A boy dwelt in a schoolyard

“A Boy Dwelt in a Schoolyard”

A ghost story By Cameron Reese

            I met a woman I had not seen in many years. She and I were the last of us who remained in our hometown of those who were born here, raised here, and then proceeded to construct our adult lives here from the graduating class of 1993. We met one night at the bar we used to frequent in the days of our mutual adolescence. I bought her a drink and we proceeded to talk about the days of yesteryear when we were younger and more idealistic—the days when we could still leave without consequence. The conversation was ordinary… until it wasn’t. But then again, it would be unrealistic to remain ordinary, perhaps even phony. There was a reason so many of us left after ’93. She recounted the day of May the 6th—some twenty years ago. She said what many others in town say, “Nothing good happens on the sixth day of May.”  

            We all know why, and the entire town has since been left scarred, irreparably, by the events of that day. We ought to know since we were there when it happened. She asked me, “Do you remember? Do you remember that day?” “Of course… how could I forget? It still haunts me now.” “You know what they say, right?” “Yes, yes,” I cut her off before she could say it. “I know what they say, you don’t have to remind me.” “Aren’t you curious if it’s true?” I thought for a moment, put back my drink and said, “No, not really. I would like to forget it ever happened, but I simply can’t.”

            Her name was Elizabeth but back in the halls of Parkview High, we called her ‘Lizzy.’ But the times have changed. She’s older now; her hair possesses a streak of gray, her hands are veiny and have lost their suppleness, she has wrinkles around the edges of her eyes, and her body has grown firm. She’s beautiful for her age, but the times have changed. I’m older now, too. I feel it when I watch the young men and women around the bar downing shots in aggressive swoops or in their screams and hollers with the abandon that comes from the lack of a fear of death. These youthful drinkers at the bar, they’re all children to me now—I envy their cavalier, untamable spirit. Mine was once as vibrant as theirs.

            Now I’m talking to Elizabeth, and she wants to remember the glory days. “Do you remember when…” I wasn’t listening at this point. As she talked and talked, all I could do was nod, smile, and proverbially lean back against the rope and let her punch herself out. I just looked at her with glazing eyes; she wore lipstick and leaned cutely against the bar as she rubbed the condensation off the glass of her drink. We were both too old to be here in this environment and I felt weary and tired. She wore her nice dress with her matching pocketbook slung around her shoulder, dangling at her thin waist. She had a tattoo on her ankle and two kids at home—kids to a man no longer in her life.

            “So, what do you say?” she asked. I blinked suddenly and returned to the world around me, “Huh?” “Were you listening?” she asked with a smile. “Yes, of course I was.” “So, do you want to get out of here?” That didn’t take much pondering, I didn’t have children at home or responsibilities to shirk. “Hell yeah, let’s ditch this daycare,” I said. Then we left, together.

            She decided that since she was the more sober of the two, that she’d be the one to drive. I did not object at the time, but looking back at it now, I should have steered the course because then the whole calamity could have been avoided altogether.

            We drove down the main drag of town, which had changed subtly year-by-year to the point where the changes were imperceptible to those who dwelled here every day, but, when shown a photo leaping twenty years in the past—from the days of Parkview High—even I can hardly recognize the place I call home.

             As she drove, we came upon the old high school, which too had changed a-plenty since we occupied those halls. Back then, it was but a single, humble building which rested in a field, unfenced and slightly forested. Now, the tall building stood firmly surrounded by a tall dark fence, in a field of cement encompassed by a vast parking lot. The trees were gone, and it now more resembled a jailhouse than an environment conducive to learning.

As I was looking out at the school in a gaze of reminiscence, I could feel the car slow to a stop. I looked at her and she said to me with an impish grin, “Let’s go inside and see the boy dwelt in the schoolyard.”

I tried to laugh her off, “You’re kidding, right? You don’t really believe what they say… do you?” She said, “Everyone in town has seen it, and we all know its there. There’s no denying it, and it will never go away. Let’s go and see it for ourselves. After all, we were there when it happened.” I half-shrugged and said, “I haven’t thought about it in a long time. Not thinking about it is as close as I’ll ever come to it never happening.” “But it did happen,” she reminded me, “and it’s unhealthy to go your entire life without grieving.”

I nodded.

She proceeded to park the car along the grass off the side of the road before the slope which led up to the fenced schoolyard. As we got out of the car, I checked my phone to read the time, but I then caught a glimpse of today’s date, and I saw that it was a Friday… the sixth of May. Nothing good happens on the sixth day of any month, but this was especially true in May. It was exactly twenty years ago when it happened.

