The Phantom School

Everything was okay.

The world was making sense.

I was feeling good.

I was okay.

I was doing good.

I was... asleep.

- - -

I woke up in the middle of the night. It was 00:15. I was sweating.

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Everything was not okay. Something was off, and I knew it. Maybe it was a gut feeling, maybe it was a doing of sixth sense, or perhaps someone was trying out telepathy. Somehow, I knew something was off.

I looked out of the window. The street was silent. The only sign of life around here was a gray cat sleeping near one of the cars parked outside.

I unwillingly turned on the lights, and went blind for a brief moment. After my eyes adjusted for the light level, I changed my clothes and got outside. From a certain point of view, I didn"t know what I was doing; but I was confident in whatever I was about to do.

I started waiting for one of the late night buses that came once every hour. In this silence, I could hear the engine sound of the bus hundreds of meters away. The bus then appeared from the corner of the street and came to a stop in front of me. I got on the bus. Aside from the driver himself, there was only a single pa.s.senger sitting alone, looking out of the window. While walking back towards the rear seats of the bus, I glanced at her. She was a pretty young lady. I couldn"t see her face.

She noticed me, but didn"t move her head. I was a bit embarra.s.sed, so I looked away and walked by. But, just when I got past her...

"Mr. Kenan."

!!

I froze there and looked back at her. She was... No! That couldn"t be!

"Melis?"

"What are you doing out here in the middle of the night?" she asked, with a very low voice.

"I should ask the same." I replied. She got closer to the window, and gestured for me to sit by her. I did.

"Mother needs my help, teacher." she said. "I fear... I fear that something bad is going to happen today."

"Did you feel it?" I asked.

"Did you feel it too?" she asked back. I nodded.

"This is my mistake." she said. "I have to clean up the mess I"ve done. Unbeknownst to me at the time, you were right, even though you didn"t know a lot back then."

"What now?"

"If I leave mother alone, she won"t be powerful. I have to go and help her."

"How?" I asked.

"My presence there will make the difference." she said. "If there are no more deaths, we can push the darkness back to where it belongs. The entire community of spirits will vanish."

"You can"t possibly mean that you are going to-"

"Look." she interrupted. "If you are going to stay in my way, just get off at the next stop. You have nothing to do with this, and you can keep living your life like nothing ever happened."

"..."

"So?"

"Are you confident in your ability to do what it is you want to do?" I asked.

"Do you want a honest answer?" she asked.

"Yes, please."

"No." she said. "But there is nothing else I can do. It is like a civil war at this point. They won"t listen to each other."

"Wh-what if you fail?"

"I don"t know. Leave. Just leave. Tear the building apart and leave. Burn it. Bomb it. Whatever... Just keep people away." she said.

When she raised her voice without knowing, we got a questioning look from the bus driver through the mirror. I stared back at him through the mirror, and he looked back at the road without saying anything.

We eventually came to our stop and got off the bus. We still had to walk quite some time to reach the school. While walking towards the woodlands surrounding the school, I saw something with the corner of my eye.

"Wait." I said.

"What happened?"

"Just wait here." I said and walked between some trees.

"Mr. Kenan?" she shouted behind me.

"Hold on!" I shouted back. When I got there, I felt a combination of happiness, sadness and astonishment. An old, dark blue Lada... It was my car! It was far away from the school, and almost invisible from where the road was. It had crashed into a tree; the hood was crumpled, the windshield was cracked, the b.u.mpers were bent, the headlights and mirrors had came out of their places.

While inspecting my old car carefully, I heard something behind me. Melis was walking towards here to see what I was looking at.

"What is this?" she asked.

"My car." I said. "Was." I added a moment later. "I will have this debris pulled out of here, but this car won"t be going anywhere else anymore."

"How did this happen?" she asked. That was a nice question...

Probably, after I parked it that one night, the parking brake failed and the car rolled down the road on it"s own. I was lucky that it didn"t harm anyone.

"I don"t know." I answered Melis. "I left it parked somewhere near the school, then it went missing."

"You were lucky for not being in that car, you know..." she said. That was right. If the brakes had failed while I was driving, it would be a disaster.

"We are not used to think about it in our daily lives, teacher..." she continued. "But death is always so close to us."

"Right..." I said.

"It is good to have someone watching over you." she said. What was she getting at?

"Right..." I repeated.

"Besides, you didn"t like that car anyway." she said.

"Did I tell you that?" I asked.

"I didn"t like it either."