“Sit down, young man!”

David had opened the door fully and was standing in the glow of fluorescent lighting. Ahead, five rows of desks faced him. They each held a youth about David’s age. One of the front desks was empty.

It was a classroom.

A young woman stood before the class. She had just turned to face David. She placed a sheet of paper on the empty school desk, pointed to David, then to the desk. “Now!” she added.

David asked her if she was the Teacher.

“Of course!” she said, tapping the desk with her index finger. “Sit! You are 23 minutes late.”

David complied. He slid into the desk. The rear of the seat pressed into the small of his back. He crammed his legs in the space underneath the desk.

“Begin with a bilabial fricative,” the Teacher announced to the class. She appeared older, perhaps 20 or 25. “Not you!” the Teacher said to David, pushing the sheet of paper towards him.

David looked at the paper. Water dripped from his head, forming tiny pockets of moisture on the page. Then more pockets joined those pockets until the entire paper was an illegible smudge.

“Istanbul bridges the gap between Europe and Asia. The Bosphorus separates the two land masses.” A girl, about David’s age, had made this pronouncement. She was sitting in the desk next to David’s. She folded her hands together and straightened her back. The girl turned toward David and flashed a wry smile. “That’s why I’m getting a scholarship. I’m going to Oxford!”

David nodded and offered a forced smile. He had begun to suspect this might not be the math class.

“That will be enough, Ms. Kavanaugh!” The Teacher tapped her pointer on the student’s desk. “Finish with a velar stop.”

“I’m Suzie. Are you thirsty?” The girl whispered to David. “I have water.” She held out a plastic water bottle in his direction.

David was about to accept the offer. Then his eyes caught sight of something on the wall, just beyond Suzie’s head. It was a window—no, a porthole. How was there a porthole in the classroom wall?

David removed himself from the diminutive desk, and stumbled toward the porthole. The whole room was now shifting one way, then the next.

David gripped the frame of the portal and steadied himself. He peered outward through lens-shaped glass.

“Join them with an alveolar trill,” the Teacher continued from behind him.

Outside the porthole, sharp blue sky met sea green below with a stark horizontal boundary. To his rear, David could hear a muted jangle, like change in a pocket. The beat matched that which had felt in the hallway. The entire room now pulsed to that beat. On the upbeat, the murky water outside rose above the porthole. David could feel the outer wall lean in towards him.

“Why are manhole covers round?” Suzie said. David turned to see her pointing to the floor, to an area between the teacher’s desk and the students’ desks.

David recoiled.

The floor was open. It was a circular aperature, like the one he had passed through from the floor above. How had he not seen this?

David could still see where his feet had left watery prints when he had entered the classroom. The prints passed between the doorway and his desk. The aperature, with a diameter of about two arm’s breadths, lay in their path. How had he not fallen in?

Next to the hole, a circular metal grating lay on the floor. It was attached to the opening with a hinge. Opposite the hinge, also attached, David noticed an open padlock and length of chain.

The muffled jangle was growing louder. Between surges from the ocean outside, David leapt toward the Teacher’s desk and held onto it at one corner. From here, he could see down into the aperature. Below, a ghostly figure ascended a spiral staircase. As the figure approached, a glint from the classroom light caught something on the shadowy hip— a set of keys.

“Find your seat, young man!” David turned toward the Teacher who was now gripping the opposite side of her desk, appearing to steady her balance. She had lost the air of composure she had been carrying when David had first arrived.

David turned his attention back to the spiral staircase. The shadowy figure below had completed another circuit in its ascent. Fluorescent light from above spilled onto it, through the aperature. David caught sight of the top of a balding head, facing downward. The hip keys again threw back a glimmer of light. Further down, the figure’s dampened golashes played with what little illumination reached them.

A melodic hum had been been accompanying the ocean swell. David only became aware of it as the sound coalesced into words. The hum was coming from the shadowy figure below. It was singing.

“We all face the waters, we all bear the curse…”

Each beat from the sea shanty was met with a swell from the ocean outside. The walls groaned. The sea penetrated previously unseen crevices in the room’s exterior.

David lost his footing. He feet slid out from under him, and he fell on his rear, next the the metal grating. He gripped the edge of the grating, and pulled his feet under his huddled body.

“Our sons and our daughters will know it far worse…”

The crevices in the exterior wall had widened. Water now flowed freely into the room. Each new ocean swell carried with it a spray of salt water. The taste of saline filled David’s mouth and nasal cavity.

The voice of the shadowy figure below now filled the classroom.

“But when the Day’s over, be certain, be sure…”

David heaved back against the grating. It remained unmoved.

He looked up toward the Teacher, and their eyes met. She mopped the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand and gave a tiny nod. Still gripping the edge of the desk, she positioned herself next to the grating. Then she crouched facing David, took hold of the edge of the grating and leaned backward.

The hinge let out a howl. David shifted his weight as the grating began to lift. The muscles in his thighs and midrift cried out.

David straightened his stance and leaned with his back against the grating. It now stood perpendicular to the ground. The slightest nudge in either direction would allow gravity to drop the grating. David’s bare feet slid on the floor as he leaned into the grating. He knew he wouldn’t be able to lift it again if it fell open.

The Teacher shuffled over to David’s side of the grating.

The entire room lurched as another ocean swell beat agains the outer wall.

“You’ll either be fishin’ or wishin’ you —.”

The two collapsed together on the grating as it sealed the opening with a piercing, metalic crash. David rolled over onto his front. The knuckles of the figure below kneaded into David’s chest. The fists gripped the grating, shaking it beneath them.

David’s hands fumbled with the padlock.

Suzie’s voice carried over the din. “No one cares about your fricatives!”

The whiffle box dropped from Sharon’s hands. It landed between her feet, creating a muffled click! when it struck the hardwood floor.

David saw it to be the solitary box he had entered the library with. Hadn’t Sharon opened it?

The Librarian cleared his throat. He drew a long breath through his pipe, held it, released it, then cocked his head to one side. “Well,” he said. “That was somewhat unexpected.”

Sharon rose from her chair and gripped David’s collar. She pulled his face toward hers. A bead of sweat trickled down her right temple.

“Tell me you were able to lock the grating,” she breathed.