The NoSleep Podcast - NoSleep Podcast S6 - Holiday Bonus

Episode Date: December 27, 2015

The show is taking a holiday break this week but we're featuring a Season 5 classic tale from author Paul Bae: "An Incident at My School"."An Incident at My School" written by Paul Bae and read by David Cummings & Jesse Cornett & Erika Sanderson & Jessica McEvoy. (Story starts at 00:03:00)Click here for Paul Bae's book: "You Suck, Sir" Click here for Pacific Northwest Stories Network Click here to learn more about Jesse Cornett Click here to learn more about Erika Sanderson Click here to learn more about Jessica McEvoy Podcast produced by: David CummingsMusic & Sound Design by: Brandon Boone & David Cummings.Audio program ©2015 - Creative Reason Media - All Rights Reserved - No reproduction or use of this content is permitted without the express written consent of Creative Reason Media. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Season's greetings, everyone. This is David, and it's now the weekend in between Christmas and New Year's. As such, we're taking a bit of a holiday ourselves this week. We'll be back with Season 6, Episode 14, on January 3rd. But we don't want you to use this break to sneak off and get some sleep. No, indeed. We have a story for you to tide you over until we get rid of this hangover. I mean until we get some rest ourselves for the new year.

And if our story isn't enough to quench your thirst for good audio storytelling, I hope you'll be listening to the great work from our friends over at Pacific Northwest Stories. You know them, they produce the Black Tapes podcast and the podcast, Tannis. In fact, some of you may be familiar with this sound. The Black Tapes podcast is a Pacific. Northwest Stories and Minnow Beets Whale production. Executive producers, Paul Bay and Terry Miles. There's that strange name, Paul Bay.

What do we really know about Paul, other than the fact that he's an executive producer over at Pacific Northwest Stories? Well, it turns out he's done time. I mean, he's done time as an actor, a standing up comedian, and a writer. In fact, he may be best known for a book he wrote about his experiences as a teacher, entitled, You Sucks, Sir. You see, Paul is an experienced high school teacher, and his book shares many of the funniest exchanges he's had with his students. Back in May, Paul posted a two-part story on No Sleep, in which he shared some terrifying experiences at his former school. Is the story fiction or fact, or perhaps a bit of both?

We adapted the story for the podcast during season 5, and we wanted to share it with those of you who haven't heard it yet. Joining me for the story are Jesse Cornett, Erica Sanderson, and Jessica McAvoy. So get to your desks, sit up straight, and listen to the teacher. This is one lesson you won't want to miss. And now the No Sleep Podcast is proud to present Paul Bay's story, An Incident at My School. Here in my career, I was a teacher at a high school in Vancouver's East Side.

When I was first hired there in the late 90s, one of my colleagues told me that it was, quote, a jewel of the community, and the best East End school you'd never heard of. And she was right. I grew up in Vancouver, but had never even heard of this school. But as I began my tenure there, the reasons for its relative anonymity became apparent. It's near an area of our city affectionately called The Drive, which is known for its cultural vibrancy, social justice advocacy, and eccentric.

personalities. With a student body of less than a thousand students cloistered in a tight-knit neighborhood of old wood-framed houses dating back to the turn of the 20th century, and quietly, humbly plodding through its history without feeling the need to trumpet its innumerable academic successes, its many charms drew me in like a siren song. The school had been there since the late 1920s and was in need of some major repairs. Then, in 2001, a 6.6 magnitude earthquake hit our American sister city of Seattle. Its epicenter was 230 kilometers away, yet our building still swayed like a drunken sailor. As you can imagine, that quake worsened the state of our structural disrepair, leaving a two-inch crack in the

basement floor. I only know this because the custodian who cleaned my floor, Mani, confided in me after the quake. We're lucky this is an old woman's school. It absorbed everything, but our concrete took a beaten downstairs. Apparently, it also damaged a pipe, causing water damage on the bottom floor. Mani was part of the crew charged with the cleanup. That was a one of the crew. That was a Thursday when I spoke with him. Friday afternoon rolled in and I was stuck at my desk marking papers for an hour. Parent teacher meetings were being held at the end of the following week and I was well behind in my grading as usual. That's when I heard Manny sweeping the hallway. I stuck my head out of my room to ask how the repairs were going. He had a strong accent so I didn't

always pick up on every detail of the stories he shared. He relayed events with so much gusto that I was reluctant to interrupt him. It was the joy of telling that was important, I thought. He began telling me of all the damage he had seen in the basement and the smells. Like something died, rolled around in poo, then died again. There were several spots where two inches of brown water had pooled, so that probably had something to do with it. When they pumped the water out, it revealed a crack that nearly extended the whole length of the boiler room. It was one inch wide in some places, and quite deep. I only inferred this because of what many told me next. They found a small metal box in one of the deeper cracks.

It looked to have been encased in the concrete itself and then loosened by the earthquake. When they opened it, they found two things, a Bible and a long lock of black hair tied by a small red ribbon. I asked Manny if he had seen it himself. He hadn't, but he had heard it from his friends who were in the boiler room at the time of the discovery. He said they washed off the Bible and, he said they washed off the Bible, and found the lock of hair in its pages, as if it had been used as a bookmark. I remember getting the shivers and laughing because it was a hell of a creepy story. Mani laughed too, and then did the sign of the cross over his chest before returning to his work.

On my way into work the following Tuesday, I saw that workers from the district had cordoned off the area around the boiler room entrance to start making their repairs. At the end of the day, I found myself again stuck in my room marking papers. And like clockwork, many sweeping could be heard in the hallway an hour after the last bell. I poked my head out to ask how everything was going, and for the first time since I had known him, he didn't look happy. I don't recall the particulars of this conversation, but he was evasive. It was very much unlike his character, or rather, it was a stark contrast from the persona I usually saw. But when I asked whatever happened to that Bible they found, he looked sternly at me and said, Don't talk about that. I shouldn't have told you.

