CHAPTER 8: School Is In Session
The path to the schoolhouse was shorter than the path to Home Sweet Home, and Alex found himself standing there sooner than he'd liked. Despite the cheery colors, like everything else, the school looked very uninviting. Child sized chairs, papers, and the remains of toys sat scattered around, and all the bright colors were dulled by a layer of dust and grime that had settled on the primary color palette.
"Okay, it's just a schoolhouse... nothing more," Alex muttered to himself. "Just so long as Catnap doesn't follow me."
Inserting the key, he unlocked the double doors. Just inside the entryway, he was greeted with another staircase heading down. Like Home Sweet Home, the modest schoolhouse he could see was nothing more than a facade. The only difference was the sharp angles of the stairway. No gentle curves like in Home Sweet Home.
At the bottom of the stairs, Alex entered into a typical-looking school hallway. An extremely messy school hallway with discarded backpacks laying all over, desks pushed into the halls, even the lockers looked like they'd been used as punching bags. Lots of posters decorated the walls, most of them showing the cartoon forms of the critters participating in school activities, denoting rules or reminding the kids to keep learning. One showed who Alex figured was Dogday in a poster proclaiming, "Reading is Fun."
"Hmm he seems friendly," he thought. "I wonder… what happened to him? Bubba said Picky just vanished, but she wasn't hiding far away from them. If they'd wanted to look, they could have found her. What happened to him? He's their leader so shouldn't he be with them?"
These musings were interrupted by the ringing of his phone. Alex picked up and Bubba's panicked voice screamed out.
"I was wrong! Turn around, get out of there!"
"Bubba, what's wrong? Why do-"
"Don't ask! Get o- OH NO!"
Alex turned to see a big metal security gate slam down behind him, closing off his escape!
"Bubba, what's going on?!"
"I thought she was dead! I thought they were all dead! Wait! No….No! She's cutting off my access to the cameras!" Then in an annoyed tone to the computer screen. "Admin codes required? I AM THE ADMIN!" The elephant huffed, though his voice carried a lot of static. "Alex, I'm sorry! I thought that-"
CLICK
The line went dead and suddenly the intercom crackled to life and a woman's voice spoke.
"This is Miss Delight, with a friendly reminder that students are to not make use of electronic devices during school hours!" came a too cheerful voice.
Alex couldn't help but freeze as the voice spoke. Memories of a certain crazy pink spider returned to him. He didn't speak. Above the fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, occasionally sending the hallway into darkness. The silence was deafening before the cheery voice spoke again.
"Welcome to class! Hmmm you are a bit older than most of the students here, but no worries, I'm sure you'll fit right in!"
"Yeah.. uh… whoever you are, I'm just here to turn the generator on and leave," Alex said to the voice, hoping they could hear.
No response came.
"Hmmph great. Well, I don't have time for this," he said to himself, shaking off the nerves that still clung to the corners of his mind.
He turned to the nearest doorway and pushed into a dark and dimly lit classroom. This room seemed to be a music classroom given the piano in the center of the room. Child sized tables and chairs lay scattered everywhere, one of the doorways leading into this room had a large desk pushed against it, and lots of trash littered the floor. The room's lighting was dark, save for the single light in the middle of the room, and lights from the windows that faced the "front" of the school.
"I'm sure, even as a kid, if I saw windows like this, I wouldn't believe it," Alex murmured to himself, looking through a shattered window and poking the fake bush-sized tree. It was clear these windows were meant to look more realistic than a fancy spotlight behind a frosted glass window, but the illusion still fell flat.
Looking around the room, he saw a new kind of poster. This one had a cartoon human on it and read out a couple rules for children to follow. The human, though, was what Alex focused on the most. She looked like a typical old-time teacher; long skirt, older style shirt, pointing stick to tap on the chalkboard. She wouldn't look out of place if she was teaching in a one-room schoolhouse. But there was something off with her and Alex focused on it right away; it was the smile. A big, huge toothy smile that looked far too big and too overly friendly to be genuine. The critters all had unnatural looking smiles but then again, they weren't meant to look like humans.
"I know that a smile is supposed to be welcoming, but God… did the people designing the characters not understand subtly? If she smiled any bigger, she'd be all teeth," he thought with a shudder.
It was then that he saw a piece of paper with neat and even script written on it. No way this was a child's writing, it had to belong to an adult. He picked it up and began to read it.
"Just a few weeks ago was the Hour of Joy. Today there is only silence in this school. I don't think any of us here know what to do with it. The hallways without the children carry even the smallest sounds as if they were shouts. The other teachers and I startle each other constantly. We'll have to get used to it. Something locked the front door this morning. We haven't been able to open it."
