The Old School House

An extended free verse poem about an old, isolated building with a macabre past

Part 1

 

It’s a cold cut night

And the hollow stars are out.

We’re way past street lights

Without a soul for miles.

 

We laugh and stumble and sip

Booze we’ve snuck.

And the warm dark spirit fills us

And we’re up for it. Up.

 

It’s Christmas Eve and

It’s you and me standing brave

At the old school house.

 

We swagger closer.

The old shapes cut odd against the night.

Rectangles of purple black

And a sharp triangle to the moon.

 

It was a hospital once.

A place for wheezy urchins.

Its big halls; its open lush gardens.

It was a place for air.

A place to open the lungs.

 

And it was a school once.

A place for shaping minds.

Its history; its intent.

It was a place to grow.

A place to escape.

 

And it was a borstal once.

A place for broken souls.

Its isolation; its blankness.

It was a place to hide.

A place to start again.

 

We have sharp memories of these walls.

Sharp memories of those within.

Unforgiving hands still linger

and cruel words fester deep.

 

At the locked gates we stop and breathe.

 

We glance. Me at you. You at me.

There is a moment.

A moment we could almost have caught

And stopped.

 

But it passes.

Like all things.

 

And we grin and I hoist you.

Up. Up.

You pull me.

We stumble.

And we’re in.

You and me in the old schoolhouse.

 

Part 2

 

The rush and the booze

Take the cold out of us

And we creep loudly

Through the old garden.

 

“You remember?” you say

and I laugh.

Yes.

A shared joke of twenty years

That we return to often

When the drink resurrects the past.

 

It had been a warm and blue July:

a day without worry, past or future.

You and me and Jimmy J

upending seedlings.

 

“Stop that, you boys,”

said a voice

that’s got more comedic with time.

“They’ve had no chance yet.”

 

We shuffle the plants back

but they are doomed, broken.

 

“Come here, boys,”

says Mr Masri.

Refugee.

Terrorist.

Paedo.

Or so we laugh.

Or so we say.

Or so we tell.

 

He is short and dusty.

And we spread lies

That make his brief time at school a misery.

But we didn’t care.

Truly. At that age; who does?

 

He takes a shovel.

He grins a grin.

And we swear.

Over the years we have sworn it

and sworn it.

We swear he rams the shovel blade

clean through his foot.

We’ve told the tale to so many

And we’ve lapped in the laughs.

 

It’s hard to tell what order

the next memories happen.

But there’s an ambulance.

A wailing Headmistress.

A dog bites a child.

A window is broken.

And Jimmy J picks up five toes.

 

How many roads have led to this story

Again and again over how many years?

With the passing of time we fixed on a form

And have kept our story true since.

 

And when Jimmy J died

The story grew more power still.

A moment of cruel slapstick

Given the weight of loss.

 

We return to this garden so often

That it feels good to actually be here.

 

It’s Christmas Eve and

It’s you and me and Jimmy J

Standing at the old school house.

 

 

Part 3

 

 

I tug the door but it’s tight shut.

Something of history buckled up.

You take my shoulder and I follow your eyes:

And a jagged broken window call us up.

 

The rust on the pipe crunches as we hoist up.

And for a moment I feel it give,

Long-held fittings bursting out

With our clumsy weight.

 

You falter, scrape on the jagged bricks

And slam down to a tarred flat roof.

I hear you yelp

Then curse

Then laugh.

And I let myself laugh too.

 

There’s a lone window

Unshuttered and unbroken.

We both glance it and

We both half-smile.

 

A casual rock, tossed with purpose

And the night is crisply broken

With a treble-heavy gong

Without ceremony.

 

Lifted up and happy-panting,

I shout left-right left-right

And I elbow off the last shards

as you hoist me through.

 

Into the dark.

Into the stench.

Into.

Into.

 

I pause and enjoy the fear of being alone.

I let the adrenaline surface my blood

and feel the onset of sweat.

For a moment I am nothing but all of it.

 

“Hey!” I hear and

I smile down.

My hand reaches out

Like the years have never mattered.

 

And in that closed-up room

With the shuttered-out world

We feel the courage slip

And it's then we should have turned.

 

But we laugh an old laugh

And the years sink courage

Into this brief moment with

Just you and me at the old schoolhouse.

 

Part four

 

Speckled old walls of grime and mould.

Locked down windows locked with cold.

Shattered grey cabinets filled with secrets

Of cut-short lives doomed by weakness.

 

We jimmy drawers and turf over papers;

Doctors notes and old reports.

Tragedy turned to drama

With the turning of time.

 

Above us in a jangled corner

A torn up poster frowns down.

A child as thin as hope

Crept over with dotted black.

 

Your hand on my shoulder and

you push me out the door,

Laughing loud in the deep

Silent, big empty.

 

Every door is locked

And we break each window

For the thrill of the shock

As it runs cold up and through us.

 

Ward after ward of gun metal beds

With rotten maggot sheets.

Old pans of crusted waste

And papers of long gone souls.

 

“Look” you say

And we freeze tight.

In the far of the room

A shadowed shape lies

In an old shadowed bed.

