It started as just a normal Friday. I started by eating breakfast, and afterwards I went to school. I never liked Fridays. Okay, it's where the weekend begins, but it is also my longest day at school. When I got to school I suddenly got a really bad feeling. I had forgotten to do my physics homework. I've always hated my physics teacher and I was sure he was going to punish me. Although, not in the way normal teachers would.
My physics teacher always liked to come up with his own punishments, mostly writing down thousands of lines or having to stay at school and clean up the class, but sometimes things like pencil sharpening or cleaning the desk drawers. Physics was my first lesson today, so I didn't have any time to do the homework, so I hoped for the best.
When I entered class the teacher started with his daily sermon. "If you think you're allowed to talk in class, you're going to have a bad time. If you don't do your homework, you can leave now. I didn't leave, because I detected a harsh sarcastic undertone in his voice, I would rather write down "I will do my homework from now on" a thousand times than get tricked by that douche.
Next, he said, "I'm going to check your homework now. Please lay it on your table so I can see it." He started with checking the homework of the people on my left. I was in middle of the classroom so he would be here in about 30 seconds. I didn't want to have to tell him I didn't do it, so I quickly started to fill in some wrong answers hoping he wouldn't check my work properly. When he came over, he looked at my book. I figured he'd seen it was filled in, so I hoped that he'd go away.
Sadly for me, he didn't, and he told me, "I just saw you write that down. You know I hate it when students don't do their homework right? And because you didn't tell me earlier, I'm going to have to come up with some great punishment myself. I'll see you after school. This room 4PM." Great. My afternoon is ruined. And after, I have to explain to my parents why I'm so late coming home. God I hate my life.
At 4PM I went to his classroom to receive my shitty punishment. When I stepped in, he wasn't there. Although, his briefcase was still on his desk. Giving in to my curiosity I quickly checked the contents of the briefcase. I hoped to find some illegal stuff, like weapons or weed, so I could tell the headmaster and bust his balls. But all I found were some physics books, some pens, some markers and some Senior papers ready to be marked.
Right that moment my physics teacher came in,"What do you think you are doing?! Trying to steal my stuff?!"he snapped.
I told him I was just looking for a pen to write something down, and that I was terribly sorry I touched his stuff, but he didn't look too convinced.
He said, "I was gonna make you clean up this classroom so you could go home about 5PM, but now I guess you can clean up the classroom next door too. Now phone your mother, tell her to expect you at 6PM!”
I wanted to tell him to fuck off, but knew that this was definitely not the right time. I just said yes sir, took a cloth and started wiping the dust off of the tables. The teacher left with his briefcase. I knew he had access to the school's security cameras so I couldn't just stop working. But I guess at least he couldn't make me work longer than till 6PM, because the school closes at that time. I worked for what seemed to be forever. When the clock showed 6PM, I didn't stop. I just kept cleaning up as I knew he'd be mad if he came in and saw me goofing off.
"Did I tell you to stop!?" he would ask.
It was already 6.30PM. I just kept looking at the clock but the teacher just wasn't coming. The school should be closed by now, I swear! I decided to go search for him. I looked in the staffroom. Nobody there. Then, I just decided to go... it probably wasn't a good idea, after all I didn't really look anywhere else, but the teacher must have forgotten about me. And if he thinks I'm staying in after 7 he can fuck off! I went back to the classroom, grabbed my bag and went to the main gate. It was locked. I kinda started to panic. The school closed at 6PM, everyone had gone already. I checked some other doors and even the roof. All locked. I was getting hungry and wanted to go home. As fast as possible. All I wanted was to escape this school. I first tried the school's telephone. But hell... I didn't know my mom's number, I have people saved as contacts on my cell... it's the 21st century, too bad my shitty school was In the middle of scenic nowhere and they don't seem to have invented mobile networks. I didn't have my mobile phone with me anyway because it was raining outside. I never took it with me when it was raining, because I was afraid that the rain would damage it, while I was thinking. One last way to escape popped into my mind: I could open a window on the ground floor and leave the school that way. I checked all the classrooms and other rooms on the ground floor of the building but all the windows seemed to be locked. I didn't even know the windows had locks. Never seen them. In a last effort of despair I searched the staff room for any keys, but I couldn't find any.
