I've seen a lot of really disturbing stuff throughout my life. But nothing from my past experiences could've stopped my hands from shaking so hard right now. I don't know what the hell is going on at this school, in that godforsaken room.
I was never the type of guy who got excited for assignments. Whether it be hostages, bomb threats, shooters, the adrenaline rush only lasts for so long. The fear kicks in quickly after. Only got one life, after all.
The worst cases are the ones with kids involved. I have a niece who’s innocent and carefree beyond comprehension. My skin crawls thinking about her being exposed to those kinds of situations. Safe to say, I wasn't looking forward to whatever task laid ahead of us when we were called in.
When we arrived, there were already six or seven police vehicles parked outside, with a massive crowd of evacuated students standing outside. A lot of them looked a combination of utterly shocked and terrified, like they'd just been chased through a cemetery by a machete-wielding demon.
As we entered the building, we were getting caught up to date by the one of the Police Officers. But he was hardly any help.
"...Uh...we don't know what to do... they're in room 203, but...we can't go in there."
"Can't go in there? What'd you mean?" Dex - our unit leader, asked him.
He stumbled out a mostly incoherent response, skin pale and eyes wide as he did so. From his expression, you'd assume that he'd been to hell, or something of a comparable nature. Obviously, we weren't taking this lightly. We tried getting more information out of him, but he was adamant that he didn’t know anything beyond the fact that we couldn’t go into the room under any circumstances.
“We’ll figure it out.” Dex ended up saying to him, realizing that trying to converse with the guy was getting nowhere. The officer simply nodded his head in response. Not confidently, though.
We traversed into the school, and up to the second floor, all alert as hell. In the utter silence, the place was rather eerie. Not that I ever liked school regardless. Once we ascended the stairwell, room 203 was just to our right.
It wasn't really what we expected. No blood. No signs of a struggle. Just a room. However... it wasn't silent in there. We approached the door cautiously, listening intently to what was going on inside. It sounded like a teacher giving a standard lecture. But obviously, that wouldn’t have warranted a school-wide evacuation and subsequent police backup.
Jensen – another Officer, tapped me on my shoulder, pointing to the crack underneath the door. I didn’t see it at first, but a small stream of blood had begun oozing out from underneath.
Ah, shit, I thought to myself. Even though I was expecting something like this sooner or later, it was still jarring to see.
I wanted to bust down the door right then and there, unleashing a flurry of lead into the perpetrators skull, but that was obviously impulsive. He might’ve had hostages, or wired the door to explode upon opening or something of that nature.
The Police Officer’s words also stuck to my brain. Sure, he seemed like a maniac, but people don’t just become that way through arbitrary means. He’d definitely seen something bad lurking behind the door, and I wasn’t eager to find out what.
Still, we had to figure out a plan. I tried listening closer, in an attempt to discern what the person was saying. Now, I wasn’t sure if they were speaking too quietly or if they were using another language entirely, but I couldn’t make out anything explicit.
But the more I listened, the more obscure their tone and speech patterns appeared to be. It wasn’t like somebody giving a lecture at all. It was more akin to somebody monotonously reciting a series of separate and unrelated passages in succession.
Eventually, Dex stepped up, banging on the door.
“What’s your purpose here? You got any demands? At the moment, we’re willing to co-operate. But we can’t do that if you don’t communicate with us.”
No response. We tried negotiating for 10 more minutes, but the speaker paid no attention to us, simply continuing their obscure diatribe to the audience of presumably captive and horrified students.
“Fuck it,” Dex said, frustrated. “Hate dealing with crazy fucks.” He pulled out a radio and began talking to another unit. Soon enough, two more teams were on their way, one to monitor the windows from outside, and one to take a position in the room directly under 203. We were trying to consider every possible angle here.
About fifteen minutes later, the outside team showed up. Of course, there was nothing much to report on, given the fact that the windows were boarded up from the inside. Still, they had multiple snipers take vantage points. They were more or less there in case things went absolutely belly up.
“This is some bullshit,” Axwell – another Officer, said. “If they end up never telling us anything, are we just gonna wait here forever? The kids might die of natural causes instead.”
I wasn’t going to be the one to say it, but I sure was thinking it. There were no easy solutions for situations like these. Another five minutes elapsed before the ground team showed up, announcing to us over the radio that they were making their way over to the room underneath.
The radio crackled once again. “Hey Dex…”
Dex picked it up. “Yeah. Something wrong?”
“I… I don’t think we should go inside.”
“What? What the fuck are you talking ab-“
He was cut short by something rather jarring. Not a noise. More so the absence of noise. Whoever was inside the room had stopped talking. Dex put the radio down, ready to negotiate once again.
“You finished? Can we talk now?” He asked.
Suddenly and wholly unexpectedly, the door opened just a crack. Thankfully, I was on the side closest to the doorknob, which meant I wasn’t able to see anything inside. But as for the three Officers who did (including Dex)… well I’m not quite sure what happened to them.
I remember feeling a gust of boiling air seeping out and seeing some kind of deep purple glow emanating from within. At a point, I thought I could see Dex’s eyes beginning to leak blood, but that may just have been my imagination. All I know is that I blinked a few times from the heat, and a few seconds later, two of the Officers were gone and the door was closed, leaving Jensen by himself, kneeling on the ground while covering both of his eyes with his hands.
We tried getting him to talk, but he wouldn’t budge. In fact, he wouldn’t move an inch from his bizarre position. At that point, I was beginning to panic hard. This evidently wasn’t a normal situation at all. Lee was also frustrated, banging on the door and barking out orders as if whatever fucked-up entity lurking in the room cared at all about his grievances. And then he made a drastic mistake. He took his rifle and began breaking the door down with it.
He managed to get about halfway through before succumbing to whatever fate Jensen had just before him. I turned around, seeing him also covering his eyes, frozen in the position on the ground. I tried not to look at the purple light flowing out from the holes in the door as I made eye contact with Axwell.
We were both ready to get the fuck out of there. I took the lead, rushing towards the stairwell. But after about two seconds of running, I heard a scream from behind me. Some kind of large insect-like appendage shrouded in a dark violet smoke had burst through one of the holes, grabbing him by the waist. I reckon that if I were a single second later, it would’ve done the same to me as well.
I tried shooting at the thing, but my bullets simply bounced off. It pulled Axwell in shortly after, demolishing the door with it. The room was completely open now, but I wasn’t planning on investigating.
Just like that, I was the last man standing. I bolted down the stairwell, and through the first-floor hall, only to find the path to the nearest exit blanketed in the same smoke that was coming off of the appendage. There was no way in hell I was going to try traversing through it. I picked up my radio, attempting to contact the floor unit instead.
“Where are you guys? What’s going on?”
A shaky voice answered on the other end.
“You… you better hide.”
“Hide?” I questioned. “Why don’t we get our asses out of here instead?”
“I’m… I’m looking outside the window right now… something's... happening out there.”
Given all the commotion, my mind had automatically filtered out the noise. I concentrated, hearing suppressed screams and sporadic gunshots emanating from beyond the walls of the school.
“Oh, c’mon...” I muttered.
I did as I was told, stumbling into a stray classroom and barricading the door behind me. The room I’m in now doesn’t have any windows, so I can’t tell what’s going on outside. I’ve been checking for news updates on my phone, but nothing. I’m also averse to using my radio to call for help, because it might give my position away. I don’t know what the hell’s lurking out there in the hallways, but I can certainly hear something moving around. Not sure how far it is, though.
I guess… I’ll just have to wait here until somebody comes for me.
---
Credits
Comments