The School

She lingers in the hallway of the school she once knew well,
Watching the students pass her as they head the final bell.
Their laughter and their chatter seem a death knell to her ears,
For she knows their idle prattle holds nothing of their true fears.

They must know what, in darkness, frequents the hallways in the night,
They must feel the chill of something that they know is not quite right.
In the day they just dismiss it, not a frown will mar their face,
But when the bell rings out for home-time they are fast to leave this place.

It was the same when she was younger and walked these halls alone,
She knew that there was something inside these walls of stone.
The teachers would admonish any whispers; deemed them lies,
But there was no mistaking the fear etched in their bleak eyes.

Who was it, she now wondered, who first went missing in her class?
It was Laura, Laura Murray, whose brown hair shone like brass.
She was kind and she was funny, sun would shimmer in her hair,
And one day where she always sat now stood an empty chair.

And so it went for others through the school in every year,
One day they would be sat there and over night they’d disappear.
The teachers gave no council; the headmaster gave no speech,
Yet the students knew the school held something darker underneath.

It was her and her two friends that night that laid out careful plans,
A sketch of the school building held in childish shaking hands.
They looked in every window, tried to open every door
As the pallor of the moonlight draped them in silver velour.

It was a window, slightly open, that beckoned them ‘come in’,
So she stood on guard in darkness as her two friends crawled within.
There was no scream of terror nor was there a howl of pain,
But from the moment that they entered she ne’er saw them again.

So she followed, blind in terror, with tear stains on her face,
And could feel a pulse of evil emanating from this place.
It sank into her rigid bones and filled her heart with dread,
So turning back, leaving her friends, she closed her eyes and fled.

And in her flight it got her, though she knew not what ‘it’ could be,
A hooded face and blurring hands was all that she could see.
It flung her to the hard tiled floors and then savoured his feast,
‘Twas just a man, a human man, but worse than any beast.

She now stands upon those tiles that she has walked for years,
Feeling, knowing, living on the sense of children’s fears.
Those children who, so innocent, make he who killed her drool,
Sensing, not quite knowing, the malevolence of their school.