She hoped that would change with her new vocation. A vocation that, despite her mother’s standing as a well-respected educator in the area, Rebecca had never considered in her youth. However, like so many others of her generation, she had sampled just about every damn class that her college offered in her quest for a calling, that calling finally presenting itself during a summer elective on elementary education. She loved it from the start, and the rest, as they say, was history.
She was now officially a teacher, about to step into her school and set up her classroom, hoping to get it properly prepared for the day when her students arrived. It was all too much. Screw the gum. She was having that cigarette.
Rebecca rolled the window down and spat her gum at the feet of Ryan Herb, who just happened to be walking by.
10
Ryan Herb stopped and looked down at the piece of gum that had landed at his feet. He turned to his right and looked into the open driver’s side window.
“Lost its flavor?” he asked.
Rebecca’s face grew sunburn hot. “I am so sorry. I didn’t see you there.”
Ryan looked in her back seat. “I’m not surprised with all that stuff you’ve got in there. You’ve probably got a few blind spots.”
Rebecca returned a small laugh. “I could barely see out of my rear window on the way here.”
Ryan smiled. “You should see my car. So, I take it you work here? All that stuff is for your classroom?”
“You take it correct.” Rebecca suddenly felt silly carrying on a conversation while still seated in her car. She got out. Ryan took a few steps back to accommodate her.
Rebecca extended her hand. “I’m Rebecca. I’m going to be teaching first grade.”
Ryan shook her hand. “Ryan. This your first year?”
“Yep. You?”
“Yep. Probably a little older than the average first-year teacher though.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty. Bit of a midlife career change, I guess you could say. What about you?”
Older guy. She liked that. “Twenty-three. Fresh from the classroom. What grade will you be teaching?”
“Fifth.”
“I student-taught in fifth.”
“You did? Seems odd they’d put you in first. Two different worlds if you ask me.”
“At least it’s not kindergarten. I might have had to draw the line there.”
Ryan smiled. “No argument there. Kindergarten would kill me.”
Rebecca gave an innocent smirk. “I imagine that was an inadvertent pun on your part.”
Ryan looked stumped for a moment. Then: “Oh right!” He laughed. “So, I take it Mr. Hansen gave you his spooky little speech as well?”
“Who?”
“Jerry Hansen. Head of HR? Little fat guy?”
“Oh, him. Yeah, I remember him.”
“He try to scare you with the school’s history during your interview?”
Rebecca nodded. “He certainly didn’t tiptoe around the issue. Not like he told me anything I didn’t already know, though—my mom taught at Highland for over twenty years. ”
“No shit?” Ryan blurted. “She still teaching?”
Rebecca nodded.
“One of the sole survivors,” he quipped. “I may just pop into your classroom later for a bit more gossip.”
Rebecca blushed again at his mention of dropping by her classroom later. The guy was cute. She already imagined telling people how they’d met. Spat gum at his feet, I swear to God. An amusing little courting tale if there ever was one.
(Getting a bit ahead of yourself, aren’t you, girl?)
She reeled herself in. “Sure, whatever,” she replied with a little shrug, hoping it read stop by or don’t—no biggie.
(Reel it in, don’t cut the line, dummy.)
Ryan smiled politely, said, “It was nice meeting you,” turned, and headed towards the school.
Rebecca bonked her head with her palm. “Sorry about the gum,” she called to him.
He turned, gave the polite smile again, then turned back and kept going.
Dummy, she thought again.
11
What in the hell do I do with all this shit? Ryan thought to himself after finally unloading everything from his car into his classroom. It was a chaotic mess. More a hoarder’s paradise than a classroom. When he’d student-taught, Ryan had joined his co-op teacher in the middle of the school year, with the room already set up and running. Now it was his job to make the classroom look like a classroom. A daunting job indeed for a guy who could count on one hand the number of times he’d made his bed in the morning. He needed an ally.
Ryan left his classroom and stepped out into the hallway. It was closing in on noon, and the school saw fit to keep the air-conditioning on hiatus until the official start of the school year. Even if he did find someone to help him with his room, he doubted they’d be so willing after they got a whiff of him. He smelled like a wet dog.
Ryan started down the hallway. The walls were bare and lifeless. No doubt in a few weeks they’d be alive with all things learning, but for now, they held little warmth, unlike the damn school itself. He must have sweated off five pounds in his classroom alone. He made a note to bring a few fans with him tomorrow. And water. Lots of water. His mission of finding help for his classroom now took a back seat to hydration.
He decided to take a little stroll. If he found someone willing to help him,
(maybe the girl you met outside? Rebecca? She was easy on the eyes, wasn’t she?)
great, if he didn’t, he could certainly find his way to the teachers’ lounge. During his brief tour with Pam from HR this past Friday, Ryan had noticed a soda machine in the lounge. Right now the prospect of a cold soda was the whole world. Onward.
***
Ryan’s journey throughout the building had him opening and closing classroom doors that weren’t locked, poking his head into corners and spaces that seemed undiscovered. Although he knew that at least one other person—Rebecca—was in the school, there was a creepy quiet about the building that felt as though it was sleeping. It transported Ryan back to August days in his youth, when the still and baking heat gave an isolated feel to the world, as though it too was sleeping.
