by Rick Hautala
His jaw muscles clenched when he glanced up at the school building again. Now that he was actually considering doing something about it—after all these years—he wanted to move forward quickly, in spite of the faint stirrings of apprehension tugging him back. His pulse thumped heavily in his ears, echoing like a tin drum, high and fast.
So fast it sounded almost like ...
—Running feet—
The thought slipped into his mind like the burning sting of a razor cut.
Pete took a quick breath to strengthen his resolve.
At the very least, he should peek inside.
Better yet, if he could get a door or window open, maybe he should actually go inside ... take a look around … see what the old place looked like after all these years. That would certainly help him—finally—put to rest all those nameless, deep-seated fears he had about this building.
But his mind reeled at the prospect of actually looking into—and maybe even going back inside—the schoolhouse. It would be the first time he'd been in there in— What?
More than twenty-five years.
A confused rush of memories filled him with rising apprehension and expectation. He shuddered at the thought but had to admit that it was exactly what he should do. He had to go inside the old school if only to prove to himself that there was absolutely nothing in there to be afraid of except the sound of—.
Running feet.
He moved a few steps closer to the school.
The instant he was under the shadow of the huge maple tree, a chill ran up his back, and he shivered uncontrollably. He looked at Cindy as if she was supposed to give him a cue as to what to do next.
She smiled and pointed at the long-unused swing set.
"We'll be over on the swings."
Finding it impossible to speak, Pete nodded and then turned his back to her and shrugged his shoulders so she could ease Ryan out of the backpack. The instant he was on his feet, Ryan took off down the slope, heading toward the swings. His chubby legs were moving as fast as they could go. Cindy grabbed the backpack from Pete and then, hollering Ryan's name, started off after him at a run. She caught up with him after a few paces and held his hand tightly as they slowly walked the rest of the way to the swings.
The further they got away from Pete, the fainter Ryan's squeals of delight were as they echoed across the field. Cindy glanced back over her shoulder at him once and waved.
"Take your time looking around, honey," she called out, her voice faint with distance. "We'll be fine over here."
"Yeah … Sure thing," Pete replied weakly, not even sure if she heard him.
He watched them walking in the white glare of the summer sun. When they were close enough to the swings, Ryan broke away from his mother again and raced to the nearest one. He scrambled hard to get up onto the seat but couldn't make it until his mom got there and boosted him up. She began to push him gently. The heavy, humid air muffled the sounds of Ryan's laughter and the loud complaint of the rusted swing chains.
They were less than a hundred yards away, but there was a distant, mirage-like quality to the scene that made it look to Pete as though they were no longer in this world. He felt like he was watching a movie ... or seeing them … in a dream. He stood alone in the shadow of the school and maple tree a moment longer as a cold, lonely anxiety twisted deep inside his gut.
Turning slowly, he looked back up at the wall of the school.
It towered above him, and once again he imagined that the building was leaning at a crazy angle and was about to come crashing down on his head. His leg muscles were as loose as jelly as he mounted the wide concrete steps to the front door. The feathery flutter in his ears got steadily stronger with every step. He sucked in and held his breath when he stopped within arm's reach of the tarnished brass doorknob and stared at the dull glass windows.
"Jesus Christ!" he whispered, unable to believe he was actually doing this.
Feeling oddly dissociated, he watched his trembling hand reach out and grasp the doorknob. The metal was warm to the touch and felt greasy as he squeezed it and gave it a gentle twist.
For a terrifying instant, the doorknob turned, and Pete thought—incredibly—that the door might have been left unlocked; but then the latch fetched up.
Realizing that he'd been holding his breath, he let it out in a long, slow whoosh before wiping the sheen of sweat from his forehead with his forearm.
Numbing chills played up and down his back as he leaned closer to the door and peered in through the dirty wire-mesh glass. His breath rebounded into his face from the window, but he barely noticed it as he scanned the dim, empty corridor.
As his eyes tracked up the ancient staircase to the second-floor hallway, he flashed on all those days—so long ago—when he had trod those stairs and that corridor. These memories were mixed with the more recent and, in some ways, more immediate memories of the dreams ...
—No, nightmares!
... he'd had about this place.
"Jesus Christ," he repeated, shivering so wildly he had to hug himself to make sure he was real.
Reflections from the sunlit street behind him made it difficult for him to see very much inside the school, but he could make out a dusty bar of sunlight, angling into the dark, dusty upstairs corridor from an opened classroom door on the left. The light looked solid, a sickly brownish-yellow … like the sepia tones of an old photograph.
That used to be Mrs. Doyle's fifth-grade classroom, Pete thought with a hollow twisting of nostalgia.
Gussie Doyle. . . . How long ago since she died?
His mind filled with a rush of memories about his fifth-grade teacher—of the time he thought he'd lost his lunch box and had started to cry in front of the whole class only to find it buried beneath his papers inside his desk … of the time Phil Ricci, one of the school bullies, had beaten him up on the baseball field during recess, right there between second and third base, all because Pete hadn't paid him back the nickel he had borrowed for a pack of bubble gum a week ago … of the afternoon when Sally Phillips had heard the town fire horn signal a fire in her neighborhood and, worried that it might be her house, had started to cry so hard she pissed in her pants … of the time Ralph Haley had felt sick to his stomach and, not knowing what else to do, had lifted up his desktop and thrown up into it, all over his books and papers, to the great amusement of the class.
