Patrick pried off the plank across the front door of the schoolhouse with the ease of a gym bro. The bones of the old place groaned in protest. I was told the building was over 150 years old, but as the new kid, I was often the gullible victim of disinformation from pranksters. There was no sign saying it was a heritage house, but its dilapidated state spoke to its age. In the interest of your safety, dear reader, I’ll be vague about its whereabouts, because the building still stands, and its curse is supposedly real. All I’ll say is that it’s somewhere in the Canadian Maritimes. I won’t say which province it is. All I’ll say is that it was built in a meadow next to a small stream of fresh water.
John shoved me towards the doors with a snicker and a sneer. “Go on, then.”
“I-I don’t want to be first,” I stammered.
I remember that exchange of words clear as day, even though my memory of the conversation is stained with apprehension. I didn’t want to go into the schoolhouse. There was no police tape or signs asking us to keep out, but all the same, it felt wrong somehow. And at that point, I didn’t even know about the curse.
“Nevermind Johnny, she’s too chicken. I’ll go,” Patrick offered.
His girlfriend, Meg, chuckled as he brushed past me and pushed the door open. It’s hard to describe the smell that hit us then. It was an acrid odor of rot and mildew and a stuffy attic all rolled into one. It pushed into our little group as though the schoolhouse was an uncle with bad breath exhaling right in your face. I pulled my shirt collar over my nose. The other three just made faces.
I followed Patrick into the building – onto damp wooden planks that sunk a little under my weight. I could tell they were rotten, but they were just solid enough not to crumble underfoot. I had a feeling, however, that if I tried to punch them, my fist would go right through.
Inside the schoolhouse, it was like being transported through time. The large room was left abandoned, as though the students and teacher had fled in a hurry and never came back. The desks were still there – wider than what I was used to seeing, but also slightly lower to the ground. They looked uncomfortable, more like church pews than chairs, and since the desk part of each was attached to the back of the bench, servicing the students behind the one seated, it meant each student had to rely on the person in front of them not to move too much to have a stable work surface. It was a terrible design.
There were small chalk boards at almost every desk, slightly larger than a piece of paper. Some were shattered like mirrors, and a few rare ones were intact, if with moldy frames. Their chalks had long since dissolved, leaving not even a trace behind. As I walked up the aisle, I saw a stack of books bound together with a leather belt. The books looked bloated, and much like everything else here, were covered in spots of mold. Ahead of me was the professor’s desk. The bottom drawer was pulled open and inside was an old bird’s nest with its inhabitants long gone.
“Hey check this out,” John said.
I glanced up and saw him holding one of the chalkboards in his hands. The wooden frame crumbled slightly in his grip. He’d spray painted a pillar and stones on it, if you catch my drift. No surprise there; I’d seen him etch and doodle them everywhere in class when our teacher wasn’t looking. That’s just the kind of guy John was. Patrick was more the type to do that fancy S. You know the one.
While the others joked and chatted, I circled around the teacher’s desk and found the remains of a globe. There were a few spots of the map still clinging to the sphere, but for the most part, it looked like an alien landscape. There were continents of mildew forming a strange new world. It was almost beautiful, if it wasn’t so gross.
My attention was then drawn to the old iron stove right in the center aisle, likely used to warm the schoolhouse in the time before electricity. I knelt down in front of it, examining the grated door and what must have been another nest inside, when suddenly, the whole thing started to shake and I nearly jumped out of my skin. Was the schoolhouse about to collapse? I thought we were going to die.
Meg exploded into howling laughter. She let go of the stove and slapped me on the back. “Got youuuu! Oh my GOD, your FACE!”
I wasn’t amused, but I tried to hide it behind a forced smile and an insincere laugh. The trio might have been colossal jerks, but all the same, I was new and I needed friends. I lifted my hands defensively and replied, “You got me good!”
Internally, I wished I had the balls to just leave. And, considering what happened later, I really wish I had.
