The Phantom School - 119 Extra Duty

It was the last break time before the last lesson. I was sitting in the teachers’ room.

The entire school day had passed just fine. Everything was in place, and everyone was behaving normally. Except for one person… Me. I was about to lose my mind. No one was asking or worrying about the missing chemistry teacher Yasin or the absurd amount of absent students. Was I… a schizophrenic? Was everything I thought I had seen last night merely a dream?

No. It wasn’t. I knew it. I knew the time would come, and I would eventually question myself. I knew it, and because of that, I had deliberately left some of the building in a mess; so when I arrived today, I would know the last night wasn’t simply a nightmare. Even other people had seen it!

But knowing that, truly believing everything that had happened last night… That was even harder than I imagined. Was I unkowingly teleported into an alternate timeline where those students didn’t exist? Or… Were they completely erased from the only existance I knew of?

“What’s with that face?” The person asking this was English teacher Ayla. The exact same person who had witnessed the principal’s unconscious, wounded state a couple of days ago. Even she was behaving like nothing weird was happening in the school.

“What’s with my face?” I returned the question.

“You look… thoughtful.” she said. “Maybe more like, err… stressed?”

My facial expressions were on autopilot for a while, and I had no idea how I looked from the outside until now. I coughed softly and tried to cheer up.

“I was just…” I said. “You know, thinking about stuff…”

Quickly understanding my unwillingness to continue talking, she got directly to the point.

“Well…” She sat down on a chair as she started speaking. “There is something I wanted to talk with you.”

“Which is?”

“You know, there has been some… weird occurrences recently, in this school…”

Great. That was a bit relaxing; contrary to my observations so far, at least some people were paying a bit of an attention to all the ‘weird occurrences’.

“I know.” I said.

“Some of us are positive that, a majority of those weird events has been taking place when the school building was mostly empty.”

Ayla and I weren’t sincere, but what was with that informal tone of speech she was using? It almost had the atmosphere of a military briefing.

“And?”

“And we decided that we, you and Ilayda, should stay in the school building at late hours and investigate these… events.”

Ilayda was a young lady, who was teaching literature. She had come to this school just a year ago. I turned around to look at her. She just nodded.

It was anything but assuring. This could be a potential death trap. As much as I disagreed with the plan, I knew I had to keep what I knew as a secret. This was such an ugly trade-off of trust and security… People’s lives could be at risk because of the secrets I was keeping.

But, apart from all that, a further cause of concern on my part was the fact that I wasn’t involved in this whole decision-making process. Everything was already decided without my opinions, I was chosen to stay, and I was being informed about it just now.

But, at the end, I would vote for staying in the building anyway; so I could do my best to make use of everything I knew to protect the rest of the people, if the need arose.

“I understand.” I said. “When was this decided?” I asked just afterwards.

“It was the principal’s decision. It was your turn for extra duties.”

‘Extra duties’ were a non-official term we were using for things no one could officially be forced to do, but was required for the well-being of the school.

“I… I see.” That was the only answer I could possibly give.

“Look, you’ve not been looking good the whole day.” Ayla said. “If you have some sort of problem, we can exclude you from the list and find the next person on the list to stay this night.”

“NO!” I was a bit too excited. “No, it is okay, I want to stay.”

“I… didn’t know you were THAT enthusiastic.” This was Ilayda’s voice. She had apparently heard my ‘NO!’. She came closer.

“Does spending a lonely night with me sound fun?” she whispered.

“We will see just how lonely it will get.” I said mockingly, and then, lowered my voice. “There will be monsters all around us, crawling and climbing the walls…” I was trying to narrate the horror story I made up in my mind.

“Geez, Kenan…” she said to make me stop. I changed my tactics of mocking her.

“Find a boyfriend already!”

“I spend half of my life in the school; and the other half in bed.” she said as she walked away. “There is no way it is going to happen, I am a lonely loser!” Her laughs faded away as she got out of the teachers’ room.

“I want someone I can get along with.” I said to Ayla. “Where is Mete?” I asked. She laughed.

“No, you will be just fine!” Ayla walked away as well. I sighed.

– – –

After the final lesson, I got back to the teachers’ room. While everyone was packing up and leaving one by one, I was sitting there motionless. There were no signs of Ilayda.

“Hopefully she decided not to come.” I said myself. My dreams made a crash-landing as soon as she entered the teachers’ room. I averted my gaze and started playing with one of my pencils.

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“Sorry, had to go to the bathroom real quick.” she said as she wiped her wet hands on her clothes, running around the room to find her belongings. By then, everyone had left already. Only a few teachers and the vice principal were walking in the hallways now. Most probably, they were going to leave soon.

“You look tired.” Ilayda said.

“You look too energetic.” I replied.

“Oh, hey, I am a young lady with many ambitions!”

“Sleeping a full 24 hours undisturbed?” I said. She laughed loudly.

“Well, that will be a fine addition to my to-do list!” she said cheerfully.

“Well…” I said. “We are going to be here for a while, so you have plenty of time to practise.”