The teachers’ lounge was in the school cafeteria. Ryan entered and found two things, one a joy to behold, and one a surprise. The joy to behold was the soda machine, glowing and humming to his left (it had occurred to Ryan during his journey to the lounge that if the school felt air-conditioning was unnecessary, so too might it feel that getting the measly soda machine in the teachers’ lounge up and running held little priority as well. But it was. He only prayed the thing was stocked).
The surprise was the large rectangular table for faculty dead ahead. There were people seated around it. Three of them. Two men and a woman. None of them acknowledged Ryan’s entrance. Perhaps they hadn’t heard him enter.
Ryan cleared his throat. All three at the table turned their heads towards him simultaneously and stared. Their expressions projected nothing.
Ryan smiled. “Hi.”
All three said nothing. Just continued staring back. Ryan was well aware of the cliques that formed among teachers, much like the students themselves. Passive-aggressive behavior and even mild back-stabbing was unfortunately common in his new vocation. Had he stumbled upon one of those cliques now? Subtly hazing the new guy with their closed mouths and judgmental stares?
Unlikely, he quickly thought. Unless the three at the table were among the few veterans of the infamous school. But chances were good they too were new. And if so, it would make sense they’d be keen for allies, wouldn’t it? He knew he sure as hell was.
“I’m Ryan Herb,” he tried again. “I’ll be teaching fifth grade.”
Still nothing. Just stares.
Ryan frowned inside. Is there a problem? was on his lips, but he bit it back, trying for one last olive branch. He noticed none of the three had a soda, or anything for that
matter, in front of them. “Hot in here, isn’t it? Can I offer anyone a soda?” He placed his hand on the soda machine to his left.
Ryan felt as though he’d placed his hand on a stove. A searing pain burned his palm. He jerked his hand free and cried out. Then instantaneous darkness, the room, its shades pulled, becoming black as night.
Ryan stumbled backward in the darkness, felt the door at his back, turned, shouldered the door open, and stumbled out into the cafeteria, actually falling onto his knees.
The brightness of the cafeteria was a relief. An even greater relief was the queer fact that the searing pain in his palm was gone, as though it had never been. But of course it had, and with no biting back anything now, he found himself blurting out: “What the fuck was that?!”
A form of hazing the new guy, maybe? Rigging the soda machine to be white hot?
Killing the lights? He imagined the three in the lounge to be in hysterics now. It was the ghosts of Highland that did it, kid! He spun and immediately re-entered the lounge.
The lights were back on. And Ryan might have grudgingly told the three that they’d gotten him good, only he had no one to tell.
The table was empty. Like the pain in his palm, so too had all three, inexplicably, disappeared.
Wait. Wait, wait, wait, wait…
He stepped further into the lounge. The layout of the room was wide open. No places to hide, the huge rectangular table for faculty filling the bulk of it. Ryan bent and checked under the table. A silly step for adults to take to milk the extent of the joke, but he checked all the same. There was nobody under the table. He was alone.
Aloud now: “Wait, wait, wait…just wait a damn minute. I did not just imagine this.”
The lounge now shared the quiet of the rest of the school. The still quiet that made him think of lazy August days in his youth.
Quiet. Quiet…
The quiet. There was no hum from the soda machine to his left. He turned and looked at the machine. It no longer glowed. He risked touching it again. It was not white hot. Not cold either. It was the same temperature of the room. He leaned forward and traced the thick black cord snaking its way out and down the back of the machine where it lay on the carpet, unplugged.
“This…this is…” He didn’t know what this was.
12
“That’s it, I’m done,” Rebecca said to no one as she finished unpacking her final box.
Her classroom resembled a supply room, and a messy one at that, but at least everything was unpacked and out of the boxes. She would make sense of things tomorrow. Today’s goal had been just to unpack. Cross it off the list.
She wondered why Ryan had not stopped by to say hello yet. Get some gossip, as he’d put it. It was nearing noon and hot as could be in the school. Surely he’d be wanting a break sometime soon? Should she drop in on him? Make it no big thing. Breezy. How’s it coming? Need any help? That sort of stuff. But nice about it. More sincere. Certainly not the stupid play at indifference she’d given earlier when he’d suggested dropping by for that gossip.
“Hey!”
Rebecca jumped and spun towards her classroom door. Speak of the devil…
“Hey yourself,” she replied. She went to smile, offer some of that charm she’d lacked this morning, only the guy’s appearance changed things. He looked more than a little rattled. “Are you all right?”
He ignored her question and fired off his own in rapid succession, not waiting for her replies. “Are we the only ones here? Have you met anyone else yet today? Have you heard anyone else?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been in here working all morning. Why?”
He remained in her doorway. He looked down the hallway, first left, and then right, as though worried someone was following him.
“Are you all right?” she asked again. “You look a little flushed.”