I assured him that I had not and would not relay that information to anyone else, but I'm not sure if that's what he was getting at. Turns out, Mani wasn't the only employee at our school who talked about the discovery in the basement. The news spread throughout the school like a line of dominoes with the attendant gossip even reaching the staff room by that afternoon. I don't want to say too much here because the subject of the gossip and her family's history

is well known in our community. Suffice it to say that a student at our school went notoriously missing during a volleyball tournament hosted by our school. This was way before my time, but even I had heard of the event as a general missing persons case in our city, and had seen her face plastered on newspapers all over town. A few months after the student's disappearance, one of our school engineers was arrested on separate charges related to misconcounsel. conduct with minors. I don't know what happened to him after his dismissal and imprisonment, but I found the gossip distasteful for one major reason. The missing girl's younger sister

attended our school. I had not met the girl, but it was announced at the beginning of the year at a staff meeting as she was an incoming freshman. The school counselor had gravely warned of possible triggers to avoid in classroom discussions of our school's history, especially during orientation week. The staff generally regarded our school as one big family, and we were going to protect this child. And for the sake of clarity, while respecting the family's privacy, I'm going to call her Amy Waller. The next day, I found myself at my desk later than usual. It was just after 5 o'clock, and with it being late February, it was already quite dark. My classroom was on the third floor, and there was a large oak tree outside one of my windows, facing east.

The exterior school lights automatically turned on at dusk, so when the tree suddenly lit up, it jolted me out of my grating stupor. I was hungry, so I quickly gathered my things, and I was hungry. walked down the stairs and down the long back corridor towards the staff lot. That's when I first saw Amy Waller. I had just reached the main floor and turned the corner into the hall. It was long and narrow with windows all along the north side. And standing at the opposite end, in profile, was a tiny waif of a girl. She stood at the entrance to the taped-off base.

Her long, straight black hair obscured her face at first. But as I approached, she turned towards me, and that's when I saw her eyes. They looked just like her older sisters, just like the face I had seen in the papers, and on the evening news so many years before. My heart immediately sank for her. She must have been so young when her sister disappeared, yet here she was standing by the stairs leading down to the site where rumors grew of grisly deeds and macabre rituals. I didn't want to call her by name and risk having her know that our staff had held a meeting about her at the beginning of the year. So instead, I just called out, excuse me.

I thought I could engage her in conversation or something, maybe help comfort her against the gossip. She turned away from me and walked away down the adjacent hall leading to the West Wing. The next morning I reported the incident to the principal. She closed her eyes and nodded her head, pained for the little girl. If I were her, I wouldn't want to go home either. At the end of the day, I had two of my 11th graders in for extra work. They knew they were at risk of failing and pleaded for a side project they could do

just to get them past parent-teacher night. An hour into it, I could hear the familiar sound of sweeping in the hall. I walked out of my class and was surprised by another face. It wasn't Manny. Apparently, he had taken in. and this man was his temporary replacement. The man explained that the office got a last-minute call, saying Manny would be unavailable for work for a week.

I was about to walk back to my class when the man inquired about our school's recent discovery. I heard you found a box of evil. He stated it with just enough mischievousness to annoy me. The thought of Amy wandering the halls alone, burdened with the grief and gossip from her family's loss, filled me with a righteous anger at that moment. You know this isn't a joke, right? A person, a child, might have been heard in this very school.

He was taken aback by my tone. Okay. I know it's serious. I wasn't joking. Then he looked down the hall to make sure we were alone And then motioned me to come closer Then quietly he explained himself And to this day these words still burn in my ear

The man who did that was not a good man People downtown already talked about weird things that happened everywhere he worked In one school a rabbit went missing from classroom It was found the next day hanging from a tree skinned and headless. Another school had a small fire in the park behind the building.

There were dead animals burned on a big table or something. And there were candles all around that table of dead animals which caused the fire. And here, before this year, I heard strange drawings appearing on different walls.

That guy worked at all these places. You did something bad with that girl. I had forgotten about the graffiti placed around the school the previous year. I had heard some kids broke in at night and placed demonic symbols, you know, like pentagrams, occult, numerological signs, strange phrases, all over the building. That's when they installed security cameras all over the facility. But I felt he was conflating different things just for the sake of sensationalism, and it was frustrating. What makes you so sure of that? With what it had in it, my uncle's into reading about this kind of thing.

He told me, the hair, a remnant of pain and sacrifice. The Bible? To mock what's in it. Then he leaned closer. I bet there's something else down in the basement. My palms were getting sweaty, just hearing this man talk. There was something unstable in his eyes, the way he stared as he spoke. That's when I heard the screams.

They were coming from my classroom. I ran as fast as I could back to my classroom. class. Both of my students were huddled together in the middle of the room, staring at the windows. They were not small boys, quite athletic in fact, but there they were, almost in tears. It took some time to calm them down, but they relayed the strangest story in a week already full of strange stories. They claimed to have seen a girl staring in, through the window. We were on the third floor, so that was impossible. Yet here were these two 16-year-old young men in a cradle of pure fright spewing gibberish. They described the girl as thin,

pale with long, straight black hair, and large penetrating black eyes. Of course, they had described Amy's sister since stories of her were all over. the school. It was clear to me that the gossip about Amy's family had infected their imaginations and senses. I had suspected they had smoked up before coming to my room after school. Mix that with the present goings-on and you have a cocktail for a floating girl. The next day was a nightmare. Every student wanted to know what happened in my room, the day before. The students whispered stories to each other, but it was like the telephone game, so that the story grew increasingly macabre. By the end of the day, it was awful. The ninth grade

English class was the worst. Is it true? There was a girl hanging from your tree by her hair late last night? Her eyes were totally white and wide open and she was smiling the whole time. Was she really holding a Bible while grinning, swinging by her hair? The students gleefully relished these stories as much as they were repelled by them. And for each group of students, I had to remind them that we were talking about real people who suffered real pain and loss, and we were turning that into entertainment. They, of course, nodded in agreement, their heads heavy with concern. until minutes later when I could hear them theorizing about the stories again.

That evening was parent-teacher night, so I went to the gymnasium where the conferences were held and found a desk with my name on it. We were arranged alphabetically, so I was sandwiched in between the art teacher and gym teacher. I taught mostly senior English, so my schedule was packed. For 90 minutes I had a non-stop procession of 10-minute meetings with various parents, encouraging the father of a borderline failing student, advising a woman on how to restrict her daughter's social media usage, filling up the egos of the proud parents of an A student, and so on. It seemed never-ending.

