A Winter at Solem High

A Mysterious Man

Jenifer woke up with a start.

The same dream, again, she thought. The same stupid dream.

She picked her glasses up from the bedside table to unblur her vision. It was still dark outside, and cold wind gushed in through the open window, blowing the curtains apart. She shivered as she got out of bed, and went and closed it.  

Who opened it? I remember it being closed before I went to sleep.

She returned to bed and tried sleeping again. But then she heard something. First, she thought that her mind was playing tricks, but the sound was not going away.

It was the sound of someone moaning, it was distant but as she listened more intently she realized it was from one of the neighboring rooms. The reason she listened intently, was not because she was some creep, but because the person moaning was her English teacher Catherine Jennings. She had been appointed to supervise their dorm for the night, but clearly, she was having the time of her life next door. Jenifer looked around and saw both her roommates, Laura and Riley, in deep sleep, and she wished she hadn't been woken up by her dream. She wouldn't be able to look at her teacher the same way again.

Ugh. Why did she have to have sex tonight only?

She lay in bed, tossing and turning. About an hour passed this way, until she was finally on the brink of sleep when she heard something creak.

The door of her room opened, and a man entered. In the doorway stood Catherine, and she waved bye to him and closed the door. He was a tall and muscular man, which is what Jenifer could make out from her limited view of him. She was careful not to open her eyes too much, or make any sound, as she didn't know what he would do to her if he saw her looking. But her fear settled as she realized what his actual purpose was.

He opened the window and climbed outside.

So he was the one who had opened it earlier. But we are on the seventh floor, where will he go from here?

Once the man was fully outside, Jenifer quietly walked to the window to inspect.

There was a pipe beside the window, which is what the man used to slide his way down. It seemed like it was the only pipe going all the way down to the ground, which is why he had used this window to sneak in. In this freezing cold weather, she admired his immense guts to pull off such a stunt. The sliding down was easy, but climbing it seemed like something impossible. As a kid, she was herself obsessed with climbing trees, ropes, pipes, and anything she could find, so she knew the difficulty surrounding it. 

All this to fuck our English teacher.

The man reached the ground, and to her surprise, ran straight into the forest ahead, instead of taking the road that led down the hill. She found this quite peculiar. The forest was wild and dense, and from the stories that went around, not somewhere you would want to go alone, especially at night. The forest was home to nothing but wild beasts. Maybe the man did so as to not risk anyone knowing that he was here, but the road was empty and unsupervised at night, their school didn't think of any security as no crime had ever happened here or anywhere near here.

She was intrigued, and whenever Jenifer was intrigued about something, she would go to crazy lengths to find answers. She was different that way and didn't fit in much with the people at her school.  She often did things that no one else would even think of doing, like sending a huge amount of firecrackers through the air conditioning vent of the Principal's office, which as a result ended up in flames. Luckily the Principal wasn't there. Although she wouldn't have minded if he was. The school ruled this as an accident, and no one suspected Jenifer. She had been careful, but burning the office had not been her intention. She hated the Principal, and other than her two roommates, she hated everyone else at her school. She considered all the students there to be spoilt rich kids, which for the most part, is exactly what they were. She could have been expelled several times, but till now the school hadn't gone ahead with it. One more thing out of line and she was bound to be told to pack her bags, but she did not worry much about getting expelled. She considered getting expelled a free ticket out of this shitshow.

This is why she decided to do one more stupid thing, she decided to step out her window and slide down the pipe. Seven floors down seemed like a long-distance, and she held a breath for a second before descending, trying to comprehend the height and the consequence which was instant death. Then she closed her eyes and slid down. The cold air fell on her face like hundreds of tiny needles. She opened her eyes just as she was about to touch the ground, and slowed herself down by wrapping her legs around the pipe tighter, a technique she had learned climbing ropes as a child. A soft landing on the damp and muddy earth did not produce any sound, which was what she was aiming for. 

She looked at the sky and realized that dawn was still far away. She had time, not much but probably enough to find some answers. As she had hoped, the man's boots had left footsteps in the slush. Thanks to the rain that had fallen the day before, the footsteps ran deep into the wet surface, making them very clear to follow. 

She stood at the edge of the forest and looked up at the darkness that lay ahead. She felt the forest pulling her in, there was some force that was calling out to her. She couldn't really describe it, but she felt it whenever she stood at the edge. The forest had always attracted her, but she had never dared to enter.

That day she finally did.