My university is a labyrinth. Prior to applying to the school in question I had looked it up on google maps to try to get an idea of what the building was like but the exterior yielded little if anything. It was industrial in appearance both exterior and interior, with long corridors laid with brick and pipes visible across the many ceilings. Even with all of the photos available it did nothing to help give me an idea of what the school was like so I was quick to sign up for a tour to try to prepare for navigating the building. When I first arrived on campus for the tour I knew I was in for a bit of a headache when I got lost just trying to find the main hall where it was going to start. Scattered around the school were at least a few different entrances I could see, some of which led around the school rather than directly into it. It ended up taking the better part of 2 years to get a handle on navigating the place and I still could get lost from time to time. Maybe some of it could be blamed on my poor memory but I had gone to another school before that was definitely laid out in a way that had been much easier to move around. Within the other first year students I hadn’t been the only one to notice the school's rather odd layout. Besides just the entrances to the building being all over the place the interior was not what one would expect for an art school.

The school itself was extremely industrial as I had mentioned previously with little to no paneling along the ceilings as well as a pretty large emphasis on brick or concrete masonry. Many corridors of the school extended a lot farther than you might have thought with multiple staircases attached to each corridor. Funny thing about the staircases was that there was an over abundance of them for whatever reason and it was sometimes unclear if some were meant for emergency escape routes or just freely available. You’d also have quite a few staircases that were tucked away around corners at the end of the hall past many other stairs that you could pick from instead. These stairs all typically let you exit out on any of the 5 floors that were really just long wrapping hallways running around the main open area of the school. The overlooks were another odd detail. There were points where you could overlook certain areas such as locker rooms, the cafeteria, or bits of a lower down corridor. Perhaps it might have been to promote a more open feeling to certain areas but many of those spots were in very out of the way areas that weren’t really used by faculty or students, the cafeteria overlooked being an exception to that.

I can’t remember who said it first but the general consensus among the first year students was that the school had been built by a man who originally had only designed prisons, thus the strange layout and electronic lock system in place. I didn’t mention it before but as you navigate the school you often have to use your student id card to ‘unlock’ doors such as to get into the building or off the staircases scattered around the building. That was probably what made it feel the most like a prison, so many connecting parts were separated by these large steel doors that you had to stop at to open. It made you feel as though you were entering areas you weren’t supposed to be in at times and did not do much for security considering how lax students were with it.

None of these things however were the strangest thing that the school had to offer. The rumor of the school being built by someone who only built prisons was largely unconfirmed, those of us that looked into it could never find proof of this, and though it might have been a somewhat confusing layout the building was definitely very old and had been renovated multiple times over at this point. What was the strangest thing was one particular stairwell that ended at a blank wall.

I’ve talked a bit about the stair cases at the school but to better explain them they are the ones you’d typically see in high rise buildings. Tight square spiraling staircases that extended up the length of the building from floors accessible to students to places like the roof which were inaccessible. They were lifeless almost sterile areas cut off by the security doors, with the one exception of the graffiti staircase where students were allowed to paint on the walls. This was also a type of spiraling staircase where one could see both all the way up and to the bottom through the center, giving quite a powerful sense of vertigo for anyone brave enough to lean over the railings. The final thing of note was probably just how echoing they were as well. If you stamped your feet just a little too hard or tried to talk at all it would be so distorted and reverberated that it was almost a bit overwhelming.

Considering all of this and from just how many staircases I had seen throughout the building, hearing that one of these many staircases ended on a blank wall was not much of a surprise. The school was so odd that hearing that barely registered to me beyond a ‘Huh yeah I could see that’. There were a few different explanations for this but the most popular was it used to lead somewhere but due to renovations it no longer did. This being an art school there were also stories of students leaving mementos at the bottom of this stairwell as a sort of a mini shrine to really help elevate the weirdness of the place. I can clearly remember that my first few weeks there I did in earnest try to keep an eye out for this staircase but once classes really got underway I had far too many other things on my mind to keep track of and this story was promptly put away to the dusty shelves of my memory for the time being.

