16 Feb We Broke into Newbridge

Act 1: The Dare

I still remember the way the ruins looked that night—jagged, blackened stone silhouetted against the moon, like a broken row of teeth. Even now, over fifty years later, I can still smell the ash, feel the rough edges of the foundation beneath my fingers, hear the way the night swallowed every sound.

We were seventeen—too stupid to be scared, too reckless to care.

Newbridge Home for Wayward Boys had burned down nearly two decades earlier, in 1954. Back then, it was the kind of place they sent kids who didn’t fit anywhere else—the orphans, the troubled, the ones with no family and no future. And then, one night, the whole place went up in flames.

The official story? A gas leak.

The town whispered a different version.

Some said one of the boys set the fire himself, trying to escape whatever horrors went on inside. Others swore the fire started on its own, that it was never meant to be a home—just a holding cell for something that should’ve been left alone.

But no matter what version you believed, the ending was the same.

The fire raged for hours. No one made it out.

And after that? People stayed the hell away.

Or at least, most people did.

I was there because of Richie.

Richie had the worst ideas, and Tom and I had the worst habit of going along with them. That night, we’d been drinking cheap beer by the train tracks, half-watching the cars roll by, when he brought it up.

“We should go to Newbridge,” he said, grinning.

Tom snorted. “To do what? Stand around and look at a pile of bricks?”

Richie shook his head, swigging his beer. “No, man. We spend the night. See if it’s really haunted.”

I should’ve said no.

I should’ve told them both to go to hell and gone home.

But I was seventeen, and the idea of backing out in front of my friends was worse than the idea of spending a few hours in some crumbling ruins.

So, I shrugged. “Why not?”

Richie whooped, clapping me on the back.

Tom groaned, but he wasn’t gonna be the one to chicken out.

And just like that, we were going.

* * * * * *

We hopped the fence around 11 PM, our flashlights cutting through the dark.

Up close, the ruins were bigger than I expected—the main structure long since collapsed, but the outer walls still standing, like a skeleton picked clean.

Richie led the way, climbing over broken bricks and dodging rusted beams.

“I don’t get why people are so scared of this place,” he said. “It’s just a bunch of rocks.”

But it wasn’t just a bunch of rocks.

Something felt… wrong.

Not in the way horror movies tell you, where you feel like something is watching you.

No.

It was worse.

It felt like something had been here too long. Like the air was thick with memory, like the fire had burned so hot and so fast that something had been seared into the bones of the place, unable to leave.

But I didn’t say that.

Instead, I cracked open another beer and kept my mouth shut.

Tom pointed to the far side of the ruins. “What’s over there?”

Beyond the rubble, a single doorframe still stood, the charred remnants of a staircase leading downward.

“Basement, probably,” Richie said. “Place like this would’ve had one.”

I shined my light toward the entrance.

It didn’t make sense.

Everyone always said the fire had burned the whole place to the ground—nothing left standing, nothing left to salvage.

So why did it look like there was something still down there?

Richie grinned. “Guess we should check it out.”

Tom hesitated. “I dunno, man. Maybe it’s not safe.”

Richie scoffed. “You don’t honestly believe all those ghost stories, do you?”

I didn’t.

But I also didn’t like the way the basement door looked.

I didn’t like the way the darkness inside wasn’t just shadows—it was… thicker. Deeper. Like the light from my flashlight didn’t quite reach.

Richie turned back to us. “Come on. What’s the worst that could happen?”

We followed him down.

And that was our first mistake.

Act 2: The Descent

The stairs groaned under our weight, old wood sagging like it was ready to snap. I gripped the rail for balance, but the second my fingers touched it, it crumbled like charcoal, leaving my hand coated in black dust.

Richie laughed. “Better watch your step, Danny. Hate to lose you down there.”

I didn’t laugh back.

The deeper we went, the colder it got. The summer night outside had been humid and sticky, but the air down here was stale and untouched, like the fire had never reached this far.

Which, again—didn’t make sense.

Because the basement shouldn’t have been here at all.

At the bottom of the steps, we found ourselves in a long, narrow hallway.

The walls were blackened, but not with fire damage—something else. The stone was too smooth, too dark, as if it had been soaked in something thick and heavy, and I didn’t want to think about what.

