Tales From A Dorm Room.

There's something not right about my university. By all accounts, it should be the most normal place. Sure, it's old. But I dare you to find a university under twenty years old. That's not it, though. All the buildings get remodeled every four years, so they are newer in that aspect. Everyone here is fairly neutral, so there's no metaphorical rain cloud hanging over the place. Professors are helpful. Students aren't entirely assholes. It's a great place. But something...something is not right.

I moved in a two months ago. Even that was uneventful. I arrived, I unpacked. I had dinner with my parents before they left. My roommate is a bubbling pit of joy named Amelia. Other than how she had gotten graced with perfectly straight, white, teeth and voluminous, deep red hair, there's nothing peculiar about her. She is a heavy optimist, and that keeps her smile going, I think. We make a great yin and yang comparison, though. While her side of the room is Christmastown, mine is Halloweentown, and we like it that way. We get along well. I enjoy it. I met her last year and we chose to be roommates this year.

Our dorm hall is co-ed. So, our side of the hall is all girls, but across the hall is all boys. The two living across from us look more my speed than Amelia is, although they find her just as charming as I do. Niklaus and Diaval are their names. Identical twins. They're a little older than me, and transferred over from a school in their hometown, but I don't think I ever asked where that is. Diaval, he let his hair grow out and he straightens it every day. Right now, he has it dyed a dark blue color. He also has earrings. For a reason I can't explain, he chooses those long, feather, earrings. Like we live in the 80s. Niklaus, he's much more talkative than his brother and smiles more. He has his lip pierced, and keeps his hair short, dyed black, and with a purple streak through it. Both of them dress like they walked out of a 2007 album. Black jeans, sometimes skinny, sometimes Tripp, and band shirts. The weather here doesn't usually stay the same day to day, and on colder days, they like to wear these weird jackets, kind of like marching band meets goth. But they're friendly.

Those three are my solid troupe. They've kept me going so far without a hitch. And they're important. They're the only other ones who feel the shift in the air like I do. The not rightness of this place that's been setting in slowly. I think I started to notice it the second week of classes.

Like I said, the buildings yet good maintenance and remodeling when it's needed. When the power went out during my calculus lecture, no one really expected it, or could explain it. I cannot conjure a class that doesn't rely on PowerPoints to function and, given that, when the power wouldn't come back on, they let us go home. The next day, the power still hadn't come back on. They had called in electricians, and they couldn't find a reason either. The power simply did not want to work. Our class has since then been moved, as the power never came back. Weird enough, but not something to make me fear the ground I walk on.

Then the food problem started to happen. In every dining hall, not just one, but all of them, food was going bad. This wasn't bags of chips left out for too long. It was the real food, food prepared just hours before, and mold was unfurling from it. They had closed the halls down for a day to get them inspected, thinking perhaps it had something to do with the electricity going down in the math hall. I don't know how four separate buildings could be linked like that, but it was the only thing they had to go on. Luckily for me, the student union remains unaffected. Amelia and I bought pizza, while the twins supplied us all with drinks. It worked wonderfully to aide in our studying. Although, I think I know more about Diaval's chemistry exam than he does. I've lived off union food since then. The mold, like the electricity, doesn't seem fixable, no matter what. It's bothersome, but not panic inducing.

The whistling was.

I woke up at three in the morning, probably four days after the mold began. Outside my room was this whistling, like someone was standing there, waiting, keeping themselves occupied. I looked over at Amelia. She had apparently woken before I had and sat on her bunk, holding a blanket up to her face, and staring at the door. One of our counter points in personality is that she is much more easily scared than I am. I crawled off my bunk and went over to hers, beckoning her down. She came down quickly. I think it had something to do with her knowing if she didn't go, she'd be stuck in the room all alone. I thought when we opened the door that whatever was out there would be staring back at us. I even considered it being one of the twins, trying to freak us out. But, on the other side of the door, there was nothing. The whistling stopped. I guess I had to be pretty convinced it was one of the twins (they live for spooking people) because I walked across the hall and banged on the door. No reply. Amelia pulled on my arm, trying to get me to stop.

"Charlotte! Listen." Her words came through clenched teeth. The whistling had started again. This time, it was coming from further down the hall. I followed it until the end of the hall, where it was jointed with a laundry room. No sign of anyone. But the whistling kept going. I peered into the room, but it was dark, and if someone was in there, I didn't want them to come after me. I saw a figure, a silhouette, really, against the darkness, near the window. Mixed with the whistling, I heard faint sobbing. There was a crash. And then everything was quiet, and the figure was gone. Amelia clung to me, crying soundlessly. Not proud of it, but I'll admit, I took her by the elbow, turned tail, and ran like hell out of there. When we made it back to the dorm, I shut the door, trying to do that, at least, quietly, and locked it. Amelia pushed her dresser over in front of the door and we sat up the rest of the night, waiting on the whistling to come back.

The next morning, a girl was found on the grass outside the dorm hall, directly below the laundry room window. It appeared she'd jumped. I live on the fifth floor, you see, so my first thought was the whistling. The sobbing. The entire building was questioned. Neither I nor Amelia admitted to having heard anything that night. Based on the examination of the rooms, though, she didn't kill herself. There were obvious signs of struggle in the laundry room, and the screen had been ripped forcefully from the window and thrown to the floor before the girl was pushed out. Relatively nothing has occurred since then. The math building still hasn't gotten the power up and running. The dining halls are still closed. Just recently, we've been able to use the laundry room on our floor again. Amelia won't. She goes down to the floor below ours to wash her clothes. She's also grown into sleeping with the TV on, making noise all night. Otherwise, she doesn't act like anything happened. The twins came back the day the girl's body was found. They provided movie tickets and said they were at a midnight showing, having crashed at a friend's house afterward. They're just as confused as everyone else is, though. They don't really know how to make heads or tails of it, and have carried on about their daily lives. No use in crying over what you can't understand and can't change. That's what they say, in any case. It's easy to see they're uneasy about it all though. The once wild twins playing pranks now sit in their room or ours a lot.

I thought it would be okay. Just a series of freak accidents. That's what everyone else has said. How could mold, a power outage, and a dead girl have anything to do with one another? We've all tried to ease our minds. But, yesterday, I was at a night class. Film. It always takes place from six to nine at night. As we were watching the movie, some old thing for historical study purposes, the screen started to flicker. Then the lights. And then everything went dark, just like that. We were quickly ushered out into the halls. After twenty minutes of being unable to bring it back, the professors dismissed us, and sent us on our way. I went back to the dorm and told the other three. They're concerned, just like me.

I don't know what's wrong with this campus, but I think we need to find out. I'm going to try to convince the others to go out on a search with me. Whatever it is, it needs stopped before the whistling can come back, too.

Part Two Part Three