Mesmerized by this flood of reminiscences, Pete leaned forward until his nose was pressed flat against the wire-mesh glass. He couldn't get rid of the sensation that he truly was looking back in time into another dimension.
He glanced at his wristwatch and saw that it was three-fifteen.
Three-fifteen … the exact time when school used to let out.
He looked up, half-expecting to hear the sudden clanging of the school bell on the wall and see a rush of students, charging into the hallway toward the front door and freedom.
Chilled sweat trickled down his sides from his armpits. Rubbing his hands over his face, he stepped back and cast a nervous glance toward the swings. The building blocked his view of the playground and cut off any sound. He could no longer hear the shrill squeal of Ryan's laughter or the squeaking of rusty swing chains. It was like he was inside a glass bell jar, looking out at the world.
"All right... all right, than," he whispered to himself. "You've seen enough." His voice had a harsh quality that grated on his nerves.
Taking hold of the doorknob again, he pulled back on it hard and spun it around. A shocking jolt as bright and sharp as a bolt of lightning shot through him when the door latch clicked.
He whimpered softly when he pulled back on the door, and it opened slowly with a low, chattering groan.
"Oh, Jesus!... Oh, shit!" Pete whispered, looking around fearfully as if searching for an escape route.
A rush of stale, warm air wafted over him like a dusty breeze from inside a tomb. It carried with it a teasing mix of aromas, so subtle yet strong they were more like tastes tha
n smells. They stirred Pete's senses and memories—
The warm sting of old varnish burned the back of his tongue ... the scratchy mustiness of stale air irritated his eyes and the inside of his nose .. . the smell of ancient floor wax felt thick and pasty in his throat... and—beneath all of that—something else ... something that had a faint, sickening tinge of decay and rot. It hit Pete's stomach hard, like a clenched fist.
For several seconds, he stood there with the door braced open with his hip. Finally, realizing that someone might drive by and see him breaking into the school, he sucked in a breath of fresh air as if it were his last and stepped inside the building. The hydraulic door closer wheezed loudly as it pulled the door shut behind him. The heavy latch clanged with the sharp finality of a jail cell slamming shut. The sound echoed through the deserted corridor.
I can't believe this … I'm actually in here! Pete thought as an icy thrill ran through him.
He moved hesitantly toward the stairway as though hypnotized. Once upon a time, the wooden risers had been painted flat black with black rubber protective edges. Now, the tan ovals of bare wood were showing through from wear. Cupped depressions marred each step close to the railing where the heaviest foot traffic had passed over many decades.
As he started up the stairs, Pete automatically reached out for the handrail to steady himself. He was mildly surprised by its smooth, comforting feel that was so familiar. It was as if he had touched it every day of his life as recently as yesterday.
He took each step cautiously, one at a time, not at all surprised when the treads creaked loudly underfoot. The low, groaning sound of old wood made him wonder if the stairs were even safe after all these years of disuse, but he reminded himself that the school had been open up until about ten years ago. There was nothing to worry about unless it was getting caught trespassing on public property.
The schoolhouse had trapped the stale summer heat like an oven. Even before he got to the top-floor landing, he was dripping with sweat. In the rectangle of light that fell across the old wood floor, he saw every detail of the floor in sharp relief … every dirt-filled crack between ancient boards, every rusted nail head … every swirl of wood-grain pattern worn to a dull black gloss with age stood out with near-hallucinatory clarity.
At the top of the stairs, Pete paused and wiped his face on his bare forearm.
The stale air was making his throat raw, as if he were running a fever. He looked longingly down the hall to the old porcelain water fountain, which was attached to the wall. He doubted there was any chance the water would still be turned on, but just seeing the fountain—the "bubbler," as he and his friends used to call it—made him remember all those times he had asked to be excused from class to get a drink. Beneath the layers of dust and dirt, the dull white gleam of old porcelain showed through the grime like rotting bone.
One detail which he didn't remember from when he was a student here was the pale brown pine wainscoting lining both sides of the corridor. The varnish had yellowed with age and was peeling off and laced with cracks like old river ice. Between the parallel joining grooves as well as in the angles where the wall met the floor, there was a thick accumulation of dust and black gunk. He wondered if rats had free run of the schoolhouse now.
Pete walked over to the door and entered Gussie Doyle's old classroom. He was surprised to see the desks and chairs still there, all lined up in neat, narrow rows as though waiting for another onrush of noisy students. The desks looked much smaller than Pete remembered them. Afternoon sunlight streamed through the tall windows and glanced like white fire off the dusty aluminum sills. The heat in the room was stifling. Scores of trapped flies and hornets bounced against the grimy glass and tangled themselves in the clots of cobwebs as they sought a way out. The sill was littered with the dried husks of those who had failed.
