After lights-out, I make my roommates play with an Ouija board with me.

Being the scaredy-cat she is, my roommate decides to ask something stupid, "Where did my earphones go?"

I almost burst out laughing. I can't believe she's using it to find her earphones.

To our surprise, the planchette starts to move. It spells out, "It's under your bed beside the eye."

We exchange glances in confusion. What eye?

I snort and get out of bed. Using my phone's flashlight, I check under the bed. Nothing is there.

Before I can make fun of my roommate for being superstitious, the door slams open. The student who stays next door barges into our room, her face as pale as a sheet.

Her voice trembles as she shouts, "Wake up! Everyone on campus is going wild! Someone found an eyeball in our dorm!"

Everyone in our room started freaking out. "Holy shit!"

Madison Lane, who loved gossip the most, jumped out of her bed. She wasn't scared at all. In fact, she was excited.

"Did that really happen? I'm not sleepy anymore! Hurry up and show it to me!"

She snatched the phone away. Queenie Sanders, my other roommate, hid beneath her blanket.

"Don't look at it, Madison. It sounds so scary… Julia, it can't be real, can it?"

I frowned and leaned in to look at the post, too. The viral post already had thousands of views. The title was in blood red.

It read, "What a terrifying night! An eyeball was found in Crown Residence Hall! We have the picture to prove it!"

Tapping on the post revealed a creepy image. Although it was censored, we could still make out the details.

The image showed a bloody, spherical object lying in the turn to the third floor's staircase. A coin was placed next to it for size comparison. There were already more than a thousand comments.

"What! Isn't this Crown Residence Hall our dorm? How am I supposed to go to the bathroom now?"

"Same. I'm already planning to use my trash can instead."

"The texture and veins make it look so real…"

Queenie threw the phone away in shock and gripped her blanket tighter. "Ew, gross! Is there a psychopathic killer in our midst?"

I examined the image closely, zooming in and sliding the window around. Then, I snickered, "It's fake."

"What?" Everyone turned to me.

I turned the phone around to face them and pointed at the corner of the image. "Look, there's light reflected on the eyeball. It looks way too smooth, like glass. It was probably photoshopped."

The moment I finished my sentence, Leah Cooper, another roommate who had been silent all this time, suddenly grabbed my arm tightly.

"Julia," she whispered.

Her body was trembling all over. "It's not fake... It's real."

I was stunned by her reaction. "How do you know that?"

"T-That's because when we played with the Ouija board just now…" Her voice trembled as she continued, "It said that the earphones I lost were under the bed beside the eye!"

Only then did I remember that we were playing the Ouija board when Kayla Smith barged in.

Just a few minutes ago, I was even planning on making fun of Leah for being so superstitious. Now, with two of these events in quick succession, it felt like an actual prophecy.

Madison's and Queenie's faces paled. The tension was so thick you could cut it with a knife.

"What eye? How could you take an Ouija board seriously?"

I got out of bed and turned on my phone's flashlight. Then, I aimed it under Leah's bed. I was surprised to see that Leah's earphones really were hidden in the innermost corner beneath her bed.

Madison shrieked and stumbled back. "It's really there! I'm getting goosebumps!"

"It's just a coincidence." Even though I was shocked, I tried to keep calm and said, "There are absolutely no ghosts in the world."

However, Leah looked drained. She collapsed onto her bed and mumbled to herself, "The Ouija board was telling the truth. It left its eyeball in the hallway…"

The eerie atmosphere in our room creeped Kayla out. After reminding us to lock our door, she quickly made herself scarce.

Queenie and Madison squeezed themselves under one blanket in the same bed. Queenie was scared to the point of tears.

"Julia, I'm so scared… Can we go to the resident director tomorrow to request a dorm change? This dorm's got to be haunted!"

Madison was no longer interested in gossip. She agreed with Queenie, her face as pale as a sheet.

"Damn it. If I knew the scoop was that thrilling, I wouldn't have joined in so eagerly. How am I supposed to sleep now?"

I was also feeling the creeps, but logic told me ghosts weren't real. It was most likely a prank that simply coincided with what happened to Leah. It also didn't help that Leah was a timid person, to begin with.

"Settle down and stop scaring yourselves." I sat back on my bed and said nonchalantly, "Someone probably just found the eye specimen dropped by some unlucky med student and decided to post it online."

Suddenly, we heard the jangling of keys from the hallway. The security guard, Emily Parker, was making her rounds.

"Why haven't you gone to bed? Look at how late it is. Hurry up and go to bed!"

When Emily pushed the door open and saw the four of us sitting in a circle, she was stunned. "My, my, are you having a party or something?"

Queenie was the most timid out of the four of us. She couldn't help but ask, "Ms. Parker, is it true that they found an eyeball in one of the hallways?"

Emily's expression was unreadable. She lowered her voice before saying, "It's true.

"The cops were here just now. They already left with it. It left me feeling pretty restless, so I decided to make more rounds tonight."

