Got any spooky local folklore and stories?
Not local to me (though there are a good few I could tell), but have this strange tale instead
-----------------
The Teacher
There is a ghost past the schoolyard.
Over there, past the field to where the trees touch the iron railing on the other side. Do you see? By the forked one with the crack. In and out between the trees he walks, to sit or stand a while alone. He’s always been there, for years and years and years. Everybody knows. Pale skin, pale hair, and blood red eyes- all life sucked out of him. It’s true! You must know him, Sir, you must. You’ve been here before, haven’t you? You were a student here too, Miss says, back when you were young.
He was. And the teacher can remember the story of the ghost behind the playing fields, one who walked there a few days every year to sit in silence amongst the trees. There is a little bench on the other side of the school’s railings, old and rusty as if left behind to guard a forgotten track, and the ghost would come and haunt the grounds a few times in October, every year since the beginning of time.
Maybe he was there more often, in the summer when the leaves hide the shape of him amongst the green, but he was always gone by the time the last of them fell, leaving only the old bench and the muddy floor of the forest. Or, perhaps he only appeared when the spirits grew in strength as the summer died, old year peeling away to reveal the world of the beyond.
This is only a story. One passed from year group to year group, new students taken by the shoulders and made to stand at cool railings, five years old and dreading to spot the dead man emerge from the trees. Children said he died there, waiting for a lost love. That she betrayed him to her secret lover, who shot him from behind as he waited to meet her. He’d kill you, if you looked him in the eye. Drop dead from fright.
If you listen, Sir! If you listen you can hear the shot. I swear it, and Ada says that she saw blood last year on the leaves. Gone in a blink but she swears-
The teacher enjoys these stories. He is pleased that after twenty years that it prevails, almost entirely unchanged. He remembers some encounters that now come back to him, stood as he is in his new-old classroom on the first weekend of October. His brother swore blind that he saw the man once, a flash of white before vanishing when he looked. Several of his classmates had a similar experience, a noise of twigs snapping when no one was near, the smell of gun smoke and unseen cookfires that left as suddenly as they came.
The teacher has no stories of his own. He had been too scared to get close to see when he was a student, staying well in the safety of the school field as his classmates screamed and ran from the edges, daring each other to get close, closer.
He wonders how old these stories are. Every school has something of the like, he knows- girl dead in the toilets, boy thrown from the roof. Sad and lost children, furious at their lot and stuck forever to watch the life they left behind. But this one, the teacher thinks, is unusual. The details still so solid and exactly the same as what he remembers.
‘Oh, I don’t know.’ The librarian, the same as was here when the teacher was a boy, takes a sip of her coffee and blinks at him behind thick glasses, ‘The whole time I’ve worked here, I think. Unsettled me, at first. Thought it morbid.’
‘And now?’
She chuckles, ‘Now, I’m fond of it. It’s nice that it hasn’t changed. Traditions passed by children are special, I think. Don’t you?’
Stop.
Wait.
What is that, by that tree? A movement, quick between tree trunks. Hold still, listen a moment. Is that not the snap of a twig, the rustle of something move?
Perhaps, after all, there is something past the schoolyard.
The teacher spots it, one day, taking a walk around the edges of the field. Too many papers, too much marking… and it’s nice to be outside. The sun is out today, the autumn leaves orange and red fires in their branches or in drips and splotches along the ground but there… what was that. A glimpse of white amongst brown. Could it be?
Don’t be foolish. Go and look.
How many years has it been, the teacher thinks to himself, as his heart beats faster close by the railings. A too fast trip ta-tum ta-tum, a marching drum as he nears. Caution grips his stomach, a flutter of a warning. Silly children’s stories, silly exaggerations and games, he is too grown up for this. But stories long held and passed down hold truth, don��t they? Isn’t there something true, in every tale that is told? Something that makes it important to be kept, something that demands it be remembered?
Closer, closer. One step, two.
The teacher has never been this close before.
On the edges of the schoolyard, almost beyond the shouts of playing children where the trees touch the railings, there is a bench. It is warped, rusted by wind and rain and time. It sits alongst the branches and the roots, a forgotten rest stop in the thickness of the forest. And by the bench, stands a man.
He is a normal man. Average height, average build. Maybe a little too slim, coat too loose about the chest, but there is a body to fill it. He swings his head around as the teacher approaches, a polite nod in greeting that the teacher does not- forgets to- return. The man’s eyes are red, his hair is white, and hundreds of old stories murmur in the teacher’s head at once like whispers.
‘Can I help you?’ The man speaks, awkward silence between them gone on for too long, and the teacher finds his senses return. This ghost has a voice, and a body. He is a man, after all.
But… but.
‘Hello.’ The teacher steps closer to the stranger. ‘Are you lost?’
‘Lost?’ The man scoffs, as if offended. ‘Nah. Just on a walk.’
‘This is a school.’ The teacher says, patting the railings that separate them, ‘You are scaring the children.’
The man raises his eyebrow, disbelief and scorn all over his face, ‘The children?’
Swallow, breathe. A shout of young voices on the wind. ‘Yes.’
‘Huh.’ The man turns away and looks out through the forest. ‘I’ve been coming here for years and not had trouble before.’
The teacher goes to respond but the stranger scuffs the mud underfoot with the toe of one boot and the teacher finds himself silenced.
‘There used to be a road here. A single horse track through the woods.’ The stranger lays a hand upon the bench, wide hand light on the metal back, ‘The Prussian army camped here once and left this behind. Wouldn’t know that now, would you?’
Muddy ground, thick trees. Where had this man come from? The teacher shakes his head, ‘No, I wouldn’t.’
‘Not on any maps anymore. Used to be. Then they built the manor-‘ a head jerk towards where the school now sits, directed to something missing, ‘and everything shifted east. Then, this became the edge; the last bit.’
The edge? Of town, yes, but that felt like there was more there, underneath and between the man’s words. The teacher opens his mouth, closes it. Then, ‘My family lived there.’
The man turns back to him, bright eyes and a knowing smile, ‘Yeah?’
Why had he said that? The teacher didn’t mean to say that, he had meant to sa- ‘Yes. My great great grandfather was born in the gatehouse. They worked for the family.’
The man snorts. He knew that already, the teacher thinks, he knew that. He knows me too, somehow, something in his face gives it away. The normalcy of family, shared blood and kin amongst strangers.
‘Well, all gone now.’ Red eyes, white hair. Broad shoulders pulled back and straight naturally- a soldier’s stance. There could almost be a sword at his side, and if the coat were not there the teacher could believe that there was. The man nods at him, sober- ‘Nice to meet you’- and the teacher knows that he is dismissed.
Where is he going? Why is he walking away? But he is, the teacher finds that he is walking. Back across the field, back to the school- sat atop the ruined foundations of a manor house that hardly anyone remembers was once there. A general built it, some documents say, a young man who was rewarded for his efforts in helping Prussia to greatness and it fell when the Russians came.
How strange, the teacher thinks to himself as the hours tick by, how odd. His shoes are muddy and he knows he walked during lunch, but the route… where did he go? Who did he speak to? Did he speak at all; he thinks that he did. He has memory of words there, in his mind, but he can’t quite hold onto them. It is like his mind shies away, refusing to acknowledge something he isn’t supposed to know. There is the taste of something in his mouth, something metallic and sharp, and it lingers there until the night like soot.
Sir, sir! Look, did you see-?
No. No, he did not.
72 notes
·
View notes