CHAPTER 14 VIGIL PART 2

 

VIGIL PART 2

Twenty minutes into the vigil we were still sitting there listening for any noise. There was the constant pitter patter of the rain and the occasional roll of thunder but nothing serious. Suddenly, the power went out.

Not in the school, just the equipment. None of the camera shutter remotes worked. Giles and Mark frantically checked the connections using the light from the scanner, but nothing. They were positioned in such a way that no ambient light from the corridor through the glass panelled doors helped. Then the lights went out on the scanner. There were no lights on the box and the small screen was blank, the green swirly line that jumped every time a noise was made had gone out. They were concerned that a fuse had blown on the multi power socket. They started unplugging and plugging everything to just check but nothing worked.

My limited electrical ability told me this was unusual.

"If there's a problem with the multi power socket it would knock out everything, not just some things." My common sense statement made them stare at each other for a second, and then attack the connections again.

Here we were sitting in the near dark, at the bottom of a flight of stairs that went up to the top floor of the old school. Stairs that I had come down hearing something coming after me only for nothing to reach the steps at the bottom. This was, to me, madness, but I went along with it. Maybe I was the mad one?

Now the equipment wasn’t working, it was dark here and out, wind was blowing and thunder was rumbling.

I could wait no longer.

“Lads, are we out of our minds, sitting here in the dark? This isn’t a great plan.”

The voice recorder lit up. A little light in the darkness.

“It may be atmospherics.” Giles said making Mark nod his head.

I pointed at the Voice Recorder.

“Why is that on and nothing else?”

All three Cameras flashed scaring the life out of us. The Cameras were lying down and flashed the stone floor and illuminated the area for a second.

“This isn’t right.” Giles muttered under his breath. “This shouldn’t be happening.”

“You’re telling me!” I told him.

Mark and Giles did their best in the dark to get all the cameras and equipment together. The remaining ambient light came from the fluorescents in the Linkway corridor which were still lit, as were all the other lights that I could see through the windows.

There was a deafening, CRASH! Then another....and another.

The double doors this end of the Linkway corridor, that were locked, by a key in the door and the right hand door by a bolt at the top and bottom were being hit from the other side, from within the airlock between these doors this end and the other set of doors at the other end. Giles looked around the corner of the wall down the Linkway and dropped the Pentax camera, its lens bouncing off and hitting me on the leg.

“My God!” he said, then repeating it again. He raised his arm and pointed down the corridor. Both Mark and I moved to stand alongside him, and to be honest, further back. It took a second or two for what we were seeing to register in our minds. It was impossible.

There, in front of the double doors at the other end of the corridor, outside the two doors of the toilet block, was a child. A girl, standing with her back to the doors. looking in our direction. She was wearing a below the knee dress, with a frill. A long dress that was burnt black and I could see smoke swirling around as clear as I see this laptop I 'm typing on.

Giles stepped forward slightly, looking on the floor for a camera that was still intact, still looking up now and then. He started staring, lifting his glasses and lowering them as if he thought it was a trick of the light.

Then we noticed the shadow man standing behind her on the other side of the glass panelled doors. The girl backed away as Giles rummaged on the floor for the only camera with a lens. As he reached for it both Mark and I saw the girl blend into and through the door to where the Shadow man was and they both faded from view. Mark and I stood staring, as if they were still there. Giles stood with the camera poised but the back was open, the film was destroyed and useless. Giles cursed under his breath.

Mark looked at me for answers but I had none. They were the professionals, what do I know?

I became aware that we were still in the dark with equipment on the floor and a staircase open to the top floor. Then, after a while we started to move again in slow motion, like a dreamlike state. and then speeding up as our location and situation came back to the forefront of our minds.

“Hold it!” I whispered. “we need to get out, right. I don’t suggest we go that way!” I said pointing down the corridor.

“How do we get out then, Dave?” Giles asked. I could hear the nerves beneath the calmness of his voice.

“There’s another way.”

Without knowing what it was they both said “Let’s go!”

If I had said, "Let's jump out the window and run" they would have been with me.

I asked Giles if he had all the equipment in his bag but he said he would come back and collect it next day. He wanted out and so did Mark. I wanted out too. This was enough for one evening.

I opened the ground floor hall door and we stepped in to the darkness. I flicked one of the switches on and a couple of lights came on. I locked the door behind me and led the two guys quickly over to the diagonal corner door, opened that into the pitch darkness of the ground floor landing, the exact mirror image of where we had been on the other side. I turned the light on and then turned the hall lights off and shutt door, opened the exterior door and led them out into the rear playground. I locked the door and led them around a corner to the school gates in Manbey Street and unlocked the padlock on the chain holding the gates shut, locking it behind us. We all breathed a collective sigh of relief. We walked towards Water Lane with the Manbey Arms on our left and turned right. We hurried along down Water Lane in the light rain and then turned right into Deanery road to the front entrance of the school. They followed me up the steps.

“Are your coats in the office?” I asked.

They both nodded.

“Wait here”

I unlocked the front door and stepped into the hall, Giles held the door open. I hurried to the office and grabbed my coat from behind the door, and their coats off the chairs, shut the door behind me and hurried back to the front door. Locking it behind me. They would be back in the morning at 10am. I thought it best to sit in my car until they arrived instead of going in on my own in the morning.

I got to the Phoenix Apollo to meet my girlfriend, Wanda. She was sitting at a table on her own, holding a glass of something. She waved madly at me. I went over and sat down.

“I got here 10 minutes ago. A bit early but it’s a quiet evening. Wow, what a day I have had.”

She looked at me as I sat there thinking.

“Had a hard day too?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t believe it if I told you.”.

“Try me!” she replied.

I told her, every detail.

"What?" She was astounded, shocked and amazed and downed the remains of her glass of white wine in one.

“Well you did ask!”

She was reaching for the Wine bottle but I grabbed it quickly and refilled her glass.

"That tops my Staff issues", she said, then she went quiet. I looked around as the place started to fill up. My friend, the boxer Nigel Benn arrived with his girlfriend and some others. He waved, I waved back then Wanda snapped out of her dream and said,

“I want to have a look around that school? Can I, take me there over the weekend.”

I smiled and looked at the menu but we both knew that off by heart.

I stared at the specials board instead, realising I was going out with a girl madder than me!

But I was not so mad as to stare ahead on the way down Water Lane with the school on my right. If Giles and Mark had looked at the school like I did, instead of mumbling to each other and comparing notes they would have seen the large shadow figure in the corridor window like I did. Irrespective of what Peter Underwood had said to me, or what Giles and Mark thought, I needed to be rid of these ghosts as soon as possible.