Dib sprinted through the middle school halls with Gaz in hot, shin-kicking pursuit.

"Two hundred and fifty-nine hours!" she yelled behind him.

Dib risked a look over his shoulder. His sister's glare was too close, and his loaded backpack was slowing him down.

"I said it wasn't me!" Dib nearly overbalanced turning the corner into another hall. "Can't you just drop it?!"

Gaz put on a burst of speed. "Two hundred and fifty-nine hours, Dib! A hundred-plus percent item collection, time attack achievements, max upgrades. All wasted, because of you!"

Running from Gaz between classes all day was tiring. Dib held a tenuous hope that his sister's rage would peter out by lunch, but she was like a purple-and-black hate conduit with a direct connection to hell.

The cafeteria entrance came into sight. Dib rushed for the double doors, reached out to shove them open, and Gaz smashed him through with a flying kick to his spine.

Dib sailed through the air and smacked into the cafeteria floor, skidding a few feet. He rolled over and sat up as the doors swung closed behind a quickly advancing Gaz.

Dib scooted backwards until his backpack hit a lunch table. "I didn't do anything, I swear!"

Gaz thundered up in her glossy black goth boots, reared one of them back, and kicked Dib in the shin. He yelped and fell over, clutching his much-abused leg. Shin guards were starting to sound like a good investment.

Gritting his teeth, Dib dragged himself up to sit at the lunch table. Gaz thumped into her seat a few feet down the bench, and set out her lunch with increasingly aggressive movements.

Dib gave his sister a sidelong glance. "Look, I'm sorry about whatever happened to your game. But I'm gonna be busy for the next couple days, so you'll have to find someone else to kick around while I'm gone."

Gaz released her unopened pudding cup before clenching her fists. "Busy?" She rounded on Dib. "What stupid paranormal excuse is it this time? Because if you think it'll help you escape my wrath..."

"Oh, I'm just..." Sweat broke out on the back of Dib's neck. "Going to a haunted school in another dimension." He grinned in a way he hoped looked winning, and not terrified for his life.

Seconds passed. Dib's face started to hurt. "Wait, you mean the death school you were talking about last night?"

He relaxed somewhat. "Yeah, the one where a bunch of murders took place before it closed down. Something to do with a girl named Sachiko. The actual building was destroyed and had another school built on top of it, but it still exists in some ghostly alternate reality."

"So how're you planning to get there?" Gaz leaned back to eye Dib's bulging backpack. "Did you take Dad's experimental transporter to school again?"

"Nah. I don't think it'd work for this, anyway." Dib hauled his backpack onto the table. "Most of what's in here's food, water, and recording equipment." He unzipped a side pocket and took out a slightly warped, person-shaped piece of paper. "To get there, I'm gonna use the 'Sachiko Ever After' charm I found on the internet. It needs at least two people to work, and I know exactly who's gonna help me."

He zipped up his backpack, slinging it over one shoulder as he stood up from the table with the paper doll in one hand.

"I'll go."

Dib looked sideways to find Gaz standing with him. "Huh?"

"I'll go to the death school with you."

"But—"

"I'm going with you," Gaz said, knuckles cracking as her hands trembled into fists. "And if you're lying about it being in an alternate nightmare-reality, I will kick your ass so hard, you'll be puking buckles for a week."

"Okay, okay!" Dib held up his hands, eyes darting to Gaz's steel-toed boots. "I never said it was a nightmare-reality, but okay! You can come."

Gaz crossed her arms. "Good."

Dib sighed, adjusted his backpack, and started for a familiar corner of the cafeteria.

Zim tapped his fingers on the table. He glanced at the narrow windows in the double doors, through the larger ones facing the middle school's front lawn, and down at the vent in the wall behind him.

He faced forward again with a huff; still no sign of GIR. He'd called him before first period to deliver something, and should've received it hours ago. If lunch ended without that item in Zim's hands, then there would have been no point in—

"Hey, Zim!"

Zim jerked his head up. "What is it now, you filthy Dib! Can't you see I'm incredibly busy plotting the downfall of your entire race?"

"Yeah sure. Look, I'm gonna go research a haunted school in another dimension." Dib held up a white paper doll. "And you can't come."

