A Mysterious Girl

M Fikrie Prabowo

9D

Some time in Autumn seven years ago, I began studying at a boarding school in Scarborough,
UK. The house I stayed in was the only girls' boarding house of the school at the time. The
house was built in 1887 and is located at Filey Road.

The place felt very homely and when I was shown to my dormitory on the first floor, I was
delighted to discover that three roommates had been expecting my arrival and to give me a
warm welcome. The three girls had already chosen the beds they wanted to sleep in, and the
only one left (my bed to be) was closest to the door. The back of the bed was against the violet
wall and this part of the wall was not flat, but looked like what used to be a fireplace that had
now been painted white and whose opening had been blocked.

Not long into the school term, I had a dream one night -

I was there at the boarding house but the interior was different from how I had remembered it
to be.

I found a girl who was in what we called the "Games Room" on the ground floor, which was
close to the staircase. She was a girl with long and wavey brown hair and was wearing a pretty
and pale flowery dress, which I thought seemed a little old-fashioned.

She seemed slightly younger or about my age then (i.e. About 10 to 14 years old). And,
although I did not know who she was, she was friendly to me and we began chatting.

She asked if I wanted to play the piano since she knew that was what I loved. I had no idea how
she knew of this hobby of mine but I was grateful of her offer and thanked her.

A little while later, I began to wonder about the quietness in the house and asked this girl
where her family was.

"My dad has gone to work," she replied.

I asked another question, "When will he return?"

"He told me that he would return soon," she answered with a smile.
The answer somehow seemed ominous to me, as an image of a military chief flashed through
my mind, so I asked no further questions.

Soon, she took me to a corridor and beckoned me to follow her. The corridor was almost
blindingly bright but it seemed to have a dark aura about it simultaneously. To try and ease this
awkward feeling about the corridor, I turned my attention back to the girl, who I was now
walking behind. Then, I started to feel slightly dizzy and insecure, as though the girl was a
stranger again.

At that very moment, a thought came to me that this girl was a ghost. A part of me was so sure,
yet I could not be sure because she appeared so solid and real.

When I woke up I told my roommates about the dream. They freaked out a little bit and told
me a few seconds later that that was the reason why they did not choose to sleep in my bed
when they first arrived in the dormitory: apparently, I was not the first girl to have experienced
something like this in that dormitory. And, then, they told me about the mysterious girl being in
the bathroom from time to time, to which I did not completely believe as these three girls did
not witness this themselves.

A year later, I had been moved to a different room on the top floor. Since then, I had not been
hearing a thing from the mysterious girl.

Even up to the time I was arranged to stay in this dormitory again during my last year at the
school, I had been believing that the dream was just one of many of the odd ones I had had in
the past.

Besides a few rearrangements of the furniture, there had not been much change in the room,
with the most noticeable change being the replacement of the old bunkbeds by single beds.
The desks were still in the same places, i.e. By the wall closest to the bathroom and to the door.

Without much thought, I took the same bed I did last time, although I did have the opportunity
to choose one of the other two as well (since this time there were no roommates to share the
dormitory with).

One night, out of twenty one girls, three were left (me inclusive) in the house as the rest had
gone out (either to a friends'/ a boarders' cinema trip/ home). I took this as a great opportunity
to watch a film with the member of staff on duty without disturbance.

Before the film started, I realised that I had forgotten to bring something down from my
dormitory (if I haven't remembered incorrectly, it was a drink). So, I ran up the stairs and
stopped at the top of the staircase just to take a deep breath before I walked into my room.
Then, I heard intermittent noises coming from the direction of my room and the bathroom,
going "clog", "click", "knock". The windows in my room were open so I had a suspicion that a
burglar had broken in through them to mess my room up.

I was so afraid but I need to check this out. So, I got something solid I could hit a person with
(just as a defensive tool), and walked, as silently as I could, to the dorm. Feeling compelled to
be brave, I flew the door wide open and pressed the light switch right next to the door and said,
"who's there?" No one answered, and there was no one in sight, but the noises continued. I
listened harder this time for their source.

Ah-hah. Found the source - it was the bathroom!

There were no windows in that bathroom and so I doubted that anyone could have broken into
the bathroom. For this reason, I was able to open the bathroom door quite calmly.