As she spoke, she shot a few nervous glances down the hallway. "Don't roam around tonight, ladies. Make sure to lock your door."

Then, as if she recalled something, she paused and added ominously, "Come to think of it, this isn't the first creepy thing that happened here.

"The elders told me that this place used to be a mass grave. Who knows how many unwanted corpses were buried in this land? Beneath the building's foundation is also the grave of a little girl whose eyes had been gouged out…"

"Ms. Parker!" I couldn't take it anymore, so I interrupted her. "Don't say things like that in the middle of the night."

Knowing that she had run her mouth, Emily laughed wryly and left after telling us to sleep early. The room quieted down after she left. Queenie and Madison were so scared that they hid under their blanket and refused to peek their heads out.

Leah was scared out of her wits. She crawled to my bedside and shook my arm. "Julia, c-can I sleep with you? I'm scared."

Seeing how pale she was, I couldn't bring myself to refuse. I couldn't abandon her in a situation like this.

"Fine. Get in." I rolled my eyes and made space for her.

Leah looked at me like I had given her the world. I could feel how cold her limbs were when she crawled into my bed.

I didn't know if it was because I was sharing a bed with another person, but I couldn't sleep. After some time, I felt something moving beside me while I was half-conscious.

It was Leah. She was gently patting me down as if searching for something. Her cold fingers brushed my neck and arms before stopping at my face.

Her touch annoyed me, so I instinctively pushed her face away. But when my hand touched her face, I immediately jolted awake.

What I touched wasn't a lady's smooth skin, but a rough, uneven thing that felt like a centipede above her eye! It felt like a wound that had been ripped open after it had healed. It was also wet.

I shrieked, pushed her away, and fell out of my bed. It shocked everyone awake.

"What's wrong?"

"Are you okay, Julia?"

Madison and Queenie quickly turned on their phones' flashlights. The light illuminated the room.

Still shaken, I slowly looked up and saw Leah sitting on my bed innocently. She looked at me with bleary eyes.

"What's the matter, Julia?" she asked worriedly and yawned.

Stunned, I stared at her eye. "Y-Your face…" I pointed at her and said, my voice trembling.

"What's wrong with my face?" Confused, Leah touched her face.

Queenie jumped out of bed to help me up. She grumbled, "Julia, did you have a nightmare? If I get one more jumpscare tonight, my soul is going to leave my body."

Was it a nightmare? But it felt so real!

Leah also got out of bed. She patted my back gently.

"It's okay now. It must've been a nightmare. How about I go back to sleeping in my own bed so you won't get another scare?"

Seeing the sincere and innocent look on her face, I started to doubt my perception for once. Was I hallucinating because I was too restless?

In the end, I let Leah stay in my bed. On one hand, I was still shaken by what had happened and was too scared to sleep alone. On the other hand, I didn't want to make a fool of myself by making a big deal out of nothing if it was just a hallucination.

However, I couldn't go back to sleep. I lay with my back facing Leah. I stared at the wall, my mind a complete mess.

My head was filled with thoughts about the wound I had felt, the story Emily had told us about this place being a mass grave, the Ouija board's prophecy, and the eyeball found in the hallway.

I felt goosebumps all over my body. Then, something possessed me to pull out my phone and type my university's name and "mass grave" into the search bar. To my surprise, I stumbled upon a post from five years ago.

The person who posted it claimed to be a student of my university. He had read through historical records and the university's archives to prove that Crown Residence Hall used to be a mass grave centuries ago.

There was even a photocopy of the yellowed pages of an old newspaper article. The article recorded an unsolved case that occurred in that year.

A little girl had gone missing near the mass grave. Then, her body was found a few days later with her eyes gouged out by something sharp.

I broke into a cold sweat. Emily's story wasn't unfounded. It really did happen!

As my heart raced, I continued to read the rest of the article. I wanted to find out more about the little girl, but the comments were all unrelated. I didn't get any more useful information.

Dejected, I closed the post, set my phone aside, and forced myself to go back to sleep. Suddenly, I heard a persistent noise behind me. It sounded like someone's nails were scratching the bed frame!

Was it Leah? What was she doing?

All of my hair stood on end. I was too scared to turn back. The sound went on for around 30 seconds before stopping.

I heard the sound of a pair of footsteps that slowly grew louder as they approached. Then, they stopped outside our door.

The door opened with a creak. Cold air gushed into our room, blowing down my neck.

In the dark, a figure felt around for the way to my bed. Perhaps not wanting to wake me up, she moved very silently.

"Julia," she asked softly, "why haven't you gone to sleep?"

I wanted to say that I was too scared to go back to sleep, but the words died in my throat. I couldn't bring myself to speak because I suddenly realized something terrifying.

If the person who just entered the room was Leah, who had woken up to use the bathroom… Who was scratching the bed frame behind me just now?

As she spoke, I turned around. The light from my screen illuminated her face and the rest of the mattress beside me.

The person who had been sleeping next to me had disappeared at some point. All that was left was an empty space.