break. You don’t honestly expect them to have everything cleaned and fixed before school starts, do you?”
Mr. Poole met her eyes for a moment before looking back to the wall.
“I’m sure that they’ll have it all cleaned up soon,” Lindy continued. “And those words wouldn’t seem so odd to you if the hallway was lit—your own bedroom would look creepy if it was dark and you were looking around with a flashlight.”
Mr. Poole swallowed and nodded. “Sorry. I just get jittery I guess. First day on the job, right?”
“Of course,” Lindy said. “Now, if you don’t mind.” She nodded towards the stairs.
Mr. Poole sighed and stepped down onto the stairs, getting a firm grasp on the handrail before descending any further. The stairs were far too narrow and steep, and he found himself twisting sideways to fit more of his foot onto each step.
Once he’d moved halfway down the flight, Lindy followed after him, pausing to pull the steel door closed. He thought he heard the key slip back into the keyhole and the deadbolt click back into place, but he wasn’t sure. His collar suddenly felt tight, and the air seemed still and cold, like a cave.
The carpet squished wetly beneath his shoes, and the smell of mildew nearly choked him.
“Does it always smell like this down here?”
“No. They’ll be replacing the carpet right here later this week, just as soon as the leak is fixed.”
He took a few steps forward, his phone’s light illuminating the floor ahead of him.
“Did the leak just come in during the—” He halted mid-step. On the edge of the circle of light, he thought he had seen a flash of reflective eyes and a darting shadow. He was even more certain that he had heard the scurrying sounds of small feet. “What was that?!”
“What was what?”
“There’s some kind of animal down here.”
“Well, how large did it look?”
“Like…like a small dog.”
“Well, that’s probably what it was.”
He wanted to ask more about it, or discuss how odd it was, but he bit his tongue, guessing that nothing would come of such an effort. He could feel Lindy’s eyes on his back, practically forcing him forwards. Swallowing his anxiety, Mr. Poole began to walk forwards again. Then he screamed and leapt back, accidentally elbowing Lindy’s ribcage.
“Ow,” she said, snapping a hand to his forearm. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but this place has me on edge, alright? Something touched my ankle and startled me.” He tried to pull his arm from her grasp, but found that her hand had latched closed on him with surprising vice-like strength.
“Nothing touched your ankle,” she said, releasing his arm, “and you need to calm yourself.”
He looked into her blank face, his own set somewhere between anger and fear. Then he rubbed his forearm where she’d clamped onto him, looking down at the floor as he did so. A step in front of him, just above the wet carpet, a black soccer-ball sized hole plunged into the wall. Over its gaping maw, a few whiskers of ragged cobweb blew out in front of it as the air rushed out of the tunnel.
Whether it had been the cobwebs or just the chilly current of air, something had touched his ankle. At this point, Mr. Poole felt frazzled beyond caring. But there was something in Lindy’s eyes, something in the strength of her grip and the click of the deadbolt he may not have imagined, that compelled him to go forwards without further complaint.
The hallway took them deeper into the darkness and farther from the stairs. Every so often they would pass by a heavy doorway on the left or right, but never did Lindy say anything about them, and Mr. Poole chose not to ask, privately guessing that they might have been intended for inmates that required solitary confinement.
After a while of moving forwards, Mr. Poole’s flashlight beam reached a wall.
“Go left,” Lindy said.
Obediently, Mr. Poole turned to the left and began walking down another corridor. This one proved much shorter, and before long they had arrived at another split.
“Right,” Lindy said.
Mr. Poole went right. After a few seconds walking, Lindy said, “Stop.”
Mr. Poole stopped.
“Wrong turn,” she said. “Turn around.”
Mr. Poole turned back around, shining his light past Lindy and back down the way they had come.
“Go straight, please,” Lindy said.
Mr. Poole walked past her, back to the last fork.
“Keep going straight,” Lindy said.
Mr. Poole walked past the corridor that led out—or at least he thought it led out. As he second-guessed himself, he began to worry. He had harbored ideas about overpowering Lindy and getting the keys away from her—of making an escape. But was he already lost?
Something skittered across the hall in the darkness ahead. Mr. Poole flinched, but kept moving forwards.
