Mister Haddock was always my least favourite teacher in Grade Ten. Balding, stoved-faced little man with a ratty ponytail behind his near naked pink skull. He was the only teacher I never saw smile or laugh, even around other teachers or adults. He was never even nice when parents came to visit – never had that put-on warmth most teachers do. With his diminutive stature and small miserable face, he looked like one of the seven dwarves from Snow White, if one of the seven dwarves were a closet alkie. He’d never let you go to the bathroom during class, whether it was an emergency or not, even if you were a girl. And if you requested an extension for an assignment – whether it was because you were sick, someone in your family had died, or you had to be excused for your soccer or football game – he would just respond with, “No” and “That’s tough.” As you can imagine, I wasn’t the only kid at John Haggert High School who harboured a grudge for the surly little troll of the JH High science department.
What really made the situation worse was that Mister Haddock taught science, a class in which I had to excel if I wanted to pursue my postsecondary dream of studying to become a veterinarian. Cliché, I know, but I’ve always loved animals and wanted desperately to understand and help them as best I could. That was another sticking point between Mister Haddock and I; he refused to give good marks no matter how hard you tried or how well you followed his instructions. “When you give me something good enough to get an A in university, I’ll give you an A,” he’d groan, his tired refrain to any nagging student. Like that was a reasonable bar to set for a high school junior or freshmen. Just my luck, Mister Haddock also taught Grade Eleven biology, another necessary course on my journey to guiding sick and dying pets into the afterlife.
And that’s another thing about Mister Haddock that bothered me; he clearly hated his job. I’d always planned on becoming a teacher as a back-up plan, especially since I’d always loved school. I was always on the honour roll, on at least three school teams, in multiple clubs, elected student rep for each grade I was in until making school president in Grade Twelve and would later be valedictorian. But Mister Haddock always acted like he’d rather be doing anything other than teach at our school. Like this job was somehow beneath him. Just for context, John Haggert High School is in the Meadowville neighborhood of Aakoziwin, the safest city in Ontario and one of the safest places in all of Canada – which would put in running for safest metropolitan area on the planet. It’s a bustling suburban town with lots to do, especially being so close to Toronto. Our school is neck and neck with Caramel Mountain Secondary for national reputation and university acceptances. We have one of the best hockey teams, one of the best arts and music programs, and are among the top performers in math and literacy. Our building is the typical squat, two-floor, lengthwise cinderblock affair, but our hallways are adorned with gorgeous wall murals painted by the arts students, festooned with colourful and accurate dioramas of the Globe Theatre, Greek coliseums, and DNA models. So why did Mister Haddock act like he was stocking the shelves at a grocery store? Why did he treat us like we were all riffraff, as my Uncle John would say?
The last straw that broke this camel’s back came when he docked me ten percent for being two days late on an assignment. My grandmother was in the hospital from a massive stroke, which is what caused me to be late. My mother had made sure to call reception to explain the situation on the very first day I was away from school. And even after I provided him with two letters, one from my parents, the other from the hospital, and even though all my other teachers accepted my homework without penalty, Mister Ian Warren Haddock refused to budge.
“Look,” he grunted, visibly cornered behind his particleboard desk, me standing before him with hands on hips, pleading my case. Demanding an explanation. “Look, I’ve already imputed the mark into the database and sent it out to the department head. I can’t change it right now. It’ll make me look bad.”
I could feel my eyes grow moist. How could he do this to me? Me! Jennifer Wang Li, Grade Ten student rep and future saviour of all furry four-legged creatures!
Feebly, without meeting my misty gaze, he mumbled, “At least your gran’s alive, right? Isn’t that all that matters?”
Using my grandmother stroke against me? Trying to browbeat me away from demanding what was mine by guilting me into not appreciating my own family?
At this, I didn’t yell, didn’t storm off. Didn’t even bother complaining to my parents or the principal’s office. Instead, I coolly sat down at my lab table, and began plotting my petty revenge against Mister Haddock.
I knew all about the pranks kids pull on their teachers. The homemade stink bomb. The head in the jar. The dreaded toothpick in the door lock. I wasn’t about to bother with anything as cute or clever. During the lunch period, when I knew Mister Haddock was two kilometres away having a smoke near Meadow Woods Park, I would creep into the lab and simply swipe all his test papers and homework. I knew he wouldn’t bother keeping them secure, and even with the gas valves, there was a good chance the dope would leave the laboratory unlocked (he’d done so several times before).
