I’ve been losing time. This is my third attempt at typing this out. I’ll sit down at the desk to start writing, and suddenly it’s three hours later and I’m on the porch finishing a pack of cigarettes. When I go back to the computer, a blank Word document is staring at me.
But it’s not only when I’m trying to write. The first blackout I can remember happened shortly after we came back from our drive through the town. Since then, they come at least two or three times a day. I’ll walk into a new room and suddenly realize I can’t remember what I’ve been doing for the past half hour. I’ll complain of being hungry and suddenly we’re sitting in front of the TV eating pizza. I’ll be in the shower and suddenly I’m in bed with the lights out.
Blake and Heather don’t feel odd, and they say I act totally normal during the times I can’t remember. Blake won't let me quarantine myself in my room, as I know I should. He also stubbornly refuses to take Heather and get back to San Francisco. He says there’s a good chance they’re already infected, too, and he won’t risk spreading it. He also won’t leave me. I know it’s selfish, but I’m grateful. He and Heather keep arguing about it. She stormed out a couple minutes ago to take a walk, because he won’t give an inch. Too bad she didn’t drive herself - she hadn’t wanted to pay for gas.
I promised myself I’d take you through this chronologically, though. The memory loss makes it impossible to promise I won’t leave anything out.
We didn’t go into town the next day. I was (am) still traumatized after seeing that creature and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to go back. But I also didn’t want to leave yet. The laptop from Hillside Apartments was wrapped in a plastic bag and ignored on the counter. I drank most of the day away. Heather and Blake argued on and off about leaving (“Please, babe, let’s just go. Leave her here. It’s not even our problem.”) But Blake is my best friend. He was mine before she ever came along. He’d never leave me, and he let her know it. He's also as curious as I am as to what's going on.
Around three in the afternoon that day I got a text from the Oregon number. It said “HEllo beautiful. so Happy youv3 decided to stay. i’m tHrowing a littl3 party in your Honor. wE can’t wait. see you soon!”
I deleted it shortly after writing it down. “He” again. Who is “He”?
The morning of the 19th I woke up feeling braver after about three hours of sleep. I kept thinking of that text from the Chicago number about the high school and the promise of answers. I had to go back. I’m pretty sure I’m infected, and if that’s the case then leaving is not an option. My only chance is to figure out what’s going on. Maybe I can stop this somehow, even if it means burning the town to the ground. Maybe there is a cure, or a source, or something.
Heather didn’t come with Blake and I when we headed into town that day. She’s scared and furious with me for getting them into this. I don’t blame her. I feel really guilty about it. They knew everything I knew when they agreed to come, but I was the one who’d unearthed something that should have remained buried.
We’d seen the high school on our drive that first night, and it wasn’t hard to find again. It’s a tall gray building with red double doors, the sidewalk lined with trees, very picturesque. The sign out front said Charles M. Hadwell High School.
I’d thought the apartment building had been tough to get into. This one was locked up tighter than a drum, a stark contrast to the houses on the very same block with their doors wide open. The front entrance was heavily chained and padlocked - we decided the crowbar would be a last-ditch effort here. The chain was so tight around the handles we doubted we’d be able to get the leverage to break it in any case. First we circled the perimeter and found three more doors, all metal, locked tight. All the moldy windows on the first story had bars over them.
There was, however, a fire escape, and the windows on the upper floors weren’t barred. Conveniently enough, the ladder was already lowered to the ground, ready to use. We climbed through an unlocked window on the third floor. Again, we were wearing respirators, gloves, long sleeves and beanies. Though I doubt it mattered anymore.
The room we fell into was dim and old fashioned. The building had probably been built in the sixties and had not been updated since. The walls were dark green, trimmed with wood, and the floor was beige tile. Mold populated every corner; the level of decay was comparable to the police station.
We moved into the hallway. Some of the lockers along the walls were open, contents spilling from them. Papers and books and binders. We passed classroom after classroom, slowly realizing we had no idea what we were looking for. The school was full of documents and many of the chalkboards or projectors had writing on them. The school was a big place and we didn’t know where these alleged “answers” would be. It could take days to look through everything, but we started out searching pretty thoroughly.
