Descent

11 - "There's someone out there kidnapping kids"

Tommy and Arjun synced up after the assembly. They compared notes as they let the flow of kids out of the gym carry them through the halls.

"I just looked and you were gone." Arjun explained, gripping his backpack strap tight over one shoulder.

"Dude, I like, went to another planet." As Tommy said this, he caught the eye of an eighth grader who gave him some serious judgement.

"What do you mean?" Arjun asked.

Tommy tried his best to describe the twisting hallways, the way the school had swallowed him up, the ghostly image of Clara in the classroom window--but it was like trying to recount a dream. Details kept slipping away from him and he found himself struggling even to recall what had happened, as if speaking the memories out loud caused them to erode.

"Okay so, you had a bad dream?" Arjun tried to force himself to laugh, "You fell asleep, man!" He tried again to laugh, but it came out weak and unconvincing.

"Yeah, I guess so."

The train of kids thinned out as everyone returned to their respective classrooms. Soon, only the sixth graders were left: a single-file column of 11- and 12-year olds headed up the stairs, one at a time, hands on the railing like good boys and girls. Arjun was saying something but Tommy was zoned out, obsessed with the logic of what he was experiencing. He stared at the steps, and the shoes of the kids trudging up them, and wondered why he was seeing things while he was awake, now. Was it something to do with the meditation he had gone through yesterday? Ms. Eleanor had led them on exercises like that before--what was different about this time?

"Finding a character." That's what she'd called it. Before, meditation in class had been about centering yourself, whatever that meant, and Tommy had always thought it was just a clever way of burning time. But yesterday, they had been tasked with finding characters to play in the show at the end of the month. Did actively looking for Clara cause her to come to him? Did he see the next 'scene', for lack of a better word, in the story because he wanted to? His dream that night had been related, too--he'd been thinking about digging, being underground, and had experienced Clara investigating the stairway under her house.

Tommy made a decision: in drama class tonight, he'd focus on that dream and try to see what came next. How did Clara get out of the basement? And what was up with her dad's gnarly burned hands?

"Tommy?"

He looked up and saw the man in red stood astride the cathedral steps he held aloft in one hand a blazing torch that danced and writhed in the air that bellowed from beneath the earth and upon his face was a mask of bone bone bonebonebonebonebone

"Tommy!"

Tommy snapped out of it. He was back on the stairs. What the fuck was that? His teacher, Madame Terroir, was holding the door open for him at the top of the staircase.

"Sorry." He muttered, and resumed his climb. His hand ached where he'd gripped the handrail and he could still smell woodsmoke and mud.

----

He spent the rest of the day in a daze but didn't have to wait long for school to end. He was halfway down the school laneway when Ms. Eleanor pulled up alongside him in her red minivan and called for him to hop in: due to the curfew, she'd arrived to pick up the kids at school.

The drive to the Gannet House was normal, the kids in the van chattered away excitedly, and Tommy listened solemnly while Leslie and Ms. Eleanor sang along to the radio in the front seat. They played another warm-up game, something similar to Red Rover but called "Break the Chains" here in Rosshaven, then settled down into a circle.