"Good for you." Zim flapped a hand dismissively. "Have fun annoying all the dead humans."

"Okay!" Dib chirped with a wide grin. "Enjoy your uninterrupted diabolical masterminding."

Zim glared as Dib sidestepped away from the table, returning to his sister waiting ten feet away. He spoke a few words to Gaz that Zim didn't catch, and she nodded. Zim's fingers flexed against the edge of the table as Dib babbled on about something. It was too low to make out the words, but loud enough to hear his excitement.

Zim scored four little lines in the tabletop and leaned forward, straining to listen. Dib looked over his shoulder, still grinning, and fluttered the piece of paper in Zim's direction.

Zim slammed his hands on the table and shoved himself to his feet. "Not so fast, stink-worm!" He marched over, fists rigid at his sides. "Think you can just stand there and make plans to defeat me right in front of my face?!" He jabbed a finger up at Dib as he rattled off the end of his sentence in triple-time.

Dib backed out of chin-poking range and said, "Then maybe you should come along, and make sure I don't make plans to do stuff to you." He shifted his gaze to one side. "Or else you'll never know."

"Enough talk! I'll show you what a load of horse dookie your ghost school is." Zim swiped for the paper doll, but Dib backed up with it held out of reach.

"Challenge accepted, space-boy. But we gotta do this right, so listen." Dib held the paper doll in both hands. "To get to the haunted school, we have to perform a ritual. It goes like this..."

The level of noise in the cafeteria rose as students finished their meals. Lunch trays slammed over trash bins, and clattered into metal tubs to await their weekly scrubbing. Some kids filtered into the halls to chat by their lockers, while others hung back with their cliques at the lunch tables.

"That's the most insipid thing I've ever heard," Zim said at the end of Dib's rambling explanation.

"But that's what the blog post said!" Dib insisted. "I mean, it was Google-translated, but still!"

"Ha! Your primitive machine translation probably got it wrong. I've used it, and it can't even detect Vortian."

"Can we just get on with it?" Gaz cut in. "Before I start considering the whole revenge thing again."

"All right, jeez!" Dib held out the paper doll, grasping a tiny arm by thumb and forefinger. "Grab on to part of it, and repeat that phrase I mentioned in your head three times." He glanced at Zim, then Gaz. "Once for each of us."

Gaz grunted, and grabbed the doll's head. Zim fixed Dib with a squinty-eyed glare, and took hold of the doll's other arm.

One of the double doors squeaked open as Zita returned from her locker, arms loaded with magazines full of cute boys. Something small slipped in behind her before the door closed.

Dib looked up. "Did everyone finish?"

"Yes, yes. You kept me waiting," said Zim.

Dib's eyes went back to the doll. "Now we pull it apart, so we each have our own piece. And... go!"

The paper ripped into three separate sections—Dib got an arm, Gaz got the head, and Zim got the rest.

Zim grinned at his papery most-of-a-torso and held it up high. "Victory!"

"That's not the point, Zim." Dib examined his bent paper arm. "The blog didn't explain exactly what the pieces were for. Just that we should hold onto them." He shrugged and pocketed the scrap. "Just something about Sachiko getting angry if the ritual fails."

Zim stared at his shred of paper, no longer impressed, and noticed two things at once. The first thing was GIR, using a greasy table as a slip-n-slide halfway across the cafeteria. The second thing was his antennae vibrating under his wig.

He mentally shoved aside the second thing and shouted, "GIR! Come here at once!" The crowd of kids cheering on the robot turned as one to look at Zim. He cleared his throat. "You... bad, bad doggy. Now heel!"

GIR stood at attention, the front of his dog suit glossy with pizza squeezings, and jumped over the crowd. As he landed and trotted for Zim with squeaky steps, the kids returned to aimless chatter.

Zim pressed a hand to his wig to still his twitchy antennae, just in time to hear an intensifying low rumble. The fluorescent lights creaked and flickered. Dib, Gaz, and Zim glanced up at the swaying fixtures as the floor moved back and forth under their feet.

Dib staggered into Zim's table for support. "An earthquake? But this place hasn't seem seismic activity since—" A swinging light buzzed dangerously above him, throwing his attention back to the ceiling.

