EVERY Malaysian school has a place students are warned not to visit.
Sometimes, it is a toilet where someone supposedly gave birth in 1994, a storeroom haunted by a long-dead headmaster, or a science lab where the only successful experiment was traumatising generations of students.
For my friend Hafiez, it was the fifth floor.
He told me about it over coffee last month.
His secondary school in Kuala Langat had an unusual top floor. Half the size of those below, it housed four classrooms accessible only through a staircase blocked by a heavy iron grille, secured with a chain and padlock.
Nobody remembered when it had last been opened. Not even Hafiez’s older sisters, who had attended the same school years before him.
Yet through the louvred windows, students could see desks arranged in straight rows, every chair tucked neatly beneath its desk. They were probably the tidiest classrooms in the entire school, which was rather embarrassing for the classrooms that actually had students in them.
One afternoon in August 2012, Hafiez and four friends were killing time before co-curricular activities when Farid noticed something unusual.
The grille was open, its rusted chain hanging loosely against the wall, apparently taking its first day off in years.
“Eh, jom naik.”
All five climbed the staircase.
Hafiez remembered the silence first. Their school stood beside a busy road, but upstairs, even the familiar noise of passing motorcycles and lorries seemed distant.
The corridor was spotless, with none of the cobwebs or grime expected of an abandoned floor. The classroom windows, however, were dusty on the outside.
Beyond the glass, everything was immaculate. Desks stood in neat rows, chairs tucked beneath them, as though an unusually disciplined class had just been dismissed.
Yet every classroom door was chained and padlocked.
Strangely, nobody suggested opening one. They had gone to all the trouble of sneaking upstairs, only to behave like remarkably well-mannered visitors.
After several minutes, they went downstairs.
The following afternoon, they returned, but the grille was locked again, ending their brief career as school explorers.
At the canteen, Farid suddenly stopped eating.
“Semalam korang nampak tak nama dekat papan hitam?”
He insisted their names had been written on the blackboard inside the last classroom. All five of them.
His friends laughed, accusing him of inventing another ghost story, as though haunted toilets and headless cleaners weren’t already keeping the school rumour mill employed.
Farid didn’t laugh. He said he had counted the names twice.
Then he mentioned something nobody found particularly funny.
“Ada enam nama sebenarnya.” (There were actually six names).
The sixth belonged to someone he didn’t know.
Nobody understood what he meant.
Farid refused to elaborate. He left his food unfinished and barely spoke for the rest of recess.
The next morning, Farid was absent. He did not return for four days.
When he came back, he seemed well enough, although noticeably quieter. Whenever someone mentioned the fifth floor, he changed the subject.
Hafiez tried asking about the names again, but Farid, usually never short of something to say, had apparently discovered the virtues of keeping his mouth shut.
Eventually, everyone stopped asking. For once, five teenage boys collectively decided that minding their own business was an excellent idea.
They never went upstairs again.
Years passed. Hafiez dismissed the incident as teenage mischief, back when curiosity outweighed common sense.
When he finished telling me the story, I laughed. It sounded like every Malaysian school horror story ever told, passed down with increasing drama and about as much evidence as a student explaining missing homework.
I asked whether Farid had ever explained the sixth name. He hadn’t.
But Farid had been certain of one detail. Five names were faded, their chalk marks old and uneven. The sixth looked freshly written, as though someone had just put down the chalk.
Something about that detail troubled me.
In August 2012, I was thirteen, attending school in Subang Jaya. I had never visited Hafiez’s school in Kuala Langat.
Yet as Hafiez described the narrow staircase, the green railings and the spotless corridor, I found myself recognising every detail.
Then again, Malaysian schools seemed to have been issued the same architectural blueprint, along with a generous supply of green paint.
But this felt different.
I remembered the rough paint beneath my fingers. The staircase narrowing before the final landing. The strange silence.
And somewhere at the back of my mind, a memory stirred.
My school had a fifth floor too.
It was usually locked behind an iron grille. Beyond it stood several unused classrooms.
One afternoon, I found the grille open. I couldn’t remember why I went upstairs, or whether anyone accompanied me.
But I remembered the last classroom.
Its windows were dusty, yet the desks inside were immaculate, every chair carefully tucked beneath its desk.
At thirteen, I found that more impressive than frightening. My own classroom rarely looked so tidy, even after the class monitor threatened to write everyone’s name on the blackboard.
And there were names on that blackboard.
Several, written in white chalk. Most were faint, but one stood out.
I remembered staring at it longer than the others. The spelling was unusual, and I had tried sounding it out under my breath. Even then, I couldn’t place it.
I couldn’t even remember leaving the fifth floor. All I remembered was suddenly feeling unwell.
By that evening, I had developed a fever that kept me out of school for four days.
Most childhood fevers earned you a day or two off school. Mine apparently decided to take the whole working week.
For years, I remembered the illness but little of what happened before it.
Until Hafiez told me his story.
Sitting across from him, I tried to recall the blackboard.
The faded names. The fresh white lettering. The slight slant of the letters and the chalk dust beneath them.
Hafiez wondered aloud whether Farid’s illness had anything to do with their expedition. Normally, I would have happily contributed a ridiculous theory or two. But I was barely listening.
I kept thinking about the names Farid had seen.
Five old ones. One freshly written.
And the blackboard in my own school, where one name had stood out from the others.
Across the table, Hafiez was still talking. I looked at him.
For fourteen years, the name had remained somewhere at the back of my mind.
But as Hafiez spoke, something about that name finally fell into place.
It was Hafiez’s.
And until three years ago, I had never met him.
Hafiez stopped talking.
Then he smiled.