John took a not-super-structurally-sound seat at one of the desks and folded one leg over the other, tossing his jacket on the table in front of him.
John said, “Hey new girl!”
He knew my name; he just wanted to be a jerk.
I replied, “What?”
I caught a conspiratorial look between him and Patrick. Great. I knew I was in for some more hazing.
“We ever tell you about the curse? We must have, right?”
Patrick nodded. “I’m sure we did.”
Meg clapped her hands with excitement.
I searched my memories but came up empty. I replied with an uncertain shrug. John’s smile grew wider. It spread into a smirk. He got up from the bench and took me by the shoulders, gently but forcibly leading me to the front of the class. I didn’t notice at the time, but Meg and Patrick inched their way towards the exit. Not out the door, though. Not yet. Like they wanted to hear what John had to say.
“It’s funny business,” John said, shaking his head in feigned disapproval, “Real funny business. You wanna hear?”
I was already painfully aware I didn’t have a choice, but all the same, I nodded.
He let go of me and dodged a massive cobweb overhead as he backed away from the desk. I didn’t think much of it at the time – of the distance he was creating between us. I thought he needed room to gesticulate or something. I was so naïve, it hurts.
“C’mon Johnny, tell her,” Patrick prompted, in the whiniest of whiny voices.
John nodded to him and gestured to wait – to be patient. “You might want to sit down for this, new girl.”
I glanced at the teacher’s chair. It was mushy. There was no way I was sitting on it, or even leaning against anything in the room. The only things not speckled in mold was the iron oven and the blackboard behind me. And even those were dirty in their own ways. Dust and bird dropping and…no. Just, no.
“I’m fine, just tell me,” I said.
John inhaled sharply and began. Now, word for word, I couldn’t tell you exactly what John told me that night. He had a theatrical and long-winded way of spinning yarns. Tangents for the sake of tangents, unnecessary detail, inappropriate sexual innuendos, that kind of thing. Sometimes, I’d zone out and didn’t bother asking him to repeat himself. So, what I’m relaying to you is a Frankensteinian version of what he said, based on fragments of memories from that night, as well as the same story stitched together from other sources. But you’ll get the gist of it.
John started, “This schoolhouse used to be the only one for five townships. Kids would walk for hours every morning and evening to come here and learn. Because of this, it wasn’t uncommon for students to stop attending suddenly. Either they were needed at the farm or had to take care of their siblings, or their parents didn’t like how far they had to walk to come here. School wasn’t seen as a high priority back then.”
“You would have fit in great, Johnny!” Patrick teased from the front of the schoolhouse. This was when I finally noticed how far back they were.
John continued, “Shut up Pat. Anyways. My point is: no one batted an eye as the classes became thinner and thinner, until it was just the teacher and a few students. It’s not like nowadays, where everyone’s connected all the time. You might have known your neighbors a lot better back then, but news travelled slow, and no one realized the missing students weren’t back home working; they were dead. At least a dozen students. Dead. In the span of a few months.” He scratched his chin pensively, taking a few steps back.
I could feel a knot in my throat. Even though I told myself this was just a silly countryside legend, it was getting to me. My hairs were standing on-end. The creaky schoolhouse looked all the more sinister for it.
“See here’s the thing,” John said, as he gesticulated for the teacher’s blackboard. “Back then, it was the students that cleaned up after class. They didn’t have custodians or janitors or whatever. They’d clean the board and wash the windows and clear out the stove to ready it for the next morning. It took a while for them to notice the pattern – to realize that the dead students were always the last one to leave the schoolhouse at the end of the day.”
He took another two steps back. I was frozen in place, lost in the story. Too lost to see what was happening right before my very eyes.
“That’s the curse,” Meg said. She was outside now. Patrick was standing next to her.
John kept backing up. “The last person to leave the schoolhouse is doomed…doomed to die!”