Then a student volunteer finally ushered a parent-a-woman, way to his next meeting, and he whispered to me, You've had a cancellation, sir, which was music to my ears. I was leaning back to stretch when I heard someone ask, We'd like to talk about our daughter, Amy. I was shocked out of my fleeting moment of rest. There, standing before me, were a couple whose name tags indicated they were Mr. and Mrs. Waller. The first thing that hit me was that they looked like nice people. To this day, I don't know why of

everything I could have noticed that that was the most salient thing about them. Perhaps it had to do with my empathy for them leading up to our meeting. Regardless, I had to break the news to them. Oh, I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Waller. I don't teach, Amy. They looked down at their itinerary, confused. Then Mrs. Waller called out to someone behind me. Amy, isn't this your teacher? I turned towards their daughter, and that's when my temples started to pound. My back pressed up against my chair as I suppressed everything within me that wanted to flee.

I strained every muscle in my face. face to force a smile, and I could feel my breaths coming in heavy waves through my nostrils. The girl standing before me, Amy, was not the girl I had seen in the hallway. This Amy looked nothing like her sister. This girl was tall, with smaller eyes, and though her hair was black, it wasn't straight, but wavy. No? She said before scanning the gym for her teacher. There she is over there.

Her parents smiled and apologized for disturbing me, and then moved on. A bunch of us teachers went out to a pub a few blocks away for drinks immediately after the parent-teacher conference. It was a long-standing tradition at this school for the principal to buy the first round. She lifted her glass and toasted in her slight Scottish lilt. To you all, thank you for displaying both passion and restraints an equal measure. Later that evening, with a few beers in me, I cornered the principal by the pool table and tried to finesse some information from her. I asked how Amy's transition into high school was going. You don't teach her.

do you? I told her I didn't, but was concerned, given the recent discovery in the basement. Ah, that. Don't you worry about her. Agreed, councillor, is ready if any red flags are raised. I was about to walk away when I thought of another question. Lorna, does Amy have any other siblings? None? She put her arm around my shoulder and gave it a strong squeeze. Don't let these stories get inside your head. I've been hearing them for years. Christ, just let the dead be dead and be done with it, I say.

Go get another beer on my tab. Near midnight, I found myself walking out of the bar, still bothered by the experience of seeing Amy, the real Amy. I was standing at a corner, thinking about hailing a cab, but when I suddenly got the urge to go back to the school. It was only a ten-minute walk. It would help clear my head.

The moon was out, so it would partly light my way through the dark neighborhood. I know that in hindsight it sounds ridiculous. Like one of those scenes and horror movies where you think, Why the hell is he going back there? This is so fake. I know how stupid. stupid this all sounds. Perhaps it was the beer amping up any youthful foolhardiness I had left in my bones, fueling my inner need for answers to questions spinning in my head. Or maybe I had a flare

for the dramatic moment, the kind that lead some men to stand under balconies and unburdened their hearts. Regardless of the reason, I found myself standing on the grass under my classroom window, unburdening my heart of nothing at all. On the contrary, it was heavy with foreboding, as if a thick fog had settled in its core. I stood by the tree that provided shade to my room on some late autumn afternoons. The moon cast long shadows across the school lawn, and a slight breeze was noticeable now that I had stopped walking. The tree squeaked under its own weight, and I could hear the branches tapping against one another. And as my head grew tired and heavy, I thought of the strange, manic eyes of Manny's replacement custodian. When did he have time to ask a relative

about the events of our school, since he just started working for us that day? And we were, Why would he care so much to even bother? The wind died down as I started thinking of the walk back to the drive to catch a taxi. And that's when I noticed it. The tapping sound of the branches. I could still hear it despite there being no breeze. I looked up and all was still. Then I caught movement in the corner of my own.

eye. I turned to look up at my classroom window and there, three stories above me, was the girl staring down at me. The one I had thought was Amy. Her fingers were tapping the window. Slowly, a pair of soulless eyes staring down at me. I backed away. I backed away. rubbing my eyes. I looked back up, and she was gone. It had been a figment of my overactive imagination, mixed with a few pints of beer in the eerie, exaggerating influence of moonlight.

That must have been it, but my heart was still racing, so I put it to good use and ran back to the dry, where I caught a cab for home. I had the whole weekend to process it all and concluded that I required more answers. Obviously, I was starting to see things, nightmares embedded in my imagination.

My mind needed coherence. I needed things to make sense. On Monday, I went to see Lorna, my principal. I asked her what she did. had meant at the pub when she said she'd been hearing these stories for years. She looked at me incredulously, as if I were joking. She wanted to know why I was so curious. I told her that several students had approached me with concern, and I needed a way to reassure them with facts. You want facts, say? Here's a fact. Vancouver is filled with old school.

schools. And every one of those schools has an urban legend about some ghost. Here's another fact. It's not just schools. You can say that about any old building in Canada, the States, England. Hell, my old school back in Glasgow had at least three ghosts are known of. People like telling ghost stories and people like hearing them. So that's why we're hearing them. Now, Go and teach your kids more facts. I reminded her I teach English, and she laughed. The day proceeded the way most teaching days do. Some yelling, some laughter, some revelations, and much rubbing of my forehead.

A typical day in the life of a high school English teacher. I was an assistant coach on our varsity soccer team, so I held practice. practice after school on the Westfield as usual. We worked on our drills for most of the afternoon, and then wrapped it up with a brief scrimmage. I had my two assistants help me lug the ball bags back to the equipment room. It was getting dark, and I could see clouds gathering in the north by the mountains. When I walked into my room to grab my belongings to take home, there was a sheet of paper on my desk. I spotted it immediately, since it looked so out of place, nowhere near my regular stacks of marking.

I don't remember leaving any paperwork on my desk itself. I walked towards my desk and picked it up. Nothing. I turned it over. I suddenly felt my chest sink inward, as if collapsing into itself, making it hard to breathe. breathe. It was a drawing, a crude pencil sketch, as if a young child had hastily drawn it. The drawing was of me standing under the tree outside my window. It was drawn from the perspective of someone standing in my room, looking down on me. As far as I knew, no one had known I was standing

outside the school Friday night. I ran downstairs and headed to the office. I tried the door, and it was locked. Everyone had gone home. Then I had an idea. I jogged back to my wing and searched the hallways. I then took the back stairwell up to the second floor and walked quickly down the corridor. I heard something up ahead and saw one of the classroom doors still open. That's where I found Manny's substitute custodian. He was moving desks out of the way so he could finish sweeping the room. I folded the sketch and placed it in my rear pocket and walked in. He was surprised to see me. His name, it turns out, was Oscar. I was... I asked him how he liked working at our school.

