Creepy story: we rang the haunted triangle and something stared back

Okay this is going to sound dumb but hear me out.

Back in middle school, our music room had this old cabinet against the back wall. Usually had a curtain over it. But if you peeked inside? Ancient handwritten sheet music, textbooks so yellowed they were basically fossils. Dated back to like 1959. Stuff nobody used but apparently couldn't throw away either.

Bottom right of the cabinet there was a drawer. Inside: old castanets, a recorder or two, and this triangle. Like a literal triangle instrument. Except it had rusted SO badly it was completely brown. The whole thing.

And of course there was a rumor.

Somebody said: if you ring that brown triangle three times after 6pm, all the composer portraits hanging on the walls will turn and look at you. Beethoven, Mozart, whoever. All of them. At once.

So my friend A opens his big mouth in front of some girls and goes "I'll test it and report back." cool great wonderful. And then A comes to ME because we were both on the basketball team and he goes please please please come with me and I literally could not say no.

The music room had two doors. Front door by the chalkboard, back door near these old pump organs. The back door was always locked since the organs blocked the floor space and nobody used it. Teachers only locked the front door after class. So we got a friend from the choir club to leave the back door cracked open ahead of time, and we even moved the organs out of the way a little to make room. We were so prepared. We were IDIOTS.

Anyway. Basketball practice ends. We sneak in through the back. It was early summer so even at 6pm it was still pretty light out, which honestly made it slightly less terrifying.

I wanted to bring more people. A said no, someone might chicken out and ruin it. So it was just us two.

A pulls the triangle out of the drawer.

*ting...* one.

*ting...* two.

*ting...* three.

We both spin around checking the portraits. Nothing. The sound fades out. All I can hear is the clock above the chalkboard ticking. And even THAT was creepy, the room felt so heavy all of a sudden.

But A is completely fine. Almost smiling. Goes "huh, nothing happening?" and just. keeps going.

*ting...* four.

*ting...* five.

I'm literally shaking watching him.

*ting—*

Six. Except he grabs the triangle MID-RING and muffles it with his hand.

"let's go."

He puts the triangle down, grabs my sleeve, and starts dragging me toward the door. The smile is gone. Just gone.

"what's wrong?"

"it's fine just COME ON."

He basically hauled me into the hallway. I was thinking okay we're out now, music room is behind us, I can ask.

"hey, what did you see, did something—"

"wai— *hhhk—*"

He was trying to stop me from finishing the sentence. But he couldn't even get words out. Just this sharp little gasp. Like the air left his body.

He was scared. Actually scared. This dude who had been smiling thirty seconds ago was pale and barely breathing.

I just kept going "it's okay it's okay it's nothing" and we walked out of school together. He didn't say a word the whole time. We ended up at this park nearby and sat on a bench until he calmed down.

(I only then realized we'd left the triangle just lying on the floor btw. not great.)

We sat there for a while. A just... white-faced and silent. Then a guy walks by with his dog and A sort of snaps back to reality and I finally ask.

"I didn't see anything. which portrait moved. was it beethoven?"

"...Vita-one."

"what."

"VITA-ONE. it was vita-one."

Okay so. Near the window by the chalkboard there were some bags just... sitting there. Miscellaneous stuff. And one of them, for reasons nobody could explain, was a giant bag of Vita-one dog food. Like the biggest size they sell.

Apparently the dog on the packaging had its eyes rolled back, bloodshot red, and it was STARING AT HIM.

I genuinely did not believe him. I thought this whole thing was a setup. Like he was going to go tell everyone at school how I was trembling like a leaf and laugh at me.

But the next day at school A didn't say a word to anyone. Didn't tease me. Didn't tell the story. Nothing.

Actually I was the one getting bombarded with questions from the girls because they'd heard something happened.

Turns out the abandoned triangle on the floor got found and they traced it back to A. I wasn't caught (A covered for me I think) so only A got called to the teacher's office.

But here's the thing. A told the teacher EVERYTHING. And apparently begged hard enough that the teacher actually went and removed the Vita-one bag and replaced it with a normal bag.

So.

Maybe it was all real.