"Hello? Is anyone there?" I asked.

I looked around the entire room and saw that all the toilet doors (just like public ones at typical
shopping malls, airports, etc) were open. So, it was unlikely that anyone was inside the
compartments.

I then took a look at the two shower boxes next to the toilets, which had translucent doors. No
one was in either of them but one of the boxes was the source of the noises. The shower door
was closed and the shower was on. I thought that perhaps someone had accidentally left the
shower on and, to stop wasting water, I went to open the shower door to turn the water off,
and the noises, which was caused by the shower head dancing inside the cubicle, stopped.

When I opened the door I felt a gush of wind going directly through me - which somehow
seemed angry. Yes, it was an angry wind. I do not know how I got this impression but that really
was what it felt like, as though I had just spoiled someone's enjoyment of showering.

Just to make sure that I was not over-thinking, I went to the girl living next door to me and
asked if she was about to have a shower and had left the shower on on purpose. This girl was
one of the most sensible ones in the house, so her answer convinced me - "no, but I'm planning
to have one later tonight, why?"

Then, I told her what had just happened and left. I did the same with the other girl left in the
house, who lived on the top floor and gave me a similar answer - "no, I haven't; I had a shower
this morning in one of the bathrooms on this floor."
By now, I was totally freaked out. I thought it had to be a joke or it was something I could not
explain. I ran downstairs to tell the staff on duty about it and she told me that there were
probably problems with the hydraulic pressure in the showers. Her explanation seemed to
make sense but this had never happened before, or had it? And, what about this angry wind
that I felt? Did I imagine it?

I went back into my room to talk on MSN with a close friend about it, because I felt this person
could give me the reassurance I needed. Soon, I was beginning to calm down a little when a
half-visible, with the height of an average-12-year-old girl appeared from the corner of my eye
just a few feet away from my bed. She was standing close to the door, in front of one of the
desks, and her feet seemed to be stuck a few inches below the floor. She seemed to be staring
at me with anger, hate, and... Perhaps disappointment. It was a mixture of negative emotions,
as far as I could tell.

I moved my eyeballs slowly to my right to see if I saw what I thought I saw, and then the figure
just flashed across the room in, possibly, a straight line and through the wall (next to the
blocked fireplace).

I did not know what to believe now. Was I going insane? Just to check, I went to the girl next
door again. I told her what I had just seen and how it might have been linked to the earlier
incident in the shower. I did not ask her to believe me but she seemed to understand: back to
when she stayed in my dormitory (a year or two before I returned to it), she had a dream about
a baby girl. She said that in the dream, she had to save this baby girl, during a war, and she had
no idea why but it felt real.

I asked which bed she was sleeping in when she had this dream. It was the very same bed that I
slept in every night. Now, all seemed to come together, maybe the fact that: the mysterious
girls' dress seemed ancient was because she was from a different era; the girl's dad had not
come home for a long time was due to a military mission he had to go on; the girl had not left
the house and was alone now was because all other family members had gone to make
sacrifices to protect her; the girl needed to be saved by someone indicated she did not want to
be alone anymore... Still, who can be certain as to how accurate my interpretation of the events
is?

For a while, I had been feeling sad due to the possibility of my interpretation of the story being
true. I was also afraid that the mysterious girl might get me killed to make me her new ghost
friend if this story were true. And, as I was thinking about this, I was standing just a few feet
away from, and facing, my bed.
A second later, I felt something pull my hair, like "tug-tug". Now, I was quite sure she had been
there: the spot I was standing was where I saw her from my bed. Although scared, I pretended
that nothing had happened, and from that night, my hair never got pulled again.

A few days later, when I went to brush my teeth in the bathroom, I found that one of the toilet
lights had fused, which was not so surprising as it had been used for a good few years already.
Days later, a new light bulb had been installed, making the room brighter again. Approximately
two weeks after that, the light bulb of the next toilet compartment fused, got replaced, and
after yet another two weeks, the same happened to the last light bulb. What is more, this
happened again to the first lightbulb another fortnight later, and had been continuing like a
cycle between the three lightbulbs since then (until I left, at least).

I have not been getting any update on the mysterious girl, so I am guessing that no one has
been haunted by her presence since me.

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