Now even though I had stopped actively thinking about this story it was always there in the back of my thoughts, typically whenever I was going down a staircase in the school. Yet as time went on and I entered into my second year of school I still had yet to find it. I had gone down a LOT of different stairs at that point and felt that I finally actually did understand most of the school's layout as well. Still with all of that, no mysterious stairwell that ended in a flat wall. I think I had just finally gotten to the point where I was dismissing it as just rumor generated by the mind of bored art students when it came up during one of my talks with a small group of classmates. One of the girls had, in fact, seen it.

I didn’t know this girl very well, only as much as that single semester of class, but I did get the feeling she wasn’t one to just make up stories for the hell of it. She said she had been going down a set of stairs when she came across this mythical end, a blank wall being where you’d typically see the door. In her words it definitely was very…creepy, and she was very confused at first until she realized where she had ended up. When I asked her if she remembered where it was she said she actually didn’t besides saying it might have been on the fourth or third floor somewhere. The idea of the empty stairwell was thus thrust back into the forefront of my mind and I decided that while I was at the school I would try to find it, if only to satisfy my own curiosity about it. I went through every floor and from every floor every staircase I could reasonably find. The few spots of the school I was unfamiliar with I became quite accustomed to as I formed a better mental map of the place. With every staircase I came across though I was no closer to finding that ever evasive blank one. Until today.

It had turned into a late day of studying at the school after I got roped into a group study session with some friends after class. I ended up being the last to leave as I had wanted to finish off the project I was working on and before I knew it was already nearly 11pm. With barely any other students in sight at that point I put away my things into my backpack and headed towards the nearest staircase without really a thought about whether I had been down it or not. I was tired and hungry so I never really paid attention to that fact. As I headed down the stairs I put my hands deeper into my pockets with a shiver, already lost in thought trying to plan out what I’d be working on tomorrow and how much other homework there was left to do. It was only when I got to the bottom where my exit would normally be that I brought my eyes up. Up to the blank wall in front of me. Whatever train of thought I had at the time flew straight off the rails and into the mental ravine when I realized where I was. Gently I pressed my hand up against the wall, eyes trying to catch any sign of where a doorway might once have been. It was just like they had said, a blank wall that bore no features to suggest there had ever been anything there. Or…..was there? As my eyes ran along the surface of the wall I thought I could just barely make out the faint lines of something. Perhaps those stories were right after all.

Satisfied that I had finally discovered what so many had talked about I made a mental note to write where the staircase was attached to on what end of the school and turned around to start up the stairs again. As I brought out my phone I was surprised at just how numb my fingers were…..in fact now that I realized this I also noticed that my breath was almost visible there in the stairwell. It was winter at that time but it was still rather odd to see temperatures drop that much in the school. This was perhaps the first sign that something was off but hindsight tends always to be 20/20 doesn’t it. I’ve never been one to believe in the supernatural either so I chalked this up to not much more than faulty ventilation. As I got to the next landing up that did have a door I swiped my student id across the electronic lock……and nothing happened.

Looking down at the thing I noticed for the first time that the LED usually lit up on it was unlit. Yet when I looked through the small window on the door to the hallway beyond I could see the overhead lights were still on, though no one was in sight. Great, I thought, I just had to be at the school this late when the security system was acting up. A quick pull on the door revealed that it was still very much locked and with an annoyed huff I began to work my way up the stairs to see if any of the other doors were working.

It was at door number 7 that I realized finally that something was wrong. The school only had 5 floors, 6 if you counted the roof. It was at that point I stopped and leaned over the railing to look up. For as far as I could see…..there were stairs. Stairs winding up and up and up all the way into a black fog above. I blinked a few times as I took this in and tried to rationalize it. Had I been drugged? Was I asleep? Both? Things felt far too real for it to be a dream but at the same time they were making about as much sense as one. Still pondering this thought I looked down the stair well towards the bottom just to see if there were still the same amount of floors I had covered. There was as far as I could see, with the one exception that the floor on the bottom had been shrouded in darkness. The only thing visible was the steps descending into it and the faint edges of the room, the bulb once lit on that landing now dead. Seeing that darkness below sent another chill through me and after slapping myself a couple of times across the face I started to realize that I probably wasn’t going to be waking up anytime soon if it was a dream. So my choices seemed to be to wait where I was until something changed, go back down to what I knew to be a dead end, or go up the seemingly endless stairs. I had already brought out my phone again to see if I could try to call someone but to little surprise it seemed to have stopped working.

