I can still remember the day my school building went up in flames, even though it took place over twenty years ago.
It was the wrenched ghost's fault. Always playing tricks; blowing people down the long stairway, knocking over their textbooks, tricks like that.
But this time, he took it too far.
We were in the middle of science when the smoke alarm went off. We all lumbered outside, thinking of the usual fire drill we had.
We were wrong.
The minute I stepped out of the room, acrid smoke filled my lungs, making me cough and cough. We stumbled down the hall, which was now engulfed with flames, and hurtled down the steps, trying to reach the daylight. We burst into the fresh air, gasping, panting, wheezing.
We all heard the blare of the fire trucks, but they came too late. When they arrived, our building collapsed, burying half of the grade.
Over 3 million dollars worth of stuff was lost; bags, books, phone, and no one hadn't lost a good friend.
Less and less people applied their children to come to the school, so the steady stream of children walking around campus slowed down to a trickle, which finally stopped.
The school had to close down, but people sneak in once and a while; no one knows, no one cares.
20 years after the ordeal, I still come; sift through dust and rubble to find lost treasure, try to imagine how the buildings used to look.
But when you look towards one building in particular, Castle Hall, if you look hard enough, the ghostly outline of a girl, one of the victims, will appear out of the rubble. And if you listen hard enough, you just might hear the laughing of two people; the joyful laughing of the girl moments before she died, and the ghost, moments before he burned the building to ashes.