I was a police constable in the 1970s and saw a lot of bad stuff working in Bridal Veil Lake. Any place with tourism has shady and outright illegal operations, especially this close to a border. But all of that, as messed up and sad as some of it was, isn’t like what I saw at the high school that one night.
It was mid January, and cold, so I wasn’t much surprised by the call to check for an intruder. Sometimes, being warm took priority over the law. I’d been called to the school a few times already for break-ins.
My partner and I pulled up to the front doors of the school and checked the atrium windows - these windows are huge, and one idiot threw a brick through it the last time we were here.
No damage to report at the atrium this time, though. So we pulled around and into the parking lot, where a driveway runs down the hill along the back of the building to a smaller staff parking lot. The first time we got called to the school, a guy had busted through the theatre doors there with a mini-sledge.
We caught the intruders on both occasions. The second guy, the atrium one, was just drunk out of his mind, but the first had been stone cold sober and waiting for us on the third floor.
“Get me out of here. Please,” he begged. He wouldn’t open his eyes. “If I open my eyes,” he said, “then I’ll see him.” He was really calm and not high or drunk or anything. We figured he was mentally ill.
He kept his eyes shut until we were outside.
My partner and I had to carry him. Luckily, he was a little guy.
I didn’t think much about him again until after this particular night. I even looked him up to see if he had any thoughts about what my partner and I saw.
But he killed himself a few weeks after spending another night in the drunk tank shortly after his encounter with us.
The theatre door was fine, so we circled around to the narrow strip of tarmac overlooking the football field at the bottom of the hill. Again, no signs of forced entry, so my partner calls it in and says everything looks okay.
We get told to go into the school anyway because more reports are coming from residents across the street about activity on the third floor. Someone apparently heard a gunshot, though we didn’t hear a thing.
It’s not typical for law enforcement to break into a building. Only our sergeant was allowed except under circumstances where someone might be injured or in danger. That kind of thing. So we’re stuck waiting for someone to come down with the key.
While we’re waiting, however, there’s a high-pitched wail - not like an ordinary scream - but a sound a woman would make if she were being tortured. It’s a pretty distinct sound, that kind of anguish. Sort of like a wounded animal. Well, because it is, I guess.
Cops often hear this noise on a recording during specialised training. Do yourself a favour and never look it up.
So we’re not supposed to break in unless the sergeant gives us the okay. But then she’s wailing again, and it’s kind of dull, like it’s coming from deep inside the school.
Nuts to waiting. I smash open the theatre door window with my baton. Any place you’re in at the wrong time is a bit uncanny, so my partner and I are already on edge.
We don’t call for support, not even after the scream, because we don’t want to let our nerves dictate what we do and then get ribbed by our colleagues over nothing. It could still be kids playing a prank or an animal; a fox does a good impression of a woman screaming, for example.
My partner seems convinced it’s something like that, but I’m not so sure.
He’s the senior partner, so it’s pretty much his call.
He’s the senior partner, so his memory of the torture victim on the recording isn’t as fresh as mine.
The theatre is just about the lowest point in the school, along with a woodworking class. We check doors as we go, and they’re all locked, so we’re working our way through the halls really slowly with flashlights because we’ve no idea how to turn on the hallway lights.
It doesn’t seem long before we’re going up the stairs to the third floor, and I’m thinking about that first break-in and getting a sinking feeling in my gut.
“Relax,” my partner says. I guess because I’m visibly upset. “We already did this before. Twice. Remember?”
I get the idea that he might be disappointed in me or ashamed or sickened. It pisses me off a little, so I hang back - like why should I bother following an asshole? - while he goes ahead through the doorway.
It only takes me a second to reconsider how childish I’m being, but then it’s too late. There’s another scream, the same as the others, identical, I’d say, but it’s not a woman. It’s my partner.
It’s like he was the one up there and screaming the whole time before he actually arrived. I race into the hallway, and he’s down on the floor, and there’s a big man heading away and through another set of doorways toward a music classroom.
“Stop!” I shout after the guy, but suddenly he isn’t there anymore. He’s passed through the music classroom doors, the solid, closed doors.