He said our school suited him just fine. As far as he's been told, he was going to be with us for the remainder of the week. I tried to make some more small talk, but I could sense he was suspicious. He had every right to be. It's not like we were old friends catching up. Why would I care how he liked cleaning the floors at our school compared to the floors of other schools. Has there anything else I could help you with? He had one of those faces that even at rest, it looked like it was about to curve into a creepy grin. Oh yeah, um, the other day you mentioned

that you believe there's something else in the basement. What makes you think that? He then moved to the door and poked his head out into the hall. He then turned towards me. This school has dark history. You wouldn't think it with its bright paint job. The quiet houses across the street. But they've had families here that. And he stopped as if searching for the right words.

There are good families and bad families. And then there are other families. What's that supposed to mean? He hesitated, then spoke. Are you a religious man? No. The basement. You know that feeling you get that makes you want to drive into oncoming traffic?

The kind that softly urges you to leap off a balcony when you're peering over the edge of a patio, the part of you that needs to know and feel unknowables? It's as if we're drawn from the abyss screaming into the world, and then, eventually, we subconsciously miss it and are quietly called back into that abyss. I think that urge towards an end was pulling me in the direction I found myself on. I think that's why, a few minutes later, I found myself standing in front of the basement entrance,

The large metal door was propped slightly open, taped off for repairs. The lights were off so that I peered into the blackness of its depths. I had never been down there, so had no idea what to expect. I took the large door and opened it wider to let the hallway light shine down into the stairs. And as the door swung wider, as the fluoride, The crescent light of the hall expanded into the stairs. I saw someone standing down there. It was a girl with long black hair. Her back was to me, so I couldn't see her face. She was near what I thought was the bottom of the staircase. I bent forward to get a better look.

It was the same girl I had seen standing outside this very door the week prior. I was about to call out to her when I noticed something very strange. There was something odd in the way she was standing. It was as if she were leaning too far back towards me. It struck me as unnatural and disturbed me just enough to make me catch my time. tongue for a moment. But she must have heard me because she started walking down the steps. And that's when I saw it. My eyes had traveled down her back. She was wearing a cream-colored sweater, waist high. A dark knee-length skirt flowed neatly out below that, but at the bottom.

Her feet were turned the wrong way. They were facing me. I couldn't really tell because the angle of the stairs obscured my vision so that I couldn't get a full view of her feet. But I saw enough when she lifted them up to make me step back in horror. To this day, I don't know for sure if that's what I actually saw. But accurate or not, the image has been burned and damaged. my memory so that on some restless, sleepless nights, the vision of those feet still come to me

from dark corners of my room. The day after I saw that girl in the basement stairwell, I floated through my classes and lessons as if a ghost myself. I hadn't had a good night's sleep since the day before the parent-teacher interviews. I found that every noise, every slight sound in the night made me sit up in bed. I lived in a small condo downtown, so there were always noises worsening the situation. After that episode in the dark stairwell, I didn't sleep at all. I'm almost ashamed to admit the pure terror that fueled my feet out the door across the staff parking lot. and into my car.

I was all raw nerves and over heightened senses for the next several hours. As I entered my apartment building and turned the corner of the lobby towards the elevator alcove, a little girl jumped out at me from seemingly nowhere. I assume I cussed because her mother shot me a stern glare as she walked past me to gather her child. But that evening condensed into a hazy fog of moments. The only thing that stuck with clarity was the vision of the feet turned backwards towards me as they stepped away into darkness. But as as frightful as it was, it left too wide a gap of ambiguity which my mind automatically began to fill in with images even more horrifying.

Was she a ghost? A phantom? Everything in me that I thought constituted a reasonable man argued against this hypothesis. It was ridiculous, fantastical. The whole concept of ghosts is ludicrous. If ghosts are the parts of us that leave our bodies behind, why do they retain any semblance of human form? It's like that old saw. If God is eternal and omnipresent, why does he even need legs or arms or eyes?

Yes, that was a terrifying thought. Did the girl have eyes or a mouth? If she had a mouth, was it grinning ear to ear when she stepped down the stairs, demonically satisfied at its effect on me? You see, my mind was engaged in, Somersaults and cartwheels of conjecture and mad, mad imaginings, and the only thing preventing a stream of nightmares from flooding my sanity was a rigid dam of reason.

Because the thing is, we cannot believe in ghosts. We just can't. Once we allow for it, then everything in the imagination is possible. Unicorns, fairies, demons. It becomes your belief against mine, for once you allow for things not rooted in reality in the measurable, observable world, then we no longer have anything in common. Reason is the common ground that we all share and must stand on. So, by the time my senior students rolled into my classroom for Literature 12, I was an exhausted shell of a teacher. The text that day was Dante's Inferno.

About 15 minutes into the lesson, I asked if anyone had any questions. One student raised his hand. Do you believe hell exists? Yes, when I mark your papers. The joke got a tepid response. Seriously. I told him that his question, was too personal, and I didn't want to sway anyone's personal beliefs with mine. He didn't look

pleased with my answer. You ask us all the time to share our personal feelings and stories. I ask you one simple question you can't tell us. I'm sorry, sir, that's weak. I looked around the class and saw that everyone was in agreement with him. I placed my book gently on the desk in front of me and spoke as cautiously as I could in my tired state. Okay, that's fair. Then, no. As a literal place of eternal damnation created by God, I do not believe that place exists.

Another student raised her hand. Yes? Do you believe in God? I had always been able to successfully dodge this question before by just stating what I'd already said, that it would be unprofessional of me to influence anyone else with my own personal biases. But this time, I was caught by a challenge to my pedagogical integrity. I was cornered. So, I surrendered. No. I looked at the faces before me, trying to gauge disappointment, distress, encouragement, I only sensed confusion.