The room looked and felt incredibly ancient, but everything still appeared to be in order. Pete let out a grunt of surprise when he saw what looked like a small, slouch-shouldered person standing in the coat closet at the back of the room. It took him a heart-stopping moment to realize it was an old coat someone had left behind. On the teacher's desk was a faded ink blotter, a cobweb-draped cup filled with pens and pencils, and a row of dusty textbooks with heavy lead bookends. Pete had the distinct impression that the closing of the school had caught everyone by surprise.
Everything was waiting for the new school year to begin.
Closing his eyes for a moment, Pete inhaled deeply, letting the peculiar mixture of smells fill his mind with a kaleidoscope of memories. In spite of his gathering nervousness, he felt a deep sense of peace here, too—a quietude that soothed him like he had never been soothed before.
He wondered how he ever could have twisted a place as peaceful and quiet as this—a place so full of warm, nostalgic memories—into such nightmare images.
Maybe his nightmares simply originated in a longing he felt for his own lost childhood—a deep, indescribable yearning for those precious times that were gone and, he knew, could never be recaptured or relived.
His reverie was cut short when a door slammed shut somewhere out in the corridor.
"Shit," he whispered as the sound reverberated in the hall.
Someone else is in here.
Spinning on one foot, he stared at the door, more than half-expecting to see hump-shouldered, gray-haired Mrs. Doyle standing in the doorway, scowling at him as only she could.
His first rational thought was that the school custodian might have stopped by to check on the place. Maybe someone had seen him enter the school and had called the police. Or maybe Cindy had come inside, looking for him.
Holding his breath, Pete tip-toed over to the door and looked out into the hall. He was acutely aware that the sunlight coming in through the windows behind his back would cast his shadow ahead of him. It would give him away in an instant.
The corridor appeared to be deserted, but Pete froze in place, holding his breath and waiting either to hear the sound repeated or the sound of approaching footsteps.
Nothing.
After the longest time, he exhaled and took a slow, shallow breath.
The stifling air inside the school muffled all sound with such density that it felt as though his ears were packed with cotton. When he caught a quick flutter of motion at the far end of the corridor to his left, he dismissed it as his eyesight, adjusting to the gloom.
Still, he didn't quite dare move out into the hallway.
Not yet.
He had to be absolutely positive he was alone.
And then a thought hit him … hard enough to make his stomach drop.
What if this is another one of my dreams?
A panicky shudder ran through him.
No, he told himself. This can't possibly be a dream. If it was, then when had it started?
Could he still be in bed, back at his mother's house?
Or what if he had dozed off while sitting in his mother's hospital room?
Or maybe the dream had started even further back than that.
Maybe he had never even come back east with Cindy and Ryan.
Maybe he was still back home in San Diego … in bed and dreaming all of this.
"No," Pete whispered, his voice tight and trembling. "That's not possible. This is real. This is happening."
He raised his hands in front of his face and focused on them. The sunlight shining over his shoulder made every hair, every wrinkle, every pore in his skin, every vein and tendon in his hand and wrist stand out in sharp relief. The hot blast of sunlight warmed his back. The tightness in his chest was getting worse, and the short, shuddering breaths he was taking did little to relieve his panic rising inside him.
No. You don't get sensations like this in a dream!
Then, just as he was starting to relax, a strange sound echoed in the stairwell at the far end of the corridor. It was low, soft, and sounded like—someone crying.
It reverberated in the stairwell with a distorted,
hollow sound.
Pete's feet dragged like lead weights across the creaking floorboards as he moved slowly out into the corridor, drawn by that teasing, elusive sound.
The soft, muffled cry had sounded more like an animal in pain than a person. He listened hard, and there it was—at the edge of hearing. Although he didn't want to believe it, he knew he hadn’t imagined it. It was coming from the far end of the corridor, probably from somewhere downstairs. His heart punched hard against his ribs when he realized that it had to be coming from down in the boys' basement!
Oh, Jesus … No … Not down there!
A choking sensation gripped his throat as he shuffled slowly past Mrs. Kuhn’s fourth-grade classroom. At the far end of the hall, the large window above the stairwell was filmed with dust and grime, clotted with spiderwebs. There wasn't much available sunlight. A soft, sepia glow filled the area with a smoky haze.
The closer Pete got to the stairwell, the more it looked to him like a deep, dark pit, much darker and deeper than he remembered it.
All the while, the faint, sniffing cry continued to resonate in the corridor, luring him forward like the strong, irresistible pull of the tide.
"This is fucking crazy," he whispered to himself.
His own voice sounded harsh in the hallway, like metal rasping against stone; but that didn't stop him from gripping the handrail at the top of the stairs and starting down.
With each step, the crying grew louder, but Pete had the odd impression that it was also fading away, retreating from him with every step.
No matter how silently he tried to walk, his footsteps thumped heavily on the stairs. Ancient wood creaked beneath his weight, making his ears ring with tension.
There's no way! … No way! … There can't be anyone down there!
He wanted desperately to convince himself of that, but then he thought that maybe some kids had been playing in the schoolhouse when he had first entered; maybe one of them, thinking it must have been the police who had come in by the front door, had hurt himself trying to get away or hide.
"Hello," Pete called out.
The sudden sound of his voice startled him.
