints. With each step she took, the world around her began to warp and shift. Colors bled together, and the familiar sounds of the bustling city became a discordant racket. Panic gripped her heart as the familiar streets she knew so well looked strange. Shaken, Sarah headed back to the campus quad where she thought things would be calmer. But before she got there her thought were interrupted by a ragged busker strumming an out-of-tune guitar. He began to sing:
Emerald city’s strange faces collide
Little girl lost, trying to hide
Every street corner a symphony of LOUD
Concrete dreams of the restless crowd
Sarah slowed, her grip tightening on the book. The book was vibrating in sympathy with the sound of the busker’s guitar—each discordant strum sent a tremor through the leather cover.
The disheveled troubadour was looking right at her and Sarah felt his next lines were meant for her and no one else:
Chaos breathes, chaos knows,
Chaos’ hidden currents flow
Sarah had always hated disorder of any kind.
The book in Sarah’s hands was really humming now and the runes on the cover began to glow a deep red. Reaching the usually tranquil quad, typically a picturesque scene of students lounging on the grass or strolling between classes, she saw it transformed into something slightly unsettling, trees seemed to be hunched over; twisted limbs reaching out in every direction; air suffused with an inexplicable tension; the sound of leaves rustling seemed to be sinister whispers.
The campus crows that perched in the branches of the trees lining the quad erupted into cacophonous caws. Taking flight, their black forms swirled in the sky, their eyes gleaming with an alien intelligence, their sharp beaks seemed to embody malice as they circled above, casting menacing shadows on the ground below.
The shrubbery lining the edges of the square appeared to come alive with subtle gyrations as if possessed by some demonic force. Sarah set the book down and the scene immediately returned to normal: the busker gone, the crows back on their branches, the vegetation once again benign. When she touched the book with the tip of her boot nothing happened, but when she touched it with her fingers, the red glow returned to the letters. “
Perhaps it is my skin that causes the reaction,” she mused as she dug a pair of gloves out of her bag and put them on. “
This should help.”
Hansee Hall was known as a “quiet” dorm, it was the oldest one on campus. There was a campus legend that years ago a mysterious event had occured there. Eliza was an introverted student who had an interest in the occult. One night, after being spurned by her lover, Eliza attempted to seek revenge on him with a curse, summoning demonic spirits with an ancient ritual she had found in an old book. Evidently the ritual had gone horribly wrong for Eliza’s cries were heard but when the other students investigated the room was unoccupied and Eliza had vanished—from room 313. Sarah’s room. Sarah had heard the story on a campus tour but dismissed them as mere folklore, although she had noticed peculiar occurrences when in it—doors slamming shut on their own, whispers echoing in the dead of night, and, at times, an unshakable chill that seemed to linger in the air.
She was intrigued. The book obviously had some real power, perhaps she could use it to break out of her rut and solve the mystery. Armed with the book, curiosity, and a desire to uncover the truth, Sarah thought this could be a way to communicate with whatever spirits lingered there.
She would conduct her own séance.
She closed the blinds. Laying her bare hands on the book with its mysterious symbols she closed her eyes and began to concentrate. At first, there was only silence. But then a coldness seeped through the room and the atmosphere grew heavy. Sarah opened her eyes. All of the room’s straight lines were warped and distorted, increasing her sense of unease. A figure materialized before her—a young woman with hollow eyes and a ghostly aura. She somehow knew that it was Eliza, the woman who had once lived in this room. Through whispers and gestures, the spectre conveyed her anguish to Sarah; “Help me,” she said, “Recite the spell. Free me from this curse.”
Sarah’s heart filled with empathy for the tormented spirit. She decided to help Eliza find solace and release her from the shackles of the curse that had bound her to Room 313. Sarah read the spell aloud:
Spirits bound by chains unseen,
In the realms where shadows glean,
I call upon the ancient light,
To grant you freedom from the night.
Through the veil that separates,
Where spirits linger, bound by fates,
I break the bonds that hold you fast,
And set you free to roam at last.
Release the ties that bind your soul,
Let the energies now make you whole,
From this realm, you shall depart,
To find peace in the endless heart.
Eliza whispere: “Thank you.”
The room was still. The air no longer pressed down against Sarah’s lungs. The faint chill that had haunted Room 313 began to lift and Eliza, like a mist dissolving at dawn, had vanished.
The silence was replaced by the ordinary hum of dormitory life—distant laughter in the hallway, talking students, a door shutting somewhere down the corridor. The room’s distortions were gone. Order had been restored
Sarah looked down at the book in her lap. The runes were dull now, cracked and faded. She touched the cover with her bare hand.
Nothing.
She exhaled.
“It’s done.”
The next morning, sunlight lay across the floorboards in neat golden rectangles. Sarah awoke before her alarm — refreshed, oddly clear-headed. Her room looked… better. Not cleaner, exactly. It had always been clean. More balanced, perhaps?
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and paused. Her gloves were on the floor near the desk. She had a faint memory of dropping them — but not when. Shrugging it off, she dressed and headed to class.
The Quad felt normal. Students crossed the grass in loose, careless diagonals. Crows perched in the trees. A busker played near the fountain She couldn’t quite place his face, and he glanced up as she passed.
Sarah slowed. Had he been there yesterday? She couldn’t remember.
The thought dissolved as quickly as it formed.
Over the next few days, small things began to settle.
Her textbooks lined themselves more squarely on her shelf — not moved, just… corrected. The faint draft beneath her door disappeared. The subtle unevenness in the hallway floor no longer existed. Even the ticking of the clock seemed steadier, more symmetrical. Her classmates remarked that she seemed different: “Calmer,” one said. “Lighter,” said another. Bob passed her once near the library. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then frowned faintly — as though something about her did not quite match his memory.
“Have we—?” he began.
Sarah smiled politely. “No,” she said.
That evening, she returned to Room 313. The door resisted her key for a moment — not jammed, just unfamiliar with the motion. When it opened, the air inside was cool and still. The book lay on her desk. She was certain she had placed it in her drawer.
For a long moment she stood in the doorway, studying it. The leather looked older now. The edges more worn. She stepped closer and opened it and noticed something subtle on the inside cover written in small, careful script:
Eliza Martin, room 313.
Sarah closed the book gently and set it down so that it aligned perfectly with the edge of the desk.
In the hallway, a pair of students were talking:
“Room 313?” one whispered. “Isn’t that the one where that girl disappeared?”
“Yeah,” the other replied. “What was her name again?”
There was a pause. Inside the room, Sarah tilted her head slightly, listening.
“Something with an S, I think.”
After a moment, the voices faded.
The room felt complete.
Perfectly balanced.
And very, very still.
Sarah was alone.
Friday Fiction , YA edition.