In the fourth room we entered, I noticed a classic chalk board in one corner with some kind of chart drawn on it. I checked it out while Blake started rummaging around the teacher’s desk by the wall. There was a desktop computer there, but there was no power to the building.
Blake found a syllabus for a journalism class on the desk, and a stack of school newspapers dated September 2013. So there was my proof that this town had been up and running recently. The student body was collectively termed the Hadwell High Acolytes. Weird for a mascot, but I went to a high school where our team name was the Crusaders, and that’s kind of a similar thing. The school crest in the upper corner bore the motto “Donec totum impleat orbem.” I looked it up when I got back to the motel. It means “until it fills the whole world.”
The chart on the chalkboard turned out to be a list of class valedictorians since 1964, with dates and GPAs. Must have been for an article. I noticed that many, many of the students had the surname Hadwell. Seems a legacy went a long way in this town; that, or the family bred geniuses. The last Hadwell on the list had graduated in 2007 - first name Elizabeth. I immediately thought of Liz from the stories, but there’s no way to be sure.
We decided to head downstairs to the offices, to see if they held anything conspicuous. The classrooms had yielded nothing that seemed important on first glance. It was far darker on the first floor than those above, and it felt more cramped, like the walls were closing in. Upon rounding a corner, Blake put his hand on my arm and stopped me, telling me to listen.
I heard what he did: faint music, as though from a distant source. I strained but couldn’t make out if there were words or what the tune was. It drifted eerily down the hall. We followed it.
It was loudest when we entered a classroom near the front entrance, but still sounded muffled, as though it was coming through the walls. I identified the tune, though it was a bit slower than I was used to. It’s a really well known song. "You Are My Sunshine." It played on repeat as we searched the room. As soon as it was over, it started again.
It didn’t take long to spot a metal trapdoor in the corner of the classroom, looking out of place. I can't resist a trapdoor. It took the crowbar and Blake’s biceps to pop it out of the ground, but once it was open the music was louder. It echoed out of the black hole in the ground, and I felt like we were getting close to something. We had to go down. I didn’t want to, but we had to. The answers we were looking for were down there.
I got out my crowbar and Blake palmed his Annihilator, which is a solid demolition tool that could do some serious damage. Thus armed, we started down the steep concrete steps into the darkness.
The staircase seemed impossibly long. I kept looking back to the shrinking square of light shining through the trap door behind us. It soon disappeared in the pressing blackness and still we descended. The air grew colder around us, the walls pressed in. It felt like we were on that staircase for at least fifteen minutes, but my phone told me it was only three or four. “You Are My Sunshine” just kept on playing, growing louder.
On my next step, my foot hit the ground too soon and I lurched. Blake knocked into me, sending my flashlight flailing down the tunnel we’d just entered. The light flashed wildly in all directions as it clattered to the ground and rolled a good fifteen feet away. I watched it come to rest near the wall and sit there for a moment, the beam pointing towards Blake and I. Then it flicked off. I told myself it had broken in the fall.
The tunnel we’d entered was carved out of raw rock. It was narrow and low enough that Blake had to stoop slightly.
We moved forward, looking for my light but unable to find it. When we finally stumbled on it, it was fifty feet ahead, far further than it had been when I’d seen it stop rolling. It was totally dissembled - more appropriately, torn apart. Lens cracked, coils ripped out and stretched, bulb smashed. I was down a light source. And it seemed there was something else in the tunnel with us.
Gripping our weapons we crept forward in silence. I wanted to find the source of the music, if only to destroy it. If I never hear that song again it will be too soon.
Quite suddenly a door melted out of the darkness ahead of us, curved into the shape of the tunnel. It was made of heavy black metal. Etched into the center was the school’s crest - the classic shield with a bunch of symbols. I can’t remember the specifics of any of them, but I recognized it from the school paper. The door was unlocked.
I’m out of space here. I’ll post about what we found behind that door tomorrow. Sorry about that. There actually were some answers.
Till next time.
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Credits
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