I cleared my throat. As a sentient being, an omniscient, omnipresent creator of everything in existence that involves itself personally in our lives, no, I do not believe in that God. Do you believe in an afterlife? No. I was on a role. As a teacher, I had always been careful to avoid sharing too much with my students, making sure everything I said in the class was toward an educational purpose,

to edify and lift up a young person or to correct wayward behavior. I found the sudden wave of personal honesty refreshing, as if a thick layer of deceit and falsehood had been peeled from the surface of my skin. And then one more student spoke out. So you don't believe in ghosts? For that, I looked him square in the eye. No, I do not. I heard some giggling from various corners of the room.

Apparently, some of the students didn't believe me. Rumors of the floating girl had spread and taken hold of the school and hardened somewhere into a very localized, myth, my classroom was haunted. But I knew in my mind, and despite recent events, I had yet to encounter anything that couldn't be explained in some way, no matter how tenuous. There might be a girl who looks a lot like the missing Waller girl in our school, and I just haven't had the pleasure of formally meeting her yet. Perhaps some students were pulling an elaborate prank, trying to exploit recent events for their own amusement.

And I was slightly inebriated on Friday evening when thinking of the girl, so of course I thought I saw her standing in my classroom window, mixing the tapping of the branches with her fingers tapping on my glass, the light of the moon casting strange reflections on the glass, while the breeze and my haunted, drunk imagination, imbued it all with movement and full. form. The only thing I could not find an explanation for was that crude drawing. My best guess so far, someone was in the parking lot when I was standing outside my classroom and decided to pull a prank on me. The person must have seen me run away, frightened by something. That person was probably one of my students trying to have some fun with me. That's the only possible explanation.

Aukham's Razor, the simplest explanation is the likeliest one. It worked in this case. It was certainly more likely than the other one, that the ghost of a dead girl was stalking our halls and classrooms, mine in particular. I then realized I was still wearing the same pants from the day before. I reached into my back pocket and took out the drawing. I looked at it one more time, sighing deeply, sympathetically for the wayward teen who was hoping to send me into a paroxysm of fear with just a simple drawing. I tore it up into pieces and threw it into the recycling bin.

But something rather odd happened. One of my senior students got up from her seat, walked slowly towards the recycling bin, reached down. and pulled out the pieces of my torn-up drawing. What are you doing? This isn't supposed to be in the paper, Ben. I stared at her in utter confusion as she let some of the pieces of paper fall back into the recycling bin. Then, when she had only a few pieces left in her hand, she held up something. It was thin, as long as my index finger.

And red. It was a ribbon. My head began spinning, as if I were dizzy from a carnival ride on which I'd been placed against my will. I wanted it to end. It's okay. You just didn't see it. No big deal. She gently placed the red ribbon on the corner of my desk, looking at me, her brows furrowed with concern. Are you okay, sir? Is it possible it was there on the back of the drawing the whole time?

No, it wasn't. I had found the drawing face down, so I would have noticed anything on the back of the paper. Sir? I collected my bearings and assured her I was fine. I watched the clock the rest of the class until their dismissal at the bell. I must have looked ill because a few students asked if I was okay.

I assured them all that I was fine. Then I went looking for the custodian, Oscar. I found him on the main floor in the South Wing. I want you to show me what's in the basement. He looked aghast, as if I had just propositioned him to murder someone for me. Can't do that. He looked around to make sure we were alone. I could get fired for that.

I stood firm. What did you mean the other day when you said there's probably something else in the basement? I already told you. No, no, you didn't. You made some vague statements about different types of families. He looked me up and down, taking my measure. That's because it's all on. about. Again, he said this just as cryptically as everything else that came out of his mouth.

I was getting sick of it. Mind if I borrow your flashlight? He looked down at his maintenance push cart at the large yellow flashlight hanging on a mount on the side. He slowly took it and handed it to me. Great, the main lights are at the top of the stairs to the left. There's more at the bottom. I left him there and marched to the basement entrance. The door was still propped slightly open, yellow warning tape at its entrance. I steled myself and peered down into the darkness, half expecting to see the girl again. Nothing there. I turned on the light switch and proceeded carefully down into the basement.

For some strange reason, I called out, Hello? As if careful to not be too obtrusive. A clear sign of my nervousness, deferring to social moors when there was no need. I reached the bottom and found the light switches. I turned on all of them. The cavernous space lit up but remained dark along the sides and corners. The dank smell of mildew was in the air.

I began walking slowly, watchfully down the middle of the long room. I ran out of light very quickly, as if the darkness suddenly marked its territory in the middle of the basement, the room stretching before me into blackness. I searched the walls for more switches. There had to be more, especially since I knew the district engineers were down here assessing the damage, and coordinating repairs. I turned on the flashlight and let its beam light my way along the wall,

looking for a wall switch. I now found myself inching down the long room, cloaked in complete darkness, the beam from my flashlight lighting spots here and there, as my fingers gently tickled the walls, feeling for more light switches. This is where my mind, discipline really showed itself as my light scanned the void ahead of me.

As soon as I started sensing that my flashlight would at any moment reveal a pale, long-haired girl crouched in a corner, her head and feet turned the wrong way, her eyes white and her mouth gaping wide. My mind snapped back to the task at hand, focusing on finding anything of use. There are no such things as ghosts or spirits. I know this. The only thing to fear were other people who wanted to wish harm on others. Then something brushed against my forehead.

It was cold, causing me to jump back. I quickly aimed my beam upwards. It was then I noticed how low the ceiling had become. Something was swaying in front of me. The sight of it almost made me laugh, as my students would later like to say out loud. The thing that touched my head and almost caused my heart to break out of its rib cage was a metal pole chain hanging from a bulb, screwed into a ceiling socket.

I breathed a sigh of relief and pulled the chain. The rest of the room lit up, revealing boilers and large squat electrical transformers. The floor was slightly slanted before me, subtly ramping upwards. It wasn't that the ceiling was getting lower, but the floor getting higher. But there was something in the far back corner. I walked towards it, careful to avoid the cracks that were now appearing in the concrete under my feet. Some of the cracks were quite wide, definitely enough space to hide a small box of things. Red pylons marked off the deeper fissures in the floor.