We hopped the fence and entered the school grounds. The silvery moon cut thin against the slit of a midnight cloud which passed slowly. We walked through the vacant parking lot and hopped another fence which was smaller. We tried the first door which led into the main building, but it was locked. We went around the corner and entered a large courtyard area which was encircled by the tall freshly painted stone walls. Our steps echoed throughout, and she stayed close to me as we walked.

We came upon a green door which was locked and again we were denied entry. “I bet all the doors are locked. We should just go, they’re not going to forget to lock a door.” She said, “No, wait, let’s keep trying.” We walked around the building and pulled at the knobs of every door we encountered, but they were, without exception, all locked until, that is, when we made a complete circle and wound up back at the green door only to discover that it was now open. It stood agape in the breeze for us to walk through as though someone was holding it open for us.

She grabbed my arm tightly and said, “He knows we’re here.”

The hairs on my neck rose and a sharp breeze seemed to urge me toward the green door. I said, “We have to go inside. We can’t ignore it any longer.” She nodded.

I took the first step toward the door, and she clung to my arm as I walked slowly and with the intrepid façade of fearlessness. When we stepped into the dark halls of Parkview High, it was unlike anything I could remember. The walls were newly painted, the lockers were pristine, the floor was devoid of sneaker marks, and the ceilings were luxuriously high. We passed by the atrium where at the front of the doors there stood metal detectors where the students were mandated to pass before their little workaday lives could commence.   

  We walked up the large staircase which led to the second floor. The hallway was dead quiet except for the low hum of the AC and the slight whistling of the wind against the windows and bobbing branches in the breeze, the instruments of the night. Elizabeth and I came to the balcony which overlooked the courtyard. It was bright outside under the light of the moon, and all was empty except for in the middle there stood a boy dwelt in the schoolyard. Despite the fact twenty years had elapsed, the face of the boy remained the same.

            His eyes were as black as ebony, the red sheen of his curly hair glinted and blew softly in the breeze, and his complexion was white. He turned and looked at us and I could feel Elizabeth’s grip tightened on my arm. After we briefly shared a glance at one another asking with our eyes—and answering with our mutual, panic-stricken faces—whether or not what we saw was an aberration of the mind, we turned back to the boy, but he was now gone.

            I heard the sound of sneakers running down the hall. We both did. Elizabeth and I turned our heads to see that the hallway was smaller now. The ceiling had shrunk, the crisp, fresh paint was gone, and the lockers were small and dusty and old. The hallway was just as I had remembered it being twenty years ago when I was younger. And today was the sixth day of May.

            We crept down the hall passing by the classrooms who here alone thousands had come and gone. We went down further and found the door which had been permanently sealed and barred from entry; inside was the classroom where it happened. “There it is,” she muttered, “the classroom where it took place.” “I never thought I’d be standing here again.” I went to the door and turned at its handle. For all the locks and wedges over the large brown-stained, wooden door, it opened immediately upon my touch. Slowly, it creaked open into a dimly lit classroom where the desks stood aligned in their familiar verses. The shades were drawn and being hit by the moonlight from outside whereby we saw the silhouette of the boy standing alone.  

            “Nicholas?”

            His shadow turned to us and let us know that it was truly him. When I drew back the shades, the moonlight cast through the window unmitigated, and where once the shadow had appeared, in its place was the boy. He wore the same clothes he did on that day twenty years ago, on the sixth day of May.

            I saw his face and looked into his eyes and I told him what I’ve kept buried deep inside for all these years, I said: “If you can hear me, I want to let you know that you can never be forgiven. That you’ll suffer for eternity, that you’ll never need to learn from the error of your way, for you’ll never see the day again. You’re here to be left alone forever to wallow in whatever misery you were cursed with. Look around you, your victims are gone now, gone to a place you’ll never step foot. Even though you have taken life here on Earth, you have not won, for clearly God has punished your soul. A punishment awaits you far greater than any you could have inflicted upon the world. Goodbye.”

            The boy was angered by my words, and when he turned to face me squarely, I saw he held a rifle which dangled by his side. He began to cry out and yell at the top of his lungs like the wants of a spoiled brat. He turned the gun to me and pointed it straight from point blank range. But before he could fire, I collapsed the blinds which dimmed the luminescence from the moon and his likeness faded into a shadow.

            His shadow still remained against the wall like a stain that would never go away. But it was in these halls that he lurched until his day of judgement. Until then, when enough time on Earth has passed by and all traces of his evil deeds are forgotten, we must live with the stain of his shadow on these walls. It is here that he now remains forevermore, a boy dwelt in the schoolyard.