In so many ways, it would be the perfect revenge; he’d have to admit to leaving the room unsupervised and unsecured, going against school policy and regulation, landing him in hot water with the office. Maybe even resulting in his eventual termination. And, when he asked the students to redo the test, someone would eventually complain to the school or a parent, resulting in him admitting that he’d lost the test papers, which would likewise get him in trouble – or at least so I figured at the time. He’d know what it was like to be punished for something that was not his fault. At least, not exactly his fault. To have every excuse in the world, only for each of them to fall on stone-deaf ears. It was perfect. I just had to be careful; I knew there were cameras in the hallways, but as far as I could tell, there was no surveillance in the classrooms themselves.
I snuck inside the unmanned lab at a quarter past noon. With the lights out and in the scant fluorescent glow bleeding in from the hallway through the open door, the lab looked almost eerie: the long tables, eye wash station, beakers, tongs and burners redolent of the abode of Doctor Jekyll in the movies. As though the lab were in preparation of some macabre, unnecessary surgery. But maybe that was just my imagination running away with me. I crept toward Mister Haddock’s desk. Sure enough, there were the unguarded test papers, lain plainly on the blotter.
Armed with the papers and loads of time before the vodka-reeking deadbeat returned, I felt compelled to poke around. Perhaps I’d find a pack of smokes or a micky of cheap rye lying around, getting Mister Haddock into some real trouble.
My curiosity piqued, I rounded the corner at the back and entered the supply closet, placing the test papers to the side. It was where they kept the textbooks, beakers, bunsen burners, and items meant to be hidden from teenage eyes. But no matter how hard I squinted or how furiously I rummaged through the boxes and bins, there were no incriminating objects for me to find. Not even a single cigarette butt.
I was about to turn and leave with my pillaged bounty when I spotted the slightest of movements out of the corner of my eye. Startled, I held my breath and jumped a bit before peering harder to the back of the closet. There, the slight movement, or trick of the light remained, just perceptible in the dark little room. It was so slight – a dribbling motion, that at first my brain registered a lava lamp. But that didn’t make sense; why would there be a lava lamp in a science lab? Much less one plugged in on a storage closet shelf.
I advanced further to inspect what lay at the back and that’s when I saw it. The most eldritch or horrors, like something straight from a pulp magazine. It was a two-foot anatomical model, showing the muscles and internal organs from the small intestine to the eyeballs. A jarring sight to begin with, but this particular model – it was bleeding. I mean, actively bleeding, pulsating with blood that dripped from red crevices and apertures, staining the beige metal platform on which it stood. My mind whirled at the sickening visual before me. How could that be? Wasn’t the model made of silicone? Not flesh or bone, surely. Unbelieving, I examined the ghastly little model, looking around to find some sort of power cord – certain this was some optical illusion or trick of the light. No such luck. As best I could tell, this was nothing but a regular artificial figurine. No means of moving – or in this case bleeding – on it own.
At my wits end to try and explain this thing before me, adrenaline barrelling through my veins, I deigned to touch the scarlet flow coming off it, getting some it on my fingertips. The wet sensation was enough to flip my stomach, but when I brought the smeared fingers to my nose, I discovered the unmistakable metallic odour of blood. It was real. As real as it could be. I looked down and saw the dark liquid begin to drip over the shelf’s edge onto the floor. Numb from scalp to chin, I peered back up at the vinaceous, pulsating face, at the fake blues eyes stuck to the front of the skull. The eyes which had somehow remained uncovered by the pouring crimson. They had been staring blindly away from me, but then, at that very moment, they came alive and swivelled around to glare at me. I shrieked before turning and fleeing from the lab, leaving Mister Haddock’s papers on the shelf where I’d lain them.
That night I couldn’t sleep. And the next day I couldn’t eat. Couldn’t chat with my friends or join them at any of our clubs. I just couldn’t get the image of that bleeding anatomical model out of my mind’s eye. And I couldn’t quiet the questions racing through my bewildered brain – those compelling echoes dinning off the inner walls of my skull. How could a silicone model’s inner working cause it to bleed like that? Or appear to bleed? Why did the fluid smell so unmistakably like blood? Why did I only see it bleeding like that after class had been dismissed? In the name of God, why was something like that in the science lab at all?
Resolved on getting to the bottom of this, I first had to be sure that what I saw wasn’t a mere figment of my imagination. To prove I wasn’t going crazy, I recruited my friend Jacqueline to come along with me the next lunch break, when Mister Haddock had gone out for his smoke. Having not been told the exact reason for sneaking into the science lab, Jackie giggled as I towed her along, inferring in whispers that our secret mission was owing to a crush I wanted to impart on her away from prying eyes and ears.
But when we arrived, the lab was closed. The yellow on gray stainless-steel doors were shut, the wooden door stop lying on the floor, discarded. I tried the handles, but it was no use. The hygienic doors wouldn’t budge. Mister Haddock hadn’t bothered locking up the lab since early September. Did he notice his test papers had been moved and got spooked?
