We stood in the center of the hall. The bodies sat upright. Some had their legs crossed and some had their legs sprawled, but all of them had their heads bowed. Some of the bodies I recognized from the morning, when they all piled together to get through the front door of the school. I almost laughed at the irony of how they worked so hard to get here and now they will never leave. The terror in my throat prevented laughter. I looked back at the door of our class room. There was no motion beyond the small window peering in. We began quietly treading down the center of the hallway, stepping carefully over any legs that poked out from the walls. Our footsteps were silent, yet they were all we could hear. We came to a corner and Anthony poked his head around and waved us on, allowing us to pass between him and another pair of legs against the close wall. Fear had settled in my mind and with it, all direction was lost. Some how we ended up in front of the principles office. The doors bottom half had been torn off and the carpet inside was damp with blood. All the ceiling tiles in the room were missing, leaving only the square plastic bands that used to hold them and an abyssal darkness above. The corpse that sat next to the door in the hall was more than familiar.
"Coach?" I raised my hand and leaned to raise his loose head so I could see his eyes. A hand grabbed my shoulder and pulled me backwards a step. Cody patted my shoulder and shook his head in remorse for the man on the floor. I was angry all of a sudden. I didn't like the man on the floor, in fact I hated the him almost all the time, and yet here I was feeling loss. I touched the bag strap on my shoulder and closed my eyes. I had brought this weapon in my bag to kill him and other bullies like him, like Reggie. REGGIE. It hit me. Reggie probably died out of all this chaos. I smiled and shuffled down the hallway after the group.
My backpacks weight shifted with every step I took. We took turns stepping over puddles of blood, drained from the eyes of our peers and superiors. The crimson syrup dripped from the bare faces of the dammed. Their bloodshot eyes stared at the ground as if they were contemplating something that no living person could fathom.
We took another turn down yet another hallway, lined with corpses sitting in wait for our arrival. At the end there was light. The main entrance. We maneuvered through the legs and puddles, quickly now that we had a goal. We approached the door and instantly began pushing through. Pushing to freedom. Pushing to get out of this nightmare. The doors pushed in a few inches then stopped. Locked, preventing our escape. We all took turns slamming the glass, pushing the rails and pulling the handles. We began to look around for blunt objects we could use to shatter the glass. We scoured the floor, looking for anything big enough to swing. Cody began furiously kicking the glass with no result. Bethany began comforting one of the other girls who was becoming hysterical. Anthony and I both continued to look for blunt objects.
I searched the floor thoughtlessly. Suddenly my left eye twitched. It was a sudden itch in the socket. I rubbed my eye and lifted my face up from the floor. My arm dropped to my side limp. I stared down the hallway in horror. Everything became heavy. My knees hit the floor hard, making a hard thud. I sat on my legs and felt tears of fear run down my face. I couldn't blink. I couldn't look away. I was staring down and empty hallway, the same hallway we just walked through. No bodies or blood. The hallway was clean. Anthony walked beside me, his eyes down the hall as well. I heard the girls hysterical sobbing increase to a muffled scream through her hands.
"What the fuck?" Cody stopped kicking the window and turned to share our terror. Did they walk away? I thought. No foot prints in the blood because there was no blood on the floors. No blood on the floors because there were no bodies. I turned faced the glass of the doors. The glass was blurred, and unaffected by our previous attempts to break it. All we could see behind it was light. Not blinding and yet it wasn't dim either. The sunlight came through the blurry glass, preventing my sight from discovering anything outside the building. It was as if the school was all that had existed. It was like the darkness only dwelled in the corners of the building to escape the infinite light beyond the school. What did that make us? My mind raced faster than I could catch. Half my skull began to burn from within. I put my forehead to the floor and wrapped my head with my arms. I felt the cold streams of fear trail from my eyes to the center of my cheeks, where they followed gravitys pull to the ground below. I clenched my eyes shut hard as an intense ringing began in my ears. The ringing snuffed out the sounds of silence from the hallways and classrooms. The ringing became so intense, that I could only focus on it and nothing else. I opened my eyes to the tile floor beneath me. The ringing stopped and I jerked my head up.
"That was the school bell." I stared down the empty hall, waiting for someone to say something else. I blinked and felt another tear drip down to my throat. In slow reaction, I quickly rubbed the streams of my cheeks with my arm. Suddenly, a squeaking sound jolted from the floor beside me. It echoed through the halls. Cody sprinted loudly down my line of sight, almost like he was running from me. He turned a corner and disappeared.
"Cody!" Anthony called, shocked still from everything that was going on. He grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. "Come on, we have to follow him!" Anthony was scared and I was hysterical with fear. We turned and ran after Cody hard, our feet slapping the floor with each step. We turned the same corner our friend disappeared behind. We stopped. Fear, yet again, paralyzed us in our tracks. Cody stood facing us. So did Mrs. Creath. So did the Coach and Elliot. Behind them was an army. All the bodies that lay in the hallways we passed, all the victims of the darkness. They stood completely still and straight. Their eyes were opened wide with the same fear that showed when that darkness sucked their lives out. Their cheeks had the same crimson tear streams. They didn't move. We didn't move either. Where could we even go?