It didn’t take long for me to decide. Staying in one place felt like a waste of time and I had no interest in sitting in the dark at the bottom so instead I started to ascend the stairs. Each time I rounded up to a new landing I was met with a similar sight. An unlit security pad, a heavy steel door with a small window on it, and the view of a very empty hallway that I had never seen before. After another four flights though I noticed something new. The hallways beyond these doors had started to…..deteriorate. I could see visible signs of dust along the old lockers as well as desks and chairs lined up against the walls that looked better suited for a dump than a hallway with how worn and cracked they were. It was around this time that I heard the first step.

While I had been on the stairs the only noises I had been hearing were my own you see, so when there was an audible ‘thud’ from below as I stood there eyeballing the newest floor I could practically feel my blood freeze. This thud was followed by another, and another, as a very audible set of footsteps began to ascend the stairs from below me. Without thinking I glanced back down the railing, almost automatically as though I was looking to see if another student had been brought to this waking dream of mine. To my horror however what I saw instead was the lights below me snuffing out slowly one after another in rhythm to the echoing stamp of footsteps. And they were getting closer.

I couldn’t see any signs of what was making those noises but I didn’t need anyone there to tell me that I probably did not want to find out at that point. If it weren’t for their impending approach I might have been stuck there afraid to make any kind of sound but if I did that then whatever was coming would eventually reach my floor. Cursing under my breath I started up the stairs, making sure to keep a faster pace than whatever was below me. I had no idea what I could do at that point. Each door I tried as I went upwards, only to meet with the solid thunk of unyielding metal locks, and every time I did take the effort to do this the darkness below got closer. This meant the only direction I had for now…..was up.

Throwing aside my jogging pace I practically sprinted up the stairs two and then three at a time, my chest heaving and my legs burning as I moved with purpose. The corridors beyond the doors were now little more than a blur to me but I still can remember flashes of images that burned themselves into my mind and drove on my panicked ascent. The once empty hallways slowly became littered with shapes and figures that were almost unrecognizable, twisted piles of bodies strewn out across rotting furniture that stretched out into an endless yawning maw of shadow beyond. Those footsteps behind me were getting faster too, much faster. What had started out as a slow, almost methodical walking pace had increased into an almost thunderous roar that threatened to overtake me with every step that I took upwards. I wasn’t thinking anything at that point beyond the fact that I did NOT want to get caught by whatever the hell that thing was.

Just when I could feel that my body was going to finally buckle and a tugging pain in my legs, I turned to see a final door in front of me, one that had visible beams of moonlight shining through its small window. Without turning back I threw myself up those final steps and put all of my weight into my shoulder that crashed up against the door. To my shock and relief the door actually gave way and my world was sent tumbling as I fell head over heels across the cement landing and eventual snowbank. The silence that followed was almost deafening.

I lay there in the snow as I struggled to catch my breath, eyes looking up to the clear night sky above me almost weeping with relief. It didn’t take long to feel the biting chill of the snow around me and with a few hacking coughs I brought myself back up to my feet and looked around to try to see where I was now. Simply put….I was outside the school, near the parking garage in fact. Yet when I tried to see where I had come from I couldn’t see any sign of a door that made sense for me to have flown out of. The trail in the snow was messy and half cut off, with at least three doors nearby that I could have come out of but in no direct way like one might have thought. I-I didn’t stay around any longer to figure that out though. Sniffling from the cold and nursing what definitely felt like a twisted ankle I hobbled to my car, threw my backpack in the passenger seat, and went home.

I never told anyone until this point what had happened in that stairwell. Even though the rest of my night played out as normal as could be I was never able to come to terms with whether or not it had actually happened. Part of me wants to believe it was all just a bad dream and I only woke out of it when I stumbled out the door after a night of studying that probably should have ended sooner. Yet the morning after that sprain in my ankle was all too real, just as real as the pain I felt in my legs as though I had very much climbed up those many flights of stairs. So I’ve chosen to play it safe for now. I only go to school during the day and I only use specific staircases if I have to.