The Teacher's Tales of Terror (6 page)

BOOK: The Teacher's Tales of Terror
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Lady Overton’s mind seemed to have fogged and she was finding it unaccountably difficult to concentrate on what was happening. How could this be Eleanor, when she had been brushing Eleanor’s hair the past half hour?

‘Look at what you’ve done,’ screamed Eleanor. ‘Look at yourself!’

Eleanor ran from the room and Lady Overton looked at her hands as she reached out to call her back. They were covered in mud, her fingernails broken and bleeding. Her dress was likewise filthy and torn, stained with mould and laced with dusty cobwebs.

Slowly, slowly she turned to look in the dressing-table mirror. It was not Eleanor who looked back. It had never been Eleanor; she understood that now.

The face that stared back at her – if the word face could properly describe the grinning horror that lolled atop that shroud-covered corpse – was Lydia’s.

Lady Overton remembered now: remembered how she had gone to the mausoleum in a madness born of grief and guilt; remembered how she had opened up the grave with her own bare hands and carried her daughter’s rotting corpse to the place where it now sat, revealed for what it was, just as Lydia’s true nature had been revealed before her death.

But Lady Overton’s heart could not bear the weight of that dreadful recollection and struck its last beat as the clock in the room sounded the first stroke of midnight. She fell dead to the floor, a few strands of Lydia’s long red hair still clenched between her fingers.

Mr Munro took a deep breath and surveyed the room full of upturned faces. How pale they seemed, he thought with satisfaction. A bell suddenly rang out and Mr Munro put his book down on the desk.

‘Well,’ he said. ‘There we have it. I hope that you have not found the stories too disquieting.’

‘Oh no, sir,’ said a girl on the front row enthusiastically.

‘I am very pleased to hear it,’ said Mr Munro.

He put the book back in his briefcase, clapped his hands together and took a deep breath.

‘Well, it was a pleasure to meet you all,’ he said unconvincingly. ‘Perhaps we shall meet again.’

‘For more stories, sir?’ said a boy.

‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Munro. ‘Perhaps. Well – goodbye.’

‘Goodbye, sir!’ shouted the class in unison.

Mr Munro picked up his briefcase and, nodding to the class, he opened the door and walked out into the corridor.

The other pupils were milling about, changing classrooms and teachers. He winced at the noise of scraping chairs and loud voices. He would go to the office and find out which classroom he was in next.

‘Mr Munnings?’ said a voice behind him.

It was Mrs Nesbitt, the head teacher.

‘Munro,’ he corrected.

‘Where have you been?’ she said sternly.

‘I’m not sure I appreciate your tone of voice,’ he replied.

Two girls sniggered as they passed by.

‘Well, I am very sorry to hear that,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘But I’m afraid this is unacceptable.’

Mr Munro sighed.

‘Is there a problem?’ he asked. ‘I realise my stories are quite challenging, but I find that most childr—’

‘Mrs Mildew had to cover for you whilst you disappeared to wherever you disappeared to,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘She was supposed to supervise the music hall rehearsals and –’

‘Cover for me?’ said Mr Munro. ‘What on earth do you mean? I was with 7UM as you requested.’

Mrs Nesbitt took a deep breath.

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I have no idea what you think you are trying to achieve by this nonsense. If you were not able to do the job, then why come to the school?’

‘But, my dear woman –’

‘I am not your dear woman,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘I am not anyone’s dear woman!’

‘Really?’ said Mr Munro. ‘You do surprise me.’

‘Very well,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘If you were teaching 7UM, then I’m sure they will remember you.’

Mr Munro smiled.

‘Oh – I’m
sure
they will.’

‘Then let’s go and ask them, shall we?’ said Mrs Nesbitt. Mr Munro shook his head and followed her.

‘Did you even bother to come into the school?’ said Mrs Nesbitt.

‘As I have already explained,’ said Mr Munro with a sigh, ‘I followed your instructions. I walked past the hall and went into the first classroom on the right and –’

‘On the left,’ corrected Mrs Nesbitt.

‘Right,’ said Mr Munro. ‘You definitely said right.’

‘I can’t have done,’ said Mrs Nesbitt.

‘I assure you that you did,’ said Mr Munro. ‘And more to the point, perhaps that is the source of the confusion. What I do not understand is that in my whole time teaching the class, no teacher came in. Who would have looked after those children had I not been there?’

Mrs Nesbitt had now come to a stop and was listening to Mr Munro’s speech with the expression she was often wont to use on pupils when they made their excuses about missing homework.

‘Could I ask you to just pop inside the classroom you say you were teaching in, Mr Munro?’ she said.

There was something about Mrs Nesbitt’s tone of voice that made him suspicious, but Mr Munro agreed and opened the door.

‘I don’t understand,’ he said.

The room was filled with rows of desks, each with a computer on it.

‘No,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘Neither do I.’

‘But I taught in this classroom not more than a few minutes ago,’ he said. ‘It had a blackboard, a globe over there. It was very convincingly decked out as a Victorian classroom. There was a map on the wall showing the British Empire . . .’

‘This room hasn’t been used as a classroom for years,’ said Mrs Nesbitt. ‘It is our IT room, as you can see.’

‘But I don’t –’

‘I think it’s best if you leave, Mr Munro,’ said Mrs Nesbitt coldly.