I got it wrong. I must have. I run to the doors, but they’re locked. I can’t see much through the windows. The big guy could be hiding.
I’m certain he didn’t open the doors or close them, but that can’t be, so I blamed the darkness until I couldn’t anymore.
There’s no exit except where he went in, so I go back to my partner, and his eyes are closed.
“What are you doing?!” I shout at him.
“Is he gone?” my partner asks.
“What the hell? What the hell, man? Open your eyes. Open them.” I want him to open his eyes so he’s not like the guy from the first break-in. “What did you see?”
“Is he gone?” My partner won’t open his eyes until I tell him the big man ran into the music room. We should call for back-up now. The guy is cornered.
“We should leave,” my partner says, and he does. He doesn’t wait for me. He goes, so I’m left by myself up there. Believe it or not, most police didn’t have walkie talkies in the 70s, and you had to be in your car to contact headquarters.
I’m shiting bricks, wondering what I should do when the big man reappears through the goddamn classroom door, and I mean, through it, like the door isn’t there.
I can barely see him. He’s a giant shadow. He’s just watching me - I can’t see his face, but I should be able to because my flashlight is right on him… there’s just… his face isn’t there.
It’s a blackhole for the senses. Imagine a camera panning forward on a screen. You remain stationary, the view, the non-face, expands until nothing else can be seen.
I smelled blood and burning meat. Tortured screams projected from the void, a level of anguished suffering without comparison. So many had died. There was a fire a long time ago here. Most of the victims were children.
Why did the entity want me to know?
I closed my eyes. It was too much, all too much at once. I dropped my flashlight, and it struck my foot. The minor pain distracted me for a second.
I had to look. If I didn’t, I was as good as dead. I’d been in a number of dangerous situations. None of those experiences had accessed such a primal instinct to defy and survive like this thing.
I could only manage my right eye.
It was still just darkness where his face should be, and I’m really glad I dropped my flashlight. General darkness muted the gravity of his power.
I didn’t say a word. He does something, takes a step, maybe, and my dropped flashlight beam reflects some shiny brass buttons on his coat.
He’s wearing a military uniform from like 150 years ago, give or take a decade. 1812. I know some battles took place around the school. Americans wore blue. The British were in red. The big man’s uniform was black, though.
It’s a trick. Somehow, I know it. He’s no ghostly soldier. He’s hiding something. I draw my gun and aim.
He gestures calmly to go on and fire, and I intend to make the shot fatal.
He moves for sure this time, fast. He’s coming, and I have to fire, or he’ll get me.
Then, just like that, he’s gone.
A bunch more constables come running up the steps, and they’re freaked enough to have their weapons ready.
They’re shouting wildly, and I don’t understand until one of them creeps forward and slowly reaches for me. I’m still confused until his hand wraps around the barrel of my gun, the end of which I have unknowingly pressed against the underside of my chin.
I let him take it and flinch when a gunshot pierces the unnatural quiet, previously filled with the heavy breathing of scared, young men.
We’re too late to save my partner. He made the call and scrawled a quick note before ending everything on the hill overlooking the football field.
Nobody stopped me from going to him.
I couldn’t stop crying.
I took the crumpled paper from his hand.
To know of nothing and keep going isn’t possible for me
sorry
Hell is nothing
I hope you don’t understand, kid
I hope you never do
goodbye
I don’t understand. Not completely anyway. I don’t know why I wasn’t impacted the same as my partner, especially when that thing had me at its mercy for longer.
My old partner and that first guy we arrested wanted to keep their eyes shut, but my damage is different. Every time I close my eyes, the soldier with no face invades. I can think of nothing else.
Probably don’t have to mention I never went back out on the street as a police officer again. The only therapy I got came in a bottle. Pretty standard for the time.
I’m old now and chasing sobriety, but clarity brings the soldier too, and it’s really hard to cope.
I don’t think it’s possible to fully understand what happened at the school. I just want it out of my head, and I’m starting to think going back and facing it might be the only way.
I’d need to drink. Probably more than one. I can find a brick. It’s easy to get in through the atrium.