I moved past all that towards the back corner. I now found myself standing before a small room. It sat in the far corner, almost imperceptible, except to me who had been looking for anything unusual, and looked like it was originally built for storage. I was confused as to what such a small room would store and why the school would need a storage space in the basement where the whole room could easily function as one big storage space. I carefully opened the tiny door inwards and crouched,

shining my light into the room. It measured roughly four by four, and was only about four feet high, a perfect square and much too low to stand in. On the left was a low bench made of two pieces of rough plywood, like one you would find in a cheap sauna. I pushed the door further in so I could see behind the door. There was nothing. I looked at the low ceiling of the tiny room and saw no light bulb. That was it.

A small room in the corner of a dark basement with no lights, no electrical outlets, nothing. Just a perfect square of concrete, a bench, and small door. And that's when I noticed the handle. My right hand was placed on a standard brass doornaub on the outside of the door. But as I look behind the door, I realized there was. no doorknob facing inside the room. There wasn't even a handle of any kind. Anyone outside the room could easily open the door as they would any door. But if anyone happened to be inside that room and the door closed, there was no handle on the inside to unlatch the door. They would

be stuck, trapped in that tiny, concrete room. The thought of it disturbed me deeply. What was the purpose of such a room? Was it used to punish students in the early days of the school? Surely no one could have surreptitiously built this concrete room in a public building without anyone's knowledge. The administration must know this is here in their school and know of its purpose. I let my hand run along the inside of the door, shining my light along it. My foot sticking out of the room to make sure the door didn't accidentally close on me. And I saw something strange on the door. I didn't notice it at first because I was so disturbed by the doorknob,

but I shined my light squarely on it. It was a circle drawn roughly in chalk. Inside the circle was a pentagram. Inside the pentagram, the face. of a goat. I suddenly felt a chill descend upon me as my imagination refused to be held at bay any longer. A torrent of images raced through my mind as I rushed out of there. Who had been accessing this room and for what purpose?

I had seen enough movies to know that sign. Why is someone drawing demonic symbols on the inside of a door that no one will ever see. I rushed to the light in the middle of the room and reached for the chain. That's when I saw it. Hanging from the bottom of the chain was something that was not there just a few minutes ago. It was a lock of hair. It was black, and it was tied in a red ribbon.

I found Oscar waiting for me. the top of the stairs. What the hell is that? I was still shaking from the experience. He held his hands up in a defensive posture. Hey, hey, hey, relax, man. That's when I noticed my hands were bald into fists, and I suddenly realized how close my face was to his. I stepped back and focused my energies on calming down. You're just the messenger, right? If you think I had anything to do with that, you're nuts. That's been there a long, long time. Everyone knows about it. Then why hasn't it been taken down? Why hasn't it been cleaned up? He looked confused. Cleaned up? Huh. They said they pumped out all the water already.

It dawned on me that he only knew half of what I was talking about. The room, you know, that tiny isolation chamber. I've never seen it, but yeah, I heard about it. Wait, you've never been down there? Now, why would I go down there? I've heard enough about it from the guys. It freaks the crap out of everyone. I've been to the bottom of the stairs, and that's enough for me.

Then why haven't they torn it down? I heard it's a structural thing. It's all concrete and holds up part of the gym in the middle of the school. That's a lot of solid block to remove. He could be right. I'm no engineer, but it sounded true. And why would I expect a temporary custodian to know anything more than rumors about our school? Why would I expect him to know more than me?

But why hasn't anyone cleaned up the graffiti? What graffiti? I held my tongue at that moment. I suddenly remembered that I was talking with a stranger. Why reveal too much to him? When does Manny return? Oscar looked at me, surprised. I guess no one told you.

He's transferred to another school. I let that play in my hands. head. Manny loved our school. He knew most of the kids by name, and they would call out to him since he had been in our community a long time. He even lived close to the drive. I coaxed Oscar to tell me where Manny now worked, an elementary school just a few minutes drive away. One more thing. What's this family you keep talking about? I only know what it is. I only know what it is. I don't know everyone else knows, except maybe you. Tell me.

He shifted uncomfortably. Okay, but I don't know how much is true. Back in the 70s and early 80s, there was a teacher here named Connors. He lived in the area alone and taught here. English or history, I think. He was a quiet man, kept to himself mostly, but everyone was scared of him for some reason. Even the principal. I've seen old photos of him.

He was a small man, but very intense. Everyone said there was something off about him. But what all his students remember is that he would start every class by reading out loud from this book. It was always the same book. Had this black cover without any lettering on it. But it was in another language.

None of his kids could ever figure out what it was. Some said Hungarian, others said Arabic, but it was decades ago, so who knows? If it wasn't English, Italian, or Chinese, it was a strange language around here. Students started spreading rumors that Mr. Connors was trying to cast a spell on the kids or that he was performing some kind of ritual chant to prepare the kids for something. You know, kids, they come up with some crazy stuff. but there was something else Strangers used to visit him in his classroom

After school Always different people Usually with anyone else That's no big deal But to the teachers here It was Because Connors was so antisocial And then the rumors started to fly

About his classroom light being on late at night About the neighbors seeing the people in robes standing in his classroom window Some of the ones in robes looked like little children The neighbors started believing There was some type of cult in their community And they started to suspect each other

There was no way to know if the family next door was involved or not The police never caught anyone trespassing And some teachers came into the school early in the morning To see strange symbols drawn onto the walls All over the building And this led to more rumors that a small group of families were scouting the school for evil purposes. But no one ever went missing, except for the Waller girl.

And, well, as far as I know. Then one day it was announced that Mr. Connors was fired. No reason was given, but it had something to do with the custodians finding something in the basement. Oscar took a deep breath, almost relieved to have unburdened himself of such salacious, neighborhood gossip. What did they find down there? I don't know, but it had something to do with that little storage room. So what does any of that have to do with the box found in the basement? All that business with Connors was over 30 years ago. Oh, I keep forgetting you don't hear any local gossip. They say that the cult is still here and their children go to this school.

That box is theirs. I nodded my head. Thank you, Oscar. I turned and walked down the hall. Not to the parking lot, but to my classroom. I climbed the stairs to my floor and walked to my room. I opened my door and looked at my desk. The red ribbon was gone.