Of course, Jacqueline balked at my expense, demanding I just tell her what this was all about. She then grew petulant when I insisted it was nothing, refusing, in her mind, to include her in what she was certain was a juicy bit of gossip.
We were then startled by a gruff voice growling behind us: “You two better move along.”
Startled out of our skin, we both spun on our heels, finding the groundskeeper, Mister Fanu, standing before us. He’d come up on us without a sound. He was a short compact man with a shapeless face behind black framed spectacles, today wearing his usual navy-blue coveralls. From his tan leather weightlifter’s belt hung a ring of what looked to be a thousand keys, like a silvery fist by his waist.
“You shouldn’t be hanging out here now,” he grunted, his voice hoarse and low like dead leaves in the wind. He then proceeded into the mantra of all on or off duty school employees patrolling the halls, telling us to either go to the Caf or outside until the next bell. Neither intimidated or especially servile, Jacqueline droned her acquiescence and shuffled off without me, rolling her eyes before getting completely out of sight. Still with some resolve for my mission, I lingered. But what remained of my gumption withered under Mister Fanu’s icy parental stare.
But as I walked away, I noticed out of the corner of my eye that the janitor had not departed the hallway. He was standing on the spot like a sentry, presumably watching me go. As if he were guarding the lab. The hairs on the back of my neck sufficiently stood on end, I turned around, finding that he was not staring after me, but rather facing the laboratory doors, as though waiting to be let in. Lastly, I noticed his hands, which were wringing and wiping themselves on a dirty black rag. On his hands, unmistakably, was a shiny, visibly wet red liquid. Blood?
Terrified, fixated, but nonetheless afraid of being spotted, I turned the corner into the adjacent stairwell. But instead of descending the steps to the main floor, I waited. When I returned to the hallway, poking my head out but not my torso from around the corner, I saw that one of the doors to the lab was ajar, and the lights within were now on. Mister Fanu was no longer there.
On rubbery legs, I inched over to the cracked door and peered inside. Squeezing myself in, first my head then shoulders then one limb at a time, I felt my heart thundering in my chest, expecting at any moment to be pulled aside by an irate Mister Haddock who would proceed to chide me. But instead, all I found was the empty, brightly lit room, and a maddening odour assaulting my nostrils.
It was the common coppery smell of blood from before but now fetid and miry like a century-old field of cow manure. Like something excreted not from anything as natural as cattle or other livestock but from something otherworldly. From something evil.
I pinched my nostrils and breathed through my nose but that hardly worked to stymy the eldritch stench. But now my senses were alerted to another disturbance, a bizarrely pleasant sound issuing from the supply closet. The sound of waves. Reminding me of my last summer vacation at Myrtle Beach, I heard the distinct lapping of waves crashing onto a sandy shore. Oh sure, it might have just been from a video or an audio file, but something about the enormity and clarity of the sound was indisputably real. I then had tinnitus in my left ear, and had to steady myself on one of the workbenches from a palpable loss of equilibrium. It was as though I’d suddenly become sick. Or as if I’d been transferred from reality into a dream. It was then that I realized the sound of the waves was no longer emanating from the closet, but was all around me, churning around my head, sending me into a dizzy spell.
The putrid, rust smell was now overwrought, and again, Mister Fanu was nowhere in sight. The crashing of the waves was then intermingled with a shrieking sound. It was small at first then swelled to a piercing wail. It wasn’t female or even human. Yes…Yes, I was certain it was an animal’s cry. Like a horse whinnying. Yes, exactly like the sound a horse would make. The voice was pained and sorrowing, as though the beast of burden were being whipped or driven into the ground. It was so terrible – so pitiful that my throat seized up and my heart ached. My mind throbbing from the assaulting soundscape swirling around – or perhaps inside – my head, I staggered toward the supply closet, grasping at stools and bench tables as I did so to not plummet to the floor. As I did, I wondered if this was what it was like to be on drugs.
I was just about to reach my hand out for the steel door handle, when all at once the encircling cacophony stopped, leaving a deafening quiet over the room. Backpedalling, tinnitus still in one ear, I regained my balance and stood up straight, standing stationary until a sudden crash from behind me – like a stool being knocked over – sent me flying out of the room and down the hallway to the stairwell. I was so terrified – so confused – I ran home without asking for leave, resulting in a two-day suspension. I was informed by one of the vice principals that if I was suspended again, I’d lose my student rep seat. But that would be the last of my troubles.