Ryan felt his face with both hands, then ran them through his sweaty hair, gripping tight and holding for a second at the end. A classic stress tell.
“I’m fine. Just the heat, I guess.” He gave an uneasy smile, said, “Thanks,” and left.
Rebecca waited until he was out of earshot—although a part of her hoped he might hear—before saying: “Well, that was weird.”
13
“It’s gonna happen from time to time, you know.”
Ryan, back in his classroom, was lost in thought, replaying recent events in the teachers’ lounge when the male voice in his doorway broke his trance.
He spun and saw a short old man dressed in faded green attire. Pants and a tee. His exceptionally bald head was slick with sweat. His face reminded Ryan of one of those dogs with so many wrinkles you can never get a good look at their eyes. In the old man’s hands was a broom, nearly as tall as he was.
“Huh?” was all Ryan said.
“You wanna work here, you better get used to it,” the old man said again. He had a way of talking that looked as though he fancied eating his lower lip, as if each word that exited his mouth left something tasty behind that begged licking. Dentures he apparently did not care to hide.
“Used to what?” Ryan said. “What are you talking about?”
The old man cocked his head as though disappointed with Ryan. He leaned on his broom, said: “Oh, you gonna play dumb, are you? You know what I’m talking about, son. I see it in your eyes just like I seen it in the eyes of all the others who been here before you. Not to mention you bolted out of that lounge like your ass was on fire.” He laughed at his own wit.
“This building is brand new,” Ryan challenged.
The old man snorted. “You’re trying to bullshit a bullshitter. You know what I’m talking about, son,” he said again.
Ryan did, and he told him so. “You worked at Highland?”
“Sure did. Long time.”
“You were there just now when I was in the teachers’ lounge?”
“Yep.”
“I didn’t see you.”
The old man stopped leaning on his broom and took a few steps into Ryan’s classroom.
“Tell you the truth, I didn’t see you at first neither. Just heard you hollerin’ about somethin’. I come out and you’re on your knees looking like you was praying.” The old man’s southern twang was now clearly evident. After so many years in Pennsylvania, Ryan guessed he held on to that twang for hometown pride’s sake. Where exactly that hometown was, Ryan couldn’t give a flying fart. Not now, at least.
“I wasn’t praying,” Ryan said.
“Good. Cuz it won’t do you no good anyway.”
“Who are you?”
The old man took a few more steps towards Ryan and held out a bony hand mapped with thick blue veins that wormed their way up his forearm. Ryan took it. The old man’s grip was unusually strong for his age and size, hardened from years of labor.
“You can call me Karl,” he said. “I’m the head janitor here. Been here forever and will probably be here long after.”
Ryan would have ordinarily dismissed such a comment as an old man’s quip. Now, he wondered whether it meant something far different.
“I don’t…I don’t understand what happened back there,” Ryan said. His defensive tone was gone. He now spoke in what amounted to a frightened whisper, a child begging his folks for proof there were no monsters in the closet.
Karl could offer no such consolation. “Of course you don’t. Can’t say I really do either. I just know that you got spooked, and I’m here to tell you that if you’re the type that spooks easy, you should pack your stuff and leave now.”
Ryan flashed on Hansen, the man’s attempt to spook him. Anger brought back his courage. “I don’t usually spook easy, but Jesus, man, something happened to me back there.”
“Something like what?”
“I wanted a soda from the teachers’ lounge. I saw some people sitting in there—”
Karl interrupted him. “Nobody here but you, me, and that pretty blonde girl at the other end of the building.”
“You say hello?”
“Yeah, I did. They blanked me though. Just stared at me.”
Karl sucked his dentures. Leaned on his broom again. Ryan went on.
“So, then I go to get a soda from the machine—”
“Hasn’t been filled yet. Haven’t even plugged it in.”
“Yes, I realize that now, Karl, thank you. May I continue?”
Karl smiled.
“So, I went to get a soda from the machine because when I first stepped in there—I am positive—that damn thing was on, Pepsi logo shining larger than life in my face. So, I touch it, and my hand burns like acid. Then the room goes pitch black. After that I panicked and ran out.”
“That all?” Karl asked.
“No, that’s not all. If you were watching like you said, then you’d remember that I went back in.”
Karl closed his eyes and nodded slowly, signaling that he did indeed remember.
“Yeah, well, when I went back inside, the lights were back on, and…” Ryan paused a moment, feeling a hint of silliness saying it aloud for the first time. “And there was no one there. I even looked under the damn table like an idiot. Oh, and the soda machine was unplugged, of course. No Pepsi logo shining in my face.”
Ryan splayed his hands. There it was—take it or leave it, old man. And to Ryan’s surprise (or maybe not so much surprise; the old man had been somewhat Hansen-esque in his cryptic mutterings thus far), the old man took it. Took it and actually looked as though he sympathized with Ryan.
“I believe you, son,” he said. “I believe every word you just said.”
Ryan felt something like relief. It was fleeting, though. The old janitor believed him. Hurray. Who the hell would believe them?
“What did you say your name was, son?” Karl asked.
Dark Halls - A Horror Novel Page 5