I reached into my pocket and took out the lock of hair, the ribbon neatly tied to its end. I opened my desk drawer and placed it gently in my index card box. I sat there for several minutes, thinking of what to do. A part of me wanted to drop it all, to just erase my mind of everything that had been going on, to hit delete and carry on as things were before. the earthquake. But there was no such start-over button. We were nearing the end of the second term, and too many students were counting on me to be at the top of my game, especially the seniors. I looked at the back wall where all the literature 12 textbooks stood side by side in neat rows.

The green spines of the large textbooks were getting dull with age, but there were still a few years left in them. I was staring at the shelves, thinking how far we still had to go to cover the curriculum, when I noticed something. On the row of lit 12 textbooks was a small space. I only noticed it because that shelf held exactly 22 textbooks with no space left over for even a pamphlet to squeeze in. But even seated across the room, I only noticed it. I was a little bit of the room. I was a little bit of I could see there was a narrow, dark space of an inch or two. I got up to inspect it, and as I neared the bookcase, I saw something that stopped me in my tracks. In the shadow of the space between the books, there was an eye.

It was floating in the darkness, staring at me. It took me a moment to figure out what was going on. Then the realization hit. Someone must have placed a fake eyeball or cow's eye from the biology lab on my shelf. The pranking continued. I started walking towards it, and then it blinked. I jumped back towards my desk. I may have even screamed because a bunch of students came running into my room.

Sir, are you okay? I assured them I was fine, taking deep breaths. They hung around, concerned for my welfare, until I insisted I was okay. They left, returning to their homework club down the hall, and I walked to the shelf. I lifted the books, inspecting each one, and then looked over the shelf itself. There was nothing there. I needed answers before I completely lost my bearings. I gathered my things, rushed to the staff parking lot, and drove to Manny's new school.

As soon as I parked on the street, I could see him in the front foyer mopping the floor. The door was locked, so I knocked. He was surprised to see me. What are you doing? hair. He shook my hand with vigorous enthusiasm. I don't recall the small talk that we made, but I quickly broached my subject. Why did you leave us, Mani? The smile disappeared from his face. He looked down at the floor, his furrowed brow signaling his predicament. Does he tell me the truth or lie? His fingers started playing with a small.

gold cross hanging from his necklace. I felt awful for placing him in what was clearly an ethical dilemma for him. Who knows what he heard or saw to make him quit our school, and how much trouble could he potentially get in for telling me anything? I learned a lot about our school's history. I wasn't sure if anything I said could sway him, but I pressed on. I know. I know. I was a lot of about the old rumors, Manny, about Connors, about the weird neighborhood cult, about his strange classroom chanting. He looked at me, somewhat bewildered. Chanting? Yes, your replacement. Oscar, he told me everything. Manny's expression turned sour as if bothered by the thought of Oscar. That dude's an idiot. No one tells him anything. He's just a nosy SOB who knows

nothing about nothing. I was confused now. Then why'd you leave? He was biting his bottom lip, shifting back and forth on his feet, weighing the various outcomes of the next words out of his mouth. He took a deep breath. That last time I saw you, you asked about the Bible they found in the basement. Yes. Just before that, I was downstairs in the office with the school engineer when the police came to take away the metal box. And I heard Lorna tell them what she found in the Bible.

It had Conner's name in it. His words fell on me clumsily, or that's the way I received them, as if I had trouble grasping their meaning. Wait, wait. The police took away the metal box? Yeah. With everything in it? Yeah.

The Bible, the hair, and the ribbon? All of it. I turned away for a moment. I needed to think things through to let the ideas settle in me to weigh their import. Mani, was the metal box found near that small room in the basement? You heard about that, too. I went down there.

He looked at me as if crushed with disappointment. Did you go in the room? I nodded. Why? Why in the world did you go in there? And for the first time in a long time, I was at a loss for words. I suddenly realized I could not explain with any rational weight

why I descended those stairs that day, or why I walked to the back, or why I walked into that mysterious room. I don't know. I just had to. Then he said something very strange, something so crowsy, cryptically compelling, that to this day it still rings in my ears.

You shouldn't have gone in there. That's what they want. They've been waiting a long, long time for someone to go in there. Now, I pride myself in being a relatively logical person. I am never one to give in to irrational phobias. I regularly go camping by myself, for several days at a time, spending nights among the trees and nocturnal animals, never for a second, giving any thought to creatures of the imagination. But I found myself suddenly giving in, swept up in the deluge of this stuff of nightmares. How do you know this, manny? I could hear my voice quaver like an unsure note. because I was taught by Mr. Connors.

I was in 8th grade, and he would read from this strange black book. Every other morning I would go to his English class and sit there as he read in this weird language that wasn't a language. I'll never forget it. It was so messed up. But then when the police came for the box, the end. The engineer gave it to them, and I saw them open the box. And that was the book. I had no idea he was raiden from the Bible the whole time so long ago.

Wait, you said he spoke in a weird language? Yes, and that's when it hit me. All that time, all those days and months and years. He was reading the Bible backwards. I found myself getting cold. It was as if the stuff of reason were a hearth, and I was being dragged further from it. You ever hear a record played backwards.

That's what his reading sounded like. I didn't put it together until I saw the thing in the office. I went quiet as I tried. to piece it all together, standing before Manny like a man suddenly exposed, made naked and vulnerable. I could feel the tangible, logical, material world starting to crumble around me. But what does any of this have to do with me? Mani looked at me. His gaze suddenly turned sympathetic. Oh my God, you don't know.

Don't know what. Your classroom. That was his room. You're in Conner's classroom. I am hard-pressed to remember with any significant detail what happened during the next few days after that. I found my grasp of reality becoming tenuous as I tried to jigsaw all the pieces together to at least create a plausible picture in which I was merely the victim of. of a mean-spirited prank.

But I failed in that attempt. I even went to the public library to search their databases to hunt down Mr. Connors since our school district told me he was excused from their employment several years ago and had no idea where he went. And reports started coming in from our school's neighbors of strange sightings coming from within our schools,

school after hours. Beams of flashlight scanning the darkness at midnight, sudden howlings and screaming emanating from our building in the dead of night, and a long-haired figure barely visible walking around a classroom shrouded in darkness. My classroom. So a few days later, I found myself explaining everything I knew about the basement to Lorna, as she was required to make a police report about the strange late-night goings-on. Nothing had turned up on any of the security cameras, so they could only rely on eyewitness reports from the neighbors. And it turns out, she knew about the tiny room in the basement. She explained that it was used for storage in the old days and not Used now. Simple.