The worst part was the air. It was dead silent. No bugs. No wind. No sound at all—except for our breathing, which felt too loud, too close, like the walls were pressing in to hear.

Tom swallowed hard. “I don’t like this.”

Richie rolled his eyes. “You never like anything.”

Still, he wasn’t smiling anymore.

I moved my flashlight across the hall. Doors lined either side, thick iron handles rusted over, but the wood beneath was untouched—not burned, not warped, not even covered in dust.

Like someone had been here, keeping it clean.

I stepped closer to one, running my fingers over the surface. The wood was warm.

And then something scratched from the other side.

We froze.

It wasn’t loud. Just a slow, deliberate scraping of nails dragging against wood, long and patient, like whatever was inside knew we were listening.

Richie lifted his hand. “That’s just rats.”

The scratching stopped.

Then, something tapped back.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Like a child knocking to be let out.

Tom whispered, “Rats don’t knock, Richie.”

For the first time, Richie looked unsure.

We stood there, waiting, the silence fraying our nerves.

Then, something laughed.

It sounded like a child giggling.

And all the blood in my body turned ice cold.

“We need to go,” I said.

Richie hesitated. “But what if—”

“Now.”

I didn’t wait for an argument. I turned and walked, pushing past them toward the stairs. My gut was screaming—leave, leave, leave.

I was three steps away when I realized something was wrong.

The staircase.

It was gone.

I spun, shining my light up where it had been—where it should have been—but there was nothing.

Just a wall of smooth, unbroken stone.

Tom made a choked sound. “What the—”

I threw myself against the wall, pounding my fists against it. Solid. Cold. Real.

The way out was gone.

The hallway stretched on forever.

And the doors?

One of them was opening.

Act 3: The Children in the Dark

The door creaked open slowly. Too slowly.

The wood didn’t scrape against the stone floor. It didn’t groan on its hinges. It just opened, soundless, effortless—like something on the other side was pulling it, inviting us in.

And then we saw it.

The dormitory.

The room was untouched by time.

It should have been burned to nothing decades ago, but instead, it was pristine—bunk beds lined in neat rows, white sheets folded over thin mattresses, scuffed wooden floors, a single lantern flickering on the nightstand.

It looked lived in, like someone had just left.

Richie let out a nervous laugh. “I told you. This place isn’t haunted. It’s just some old fallout shelter or something.”

Tom shook his head, stepping forward, his flashlight sweeping over the beds.

“No,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. “This isn’t right.”

Because it wasn’t just the beds. There were shoes tucked under the bunks, small and worn. Jackets hanging from the bedposts. The walls were lined with old wooden cubbies, each labeled with a name carved into the wood.

I stepped closer.

The names… were familiar. Not from town or school, but from the newspaper clippings. From the list of children who had died in the fire.

A bunk creaked behind us.

Richie spun, nearly dropping his flashlight. “Did you hear—”

Another creak.

Tom’s breathing turned shallow. “Danny.”

I turned. Sheets rustled. A bed in the farthest row, one we hadn’t even noticed, dipped inward, like someone was sitting up.

And then the whispering started.

It rolled through the dormitory, dozens of soft voices, overlapping, murmuring, just on the edge of understanding.

Not words.

Names.

Our names.

A bunk groaned, the mattress shifting, and something moved in the corner of my eye—a small shape, rising from the sheets.

A boy, pale and thin, dressed in a soot-streaked nightgown, hair singed at the ends.

His head tilted in our direction, but his face was wrong. It wasn’t burned or scarred – it was empty. Where his eyes and mouths should have been, there was nothing but a smooth, featureless indent.

He twitched like a puppet with broken strings.

And then…

He took a step forward.

Richie broke first. He let out a choked yell and bolted for the doorway. Tom and I followed.

We sprinted down the hall, feet pounding against stone, breath ripping from our throats, the whispering turning into a chorus of giggles—high-pitched and mocking.

I didn’t look back. I didn’t need to. I could feel them coming after us.

The air was colder now, the hall stretching longer, the doors we passed slamming shut one by one.

Richie was ahead, reaching out, smacking his hands against the stairwell that should have been there.

It wasn’t.

It was still just a wall.

“No—no, no, no—” He clawed at it, his voice breaking.

