I couldn’t exactly go back during the daytime, due the long school hours. My best bet was visiting the school in the very early morning ours, or after 6 PM. I decided on the latter. This is the truth behind what happens on the fifth floor.
Where I live currently, it would take just over an hour of driving to get back to the school. I started getting ready at about 17:00, I expected to run into teachers or guards, so had to do this carefully in order not to get some sort of trespassing charge. So I had obtained a blue overall with the school’s logo on it, a helmet and a white-mask to hide most of my details. I put all this on before leaving. The drive there was mostly uneventful, except for one detail. When I was about fifteen minutes away, I could swear I saw this horrible, violent accident in my rear-view mirror. I quickly pulled over and got out of my car, and there was no sign of an accident. In fact, it was like the highway was abandoned. No sign of life except for one or two cars.
I chalked it up to being tired, and continued on my way. I parked about a street away from the school and waited another hour, browsing the internet and just fucking around while everyone left.
I drove up to a side-gate I knew was always locked and grabbed the backpack from the backseat, loaded with tools to help me get back to that cursed place. First challenge; get past the padlock on the side-gate without making it look suspicious. It would be a slight challenge, but nothing I couldn’t handle.
I put on a set of rubber gloves, grabbed a screwdriver and a few bobby-pins, and went about picking the lock. Then moved through the gate and locked the gate behind me. After this I would have to make my way across the football field. I decided to stick to the side and move behind the storage facility at the far end of the field to avoid being spotted as much as possible.
From here, I moved through several unlit hallways to get to the staircase closest to the football field that would take me up to the fifth floor. Another padlock, another lockpicking. I’d love to sound like some badass movie character and say it was child’s play, but it wasn’t. The bobby pin broke in the lock in such a way that I couldn’t get it out with the screwdriver or any other tool. No way past this lock except breaking it.
I was about to do just that when I heard footsteps and saw a flash of light. I quickly returned the tools to my backpack and took a cloth from it, then returned it to my back. A guard turned the corner and stared straight at me. Play it cool.
“What’re you doing?”
I took a deep breath.
“Ah, just cleanin’ up after the kids, boss.”
“You sure?” He squinted and glanced at the gate, then looked back to me.
“Aye, careful if you go in the bathrooms. You know how these kids are.”
“Yeah.” He laughed. “Good luck.”
The guard squeezed pat me and continued on his patrol. I pretended to wipe down the gate until he turned the far corner. I grabbed a set of boltcutters from the backpack and broke the lock before pushing the gate open. Something I wouldn’t be able to hide, sadly. I quickly wrapped the chain back around the gate and hooked the broken lock into it, then made my way up-stairs.
Alright, deep breaths. I approached the entrance to the fifth floor nervously. Five steps. Four. Three. Two. One. Here we go.
I took a flashlight from the back and made my through the halls. The graffiti had been cleaned up and the walls seemed in far more pristine condition. Cracked wooden doors had been replaced with shining, silver doors. Steel, I assumed.
I made my way to room thirteen, slowly. No screams, no blood trails. Nothing. Of course, my first thought was that the school is just trying to cover all this up. Why wouldn’t they? A lot of kids may have gone missing that night. That was honestly a far more terrifying thought than whatever happened that night.
Room thirteen. There it was. Another silver door, barred by long, metal rods. The most difficult step, one that I hadn’t prepared for. Getting past this door. I grabbed by bolt-cutters and started cutting through the rods. It was loud, but I didn’t have much choice.
After about twenty minutes of work, I finally made my way past them. I tried the door, and it was locked. Of course. I went about lockpicking this as well, another fifteen or so minutes of extensive trying before I finally heard a click.
I made my way inside. The smell was awful. It was odd that it didn’t leak through the door. I tried the light-switch, nothing. I shone my flashlight around the room and it was just as clean as the hallway. No blood, no bodies. Nothing.
But that smell persisted. I tried to follow the source and ended up at the door to the class storeroom. There was something engraved in some strange language on the wall. It looked sort of like old norse, but not quite. God, I wish I had taken a camera and gotten a picture. I tried this door, and to my surprise it was unlocked. I opened it and the smell overhwelmed my senses. Shining my flashlight into that room was a mistake. Decaying, rotten corpses. So many of them.
Who did this? How did they get away with it? I had to investigate further, but right then I had to get away from there. Before I was caught and silenced too. I quickly closed the door behind me and made my way back to the stairs, down to the first floor and back to the gate and my car. I left as fast as I could. I had found my answers, but was left with many more questions.
I’m going to find more answers.