Mr Munro stared at the classroom one last time and then walked into the hallway. In desperation he grabbed the door handle of the opposite classroom and opened the door.

But he knew he had not turned that way when he first walked to the classroom. Mrs Billings, the class teacher, looked concernedly at him, and the class stared until Mrs Nesbitt pulled him by the arm and coaxed him away.

‘Mr Munro,’ she said. ‘I really must insist.’

Mr Munro nodded.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Of course, of course.’

Mrs Nesbitt walked him to the office and said that she would have to make a formal complaint. Mr Munro nodded. She walked him all the way to the gates. She seemed eager to make sure he was off the property.

‘Goodbye, Mr Munnings,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said absent-mindedly, too distracted to correct her. ‘Goodbye, goodbye.’

What a very peculiar man
, thought Mrs Nesbitt to herself as she returned to her office. The Victorian class photograph caught her eye as she was checking her emails. She stood up and walked across, peering at the photograph.

‘That’s impossible,’ she said to herself.

There in the photo, looking out of the window behind the children and their teachers, was the pale face of the man to whom she had just said goodbye.

 

Mr Munro decided to walk home rather than catch the bus. It was a long way but he felt that the fresh air might help. It didn’t.

All the way home he thought about the classroom. In some thoughts it would be full of children, in others, full of computers.

‘How?’ he mumbled to himself. ‘How could something like that happen? How could I be so wrong?’

An old lady who was walking past smiled benignly at him as if she saw a kindred muttering spirit. He scowled at her and quickened his step.

‘You’re exhausted,’ he told himself. ‘When was the last time you took a holiday? A proper holiday, I mean.’

He stopped and took a deep breath. Yes – that must be it. He had worked himself to a state of such exhaustion that he was actually seeing things. He would take some time off. Take a cottage in the country, perhaps?

Mr Munro decided to visit the library on his way home. He always felt comforted by the presence of books. He decided that some Romantic poetry might calm his mind and settled down at a desk with a collection of Keats.

After a while, he did feel a little better. The incident at the school still seemed horribly vivid though. Could he really have imagined those children? He shivered at the thought. Was this how madness began, he wondered.

Mr Munro called in at his favourite café and had a soothing cup of tea. Everything always felt better after a pot of Earl Grey.

But neither the tea, nor the poached egg he had with it, worked its magic today and though he tried to lose himself in
The Times
crossword, those children would insist on derailing his train of thought. He decided to give up and go home. An early night, that was what he needed.

It was already quite dark and there was a bitter chill in the air. Mr Munro was most of the way through the park and nearing the gates that opened on to the street where he lived when something made him stop and turn round.

Spittle-like snow was falling wetly. On the brow of the hill he had just crested was a ragged silhouette. It was only a group of children – presumably on their way home from school as he was – but for some reason he found them unnerving.

Mr Munro turned back towards his house and quickened his step. He had not walked more than a few paces when he felt the need to stop and turn round again.

To his horror he saw that the children were now only a few metres away and that these were not just any children – they were the very same children who could not have been in the computer suite.

Mr Munro could not look for more than a few seconds. He ran, clutching his briefcase to his chest, all the way to his front door and fumbled for his keys. He staggered inside and slammed the door, deadlocking it behind him.

He put his briefcase down on the hall table and went to the window to look out. The children were standing at the entrance to the park. The snow was falling more heavily now, the flakes lit by the street lamp. He gulped drily and pulled the curtains shut.

He turned on the television. For the first time in his life he watched a talent show, glad of the harmless inanity which drowned out all thought of the children for a while.

But only for a while.

Mr Munro glanced anxiously at the curtains and felt compelled to get up and confront his fears.

‘They are imaginary,’ he said to himself as he gripped the curtains. ‘Imaginary. They are not there.’

He opened the curtains and let out a whimper. The children were clustered just outside the window staring in, their faces pale and wan in the streetlight. The girl with the long hair smiled at him, snow swirling round her like a flock of white moths.

Mr Munro shut the curtains again.

‘You are not there!’ he shouted. ‘You are not there!’

He opened the curtains once more and the children were gone. A car drove past, but otherwise the street was empty. Mr Munro felt his heart lighten with relief and he clapped his hands together. He felt like Scrooge when the dreaded Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come becomes nothing more than his bed curtain.

‘God bless us, everyone,’ he said with a smile.

But he thought he would still take that holiday. A rest-cure was what he needed. A cottage. A cottage by the sea. Yes. The sea.

He was forced to acknowledge that he was clearly not a well man. He felt tired. His head hurt and he ached as though he had the flu.

Perhaps a holiday was not the thing at all. Perhaps he needed to be in a hospital – a place where his illness might properly be treated. The thought of ending up in such a place dampened his spirits, as he readied himself for bed.

He settled himself beneath the blankets and picked up the book that lay on his bedside table –
Tales of Mystery and Imagination
by Edgar Allan Poe – but immediately replaced it.

‘Not tonight, I think,’ he said to himself with a shudder as he leaned over and switched off the light and let the darkness embrace him.

And in that darkness, a voice spoke out, the speaker so close that Mr Munro could feel the chill breeze of their breath on his startled face.

BOOK: The Teacher's Tales of Terror
4.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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