CREEPY CATALOG

I Decided To Explore My School's Basement

The day began with such promise. I was just so tickled by the prospect of parent teacher conferences. I remember looking on this day with such foreboding as a child and was ecstatic about being on the other side of things. As a newly minted teacher, this was to be my first such meeting. The students had a half day and parent teacher conferences were to take place from 1-3 and 7-8:30 with a break in between.

One o'clock rolled around, and I sat with my students' report cards prepared and eagerly awaited my first parent.

One o'clock gave way to two and no one had showed up. I perked up when, finally at 2:30, a face appeared in my doorway. Disappointment sank in when I saw that it was just the teacher of the classroom next to mine, an older woman and a veteran of the profession. She said in her indelibly cynical voice.

"No parents either, huh? Well, what do you expect in a school like this?"

Something about that statement resonated with me. She was trying to convey that it would be foolish to expect parental involvement at a school in such a destitute neighborhood, but that isn't how I took it.

There was just something off about the place where I worked. It was nothing tangible really. It just permeated a strange, stifling energy.

Three o'clock came and still no parents. I saw the other teachers and staff hurriedly exit the building to go eat their lunches and briefly wrest themselves from the clutches of this never ending day. Being broke and the commute being too long to justify taking the train home and back, I had packed my own lunch and ate it alone in my room.

Eventually, boredom overcame me. When the clock struck five, I decided to venture out.

There is nothing quite like walking through an empty school at dusk. It is so disorienting as it is such an inversion of the norm. Where once there was the sound of children laughing and screaming, there is only silence. Where light would pour in through the vast windows revealing the promise of a new day, a nascent darkness was beginning to seep slowly but surely through the halls.

Wandering the vacant corridors, I decided to take the stairs to the basement. I had never had a reason to go there previously. Though it was a rarely, if ever, used wing of the building, I had heard mention of an old computer lab down there. Visions of revisiting my own childhood via Oregon Trail on the Apple II filled my head. I figured that would be the perfect way to stave off the boredom.

The echo of my footsteps as I descended into the darkness of the basement was deafening. A feeling of unease was beginning to form deep in my gut, but I allowed my rational mind to dictate my footsteps.

I attempted to catch my bearings in the faint light of the basement hallway, but couldn't. I wandered aimlessly checking the doors to see if this computer lab was open, but to no avail. All of the doors must have been locked as there were no homerooms down there and thus no reason to keep them open. I almost gave up until the last door I came upon. I was surprised as it easily gave way and provided me entrance into the pitch black room.

As the door closed behind me, I began to search for the light switch. Before it could be found, I couldn't help but notice the overwhelming heat. Great, I thought. I had stumbled into the boiler room. What a waste of time. I turned to open the door and continue to search for the lab.

The knob wouldn't turn.

Fanfuckingtastic. I tried the door several more times, but it refused to budge. Perhaps there was a second exit. I pulled out my phone to illuminate the darkness and nearly dropped it when the light revealed the room I had found myself inside.

This was no boiler room.

It was empty. At least it looked empty. Akin to the intangible foreboding the school emitted, I knew something was off. The feeling grew and grew as panic set in. The heat was so pervasive that I was sweating bullets. As the sound of my fists pounding on the door stopped, a new sound entered the hot, dead air. The sound of raspy breathing. I held my breath to confirm what my mind had been too reluctant to acknowledge. Those harsh breaths were not being drawn from my lungs.