By the time I had tried every way to escape the building it was already 8PM. I hadn't even eaten anything yet, so I decided to take something out of a vending machine. I still had some money in my bag. I spent half of it for supper: crisps, cookies and candy. There wasn't much more left... As I didn't want to waste money on a drink, I used the coffee machine in the heads room instead.
For the night I chose to wait. I knew that the teacher would find out he had forgotten something, and if not, my parents would call the police about me not coming home. The police would find out that I had gotten this punishment, and afterwards the police would call my physics teacher. As I didn't seem to be able to get any sleep in my current state, I just started to wander around the school searching for interesting stuff, like a flashlight or maybe even some food. I couldn't find anything like that. I also searched the school for doors I never went through. Now was the time to check it out! After a while I found a door on the ground floor, that I had never really seen before. I swear it never was there, although I couldn't be sure because this was a part of the school I almost never came to. I walked through the door to discover that it leads to the basement. I didn't know this school had a basement. It could be the place where they hid the exams, maybe that's why I never knew about this door - we weren't allowed to know. As I was in the last year of school I was pretty curious about this exam idea, so I decided to check it out. The basement was very dark, and as I didn't have any flashlight, I couldn't see anything. I thought of an experiment we once did in physics. It was about solar panels. We used a flashlight with that! I ran to the storage room next to the classroom I had been cleaning up. All the things that we used with both physics and chemistry were stored there. I searched the stuff and found the flashlight. I pressed the on button to find that it worked. Finally, a source of light.
I went down again into the basement and turned my flashlight on. I looked around. It just seemed to be the janitor’s room. There were some brooms and other cleaning things. Nothing special. Then I looked at the paintings on the wall. They were black and white pictures of our school, very old. The school is more than 200 years old. It was a hospital before, and it was renovated and became a school. There were some paintings of the hospital floors, with the beds and stuff. There were also some floor maps. Three in total. One of the ground floor. These floor maps seemed to be from the time the building was still a hospital, seen the names of the rooms. Although, the floor map of the ground floor seemed to be quite accurate with how the school looked now. The rooms had names like 'room 101-201' or 'surgery room 1'. I never expected the art classroom to be a former surgery room, but in fact, I didn't even care.
The second map was one of the first floor. Also, very accurate when compared to now. All the classrooms were rooms patients used to sleep in. The last map was a map of the basement. Although, it was very big. Just as big as the other floors of this school. This room in the basement I was in now was not the only room, the school seemed to have a lot of tunnels and rooms underneath it. One big tunnel was leading outside of the map, called 'emergency exit'. The rooms on this map were definitely not rooms patients used to stay in. One room was called, 'deceased storage'. This was some freaky shit. Although, I was also very curious now. I had to know if these tunnels and rooms were still there.
I began feeling very tired, so I took the maps with me and searched for a place in the school I would be able to rest. I remembered that there were some nice sofas to sleep on on the first floor, next to the computer square. I went there, used some of the cushions as a blanket, and fell to sleep. I fell asleep quickly because it was 2AM already. I slept till about 9AM. I first had to eat. I went to the vending machine again and took a Snickers, some cookies and a cup of coffee. Afterwards, as I didn't have anything better to do, I went to the basement again. I took the third map (the map of the basement) to check were I could be. I found the room where I was, as it was somewhere in the middle of the map. The reason I was sure this was the room I was in is that this was the only room with a staircase. The map said that on my left should be a hallway to the 'safety room'. I wondered why a hospital had such a room. Because of some crazy patient? The thought of that made me laugh. I checked my left to see a wall there. It was a simple wooden wall made of some planks. I saw that the nails which held this wall together were very rusty. They could break at any time.