Zim wrapped his arms and legs around the bench of his lunch table, and Gaz braced herself against the wall. The other children's voices rose in confusion, cries erupting from a few. GIR continued on his merry way, dancing along with the floor.

The buzzing light fell and shattered on the table between Zim and Dib. Zim shrieked and ducked his head as Dib threw himself away from it, sprawling on the floor.

The power blinked out among sounds of breaking glass and creaking tables, plunging the room into darkness. The other students went silent; only GIR's squeaky footsteps remained.

Zim stared straight ahead at the corner near his usual seating position, and his jaw dropped. The hole in the wall, which hadn't existed a second ago, had gotten bigger.

Gaz saw the opening, and edged away from it along the moving wall. The hole shattered across the floor in three quick flashes to open under her feet, and she plummeted.

"Gaz!" Dib threw himself onto the lunch table as the hole appeared halfway underneath it.

Zim kept his limbs locked around the bench and yelled over the screams coming from the other students. "You wretched fool, what did you do?!"

"How should I know?!" The table lurched into the hole, leaving Dib clinging to the edge by his fingertips. "I was just interpreting the grammatically incorrect instructions!" The ongoing quake loosened Dib's fingers, and he fell in, wailing all the way down.

Zim scrambled further up the bench as it tilted, and peered over the top of the table. GIR was only a few feet away, arms windmilling as he squealed in the chaos.

"GIR! Help me!" Zim went from angled to vertical as the table capsized.

"That mah master!" GIR crowed, activating his leg-rockets and blasting towards Zim.

Zim grabbed the table's edge and jumped, arms outstretched. The robot's bulging dog-suit eyes whirled as he spiraled closer.

GIR barreled past Zim's grasping hands, into his stomach, and down the hole.

A sound like lightning exploding a tree drowned out GIR's screeching laughter.

Dib opened his eyes to darkness. Grit shifted under the side of his face as he turned his head away from the week-old roadkill smell, only to find more of the same. Sitting up, he rubbed dirt off his cheek and groped in front of him with one hand. He hissed in air and flinched back when his fingers met something wooden and covered in scratches not a foot from his face.

Something scuffed on the floor behind him, and he turned. His sight was adjusting to the gloom, and his sister stood several feet away, looking out the window of a beat-up sliding door.

Dib performed a quick scan of his surroundings: blackboard, age-stained walls, scattered desks and chairs, holes in the floor. The scratched wooden thing in front of him was a lectern. Rain pounded against pitch-black windows along one side of the room.

"I think it worked, Gaz." Dib stood and dusted himself off. "We made it in."

"What tipped you off?" Gaz faced a ragged notice pinned to the wall by the blackboard. "No electricity, everything falling apart, or the murder messages everywhere?"

Dib shifted his supply-laden backpack more securely onto his shoulders, and approached Gaz across the creaking floorboards. "What murder messages?"

Gaz looked around the room, lingering on the blackboard for a second, then pointed to the tacked-up notice. Dib stepped up to read it.

Heavenly Host Elementary - Notice to All Faculty and Students...

A warning to stay on high alert due to recent kidnappings followed, signed by Principal Takamine Yanagihori. Dib read the name over a few times to commit it to memory.

"This is supposed to be a Japanese school, right?" Gaz pointed at the one-paragraph memo. "So why is this in English?"

Dib's eyes flicked up from Yanagihori's name. Something had skittered across the words, but he couldn't find the insect responsible. The letters were uneven, as if done on a typewriter. They slid out of their spots when he wasn't looking directly at them.

Dib blinked a few times and faced his sister. "Maybe this was English class?"

"In first grade?" Gaz looked up. Dib followed her gaze to the faded metal placard above the sliding door: 1-A.

Dib headed to one of the wooden desks and set his backpack on it. "Oh yeah, have you seen Zim anywhere?" He unzipped the main pocket and pulled out a camcorder. "I'd like to tape the look on his face when he realizes I was right."

"It was just us here when I woke up. He probably got away." Gaz came to stand by the desk, arms crossed.

