Screeches and moans echoed through the long, dark hallways of Bedford High School. Jessie brushed off her dark jeans. She had to climb in through a window at the back of the school left open by her friend Amanda. Jessie’s services weren’t exactly approved by school officials. Amanda, desperate to keep the school from closing, collected funds from other teachers and begged Jessie to take on the task. They don’t know what is in the school, only that teachers and students have been going missing.
The classroom Jessie climbed into was crammed full of desks and bookshelves. Bedford High was the only high school left in the county. Students had to be bussed in from up to an hour away to get a hope of an education. Jessie shoved her way past desks and chairs, making her way to the door.
Map in hand, she made her way toward the suspected location of the entity. Her footsteps echoed off of the lockers and walls. Stray chip bags and candy wrappers littered the floor. The school was in dire need of cleaning and repair but, much like the rest of the country since The Fall, workers and resources have become scares. Jessie wondered why they even bother to keep the school at all. An education just doesn’t go as far as it once did.
Amanda’s directions sent Jessie to the maintenance room at the back of the gymnasium. The gym was spacious and dark. The heat of the extended summer brought by The Fall turned the building in the sauna. Jessie crept her way toward the maintenance room. She turned on her flashlight to guide her way through the windowless room.
The door to the maintenance closet was slightly ajar. Jessie shone her flashlight through the gap, illuminating a small portion of the room. A water heater and a series of pipes. One pipe along the back wall had a red handkerchief tied around it. She pushed the door open farther. The room wasn’t large. Just enough space for the large water heater and a workbench.
The moment Jessie stepped inside the room, the temperature dropped. The sudden change stunned her for a moment. She was definitely in the right room. She looked around for clues of who or what she was dealing with. The workbench held basic tools; hammers, screwdrivers, an electric drill, a variety of screws, nails, and bolts. Across everything was a thick layer of dust. The room hadn’t been used in a while, despite school being in session.
The dust is disturbed from the door to a large ventilation hatch in the side wall. The markings look like something, or someone, had been dragged. There is no smell of sulfur or any other telltale sign of a demon. Likely a ghost then. An angry one if it is targeting the living. Jessie circled the room. Aside from the temperature, there is no other sign of the ghost. She needed to work quickly.
From her backpack, Jessie pulled out a vial of holy water, a jar of salt, and a bundle of sage. She poured the salt along the exits of the room; the door and a ventilation shaft. Then, she sprinkled the holy water into the corners of the room across the door and across the ventilation hatch, repeating a banishing prayer taught to her by Father Christi.
Next was the sage. It took a few tries to get the lighter to catch. Her fingers were getting numb from the cold and she could barely hold on to the small box. Finally, the flame ignited, but before she could light the sage bundle, the light blew out. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up at the sound of a low moan from behind her.
She turned and gasped at the sight of a large, partially transparent, and disfigured man. His clothes were tattered and his face appeared to be melting from the bone. He stepped toward her. Out of instinct, Jessie stepped back, stumbling over a bucket. She caught herself on the pipe with the handkerchief. The moment her hand touched the fabric, her mind was flooded with images.
She is standing inside the maintenance room. It looks different. Fuller than before. Two gas cans sit on the floor next to the work bench. Papers and manuals litter the workbench. A stack of boxes lines one wall. A man in a maintenance uniform stands next to the water heater, fixing a leak in one of the pipes.
The sounds of students running around the gym behind him. He looks back. Through the door, Jessie can see the students and two teachers. She recognizes some from the files Amanda sent her. Each of the students and teachers who went missing is in the gymnasium.
The students are yelling now. An argument over the game they are playing. The maintenance man chuckles to himself. Two students approach the door. The maintenance man has his back to the door and doesn’t notice them. One of the students has something in his hand, but Jessie can’t tell what it is.
He pulls a lighter from his pocket, putting the flame to whatever he is holding. A small firework. Smiling, he rolls the lit firework through the door, then closes it. The maintenance man notices it too late. The firework hits a canister of gas, causing an explosion before the room bursts into flames.