He turned suddenly and sharply on his heels and bolted out the door before I even had a chance to blink. The door slammed shut behind him, leaving me alone in the schoolhouse with a flabbergasted expression painted on my face. It finally clicked that I’d been tricked. And while I gave no credence to the silly curse, I was overwhelmed by the fear of being trapped in the old school. I ran to the door and tried to push it open, but I felt resistance on the other side. John or Patrick was keeping it closed. Meg giggled wildly. She was probably peeing her pants with laughter. All while I pleaded to be let out. The room was growing stuffier and, in my struggle, the collar had fallen from my nose and now I could smell nothing but mildew. It was so strong, I could even taste it.
I heard a hammer hitting a nail, and realized they were boarding the door shut.
“No, no guys come on! You’ve had your fun! Come on, this isn’t cool. Please. I need to get back home,” I screamed, tears streaming down my cheeks. I don’t even know if they could hear me over their own laughter at my expense. It felt like I was being buried alive.
“See you tomorrow, new girl – if you make it!” John casually shouted.
Their laughs grew distant, and disappeared behind the thumping of my own heart as I smacked my arms into the mushy door. It might have been old. It might have been weakened by the mold, but it wasn’t budging. I couldn’t get out. And the more I panicked, the more I inhaled that stagnant air and imagined the walls of a coffin closing in around me. The panic was a vicious cycle that refused to let up. I don’t know how long I stood there, shaking and crying, begging them to come back for me. It was long enough for my voice to grow hoarse and for my body to feel completely drained.
Eventually, I peeled myself off the door and brushed moss and wet wood chips from my arms. And then I had a stroke of genius that made me feel like a dunce: my phone. I had my phone on me. Why I hadn’t thought of it sooner was anyone’s guess. I pulled it out of my pocket and made to call my parents, but found I had no signal. By this point, my stores of adrenaline were depleted, so instead of another round of panicked crying, I just stood there in stunned, numb silence.
Hopes of my so-called friends coming back for me faded as an hour ticked by. They’d said see you tomorrow, right? That meant they’d come back in the morning, right? But I didn’t want to spend the night in the creepy, old, abandoned schoolhouse. My feet were hurting from standing for so long, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit on scum, no matter how tired my legs.
I drowned out the sounds of the schoolhouse with music. I could still hear crackling of old walls here and there, and mysterious chittering from inside the roof that I hoped were squirrels, but the music put me a bit more at ease. The music couldn’t make me ignore the shadows, though, and how they looked like children slowly moving across the room. It couldn’t snuff out the growing fear that, if I just reached out to them, I’d feel something tangible rather than a shadow. It couldn’t erase the paranoia of thinking they were growing nearer and nearer, encircling me, until…
“Oh, you’re still here?”
John’s voice came from the back of the schoolhouse. From a little room I’d assumed was the teacher’s office. He looked confused, and dare I say, maybe even the slightest bit concerned for me?
I stammered, “Y-you locked me in.”
And he looked even more confused. He gestured to the room he was emerging out of, and then walked past me, to the desk he’d sat at earlier. “You do know there’s a door in the back, right?”
My stomach dropped. I don’t think I’ve ever in my life felt as stupid as I did then. A second exit. I didn’t even check to see if there was a second exit.
John picked up the jacket he’d forgotten on the desk. “We were just messing with you. I thought you knew?”
I’d love to say that I ran out ahead of him as some sort of malice; that I remembered the curse he talked about and wanted to give him a taste of his own medicine, forcing him to be the last one out. But the truth was, I’d forgotten all about the stupid story about the curse. I thought he was just trying to spook me so locking me into the school would be even scarier by extension. No, when I tell you that I ran out of there like a bat out of hell, it had nothing to do with revenge or not being the last one inside; it was animal instinct. It was terror guiding my feet away from that damned creepy place and into the fresh night air. I ran faster and for longer than I’ve ever run in my entire life. I ran until I got home and peeled my tainted clothes off and ducked under my covers.
So, was there a curse or not?
I don’t know. All I know is that John was a healthy guy, an athlete, twice my size, and yet, he was found dead of a heart attack the next day mere meters away from the back door of the schoolhouse.