Chapter 1 – Chap 1

This all started when my family moved from Los Angeles to the small town of Jasper, Wisconsin. My father was an engineer and his company wanted him to help run the plant that was being set up right outside of Jasper.

Jasper was your pretty typical small town. One movie theater. One High School. There wasn’t a mall, but most of the stores were bunched together at the town’s center, known as “Jasper Downtown”. Though there were some stores on the edges of the town…

Jasper was surrounded by a dense wood. On our trip there my father went on about how beautiful Wisconsin nature is. The first thing I noticed about Jasper when we moved in though was how gloomy the place was. It didn’t seem to have any of the midwest charm that my parents went on about. The woods didn’t seem inviting, in fact it was the opposite. There was something oppressive about the trees that surrounded Jasper. Sometimes the trees looked like they were pointing at all the wrong angles. The branches looked like crooked canes….or handles.

We moved in at the beginning of September, and yet there was hardly ever any sun. It was constantly cloudy and foggy a lot the times too.

Jasper High School was much smaller then the high school from my hometown. And I had never heard of public schools making you wear uniforms.

“What are they making us dress up for?” I asked my parents before my first day of school. I had put on my black coat and black trousers. Thankfully there was no tie.

My father just smiled. “Just go with it, sport. Besides you kind of look cool in that blazer!”

“Yeah totally chic,” my mom chimed in. I groaned, but couldn’t help but smile. My parents knew how much I hated this, hated leaving behind my friends right before sophomore year, having to start over again, but they were trying to make things work. I had to meet them half way.

“Mom, please don't say Chic ever again.” We all laughed, and it was the last time I would share a genuine laugh like the with my parents again.

My first day of school started about how you would expect. I was brought in front of the class( I had English first period), and introduced myself.

“Hey,” I said somewhat nervously. “My name is Ash Tepper.” To my surprise my classmates were really nice. I guess I was use to the assholes kids back in Cali that the midwestern sincerity kind of hit me like a truck. As gloomy as the town of Jasper was, the people were really nice.

Or so they seemed.

At my old school each class I went to was made up of different students; I very rarely had two different classes with the same person, but at Jasper High the same group moved from class to class together. So thankfully I didn’t have to introduce myself to different groups of kids at the beginning of every class. And it was nice to spend the day with the same people, getting to know each of them.

This kid named Jack, he was assigned to my by tour guide so to speak. Apparently he was a part of the student council, and they wanted the new kid to feel at home. He was nice, even if the first thing he said to me was “Gotta catch em all, right Ash?!”. He apologized profusely when he saw the look on my face. “Oh…I guess you've heard that one before.”

Jack showed me around the school, where the cool kids hanged, where the dorks hanged, who was who, what was what. Typical school hierarchy and all that great stuff. But the school was so small, that the dorks and cool kids had a lot of crossover.

“We’re all just one big happy family here!” Jack said.

It wasn’t until he showed me the basement level that things got strange.

See Jasper High had three floors. There was the ground floor. The second floor.

And the basement floor.

There were no classes held on the basement floor, but there were rooms that were used for storage and one club. Many of the art supplies were held down there. We had been in art class, when Ms. Loach asked Jack and I to go down and get some more brushes and paint.

The first thing I noticed about the basement floor was how….less everything seemed. The lights were dimmer. The doors were more chipped and window panes on the doors looked like they hadn’t been cleaned in a long time.

When I stepped down there I felt that same oppressiveness that I got from the trees that surrounded Jasper. The entire floor felt…wrong.

We walked past the first door.

It was labeled: B1

“This is where we have student council sessions,” Jack said proudly. “We’re the only club down here, the rest are on the second.” Jack threw up his hands mockingly. “Oh one day I’ll join the clubs on the heavenly second floor, I just know it!”

He laughed, “You should really think of joining student council Jack!”

“Sure, I’ll think about it.”

Jack sighed, "That means no. It always means no."

We passed another door.

B2

“Gym equipments in there,” Jack said less enthusiastically. “If you ever need to pump air into a ball that’s where you’ll find what you need. I’ve never really been much into sports to be honest. You?”

“I love sports,” I said.

“Figures,” Jack said, but not unkindly, and with a little bit of a smile.

We walked past another door.

B3.

“Music equipment. You play anything?”

“Video games,” I said.

“Mm hmm. Mm hmm,” Jack said nodding his head profusely. "A true man of culture!"

Another door.

B4.

“And here we are! The art supply room. Lets get these brushes and paint or else Ms. Loach will be besides herself!” Jack said wryly.