The flames spread quickly and the man is engulfed. He tries to open the door, but it won’t budge. Whether it’s stuck or the students are holding it, Jessie can’t tell. The sounds of the students are drowned out by the man’s screams. Jessie looks to the ceiling. She can see a fire sprinkler, but it doesn’t turn on.
Finally, the man manages to open the door, but it’s too late. He collapses through. The students and teachers watch in horror as the man burns to death. No one tries to help him. Jessie can’t see the two boys who lit the firework.
The memories faded and Jessie was once again standing in the unused maintenance room. The ghost of the custodian stood before her. A look of anger and sadness in his eyes.
“You took them for revenge,” Jessie said. The man nodded in affirmation. “Where are they?”
A guttural growl escaped his throat as he looked toward the ventilation hatch. Jessie took a step toward the hatch, but the man blocks her.
“What happened to you was horrible,” Jessie told him. “But this isn’t the answer.”
The man growled again. Jessie reached into her pocket, pulling out a small charm.
“I know you’re angry, but it was an accident. Those boys didn’t mean for this to happen. You need to move on.”
The man stepped toward her. Jessie stepped back in response and began reciting a prayer. The ghost was frozen in its place. Even with the protection charm, the banishing prayer took three recitations to work. The ghost disappeared, but the room remained freezing. The banishment was only temporary. The entire school would need to be cleansed, but she didn’t have time for that.
Working quickly, Jessie moved to the ventilation hatch. She used one of the screwdrivers on the workbench to remove the grate, then crawled inside. The shaft wound its way across the school before reaching a drop off. Jessie shone her flashlight down the drop. She could see the floor below. The fall would hurt, but she could manage.
She dropped down, bracing her legs at the impact. Pain shot through her shins and knees, but she ignored it. She was in the basement of the school. The stale air and thick layers of dust told her this part of the school wasn’t used often.
Sweeping her flashlight beam in front of her, Jessie crept her way around stacks of boxes and broken furniture. She made her way to the far wall of the room where she found a shocking, but relieving sight. The missing students and teachers sat close together on a pile of cardboard. Alive, but in urgent need of medical attention. Some had been missing for weeks at that point.
“Helps us, please.” A teen girl, the most recent to go missing, pleaded with Jessie.
“I’ll get you out of here,” Jessie responded. She looked around for a way out. Small windows lined the tops of the walls. They would have to do.
She searched the room for a ladder. Failing to find one, she moved to the piles of old desks and chairs. Piling the furniture against the wall, she made a sketchy, but climbable, stack. Using a metal bar she found in one of the stacks, she broke out the blocks of the window.
One by one, she helped the captives escape into the school yard. Just as she was making her own way up the stack, she felt the temperature in the room drop.
“Run,” she shouted to the group. She dared not look behind her. She could feel his presence. He was getting closer. Jessie threw herself through the window, scraping her leg on a jagged piece of the rusted window well as she climbed out.
She didn’t know how far across the grounds he could reach. She just knew they had to get off of the property. “Get to the gas station and call for help.”
The group made it to the gas station across the street. When they were safely off the property, Jessie turned toward the school. She couldn’t see him at first. Then, in an upstairs window, she saw the glowering, disfigured face of the maintenance man. He wasn’t going down without a fight.
The fight would have to wait. The school was too big for Jessie to cleanse on her own. Jessie left before the cops and ambulance arrived. Even after The Fall, people refused to believe in the presence of ghosts and demons. People like Jessie had to work in secret, but things were only getting worse.
She would be back once she had help, if she could find it. Hunters like Jessie were few and far between, and partners were hard to come by. She glanced at the talisman on her desk. Given to her by Michael when she first encountered him six months prior. She had yet to use it.
It was still too much for her, asking for help from an angel. No, she still had friends left in the game. They could handle a simple ghost. But something felt off to her about the ghost. He had returned too quickly after the banishing prayer. She thought she knew all she needed to about ghosts and demons. Something strange was going on. She needed answers.
Messages for help and an email to Amanda sent, she patched up her leg and went to bed. She had a feeling this was only the beginning.
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Alicia Coast 