"The Hour of Joy? Is that what this event was?" Alex wondered as he sat the note back down on the piano's seat.
A search around the room revealed nothing of use, so Alex backtracked to another classroom across the hallway. This one looked more like a kindergarten classroom with a large open carpet area and few desks. Immediately he noticed a pile of desks around what would be the teacher's desk. A quick investigation revealed it to be a small makeshift fort. Like a space someone would build to protect themselves or stay out of sight.
"But who made it? A child… or one of my co-workers?" Alex wondered.
Leaving the room and venturing down the hallway brought him to a junction of more hallways. Looking down these, there was more damage and larger barricades, with desks piled high down one hallway. Alex couldn't help but think about this Hour of Joy as the note called it. It was anything but joyful, and it hit every location, even here. Suddenly there was a pop from the intercoms. Ms. Delight was back.
"Hmmm actually, now that I look at you, you don't resemble any of the students," Ms. Delight's voice chattered. "Huh? What's that?"
"Huh? I didn't say anything?" Alex said.
"Not you, silly. I'm talking to Barb," Ms. Delight informed him.
There was silence, but there was no pop or click of the intercom disconnecting. If this Ms. Delight was talking to someone, he couldn't hear anything.
"Ah, I see. Barb says you used to work here," Ms. Delight said, her sweet voice slowly losing its cheery note. "It's a miracle you're still…. alive. Catnap wouldn't like that you were here, snooping around."
There was a pause, then Ms. Delight's tone changed into a voice very much like Mommy Long Legs'; sickly sweet and dripping with reigned in madness.
"Barb says you're looking for your colleagues. Well, just stand still… and I'll make sure that you meet them again…"
It was only then that the intercom gave a pop and went silent. Alex gulped as the feeling of familiar horrors returned. He'd not properly met this teacher, but already he knew he didn't want to.
Down the hallway, listening carefully for the sound of someone else walking, Alex headed into another classroom. This one looked like an art room of sorts. Paint encrusted easels stood in a circle around the room, clashing with the semi clean floor despite the mess of papers and few toppled paints. A long dried-up puddle of red paint on the floor possessed a couple footprints. One set was someone wearing shoes, the other of someone wearing heels. The pair of footsteps retreated to the teacher's desk where darker smears of dried blood clung to the walls. Alex looked away from this, his mind already conjuring up images of how it could have happened.
Of all the critters, it was clear this room centered on Craftycorn. Posters around the room showed the cartoon version of the artistic unicorn in the middle of something art related. One set of posters showed Crafty doing different kinds of art: painting, drawing, and general crafts, but also theater and dance. One poster described the color wheel and what colors mixed together to make new colors. Another, along the wall near a row of sinks explained clean up. And besides this poster, there were drawings made by the children stuck on the corkboard that was called "Craftycorn's Art Gallery." A simple piece of paper taped next to it read, "If Craftycorn likes your art piece a lot, she'll have it placed on the board for all to see!" A nearby step stool was parked nearby, a very nicely decorated step stool with painted flowers that resembled Craftycorn's amulet.
"Hmm so the critters would even be in the school teaching classes, it seems," Alex thought. "Hmmm that kinda makes sense, after all, with living mascots it only makes sense to integrate them into everything."
Seeing nothing else, Alex turned to leave. As he did, a shadowy object darted past the doorway. Immediately he froze in place. Whatever it was, it moved very quickly, and didn't look like Catnap; the purple feline seemed content to walk on all fours, not two legs. Could it be Ms. Delight? It certainly hadn't moved like a human would.
Alex wasn't sure for how long he stared at the door, waiting for the thing to hopefully be long gone, but when he did, he moved slowly, ready to retreat towards the back of the room. Silently gripping the door handle he turned it and pulled it open. Outside the hallway was silent as ever.
Then he heard the sound of footsteps. Thankfully they were heading away, though the sound wasn't normal. It sounded like a stumbling kind of walk, like the walker was drunk or stumbling on a sprained ankle. Waiting a moment, he pulled the door open and walked as softly as he could down the hall, in the opposite direction.
Turning down another hallway, Alex came to another junction. Ahead of him was a set of double doors and to his right, were two doorways, both shuttered up tight by solid metal security gates. A painted notice on the doors read "Playhouse Closed for Repairs" flanked by images of Poppy, Bron, and Bubba wearing hardhats, which was covered in blood spears and scratches that looked as if they were made by fingernails.
"Hmmm, I guess the playhouse doubled as the school's playground and the two were connected here," Alex surmised. "Someone really wanted to get out this way."
