Going outside to inspect the noise, they find just what they expected.
The dead body was lying face up. The group looked at the man and almost immediately recognized him.
"It's Mr. Westwood." Vai announces.
Mr. Westwood lay stiffly, his mouth agape, holding bits of foliage.
Keith sees an opportunity via the guard booth. If he can only reach the top, he could grab onto a branch and use his upper body strength to move himself over the wall. Drop down and presto. Situation fixed.
"Boost me." Keith tells Curtis.
"With what?" Curtis waves his injured hand at Keith.
"Boost me." He points to the boys. Eric and Joseph interlock their hands together for Keith to climb on.
He grabs onto the tiled roof of the guard booth, pulling his body to the top. Finally reaching the top, he anchors himself and raises his hands to the branch. As the students flash their phone lights up into the tree, he notices something wrapped around the tree trunk.
"Touch the tree for me there." He orders Curtis.
Curtis extends his arm out and touches the tree bravely, only to retreat his hand from a shocking sensation. He shakes his hand, "It's wired too – Why'd you make me touch it for?"
"It's faster." Keith answers, "Crap." He mumbles to himself, realizing his climb to the top of the guard booth was useless. He was going to use the branch to monkey bar his way over to the top of the fence.
His legs tremble, I didn't know I was afraid of heights. I guess that's only when I don't know how to get down.
"Come down from there." Vai calls up. "Let's go inside."
"Would if I could." Keith mutters, looking down, his feet rooted to the spot. "Would if I could."
Curtis, as if reading his mind, could understand that Keith was stuck. These things are rare, only happens in once a blue moon when Keith makes the mistake of looking down. But besides that, he could climb a skyscraper. Once he doesn't see it, he doesn't care for it.,
"I'll catch you." Curtis assures.
"Yeah right. Like I'm trusting you, the worst possible –."
"Alright, Alright, just get down the way you came up. Just backwards." He murmurs to Vai, "He's just petty cause I dropped him like five or six times."
Slowly he stoops down on the roof, turning slowly. But as fate would have it, he loses his balance, falling backwards straight onto the dead body. As soon as he makes contact with the corpse, it lurches forward cushioning his fall. Like confetti shooting out of a canon, the leaves sprung out of his throat. The fresh electricity burns are apparent on the dead body as it collects the impact of the grown man.
Immediately, Keith springs to his feet, trying to shake off the 'death feeling' on him while making unintelligible cringe noises.
"Is that a vampire bite?" Curtis observes.
Keith feels his neck. "What?"
"Not on you. On him." He points to the dead body's neck.
"Looks like it." Vai comments, then shakes her head, "No, I refuse to believe that. Let's just go inside."
As they file into the office's doors, Keith sporadically cringes every few minutes or so trying to physically shake off the unholy death stain like a dog that just took a bath.
Joseph speaks up as they lock the door, "Maybe one of us is a vampire."
Alex chimes in, an effort to correct Joseph, "Maybe it's just freckles or a scar."
YOU ARE READING
Working On the Weekend
Mystery / ThrillerAfter working all day for some University credit points during the Christmas break, the students along with their professors find themselves locked in the University on a Friday night. Knowing that everyone in the town is busy celebrating their favo...