After being allowed back in school, I discovered my science class was moved to another room. Also, I never saw Mister Haddock again. First, there were a string of substitute teachers, some subbing internally from the science department – like Mister Abruzzo who taught Grade Twelve physics. Some were unfamiliar faces. All of them assigned nothing but work straight from the textbook or divvied out worksheets two or three grades below us. But eventually, much to the relief of my hovercraft, high-expectation-laden parents, we were assigned a full-time teacher, Miss Goldman, after the Christmas Break. Miss Goldman was young, energetic, and very knowledgeable. Most of my class was very happy to have her – especially as a replacement to gin-reeking Ian Haddock. Conversely, I was bricked up with anxiety, ruminating fretfully on what had happened to him. Had he really been let go? Was this somehow my fault? Or did it have something to do with that bleeding anatomical model I’d found in the supply closet? The one that had been replaced by another far less gory silicone figurine and had not been seen since that fateful day? And on what on earth was the cause of all those noises I’d heard the last time? What did those have to do with Haddock or the bleeding model?
Worse was that sound I heard that had cut through the muffling waves. The sound of the whinnying horse, the torment and desperation plain in that voice. I know this won’t make sense to you reading this, but the sound haunted me. Made me tear up every time I thought of it. The thought that something so cruel could be happening to animal here at JH High – just, just drove me insane.
Eventually, either driven by guilt for Mister Haddock’s firing or the compulsion seeded by that hideous apparition, I went to visit the science department office. But as it turned out, they had meant to speak to me.
Mister Schmeling, the head of the science department who taught Grade Eleven Chemistry, told me he’d been waiting for me when I arrived. This was a bit unnerving since I’d never had a class with him and also owing to the fact that he had neither a warm nor jocular demeanour. Bald and bespectacled with tufts of iron-grey around his ears, a rotund physique and wobbling gait, he reminded most students of a cartoon villain than an approachable teacher. He motioned me to an empty seat with a curt nod of his head.
“So, Jennifer, dear,” he began in his ice-box timbre. “I’ve been meaning to speak with you for some time.” He then began to plow through the typical teacher questions, usually reserved for guidance councillors during one-on-one consultations.
He then got to the meat of the conversation. “It’s come to my attention recently that you’ve been going into the Grade Ten science lab by yourself after lesson periods. I hope that that isn’t true.”
Frozen in my seat on the concrete-hard plastic chair, a creeping fear waxing down my head to my nape, I said nothing and made no motion with my head or shoulders. I even kept my hands still inside my lap.
Relieving me of his glacial blue stare, Mister Schmeling clucked his tongue.
“I suppose you might have seen something which you shouldn’t have,” he said. My neck now a bed of bristled hairs. “Some test papers, perhaps? Some student progress reports Mister Haddock left lying around?”
I squinted hard and tilted my head. Another suspension or even expulsion for snooping around was the very least of my worries. What was this? A fishing expedition? Or a veiled threat?
Mister Schmeling carried on: “Perhaps you saw something in the supply closet? Something that startled you? Caused your imagination to run away with you?” My eyelids peeled back inside my skull, the whites bulging from the sockets. He knew. He scanned me over, a look that was not lustful but hungry and searching, making my skin crawl. “Did you tell anyone what you saw?” he asked after a long pause. For the first time I answered him, shaking my head feverishly from side to side, my hair tremulous, strands slapping around my chin. Mister Schmeling pulled back into his swivel chair, the metal spine creaking, evidently pleased with my answer. His furry stubs for fingers laced across his ample abdomen. “If other people learned about what you think you saw, we’d have no choice but to suspend you for violating school safety regulations. Or worse. You wouldn’t want that would you? Being such a serious and hardworking student? No, I didn’t think so, my dear. So, since you’ve been so good and we’d hate for you to get behind in your studies, this’ll just be our little secret. Okay, dear?”
And so concluded the bizarre saga of Mister Haddock and the bleeding anatomy model in the science lab. I never found out the exact cause of Haddock’s dismissal, though the school used the usual cryptic phrasing of him moving on and finding work elsewhere. Some kids told me they saw him in one of the local pubs around Lakeshore, testing out a few concoctions of Ocean Spray and Absolut.
I haven’t told anyone about what I saw, as per my agreement with Mister Schmeling. At least, I haven’t until now. Perhaps he’s right; maybe my imagination simply ran away from me that fateful afternoon alone in the supply closet. But then why swear me to secrecy? What did he care what I told people I saw? Why was that laboratory never used again and was all but boarded up? That being said, I would still see red speckles and smears of blood on Mister Fanu’s hands and coveralls some days, I would still sometimes catch a whiff of something coppery and fetid in the hallways, and every so often, I would hear the uncanny crashing of waves, accompanying by the strangled whinnying of a horse, emanating from the now empty Grade Ten science lab.