I went up the staircase to the ground floor to check if anyone was around. Nope. This was my chance. I knew I could get kicked out of school if I destroyed the wooden wall, but as the school got me in the situation I was in now, I didn't really care. I decided to remove only the bottom 3 planks, and then I would be able to crawl underneath it. I started to destroy the nails, to be able to remove the first plank. The generated space was not enough to crawl underneath yet, but it was enough to see that there was definitely a hallway there. I thought, 'Why didn't they use this space? Why did they just leave it like this?' I started removing the other 2 planks. When I was done I geared myself up with my flashlight and crawled underneath. Right at the moment I climbed in, I realized I was doing stuff I shouldn't have. I had removed those planks so someone would find out eventually. Although, I didn't mind to get kicked out of this school anymore. All this school felt like right now, was a dark place.
Just before I started hesitating, my curiosity took over and I continued into the hallway. It was entirely dark, so I needed my flashlight to be able to see anything. In the hallway there were cobwebs everywhere. I hoped I wouldn't encounter any rats or mice. I took my map and chose to check out this safety room first. The safety room's door was like a huge vault door. If it was locked, I wouldn't be able to get in, but luckily for me it was ajar. I opened the 'vault door' further and looked inside. The room was filled with cobwebs. It was very cold there. I pointed my flashlight on the ground. I wish I never had. There was a body on the ground, at least, what was left of it. It was just next to the vault door, so whoever this was seemed to have died while trying to close it. I screamed. I ran as fast as I could back to the janitor's room to get out of this basement as fast as possible. I was scared as hell. I had to get out of this building as soon as possible. Although this building was pretty big, I seemed to get panic attacks, probably caused by my claustrophobia. There was only one way left to get out of this building - I had to destroy a window. No-one would have to find out. I took a heavy chair and threw it at the window. It bounced off and the window didn't even have a crack in it. I used a few more heavy objects and tried to destroy some other windows, but I couldn't get through them. What the hell is happening to this place?!
Now I wasn't just stuck in a school, I also seemed to be stuck in a building with dead people in it. I felt I had to eat something, so I took a chair to see if the glass of the vending machine was just as strong as the windows in this building. It didn't seem to be, because the chair went straight through the glass. I messed it up. People will find out that I was in this school and that I destroyed the vending machine. I did actually take some food because I was very hungry. It was 4PM. I didn't want to go to the basement anymore, and I wasn't curious at all anymore. I went to the sofas at the first floor, and decided just to chill. I took some food and my flashlight with me. As I was afraid of the dark now, I took my flashlight with me everywhere. I didn't want it to die out, so I took all the batteries of all the flashlights that the storage room had. This way it became night.
Two nights to go, I thought. It was 8PM and I already tried to sleep. I couldn't really sleep, so I was just lying there. Suddenly I heard something... footsteps. On the stairs to the first floor. I watched as this person entered the room I was in. It was a tall man, and in his hand he had an axe. The axe was red, and I was sure it was blood. It was very dark in the building already so I couldn't see his face. At this point I was scared as hell. Where did he come from? He came closer and closed, as if he was aware of my position. It was like he could smell me. I had to get away. When he was almost next to me I decided to run. I ran as fast as I could towards the staircase to the ground floor. This man should've been coming through the front door, so I wanted to check that one first. The man chased me, making weird noises. I was about 20 feet away from him, but he seemed to be faster. When I reached the front door of the school I checked if it was open. It wasn't. The man was right behind me. If I would run to a classroom now, I would be dead for sure. All I would do then was get stuck in a corner. I could run to a toilet and lock it, but I knew his axe would be able to smash through that door. There was only one option left: go to the 'safety room' in the basement. I ran as fast as I could, with adrenaline pumping though my body. I reached the door towards the basement, went down the stairs, crawled underneath the planks again and was in the hallway. I turned on my flashlight, and looked behind me. The man was crawling underneath the planks, and this was the first time I could see his face. His face looked awful. His skin seemed to have fallen off and his eyes seemed to be bulging.