Probably just another dog, he thought. A second later, he recognized how strange that sounded.
“Okay, stop here,” Lindy said, and Mr. Poole paused beside a set of double doors. Lindy stepped up and pushed on one of them, and the door swung easily and noiselessly back. Inside, the flickering glow of candles cast trembling shadows against the wall.
“Go in,” Lindy said.
Mr. Poole looked at her, saw the mask and the patient blankness in her eyes, then stepped through the door.
Mr. Poole took stock of the room before they were noticed. The school’s faculty was small—Mr. Poole guessed that fewer than two dozen people were in the room, not including himself and Lindy. They sat around a table, each with a few sheets of paper before them. Some water bottles or half-empty mugs of coffee also decorated the table—this was all normal enough, typical of the ten or so of these meetings Mr. Poole had attended at other schools. But the candles with their dancing flames placed before each faculty member was new to him, as were the hooded robes that each of them wore.
One of the figures facing Lindy and Mr. Poole stood, towering over the others at the far end of the round table.
“Lindy, and Mr. Poole, isn’t it? We’re so glad that you’re here. Come, take a seat, please.”
Lindy took half a step forward, but then stopped when Mr. Poole hadn’t moved. His legs were frozen in place, his fear becoming palpable to him. This meeting, the hoods and robes and candles—it had possibly become too much for him.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” the man said, shaking his head in self-reproach. “I’m Dennis Palterman, the principal here at Shady Junior High. We spoke on the phone a few days ago, remember?”
Mr. Poole shook his head stiffly.
“Here, uh…” Mr. Palterman looked around the table, searching for an empty seat, “you can sit right here, Mr. Poole. We’ll do proper introductions in just a minute.”
Mr. Poole moved forwards, though he wasn’t sure if his legs did it involuntarily, if he had actually willed them to move, or if Lindy had pushed him forwards from behind. Whichever it was, he was soon seating himself awkwardly between two robed and hooded figures, his arms brushing up against the rough cloth on either side of him.
The next moment, a thin stack of paper dropped onto the table in front of him. He stared down at it, reading the typical announcements and reminders that always made their rounds at these meetings. His breath puffed out visibly in front of him, and goosebumps from the room’s cold air pushed the goosebumps of fear even farther out on his skin.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” Mr. Palterman said. “It can get awfully cold down here. Lindy, do we have any…?”
“Yes, Principal, we do,” Lindy said. She stepped away from Mr. Poole, who only then realized who closely she had been standing behind him. He turned his head to follow her movements, but she seemed to have disappeared into the flickering shadows of the room.
“She’ll be back in a minute,” Mr. Palterman said. “But in the meantime, let me just say how excited we all are to have you on the team here at Shady Junior High. We’ve
always enjoyed our math teachers so much.” He smiled broadly over his candle, showing well-set white teeth. “Let’s all give Mr. Poole some claps, shall we?” He started to applaud, and the rest of the faculty shortly joined in, clapping in the heavy cold and darkness. “It isn’t easy,” he continued over the applause, “moving to Shady Town, but we’re so glad that you’d come here and join us at our fine school.”
The clapping subsided, and Mr. Poole returned a nervous nod and a muttered, “Thanks.”
“Now, let’s get the bad stuff out of the way first, shall we?” Mr. Palterman said. He stood and reached a hand into his robes. Mr. Poole’s hands instinctively clamped down upon the armrests of his chair, fear nearly bowling him over. Then Mr. Palterman pulled out a piece of paper, shooting Mr. Poole a worried look. “Are you feeling alright?” he asked.
Mr. Poole nodded. “Ju— Just a little shiver.”
“Well, I’m sure Lindy will be back soon,” Mr. Palterman said. Then he flattened out the piece of paper on the table, saying, “Now, you all know that I sent out a memo about this two weeks ago, but I know that half of you didn’t read it. So, let’s go over these budget cuts really quickly, just so nobody’s surprised later on during the schoolyear, okay?”
“Principal,” somebody said, waving their hand in the air as they spoke, “this says that we’re taking some of it from our printing allowance. You can’t be serious. I’m already double-siding everything and—”
“Don’t worry, John, it won’t be as bad as all that. We’ll be moving some other stuff around,