Chapter Four: School Day
The doors opened like a mouth welcoming prey and Leah couldn't suppress a shudder than ran down her spine as her hand connected with the cool metal bar of the heavy weight door. She stepped inside and sniffed the air. It smelled slightly musty and Leah guessed it must've an older school, not newly built or anything. Navy blue carpeting scuffed against the bottom of her black boots. The school itself was fairly modern but nothing fancy by anyone's standards. She glanced around. There was a hall leading right past three rows of lockers, an office and a hall leading left which she could see led to the darkened gymnasium. Ahead of her, past the office were doors with small panels of narrow, vertical glass but the space within was too dark to make out what room it could be. Leah strained her ears to listen for any sounds.
Like the rest of the town, the halls were haunted with the sound of silence.
Leah made her way towards the office, which was close to the entrance and visible by the glass windows, which surrounded its outer perimeter. She shone her flashlight ahead but it beamed off the glass indicating only that she was going to have to get in closer for a look inside.
Leah peered into the window and saw cluttered desks and in the far back a nurses' office, nothing particularly useful but she found the idea amusing that the kids would've had to go through the tough guys on staff to get to the nurse. A small little smile played across her face, the first all night.
She stepped off to the right and tried the door, setting the stick to the side for only a moment. To her surprise the pine door opened easily with only the sound of the bottom sliding across the navy carpet. She hurriedly grabbed the stick and continued on. Once inside she could see the normal every day items that weren't out of place. One desk had two piles of papers, a calendar, and a coffee mug which said, "Drink Me." Then Leah spotted just what she'd been hoping for. A black, wire cord phone sat neatly on the edge of the desk opposite the coffee mug desk.
Leah's hand eagerly seized the phone and picked it up, wasting no time in jamming in the numbers for 911.
Silence.
"Hello?!… Anyone?!"
She hit the receiver a few times and silence still accompanied her. "Shit!" she cursed and threw the phone back down on the receiver. She missed and the phone bounced off then banged the side of the desk and proceeded to swing back and forth to an invisible rhythm. Leah set the flashlight on the desk and ran a hand through the front of her hair, pushing it away from her face while fighting off tears of frustration.
"Relax. Relax… that's just one phone…there may be another. Or maybe even a cell phone," her mind rationed. Leah sniffled slightly and grabbed the flashlight once more, prepared to head out until something caught her eye.
Her heart froze momentarily but her legs drew her closer to the item on the desk. On a desk, a bit further back was the same symbol seen at the altar. It was as if someone had just slapped it over the desk. It was drawn over papers and nothing under it had been fussed with in the process. This time, it indeed glowed red.
Leah stared at it for a long time and suddenly felt her legs backing up at the speed of light. "No. Not that again…not again…not again… "
She once more fixed the flashlight into the loop of her pants and threw the door open, nearly throwing herself back into the hall. She fought the urge to retch. Something about that symbol made her sick. It turned her stomach to sludge just looking at it.
"This is a school. Just what the fuck is something like that doing in a SCHOOL!?"
Leah took a moment to catch her breath and swallow, trying to calm the rising wave of fear that was threatening to overtake her.
"Leah…? Don't you remember?"
"Who's there?!" Leah demanded, looking up with wide, fearful eyes. The small, childish voice had caught her off guard and caused her heart to race a thousand miles within her chest. Before her stood the little girl. Both locked gazes and stared back at one another.
"Her again… " The little girl stood there as still as a doll, arms at her side, staring.
Leah took a cautiously step forward as if approaching a deer that would flee at the softest noise. "Who…are you…?" Leah asked softly, suddenly feeling oddly suspicious of the young child. The little girl stared at her, but not with fear: with contempt.
"Those sick symbols, her…what does this all mean?" her mind wondered. "And the voice I heard before, that wasn't her. It was a little boy's…"
"Is someone else here?" Leah tried again, trying to keep her voice even. The girl responded by staring some more. "Why won't she answer me?! Is she mute or something?!" Leah's mind screamed. She felt anger heat the blood in her veins. "Look, I don't know who you are but I want answers," Leah said firmly, feeling the tension and acid rise slowly in her voice like a volcano. The girl didn't seem phased. Her glassy brown eyes gave no indication that she was even vaguely aware of Leah's crumbling patience.
"NOW!!!" Leah screamed. The girl shook her head with her brown hair brushing against her cheeks and then turned and promptly jogged off down the gymnasium hallway.
"DAMNIT!!!" Leah cried before being forced to give chase once more. This time Leah felt a peed burn within her legs that she'd never before thought she could manage. Past the gymnasium, down the hall, open a door, pass lockers: a locker room. Leah hardly noticed. Her mind wasn't functioning. All that was left was the girl.
"Going to get her…answers… get her…"
Past stagnant, lonely showers. Through another door and then… pool.
Leah's boots skidded to a halt and she nearly found herself plunging face first into dark, stale water. Leah fell to one knee, feeling the force of the stench impregnate her nostrils until she was sure she'd be sick. Leah coughed and winced, backing away from the pool's edge while still on one knee. "Oh…my…"she trailed off in disgust. Her eyes lifted and ahead of her, at the other side of the pool she saw the girl. Her eyes locked on Leah as they always were.
Leah was about to ask just what the hell the girl wanted before she saw the girl plunge forward into the murky waters ahead of her, not once moving from her standing position, frozen like an ice statue. "NO!" Leah screamed and forced herself up, running around the side of the pool to where the girl had splashed in.
It was a mistake.
The moment she leaned forward to try and find any trace of the girl, she heard a terrible squeak and felt the all too familiar feeling of her feet leaving the ground. Skull cracking pain gripped her only momentarily as the front of her forehead connected with the square tiling of the pool's edge. She uttered something that was a mix of a groan and a whimper. Her vision wavered like a lava lamp and no thoughts would enter her mind. There was just pain. White hot pain and…sirens.
Sirens in the distance.
Leah tried to lift her head but the feeling of dizziness and pain crushed her like a wall coming down.
And then it was black.
A/N: You know what those sirens mean J
Reviews please. Lemme know how this is going.
As a side note: I wrote this listening to the SH1 music "Hear Nothing." It's great atmospheric music for reading this chapter or even if you write your own SH stories. I really recommend listening to it, especially if you're in the dark.