I ran as fast as I could into the safety room and tried to lock the door. I seemed to be standing on the corpse, but I didn't care right now. The vault door was heavy as hell. I used all my strength to close it, and I locked it by turning the inside lock. I was safe. Although, I wouldn't last forever as I had limited resources. My plan was to wait here in this cold, stinking room until Monday, and then come out, running into the school. The school should be full of students by then, so I would have nothing to fear. I had only one problem with this plan - I didn't have any indication of time. I knew there were about 35 hours to go, so I just had to stick to this plan, and wait in a room together with a corpse. All I had with me was a flashlight, about 20 batteries, some candy, cookies and the maps. As there wasn't any light source in the room I was in now, all the light I had was provided by my flashlight. I noticed that there was a bookshelf in this room. The bookshelf was filled with notebooks. Every notebook had a date on it. I took the one with the latest date (it was from 23 march 1949). As the school started in 1960, this could contain why the hospital stopped running in the first place. It seemed to be some kind of diary of some nurse. She wrote about her patients and her colleagues. It started pretty normal. She also described the illnesses of her patients. I flipped to the last page. The last page was mostly blank. All that was written on this page: "Things are getting pretty serious now. All incoming patients seem to have the same illness. They are all losing their skin. One of those patients freaked out and killed Margaret. He seemed to have made his own axe. It was Shane Willfort, 53 years old. We are scared that more people will take aggressive forms. I'll have to watch out to stay alive."
That was all. I guess she didn't stay alive after all, as the book was never finished. There was a lot of weird stuff going on. Paranormal stuff. If this man chasing me was this Shane Willfort, he would've been 118 by now. It could be, because you'll never know what a disease can do. I read some more of the notebook, but didn't read much more interesting. This last page seemed to summarize all the events of the time before this day. I took my maps again. I checked the map of the basement. I saw all the rooms, but their names didn't sound like logical places for me to go at this time. I just had to stick to my plan, and try to sleep on this cold metal floor. It took a lot of time, but finally I fell asleep. When I woke up, I got hungry. I ate half of all the food I still had but didn't have any drinks with me. I had to get a drink, to be able to survive. Maybe I could go without, but it would be a tough time.
I decided to go out of the safety room and go up for some drinks from the vending machine. I would also get some more food, and then go back into this safety room again. I opened the door and checked around with my flashlight. Nobody. I went to the wall of planks, crawled underneath it and went up. I noticed that the door to the basement had been closed. I tried to open it, but it seemed to be locked. I pounded against the door, but there was no way to get through. I ran to the safety room again, and closed it off. I chose to think for a while, to be able to make a good decision about where to go. I took the map, and chose to head for the emergency exit. As I could be free in about 30 minutes, I decided to eat all my food I had left to be strong for the run. I checked my route about a thousand times on the map, so I would be sure not to go the wrong way.
About 20 minutes later, I decided to go. I opened the vault door and ran. The hallway led me past the 'experimental room', past the 'dangerous chemicals room' and past the 'deceased storage'. In my curiosity I quickly looked inside. The room was full of people, and all of them had skin like it was ripped off their heads. I didn't know how many there were, but I think there were at least ten. I ran faster. The emergency exit tunnel was longer than I thought, and I had no idea where it would end. I avoided the stones on the ground. I didn't want to fall now. I saw the end of the tunnel, with a trapdoor above it. I quickly grabbed the handle of the trapdoor. I opened the trapdoor and saw the forest above me: it was the forest next to my school. As I walked through this forest every morning on my way to school, I knew the forest very well, and I knew my way home. As I tried to lift myself through the trapdoor into the forest I fell. Everything turned black...
When I woke up, my head was pounding. I had the worst headache. I was laying on the ground and above me I could see the opened trapdoor. With all the strength that I still had I lifted myself through the trapdoor and crawled home. When I came home, I opened my front door. I seemed to be able to stand up, so I did. I walked into the living room, where my mom was sitting on the couch.
She looked at me and said, "Honey?! Where were you? I was so worried about you! If you go away for the weekend please tell me next time!” She stood up and walked towards me. Just before I could tell my story I heard her scream.
She screamed. "Son, why is your skin hanging off your face?! And your eyes seem to be bulging!" Everything went black.
Written by Simon Baars