I then told her about the girl I kept spotting, how I saw her walking into the basement, how I found the lock of hair tied to the pole chain. When she asked me to show it to her, I brought her to my room and opened my desk, took out my index card box, and showed her its contents. Index cards. The piece of hair and ribbon were gone. I took great pains to explain it all to her as she quietly, patiently, nodded. She then recommended that I take an immediate short-term stress leave.

Advice that I took. I used those days to re-examine everything in detail, replaying all the strangeness and visions. And I reached no conclusions, though I did finally manage to get some sleep. I returned ten days later in fine enough condition to finish off the year with mild success. My students were laughing at my jokes again and learning in my classes. And best of all, there were no more reports of strange sightings in our school. All work on the basement had been completed, and the door to the basement boy room was locked again. Near the end of that year, Lorna thought it would be a good idea if she

placed Amy Waller in my English 9 class the following year. She thought it would be healthy for me, to help me heal from my experience, to put a real face to otherwise horrific theories and innuendos. I wholeheartedly agreed. I was called down to Lorna's office to meet Amy and, and and her parents. I turned the corner by the receptionist and entered her office. And before me stood three people I had never seen before in my life. Mr. B, this is Amy and her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Waller. They smiled and shook my hand. These were not the people I had seen at the parent-teacher conference. I had never laid eyes on these individuals. I had never met this family. The room began to spin as I replayed the night of the parent-teacher conference. The river of possibilities

came rushing upon me, that there was at least one family in the neighborhood still involved with dark activities, impersonating other people to access our school, that these families may be looking for an offering to someone or something and that I was still being observed. And then there are other families, Oscar had said. I submitted my resignation the next day. I felt awful about it, leaving my classroom and students with very little notice. I consider just changing schools, but I knew this would follow me. My view of the material world was now skewed, bent by terrifying potential and the knowledge of dark rituals. The human character, brave and noble in its most perfect form, is also capable of dark degrees of wretchedness, and it was best if I

spent some time away from young minds while examining and healing my own. I spent the next eight years traveling, writing for radio and television, doing things I could not do as a public school teacher due to the demands of the job. In that time, the police eventually arrested and convicted a 57-year-old man of the murder of the Waller Girl, though they were never able to find her body. He had confessed to the crime while being charged with the murders of three other girls out in the suburbs. Fortunately for the Waller family, he confessed, so they found some semblance of closure. And as the years passed, and as I came to better grasp my strengths and failings, my dreams and capabilities, and, most importantly,

the things that brought me joy, I stunned myself by coming to the conclusion that I was beginning to miss the classroom. I was never comfortable with the way I left the profession that I loved. So in 2010, I returned to teaching. I restarted my career as a substitute teacher, and in my first month back to my profession, I found myself at my old school, by the drive. It had changed, though many of the same teachers were there. And at the end of the day, I was glad to run into one familiar face, Oscar. He recognized me immediately. We caught up, made several minutes of small talk, and laughed at the fact that over those eight years he had been promoted to head custodian. And then, as I was about to leave,

for the staff lot, I turned and asked him, do you have a key for the downstairs? Actually, head custodian, you can. He shook his head and then said in a plaintive voice, I wish you could just put it behind you. I reached for a rag off his cart and a flashlight. May I? He checked down the hall.

Then slowly, reluctantly, he opened the door to the basement. He propped it open with his cart. Going ahead of me, he turned on the light. Wait for you up here, just so no one closes the door. Hurry up, though. I nodded before leaving him at the top of the stairs, and headed down into the black void of the large room, where I felt my way along the walls.

I reached the middle of the room where the light met darkness. I reached up and pulled on the chain, turning on the bulb. Everything looked exactly the same. And in the far corner of the basement, under a low ceiling, I could see the small room. After a few hesitant steps, I found myself standing in front of the familiar brass knob. I steled myself and opened the door, pushing it into the room.

I turned on the flashlight and saw the same low bench to my left. I then removed my shoe and placed it in the door frame so that the door couldn't close on me completely. I carefully fit myself behind the door, and shone the flashlight on it. The symbols were still there, the circle, the pentagram, the goat's face. I balanced the flashlight on the bench, facing the ceiling, got down on a knee, and with one hand holding the door and the other on the rag, I started rubbing out the symbol.

The graffiti had been there a long time, so it took some effort. Then my ears picked up strange clicking sounds just on the other side of the door, but I was too afraid to stop working, too afraid to shine my light on what waited for me in the shadows. My mind was just toying with me again. I felt the sweat forming on my brow, but I finally succeeded in cleaning off the door. I picked up the flashlight and shone it over the door, inspecting my work. And I saw what I came to find. Near the side of the door by the latch, barely visible in this light, but clear enough for me.

Scratch marks. The wood of the door was heavy, yet it had been slightly chipped away near the latch. I moved the light around the door and began noticing other scratches in the wood. And that's when I noticed it. I felt it below my right foot. It was so subtle, so faint that I wouldn't have noticed it with my shoe on. I bent down and shone my flashlight on it and carefully picked it up. I focused the light on it, holding it gently and gently.

my palm. It was a fingernail. I felt my eyes well up at the discovery, at the confirmation of the evil in this room. Here was a place on earth with a total absence of human goodness. And to this day, Whenever I close my eyes, I have to summon all my strength to hold the nightmares at bay. Because the truth is, even though I may not believe in God, I sometimes fear the devil. And it horrifies me. We thank you for being with us for our devilishly dark tales. If you would like to find out how you can hear the full-length versions of our audio program, please visit the no-sleeppodcast.com to learn about our season pass program.

25 episodes, each over two hours long, and three exclusive bonus episodes, all for only 1999. On behalf of everyone at the No Sleep Podcast, we thank you for listening. Join us again next week when the darkness pulls you away from sleep. This audio program is copyright 2015 to 2016, Creative Reason Media, Inc. All rights reserved. The copyrights for each story are held by the respective authors. No duplication or reproduction of this audio program is permitted without the written consent of Creative Reason Media, Inc.