I turned, flashlight shaking in my hands. Tom was behind me, chest heaving, and then… he stopped breathing.

His face went slack. His arms hung at his sides. I whipped the flashlight back toward the hallway—

And saw two small, pale, bony hands gripping his ankles.

Act 4: The Escape

Tom wasn’t screaming. He wasn’t moving.

His face had gone slack, eyes unfocused as though his mind had already drifted somewhere else. His feet were still planted on the floor, but something small and pale gripped his ankles, dragging him inch by inch toward the dormitory door.

I lunged forward and grabbed his wrist, pulling as hard as I could. For a moment, I felt him resist.

Then his head tilted back toward the darkness. A sound escaped his lips—not a scream, not a gasp, but something else entirely. Something wrong. A laugh, high-pitched and hollow, like it had passed through too many throats before reaching his own.

A moment later, I lost my grip.

He was yanked backward, disappearing into the open doorway. The door slammed shut behind him, sealing so seamlessly that it looked like it had never been there in the first place.

Richie stumbled back, eyes darting between the place where Tom had stood and the featureless wall in front of us. He turned in a slow circle, taking in the empty hall. “Where did he go?” His voice cracked. “Danny, where did he—”

I ignored him and turned to face the wall that had replaced the stairwell. It was impossible, the stones fitted together so tightly that not even a sliver of light passed through, but something wasn’t right about it. It felt too smooth, too solid, as if the space beyond it had never existed at all. I pressed my palm against it, expecting rough stone, but the surface was strangely cool.

Then it shifted.

Not physically—there was no crack, no crumble of mortar—but for just a second, I swore I saw through it, like it was no more real than a reflection in warped glass.

Richie was still panicking, his hands running through his hair, his breaths coming too fast. “Danny, what do we do?!”

I ignored the question and focused on what I had just seen—or thought I had seen. If the stairwell was still there, if this was some kind of trick, then maybe…

I clenched my fists and ran straight at it.

Richie shouted my name as I braced myself for impact, expecting pain, expecting bruises, expecting my nose to break against unforgiving rock. But the moment I hit the wall, the world flickered.

And I fell through.

I hit the ground hard, rolling onto damp earth. For a second, I couldn’t breathe. The air outside was sharp and cool against my burning lungs. When I finally forced myself to look up, I found myself staring at the open sky. The ruins stretched around me, exactly as we had left them. The moon was still high. The town was still in the distance.

I turned to see Richie crumpled on the ground a few feet away. He must have followed me through, though I had no memory of him grabbing me.

We were outside.

We were free.

But Tom was gone.

Richie sat up and stared at the ruins, his face pale. His lips parted, but no words came out.

I didn’t speak either.

There was nothing to say.

We stood up and left without looking back.

Epilogue: What Was Left Behind

We never told anyone. Not the cops. Not our parents. What could we say? That Tom had vanished into a room that doesn’t exist? That the stairwell had been gone one moment and there the next? That something in that basement had let us go but kept him?

No one would believe us.

So we did what scared kids do. We ran.

A week passed before people started asking questions. Tom’s parents filed a missing person’s report. The whole town turned out for the search. His face ended up on flyers. The police questioned everyone who knew him, including Richie and me.

We told them we didn’t know anything. It wasn’t a lie. Not exactly. We had no idea where he was. We only knew where he wasn’t—not in town, not in the woods, not anywhere they thought to look.

They scoured the ruins of Newbridge, but the only thing they found was a foundation of burned-out bricks and old stone. No basement. No staircase. No way in.

Richie and I never spoke about that night again. Not to each other. Not to anyone. We went on with our lives, finished high school, moved out of town. Decades passed. I settled somewhere new, started a career, built a family.

But some nights, when I can’t sleep, I hear things. The creak of old wooden beds shifting under weight. The sound of bare feet against stone. And sometimes, just before I drift off, I swear I hear my name.

I tried not to think about Newbridge. I tried to convince myself it was all in my head. But a few days ago, I saw a news article.

They’re redeveloping the ruins.

Some local group is turning it into a historical landmark, a tribute to the boys who lived and died there.

They don’t know what’s still down there. They don’t know what happens when you open doors that were meant to stay closed. They don’t know that, once the digging starts, they’re going to hear laughter.

And it won’t be coming from above.

It’ll be coming from below.