CHAPTER 15 OPENING UP

Wanda and I spoke about all the ‘happenings’ in the school over the last few months. She was fascinated, even to the point of taking her Filofax out of her bag and making notes! 

She was up to speed on the initial stuff but after a while I stopped updating her about the heightened level of experiences. She was livid about being kept in the dark about the latest Ghost Club involvement. I was still training people at different companies in sales techniques in my downtime from the school and Wanda had her company D.I.S.C. which was getting busier. 

I had helped her start that up and had trained the 5 girls that worked for her on customer persuasion techniques and closing skills so they can upserve their clients from one filing cabinet of records transferred to floppy disk (yes! A Floppy disk) allowing Wanda to come in and upgrade the contract from one department to the whole company.

By 10pm we were ready to leave so we headed to the usual wine bar, the Charleston near Maryland Point. We had decided that I was going to leave the Council and join her as her partner in D.I.S.C. We celebrated with a bottle of champagne and then got a taxi back to her flat in Harold Road in Leytonstone. The future looked bright, and it was for a few years.

Giles called my Gordon Gecko Mobile phone on Saturday afternoon. I think it was a Motorola DynaTac but I could be wrong. It was a real housebrick. Giles had already changed his arrival to the Monday at around 10am but maybe a little later. I spent the time thinking about how to leave the Council. A new assistant was coming on Monday and I needed to get him up to speed. My car was still parked outside the school in Deanery Road so I got a cab and went and picked it up. I looked it over in case there had been any tampering and looked up at the front entrance. I could see that the hall doors were open. I knew they were shut when we left. Whatever it was, it would wait until Monday. I would deal with that fresh hell then.

On Monday I did exactly as I had decided to do. I waited in my car for any signs of life. It would be John, Giles or Derek. My money was on Derek. I heard a car coming down Deanery Rd behind me. I looked in the rear view mirror and saw Bertha, Giles’ ‘half-timbered’ car, getting nearer and nearer, and then slowing down to park behind me.

I looked to my left at the school entrance and noticed the hall doors were closed. I felt a chill go through me. They were open Saturday morning, and I hadn’t closed them.

I opened my car door and said hello to Giles who was pulling out a reel to reel tape recorder from the back of the car.

I looked across at the school and pointed.

“Giles, I left my car here on Friday night, when I came to pick it up Saturday Morning the doors either side of the hall were open. They’re not now.”

“Can they shut on their own? Wind or anything?

“No, like all the doors around the hall the hinges have a point where, if you open it past that point the door has to be pulled shut.” I became aware of someone approaching fast from my right.

“Dave, I’m Derek.”

“Hello Mate,“ I said, shaking his hand.

“And who are you? A teacher?” he asked, looking up at Giles.

“I am just working here for a couple of days.” Giles answered diplomatically.

“Not the Ghosthunter then?” Derek sounded disappointed.

“Yes!” Giles told him, confusing Derek a little.

I reached into my jeans pocket.

“Derek, take this key, let yourself in, turn left and our office is on the left.” I told him as I unlocked the padlock and chain on the front gate, “Bung the kettle on and get settled in. John will be here to show you the ropes in about ten minutes.”

“Great, thanks.” Derek trotted off.

Giles and I formed a plan for him making his recordings. He would go and wander around and see what happened. I took that as meaning he was going to agitate it into life if he could.

John whistled as he came around the corner at the junction of Water Lane with Deanery Road and waved.

We spoke a while and I had to admit that I had got him the new job. Darren had told him anyway. Typical! John shook my hand and thanked me for doing that and said he would be glad to finally leave the place. He wanted to rush through the induction of Derek but wouldn’t.

I followed John up the steps and in, and a few minutes later Giles came in, Nodded to me after I gave him a master key and he walked off down the corridor and turned left in the direction of where we had both seen the shadowman.

I looked in the hall and everything seemed to be just as it had been left. Strange. Why were the doors open and then shut?

John was over in the Old School with Derek taking him through all the cleaning machinery that we had in the store cupboard.

The phone on the desk rang, it was Wanda, asking if I had told the council I was leaving?

“Not yet,” I told her, “Give me a chance!”

“Are you having second thoughts?”

“Hmm, let’s think, work in a haunted school or help you with world domination? Tough choice.”

“I have to go, Jackie is here, she’s off to start work at Virgin”.

“When did they come in as a client?”

“It’s only a small office of theirs near Paddington.”

CRASH!

A door must have slammed shut in a corridor in the new school, so loudly it sounded like a gunshot. Even Wanda heard it down the phone.

“What was that?”

“I have no idea, it was a door slamming. It must have been the wind.” I told her.

“OK, be careful. I will see you later!”

She hung up and I stood up to put the phone back on its cradle. I heard a noise, a shuffling sound in the distance, at the bottom of the corridor in front of me. I looked down there but couldn’t see anything. Then it happened again. And again. It went silent for a while, then a door closed. Suddenly, Giles turned the corner and started to walk purposely and speedily towards me.

He told me that he had recorded some amazing things, some responses, in the science department where we had seen the Shadow man standing previously. He was going to take the recordings back to the Institute for Psychical Research and see if he can clean up the recording and isolate the voice. I didn’t have a clue what he meant in those days but I do now. He wanted to call me if, or more probably, when he found clear evidence on the recordings and hurried off to do his magic, whatever that was. He seemed very intense when he left, I didn’t even get the chance to see if he needed any help with his bag. It seemed that whatever was in the school had given him a real sense of....

CRASH

..concern! This time the noise was even louder. It suddenly occurred to me that John and Derek were in the old school going over the contents of the storeroom and I had no idea if they were OK. It may have been them. I stood looking down the corridor. There was no more sound…apart from…no nothing. I was sick to death with this situation. The sound had stopped.

Then I heard the footsteps. Slow footsteps, clear as day. The sound of a shoe hitting the floor, then another, then another. Then they started to speed up and get louder. They were coming from the science lab area and were getting louder as they got to the corner then they sped up again. I could tell the footsteps were now in the corridor that I was looking down but there was no one there.

They were right at the other end but coming at me. They were getting louder and louder as they got nearer and nearer. I stood my ground, I’d had enough. Whatever it was that was walking faster and faster, the steps getting heavier and heavier, was directly coming my way. I wasn’t scared. I was angry, livid, at my wits end, and I’d had enough.

I decided to run towards it to meet whatever it was head on…