Moving forward to the double doors he pushed them open, revealing a massive room beyond. It was filled with long folding tables with combined bench seats. Instantly he knew this was the cafeteria. Though looking around, like many of the rooms in the school, it was not fit to serve that function. Wrappers and boxes littered the tables and floor, garbage cans had been tipped over and the contents scattered as if someone had been sifting through the contents. A static filled tv sat on one table with a VCR atop and a tape sat waiting to be pushed in and another note. Reading through it, it was another note from Ms. Delight, explaining how the other teachers had seemingly singled her out to die as they prevented her from coming near to the kitchen.
This brought back details from the first note, how other teachers and the note's writer had been locked in the school after the Hour of Joy. The mountains of trash looked more like the result of someone starving, scavaging through the trash for something edible to eat. This Ms. Delight was clearly one of the teachers and had survived while being locked away. But why had they been trapped in the first place? Looking at the tape in the VCR, Alex felt this would provide answers. He pressed it in and listened as the voice of Ms. Delight spoke. In it, she spoke in two voices, asking in her normal voice and responding in a raspy voice that sounded familiar. How the children were safe, and how she couldn't see them. Which was followed by the most unhinged and deranged laughter as she giggled how she would have killed them all if she had been free!
"I KNEW THERE WAS SOMETHING WRONG WITH HER! And that voice… who the heck was she talking to? I mean, I know that's her mimicking the voice, but it sounded familiar…"
This thought was interrupted by shuffling footsteps coming from the hallway. And they were rapidly approaching!
"Oh no! She's coming! Exit, exit, I need an exit!"
Eyes darting around, an open vent caught his eyes. Not wasting a moment, he Grabpacked onto the edge of the vent and winched himself up and out of the room just as he heard the doors to the room burst open behind him.
"My my, you certainly are terrible at following the teacher's instructions," came the sickly sweet voice. "Hmmm now where could you be now? Well… no matter, I will find you sooner or later."
Alex held his breath, not daring to say a word as he quietly backed down the vent and out of sight. Where it went, he didn't care. The vent split off a few times, but the covers were always guarded by a metal grate that was secured with bolts.
"Of all the times I could use a tool belt, it's now," he thought.
With no different paths available, Alex continued along the vent. A few turns later, he came to the end, as the vent dropped back down into a different room. For a moment he paused and strained his ear to listen if he could hear anything in the room below. When he heard nothing, only then did he lean forward enough to look down in the room properly. It appeared to be a computer lab of sorts for the students. A big filing cabinet was braced against what he figured was the only door in.
"Seems she won't be able to come in through that way," he thought.
Feeling safe enough, Alex jumped down to the floor, leaving the vent behind. With nothing to GrabPack to so he could hoist himself back up, this was a one way trip unless he could clear the way. Besides the blocked door, two other doors were in the room; one into a closet with replacement computer monitors, and the other into another room. Looking inside, Alex saw sight of the backup generator as light from the computer lab spilled in to illuminate the darkness.
"At least this one doesn't have a puzzle lock," Alex said as he stepped up and slapped his blue hand into the scanner. The scanner bar loaded as and the generator gave a couple ancient groans as the starter motor kicked in, making the lights of the room flicker and grow brighter.
But just as the generator coughed fully to life, a doorway Alex had not seen burst open and something came at him! Alex jumped back and felt the breeze of something just miss his head! It proceeded to bury itself in the generator, the cowling and thin sheet metal crushed like a soup can followed by the lights plunging the whole room went dark! The unseen assailant removed their weapon, which now looked like a giant mace, and swung again, further destroying the generator into a worthless heap of scrap metal. This dislodged the starter battery which tumbled to the floor and provided weak illumination to the darkness. The attacker paused in their tracks, seemingly satisfied with their work. Alex stared at the smoking remains of the generator; no way he could fix this. Then he looked at the attacker, their form framed by the green glow of the battery.
They were taller than him by a foot, the blue skirt they wore turned black with countless old blood stains and was torn to shreds. The mace looked like what a child would create: yard sticks taped together to make a sturdy handle with a hard lump modeling clay covered in the pointed ends of colored pencils, scissors and broken paintbrush handles. The arm of the attacker was smooth, shiney and segmented like a doll's arm. A terrible grinding was heard as the figure's head slowly turned to face Alex, which made him scream!
The face of this figure was shattered and broken, revealing a massive lipless toothy snarl! If the illusion had been doll-like once upon a time, that deception was destroyed with the exposed flesh underneath. The big doll eyes blinked and looked at him as the exposed teeth grinded back and forth hungrily. If this had been the last Miss Delight, she now looked as horrific as her clearly broken mind. When it spoke, its mouth barely opened, like the voice came from another speaker.
"Pop quiz, do you scream as loud as the others? LET'S FIND OUT!"
Suddenly Miss Delight lunged towards Alex!