Ms Robinson had always been…eccentric. You wouldn’t notice at first; her wavy brown hair, grey eyes and radiant smile usually set people at ease when they saw her, but sooner or later her quirky nature would always give in.
“Her name is Gertrude, his name is Herbert, and would you please stop flirting with Ruby over there Samuel? You have a boyfriend.”
Seem ordinary? It does, doesn’t it? Until you realize that Gertrude’s the name of the back wall of our classroom, and Herbert is the ceiling. Ruby’s our resident leftie, if you’re wondering. Not my fault there was only one seat available that day.
Most parents would’ve killed to have her removed. Most parents are idiots. Ms Robinson was fun, energetic, and one of the best teachers I’d ever had. You’d be hard-pressed to find another teacher with such a passion for their subject as Ms Robinson, which only further cemented her abilities as a more-than-competent teacher.
Which was one of many reasons I’d always chosen to ignore the less funny facets of her teaching regimen. Such as the near-obnoxious amounts of perfume that was constantly being sprayed around the classroom. You couldn’t enter the place without at least one tear rolling down your cheeks. When I asked her what it was, she just said that the janitorial staff were testing out new cleaning products.
“And they couldn’t have done it in a classroom that wasn’t being used?” I asked, strapping my face mask on.
“Common sense isn’t as common as you might expect,” she muttered, obviously displeased. “You’d think they’d learn the first time.”
When I turned back to ask her what the hell that meant? Ninja-disappearing trick. Never gets old, until it does. And with Ms Robinson, it got old fast. Like, ‘this is the hundredth time this week!’ kind of fast. Every time I tried to ask her about the smell, or the creepy groans, she just vanished.
Oh, I didn’t mention the creepy groans? They happened when I was alone, or when the class was actually silent. Sometimes, when we were really bored and the teachers were out, we’d tell them to shut up or groan back. That usually made them quiet down.
Or, at least, they used to. Now…I’m not so sure. Now, I think I’m noticing patterns that I never knew of before. Strange patterns. I didn’t even notice it at first, until one of my friends pointed it out for me.
“Hey, you haven’t seen Annie at school lately, right?” Stephanie asked, fiddling nervously. My brows furrowed. I hadn’t, actually. Annie and I weren’t close or anything like that, but it was weird of her to skip school for two weeks straight. Even weirder was the fact that, when we checked, nobody knew what was happening.
Apparently, her parents packed up and left in the break or something. We got a new student though. Mark. Ms Robinson had Marky seated to the far back of the classroom, saying that Annie would like the company.
Sometimes I can’t believe how stupid I was. Maybe it was the fact that I’d known Ms Robinson for so long. It felt impossible to me that she might be anything other than good. I keep trying to tell myself it wasn’t my fault. I was a child, trying to survive my high school years.
But that doesn’t stop the memories. It doesn’t stop the pain, the guilt, the shame. It doesn’t stop me from curling up into a ball every time I remember it, screaming until the sounds fade away and the only thing I hear is my own pitiful sobbing.
There’s a storage room in my school that nobody goes to. People say it’s haunted or something, and that’s why everyone, even the janitors, stay far away from it. My friends thought it would be funny if I were to stay back in school.
Obviously, I wasn’t too pleased with the prospect of spending what could’ve been a productive/fun night in the Hellscape we call our second home, but the five thousand bucks they threw in helped sweeten the pot.
The plan was simple. While everyone else left the school, I’d be hanging back in the storage room until six in the morning, at which point I’d head out using my friend’s key (long story that we really don’t have time for). My parents were out of town so it would be fine.
“Careful. I heard there’s ghosts down there,” Jack joked, handing me a bottle of water before he left. I downed it in one gulp.
The storage room was surprisingly comfy, to be perfectly honest. Sure, a little cold, but nothing like I expected. Best of all was the smell, or lack thereof. After spending years being assaulted by ridiculous amounts of perfume, it was a welcome change. I plugged in my earphones and waited to fall asleep, my alarm already set for 6 AM.
It was midnight when I heard the scratching. I tried to ignore it at first. Maybe a cat or something got in? I couldn’t do anything about that, so I just tried my best to fall back to sleep. I failed, and ended up doing a few stretches when I heard something else. Something darker.
“Sam?”
Her voice was distant, and yet so close I could feel her breath on my nape.
“Annie?”
I sat there, waiting for a reply. Possibilities rolled through my mind. A prank? Possible, but unlikely. My friends had a 5-mile radius policy set as soon as school ended. Maybe they put some kind of timed recording?
I looked around the storage room. The place was spartan. Nowhere you could hide a recorder. I sighed, and turned on my phone flashlight. For a moment the light burned into my retina, and I stood against the wall, dizzy and blind.
A few moments passed, and when the spots in my vision began to clear, I felt vertigo hit me like a freight train on steroids. The room had become narrower? Or longer? I wasn’t sure, but something was wrong. I staggered forward, and the room twisted again.
I kept walking, trying my best to make sense of this strange spatial anomaly. Using my phone as a flashlight, I managed to navigate the corridors. I’d have time to wonder what the hell this was about later. Right now, I needed to find a way out.
“Samuel…”
“Sammy?”
“Sam!”
The words kept echoing in the back of my head. I screwed them shut, trying to focus. But it wasn’t working. The world kept turning and changing around me. Sometimes I saw hands crawling out of the walls. Sometimes they came from the floor. Some were skeletal, others were made of decaying flesh and blood.
What was happening?
I must’ve walked for hours. No, tens of thousands of hours. But the nightmare showed no sign of ending. Would I be trapped here forever? Would I never get to see sunlight again, or tell my parents I loved them?
I got my answer when the storage room door opened.
“Samuel?” Ms Robinson asked breathlessly. “What do you think you’re doing?”
I couldn’t answer. I just fell to the ground, too tired to say anything.
When I woke up, the doctors said I’d hallucinated. Apparently my ‘friends’ had drugged me with some kind of hallucinogen, and that’s what caused my hallucinations. I fainted because I’d spent three hours walking in the same room. I’d crashed into the wall at least twice.
The water bottle, I realized.
The rest of the school year was as normal as ever, except my parents freaked out and grounded me for life. That was years ago.
I’m 25 now, and this story had never been of particular importance to me until now. I mean, sure, it’s fun to say at parties: hey, did you know I got drugged that one time? And you thought your story about sharks was scary!
But now, now I don’t want to think about it at all. I thought those voices had been hallucinations. I was wrong. A few weeks ago, the school was being renovated for something. One of the workers apparently fainted on the spot when he saw what was behind one of the walls.
Kids. Hundreds of kids. Some were nothing more than skeletons now. Others were rotting and decayed. And you want to know the worst part? Some of them were still alive. Theirs’ were the most horrifying faces I have ever seen.
The chemicals had been the school’s way of stopping the smell and infections. Those voices? The kids, trying to cry out for help. The walls were thin enough that they could speak, but judging by the state they were in, even breathing would’ve been difficult.
The police still aren’t sure how the hell they did it. Whatever it was, it was designed so that nobody would ever figure it out. Some of the kids weren’t even from our town. All of them matched missing case reports from the last fifty years, ranging from our town all the way to…I don’t even know.
Gertrude Gilbert.
Herbert Jennings.
Annie Myers.
The police have no suspects. No leads. Ms Robinson is gone, along with the rest of the faculty. I have no idea how this hasn’t made national news yet. I’m afraid it never will. Nobody likes to admit when they make mistakes, and trusting Ms Robinson was the greatest mistake of all