Why is there an EMPTY Seat?

I started noticing the empty seat because nobody else would sit there.

It was the desk beside mine in chemistry class.

At first I thought it was just coincidence.

There were 30 students in the room and only 29 desks being used.

The teacher never explained it.

She just told everyone to leave that seat alone.

One morning I asked why.

She looked at me for a second and said, "Just don't move it."

That was it.

A few days later, I came into class early and noticed something sitting on the desk.

A pencil.

It was sharpened perfectly.

I moved it onto the teacher's desk.

When I came back after lunch, it was beside my notebook.

I thought someone was messing with me.

Then I noticed handwriting on the desk.

Someone had carved my name into it.

I asked around.

Nobody admitted doing it.

The next day, another sentence had appeared underneath.

"I KNOW YOU CAN SEE ME."

I stopped sitting near the desk.

But weird things kept happening.

My backpack would be moved.

My papers would disappear and turn up on that desk.

Sometimes I could hear a chair scraping behind me when nobody was moving.

Then one afternoon, I stayed after class to finish an assignment.

The teacher left.

I was alone.

At least I thought I was.

I heard someone pull the empty chair back.

I looked over.

Nobody was sitting there.

But the chair was moving.

Slowly.

Like someone invisible was dragging it toward me.

I grabbed my stuff and ran.

The next morning, I told the teacher everything.

She didn't look surprised.

She just asked me one question.

"Did it write your name?"

I said yes.

She closed her classroom door.

Then she told me the desk had belonged to a student who died during class years earlier.

Nobody had moved it because his parents had begged the school to leave it exactly where it was.

She said strange things had happened around it ever since.

Pens moving.

Books opening.

Students hearing someone whisper.

But she had never seen the desk write a name before.

I asked her what that meant.

She didn't answer.

She just told me not to come back after school anymore.

A week later, I walked into chemistry and the desk was gone.

I thought they had finally removed it.

Then I looked at my seat.

The empty chair was sitting directly beside me.

There was something carved into its surface.

My name.

Underneath it was a date.

That date was tomorrow.