"Not if he did the charm with us." Dib turned the camcorder on, and adjusted the light settings. "We'll find him sooner or later. Anyway!" He aimed at the blackboard and hit record. "Agent Mothman here, recording from inside Heavenly Host Elementary School. And proving it's not just creepypasta." As he spoke, he did a slow sweeping shot across the front of the room. "Using a ritual I found on a Japanese paranormal expert's blog, I convinced the alien specimen I've been studying for the past two years to come here with me. I also brought my sister. Say hi to the Swollen Eyeball Network, Gaz." He swish-panned to Gaz, who sneered and turned away.

Dib weaved around misplaced chairs and debris, stepping deeper into the classroom. "The alien's whereabouts are currently unknown, but he has to be somewhere in this school. Even if he doesn't show up right away, I'll be making visual and written records of any paranormal activity I can—"

"Woah, a dead body."

"Gaz, please. I'm trying to—" A beat, then Dib lowered the camcorder and turned to his sister. "C'mon, don't tell me there's really wow!" He whipped the camcorder back up to film his hasty approach. "A dead body!"

"Duh." Gaz looked down at a crumpled corpse wedged in the space between two desks. Its dusty blue uniform was torn in several places, revealing flesh rotted to scraps, with fabric sunken in where organs used to be. The roadkill smell from earlier hung over the remains.

Dib's throat tightened up. "I think that's a high school uniform." He swallowed and crouched next to the corpse. The skull had no recognizable facial features, and without a scalp, no hair remained. Dib held his breath as he tracked his eyes over the body. He was about to stand when a shiny plastic square clipped to the front of the uniform's blazer caught his attention.

He leaned in closer. It was a student ID in a plastic sleeve, stained with something dark. The stain covered where the picture would've been.

Dib pulled back and let out his breath. "I can't read whatever's on it."

Gaz crouched to inspect the ID, then stood. "It's in Japanese. Which makes sense, considering this is a Japanese school."

"But he couldn't have been a student here," Dib said, standing and checking the camcorder in his right hand. "He must've done the charm, and..." He glanced at the corpse through the camcorder's LCD screen, then turned to film the back of the room. "Let's try exploring the rest of this place. The doors still work, right?"

They picked their way across the floor, and Dib collapsed over a desk as the room jolted.

"What? Again?!" Dib clutched the camcorder to the desktop as sediment sifted onto him from above. He heard something clatter a couple desks behind, and looked over his shoulder.

Dib's backpack had fallen over from the shock, and spilled its contents into the gaping hole in the floor right next to the desk.

Dib howled, "My supplies! I needed those!" His backpack slid into the hole as the quaking subsided. "That... not so much now, I guess." Dib straightened up, raked dirt out of his hair with one hand, and looked back at Gaz dusting off her black-striped hoodie sleeves. "Well, this sucks. At least we're still okay."

"Enjoy that."

Dib's insides froze. That wasn't Gaz, or anyone Dib had ever heard before. The space between the desks with the corpse was glowing blue.

Camcorder ready, Dib sidled up to find a flickering blue flame orb sitting stationary above the body.

"Score! A will o' wisp!" Dib's voice hit an excited pitch. "I thought I'd have to wait 'til I did my paranormal trip around the world after high school graduation to find one of these babies!"

Gaz stepped up next to Dib. "Well, this is awkward."

Dib didn't take his lens or eyes off the spirit. "Whaddya mean? This is awesome!"

"Weren't we just staring at this guy's dead body a minute ago?" Gaz pointed at the spirit, which wavered. "When he was probably watchin' us before we woke up."

Dib gave his sister a sidelong glance, then focused on the spirit. "You were talking to us, right? What did you mean? Are you implying something bad's gonna happen? Like whatever happened to you?"

Gaz shoved her hands into her hoodie pocket and took one long step back.

"I've been listening since you got here," the spirit said. "You're one of those gung-ho investigative types." It sighed without air. "It's too bad. You guys look like you're only middle-schoolers."

"How does this place exist in another dimension?" Dib said. "It was demolished and paved over decades ago. They even put another school on top of it."

"It was. But the negative energy gathered from years of child murders allows this place to exist separately from the rest of reality." Blue fire swirled in the wisp's white center. "A third person came with you, right? They were probably sent to another closed space."

Dib lowered the camera an inch to face the spirit directly. "What, like he's in a different room?"