I noticed another door at the end of the hall. I was struck by how far it seemed. Most of the other doors were close together, but this door was distinctively separated from the rest. Something caught my eye, so I walked closer. Something inside of me was telling me to walk away, to turn around and forget the door.

I kept walking towards it.

And I swear as I got closer, the light got even dimmer.

There was no number on it. Instead there was a large symbol stenciled on the door.

It looked like an umbrella.

“What’s that room?” I asked turning towards Jack.

For a second I thought I saw Jack’s eyes go wide, but then he was smiling again. “Oh, that? That’s nothing. Just some more storage.”

“What’s with the Umbrella?”

“W-what?” Jack asked nervously. And now I’m sure I saw his eyes widen. “Umbrella?”

“I mean all these doors have numbers on them, but that one has…I mean it looks like an umbrella right?

“Oh yea. I…I guess it kind of does. I don't know. Hey we should really grab this stuff before Ms. Loach gets mad.”

We grabbed the supplies and headed back. Jack was quiet the entire way. I was immediately relieved by how much better things felt on the ground floor. It felt like I had been drowning and just came up for my first gulp of air….and yet.

A part of me had wanted nothing more but to sink deeper. To walk towards that door and open it. To drown down there.

What was in that room?

When we got back to class, I went back to my seat, but Jack went up to Ms. Loach and said something quietly to her.

She simply nodded.

“Jack try to get you to join student council?” This was Henry. A nice enough guy.

“Huh? Oh, yeah he did,” I responded turning away from Jack and Ms. Loach. I wanted to ask Henry about the door, but something in the back of my mind told me not to. There was something about this that felt all wrong.

“Figures,” Henry said before turning back to his painting.

The rest of the day I had this intense feeling people were staring at me, but whenever I looked up everyone else was focused on their own work. It’s like that feeling when you’re taking a shower and you feel like someone is peeking over the curtain, but when you look no one is there. And yet for those split seconds when you are seeing through foggy shampoo and soap, before the water clears your eyes, you are certain there are eyes staring back at you.

Jack was quiet the rest of the day.

I was walking back home after my first day of school when I felt a tap on my shoulder. I turned around to see a girl from my class.

“Oh, hey. Elizabeth, right?”

Elizabeth looked around nervously and then said, “What did you see?”

“What?”

“On the door I mean,” she said. “What did you see on the door on the basement floor?”

“I-I don’t…wait, you mean the door with an umbrella?”

For a second, Elizabeth’s eyes went wide, just like Jack’s had. She leaned in close and whispered in my ear.

“Get the fuck out of this town.” Gone was the Midwestern sincerity. But Elizabeth didn't say it angrily. She sounded frightened.

“What? Why?” I asked.

“Just leave. Steal your parents car, get on a bus, hitch a ride, take your bike. It doesn’t matter. Just leave,” she made to walk away, but then turned back. “And don’t tell anyone I told you this.”

“I don't understand,” I called after her. “What’s with that room?” She turned the corner and was gone.

When I got home my mother was asleep on the living room couch. An almost empty glass of wine on the table next to her. As hard as the move had hit me, it hit my mother even harder. The move had put a strain on my parents marriage. My father’s job would make him absent for almost the entire day. He wouldn’t be home until 11:00 PM tonight.

I walked up to my bedroom and sat on my bed thinking about how strange the day had been. About what Elizabeth had said.

"Leave? I can't leave. What is she thinking."

Then I heard a tapping sound. It was coming from my closet. It was soft at first.

Tap…

Tap…

I wasn't even sure I was hearing it at first.

But then the tapping grew more intense.

TapTapTap…

TapTapTap…

“Who’s there,” I said. I tried not to scream. “Who’s there?” I drudged up every ounce of courage I had and walked towards the closet door.

TAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAPTAP.

I opened the door, expecting the worse, expecting some kind of attack…

But there was no one inside my closet. Just my clothes and the usuals.

That’s when I noticed what was leaning against the inside of the closet door.

It was a black umbrella. I fell backwards, causing the door to open wider and the umbrella to fall onto my bedroom floor. I had never seen that umbrella before. Maybe my parents put it in there or maybe I forgot I had it or….

No. This was something else entirely. I got on my knees and looked at the umbrella, treating it like an animal with rabies, half expecting it to attack me at any moment. That’s when I noticed there was a small white piece of paper tucked into the strap that went around the umbrella.

I took out the note. Nothing written on one side. I turned it over.

There was only one sentence written there:

"See You Real Soon”