Episode Three, It's Not That Easy Surviving High School

Things had gone back to normal, except for the fact that I now had a girlfriend. Lucas was still his normal, sarcastic self, and Addy was as perfect as always. Tryouts for the winter musical had taken place in the beginning of October and now we had rehearsal three times a week. I hadn’t gotten a major role, but I didn’t mind. Drama club was more of a time to hang out with my friends doing something we all loved to do.

We were upset, however, to find out a rehearsal was scheduled for Halloween night. Any normal teenager would be hanging out at a party or, though they rather not admit it, trick or treating. We, however, would be stuck at the school until seven. In the long run, it didn’t really matter, because nothing fun ever started until after dark. It was the principle of the matter that really ticked us off. Who were they to make us stay at the school on a Friday night? ‘Well, why don’t you just skip it?’ one may ask. If they knew our director, Ms. Lorry, the answer would have been quite obvious.

Seven o’clock rolled around on the night of Halloween and Ms. Lorry still had us on stage. Lucas and I were in the scene currently being rehearsed and Addy was off stage chatting with her friend, Kitty. Ms. Lorry was getting especially irritated as Lucas, on his twentieth try, could still not pull off the high pitched shriek that was asked of him. I, on the other hand, was totally used to this. On occasion Lucas over exaggerated, often doing things for attention. It was part of his personality that I had grown accustomed too. Ms. Lorry, on the other hand, looked like she wanted to strangle him to death then mutilate his lifeless corpse.

Eight o’clock finally made its appearance and Ms. Lorry was giving us one of her epic speeches. I was only half paying attention. “If we’re going to pull this off, then I need all of you giving it your best effort…” Yep, it was one of those kind of speeches. She was basically calling us all useless and then summing it all by saying she had to make do with what she had. I was used to people belittling me by this point in my life, so I shrugged it off without a second thought.

Ms. Lorry told us we could all leave a few minutes after eight, but she held Lucas back to have a chat with him. Addy, Kitty, and I waited, knowing that with witnesses she was less likely to cut his head off with the hatchet students rumored she carried around in her satchel.

“What was that about?” I asked as he came strolling over, a smile on his face.

“Ms. Lorry says I’ve improved,” he boasted.

“Compared to what?” Kitty asked skeptically.

“Hey!”

We all laughed; Kitty was a pro with good comebacks, so much so that everyone who talked to her had to be careful. She also made it a point of adding ‘your mom’ to at least half of her witty back talk, which made those who didn’t know her a little ticked.

We were walking out of the cafetorium, (yes, the person who came up with that word should have his eyeballs poked out with sharpened pencils, but that’s besides the point) when Lucas remembered, “I have to go to my locker. Chemistry homework.”

“Hurry up,” I said. “We don’t want to be here all night.”

We all tagged along as he made his way up to the second floor where his locker was. After failing to successfully to unlock the padlock on his locker, he realized it wasn’t even his. “Wait a second!” he protested loudly, “My lock wasn’t red!”

“You don’t say,” Addy laughed. “Looks like you’re not doing your chemistry homework tonight.”

“I hate people,” Lucas grunted as he turned away from his locker.

“Amen to that,” Kitty agreed.

“Let’s just go,” I said urgently. “This place gives me the creeps at night.”

“I agree,” Addy said.

That’s when the I heard it, the faint click-click of the lights shutting off. The hallway was quickly drenched in darkness except for the moon shining through the window at the far end. The shadow of a tree played eerily on the floor and walls.

“I say we leave and do so now!” Lucas said rather frightfully. He was easily scared and in times like this saw little sense.

“The lights are probably set on a timer,” I pointed out. “Nothing strange going on here.”

Even as I said it I had the feeling I was wrong. I grabbed Addy’s hand and saw Lucas’s gaze shy away. He was still like this whenever we did anything of the sort in his vicinity. Once again, it was something I had grown used to.

Kitty lead the way down to the main entrance. We reached it and she pushed on the door to open it. The problem was, it didn’t seem to budge. “Stop kidding around,” Lucas stammered. “Open the damn door.”

“Hey, hey, hey,” Kitty said, a little hurt by his harshness. “I’m not doing anything. The door won’t open.”

Sure enough, Lucas tried and the door wouldn’t move and inch.

“What now?” Lucas asked me.

“How should I know?” I responded quickly. The darkness was starting to get to me. I couldn’t see the end of the hallway behind us. Anything could’ve been hiding in the thick shadows.

“The back entrance, duh,” Addy said. At least someone was still thinking clearly.

We reached the backdoor and all of us stood back, looking strangely at it. No one wanted to be the one to try it, because if it didn’t open, they would be the first blamed.

“Oh, just let me do it,” Kitty stepped forward and tried the door.

Of course she expected it to open. We all were expecting, hoping it would open. That’s why a quick singe of fear ran throughout my body when she had the same results as with the other door. “Are we gonna be stuck here all night?” Lucas wondered aloud.

I took out my cell phone, “I don’t think that will be a problem.”

I slid it open and speed dialed my house. I put it to my ear and was surprised to hear a weak static. “It won’t work.”

Kitty and Addy had the same results as me, a weak static. Lucas, on the other hand, had absolutely no service. Was I glad I didn’t have AT&T. But I guess in this situation, that didn’t really matter.

“There has to be a service entrance or something we can try,” I suggested. “And if it comes to it, we can climb out a window.”

I began to walk back towards the center of the school when Lucas stopped me. “I don’t want to go back in there.”

“We really don’t have a choice.”

“I’ll wait here,” Lucas proposed. “Come get me when you find something.”