"More like a different plane of existence. He could be standing in the same room as you right now, but you'd never see or hear each other."

"Well that's inconvenient." Dib thought for a second. "So, care to tell us how you died? In case it was a trap, or something."

The wisp was still. It had no eyes, but Dib felt its stare.

"You've already been trapped," the spirit said. "Or didn't you know? You didn't, did you?"

Dib glanced at the pitch-black windows and shuffled back from the body a little.

"Another thing." The spirit's flame swayed like a torch seeking oxygen. "After you die, you're stuck here, feeling the pain of your death forever."

The disembodied voice laughed right in Dib's ear. He scrambled away, caught his heel on a loose floorboard, and fell backward. The camcorder sailed out of his hands, arcing over his head and into a hole.

Dib thumped the back of his head against the floor. "Oh, come on!"

The laughter burrowing in his ears changed to sobs. Dib stumbled to his feet and bolted for the door. Gaz, way ahead of him, rattled it open, and they rushed into the hall.

The crying stopped the instant Gaz slid the door to 1-A shut. Dib leaned over with his hands on his knees and took deep breaths.

"Well isn't this just freakin' great." Dib straightened and brushed his hair spike back. "All my survival stuff is gone, and now almost everything I came here to do is ruined!"

Dib frowned at the corridor. It was unlit, and large, darkened doorways loomed at either end. The space between them was riddled with holes, broken glass, and rotted-out beams from the ceiling.

"It's not like I can't still investigate." Dib turned right and started walking. "Maybe I can find out how to get to those other closed spaces."

"What if that guy died in a really stupid way?"

Dib looked over his shoulder. Gaz followed behind, hands stuffed into her hoodie pocket, her hair throwing extra shadows over her face.

"What if he starved to death?" Gaz said. "Or died of thirst?"

Dib scoffed. "We're not gonna be here that long, Gaz. Depending on when we find Zim, we'll probably get back in time for Mysterious Mysteries. Knowing him, though, he'll probably leave without us."

Silence took over as they walked. Besides their footsteps, only creaky spots and the occasional scrap of wood kicked out of the way made any noise at all.

They reached one of the large doorways. "Stairs? I thought we were already on the first floor." Dib made his way down, avoiding a small puddle of candle wax on the landing.

Dib and Gaz reached the next floor, and were hit with the sight and smell of another corpse. It sat slumped against the wall below blackened windows, ten feet in front of them.

"Oh man, is that—" Dib put a hand over his mouth and nose, taking a step closer. "This one's fresh! The blood's not even dry!"

The unlucky girl, about their size, stared through them at an angle. Her head was a lopsided mush. Dib backed up to stand beside his sister.

"Probably another Japanese kid," Gaz said. "Bet they all found that charm on the internet, too."

"It was on a Japanese blog." Dib looked at the body, away from the staring eyes. Unlike the corpse in 1-A, the cause of death was clear. "What's going on here? Does this school eat children?"

Dib peered into the corridor ahead. It split off in three directions, one shortly leading to another large doorway.

"That must be the entrance," Dib said. "Let's see if we can get outside."

"Wouldn't that be too easy?"

Dib halted in mid-step—not to answer Gaz's question, but because another blue glow caught his eye. The spirit, fully formed in the shape of a little boy in bloody clothes, sat just inside the entryway, his back pressed against the door frame.

"Jeez, an even better one!" Dib whispered, hands aching for electronics. "And me without a camera!"

Gaz's footsteps stopped a few paces behind. The ghost in the doorway stared straight ahead at the other side of the frame, dull eyes unblinking, arms wrapped around his drawn-up knees. The little boy's mouth worked, lip-syncing something unheard.

"I bet he knows more than that loser wisp upstairs," said Dib, and he stepped toward the ghost.

Gaz's hand clamped Dib's shoulder like a vise, and she yanked him back so hard he almost stumbled into her. He recovered his balance and twisted out of her grip to face her.

Gaz's narrowed brown eyes met his. Dib's glare and reproachful words vanished as Gaz slowly shook her head.

She planted a hand between Dib's shoulders, and shoved him in the opposite direction. He allowed himself to be herded away from the entrance without a word.

Silly Dib, mistaking hitodama for will-o'-wisps. He was just excited, that's all.