Kitty was the first to respond. “If you’re like this when you have our company, what do you think you’ll do when your all by yourself?”

Lucas didn’t have a response and without another word followed us back into the center of the school. There was what the students called a “knuckle,” where the four main hallways met. We stopped here to review our choices.

“We could use smoke signals to call for help,” Kitty recommended.

“You’re crazy,” Lucas replied.

“Your mom’s crazy,” Kitty shot back.

“Now is definitely NOT the time,” I said loudly.

That’s when I saw it, just out of the corner of my vision. Someone was standing in the moonlight cast through the doorway at the end of the hallway. “W-what is th-that?” I managed to say, pointing.

Everyone looked. I thought Lucas was going to wet himself.

As we stared, more “someone’s” began to file out of the doorways on either side of the same hallway. I call them that because they all looked exactly the same. They were definitely teenagers dressed in what many would call “cool” clothing. Ripped jeans, button up shirts, all designer by anyone’s standards. But they all had the same, crazed look in their eyes. It was surprising to see that they walked with their hands stuck to their sides. I almost expected them to have their hands outstretched, like I had seen in those zombie movies last Halloween.

After a few moments they all stopped and stared in our general direction. The one from the back, who was presumably female, walked to the front and without hesitation lifted her arm and pointed her finger directly at us. All the other “someone’s” reacted by starting in our direction. I never thought I’d find the need say this, but now seemed the right time. “Run!”

I grabbed Lucas’ shoulder, because he was still in a strange daze, and pulled him with the rest of us. In a second he was in step beside us. “What are those things?” he asked as we ran down the hallway towards the front entrance then took a turn to head towards the elevator.

“You think we know!” I hollered back.

Could this really be happening? This circumstance did not seem plausible, but it was happening and now we were stuck in the middle of it.

I stopped at the end of the hall as the others ran up the stairwell. I was hoping that those things were just figments of our imagination. Something the paranoia of the situation had created in our minds.

My hopes were dashed. After a few seconds the group that had been in pursuit of us rounded the corner. What in the world was going on? Something strange, that was for sure. But really, how could something like this actually happen?

I turned quickly and took the steps two at a time. The rest were waiting for me on the second floor, stopped by something I hadn’t seen yet. Another group of was coming down the hallway, blocking any forward progress.

“What are we going to do?” Lucas yelled, backing away.

“The third floor,” Addy said quickly.

“We’ll be trapped.”

I looked down over the railing and the group that had been on the first floor was now climbing the steps and said rapidly “We have no other choice!”

We bounded up the steps and found ourselves in the short, third floor hallway.

“What now?” asked a defeated Lucas.

An idea occurred to me in that instant, stemming from something Kitty had said before. “What if I pull a fire alarm?”

“But we’d be eaten before anyone got here,” Lucas yelled.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” I said quietly. His screaming wasn’t helping anything.

“What else do you think they’ll do?”

I hadn’t thought about that. But it was a plan and that’s more than anyone had at that point. I raced to the fire alarm that was a few steps away and pulled it fiercely. “Oops,” I said quietly.

“OOPS!” Lucas shouted.

Kitty smacked him.

“I think I may have broken it…” I said, holding the broken red handle in my hand.

“Into a classroom,” Kitty advised as the group became visible at the top of the stairs. The first door we tried was locked, but the second opened.

We hurried in and locked it behind us, hiding in the corner away from the door. This classroom was on the backside of the school, so we wouldn’t see anything out of the windows, but I walked over to one all the same. I unlocked it at the top and to my surprise it slid right open. A chilly air filled the room. Another plan was forming in my head.

“What are you doing?” Addy asked as we heard the door handle restrain against those trying to get in.

“If we can get back to the first floor we can get out through a window.” This idea sounded oddly familiar.

“Why didn’t you think of that when we were down there?” Lucas questioned as he cowered in the corner.

“None of us were in the state of mind to think rationally.” Kitty was the one to respond.

“We can go through the door to the next classroom,” I explained my plan aloud. “That should put us directly across from the elevator. If we can sneak across the hall and get in, we should have enough time to find a window when we get there. But we have to do this quietly.”

I put my finger to my mouth to show Lucas, who was basically crying, that I meant now, then opened the door to the next classroom. It was empty. I crept over to the door to the hall and peeked my head up to see out the window in the door. The group was huddled around the door we had just entered. Whatever they were, they weren’t very smart.

I wasted no time in opening the door. I walked into the hallway and made it across into the alcove were the elevator was situated. I motioned for the others to follow. First came Addy, then Kitty, and finally Lucas, but not only until after much goading from our side. I had to resist every urge to scream at him.

When we were all safely out of site, I pressed the call button and waited. Out of no where there was a loud *beep* and the elevator doors slid noiselessly opened. I had not been expecting that one. Before we could look to see if it had attracted their attention I dived through the doorway and pressed the button for the first floor. The rest were quick to follow. The doors closed before any of the things appeared by the doorway. They had definitely heard that though.

The doors opened on the first floor and we sprinted right out. The first window we happened by was by the front entrance. I unlocked it and it flew right open.

I stopped as I realized there was a screen in the way. Lucas, however, would not be stopped that easily. He punched a hole right in the middle and ripped it apart. He jumped through first then helped Kitty and Addy over. I was last. I took one quick look and saw nothing.

Once we were out we ran. Past the naïve trick or treater’s and their unknowing guides. What we had just experienced was something unexplainable. Had we just stumbled upon an unsolved mystery or were we losing our minds? Only time would help answer such questions. In the meantime we would be left to wonder what was really going on within the walls of that high school…

This mystery will be pursued in a later episode…