 

We dare each other with silence

And you creep forward.

On an ancient bed, metal and cotton,

Something under the sheet lies.

 

“Go on” I whisper

and you do.

 

I take a rusted pipe

and feel its weight.

The metal length

Gives me grounding.

 

You edge closer

A step-step at a time.

Our breaths held

In sharpened air.

 

Close enough to reach now

But not close enough to see.

There is a smell in the air

Like something unburied.

 

Your hand touches the cold cloth,

Gripping it with a shaking hand.

 

"Go on," I whisper

And you do.

 

A sudden flick and you pull off the blanket.

You gasp back, stumble

And fall into an old bucket

Of old waste.

 

Two dinner plates on the bed

Rancid with old rotten meat,

Tucked away and forgotten

And left to fester.

 

We curse and then we laugh.

You joke something about last meals.

I say it's nothing as bad as

A curry we shared one old New Year.

 

And then we see the boy.

 

He is eight I think.

Dressed in sharp-pressed pyjamas

Of blue striped cotton

And thread-bare slippers.

 

He is looking at you

With eyes from a different age.

Eyes that have seen bombed-out homes

And loved ones torn-up and crippled.

 

He puts a handkerchief to his lips.

He coughs and the cloth blots red.

He tries to speak

But his voice is a ragged mess.

 

We stumble back, gasping

But the door has vanished.

Just bare brick wall

Rough against our terrored hands.

 

The boy growls deep,

A noise that oscilates and twists.

His hand reaches to us

His fingers thin and twined.

 

Words begin to splutter into being.

Sounds sculpt into meaning.

We hear it. We both hear it.

“You did this.”

 

And your fingers find a handle

And we tumble out of the room

And we run-trip down the hallway,

Silent in shared horror.

 

We make the stairs

And plummet down.

It’s you and me, tight and cold

Running scared through the old school house

 

Part Five

 

Back. We have the urge to go back

But the terror still waits above.

If only we'd known the horror ahead

We would have gladly embraced it.

 

"What was that?" You say

But no answer will address it.

A lifetime laughing at fringe follies

Only to find ourselves with the strongest of belief.

 

And there's no way out.

None that we can find.

In this new place with nailed-shut windows

And bricked-up doors.

 

You grasp my arm to feel something

And I place my hand on yours.

We pause and breathe

And try to settle into calm.

 

As the moments tick and our eyes adjust

The memory of upstairs becomes manageable.

Becomes intangible.

Becomes unreal.

 

The drink has long since left us

And all that's left is the tired helpless fear.

The feeling of lost shadows

In a room of flickering candles.

 

"This way," I hope

And you have nothing to say no.

Down a wood panelled hall,

Down long shuttered-out doors.

 

There's that old smell

Of thrice cleansed floors

Of polish and wax.

That old smell of distant school.

 

The place seems small

But it's our memories that are big.

These corridors were vast

And hollow to our small selves.

 

I stop you with a glance.

A peeled blue door

With a criss crossed wire window

Hanging open into the dark.

 

"Mr Masri," written black

On a faded white sign.

The letters form a word

Which form the memory.

 

You remember a little

About that day.

The way the blade of the spade

Split through shoe and foot.

 

A terrible terrible slip;

An accident we both recall.

The screaming agony torn on his face

That sent giggles through your spine.

 

I open the door and the dark

Calls us in.

 

Five rows of six desks,

Posters of plants and animals and all between.

Glass tanks of faded foliage,

Piled books of outdated knowledge.

 

It’s like we left it.

Like we left it a decade ago.

Or was it longer?

The years are beginning to melt together.

 

You stand at the front

And play at being teacher.

I half-squeeze into a chair

And raise my hand gleefully.

 

“You boy!” you say

And I say, “Me, sir?”

“You boy!” you say

“Where’s your homework?”

 

I laugh and shout something obscene

That feels like release

In this place where we were

So defined. So controlled.

 

Something in me loosens

And I give in to the urge

To toss the books from tabletops to floor.

To kick over desks and topple chairs.

 

You take an old burner

And smash the glass tanks

One after another

Like the windows on the eleven when we were twelve.

 

“Stop!”

 

I think it is you

And you think it is me.

 

“Stop!”

 

But we are lost

In our small act of chaos.

 

“Stop, you ingrates!”

 

The word turns us round.

We’ve never heard it spoken by another.

Just from his lips.

Just from him:

 

Mr Masri.

 

“You pathetic ingrates.”

 

He’s in the doorway.

His rugby-trimmed frame

Cutting a dark cross

Against our exit.

 

“You going to tear this up

Like you tore up me?”

 

He steps forward,

Awkward and pained,

And a trickle of moonlight

Seeps over him.

 

His face is close to nothing.

His jaw is wrenched free

And where it was

Just a void of dark red alive with lice.

 

His head is halved at the scalp.

Strands of hair sprout from broken edges

From where a kind, keen mind

Once lived. Once loved.

 

It had been your hands.

Your hands on the shovel that day.

He had bent down to tend to a twisted

Shoot that needed a kind hand.

 

The invitation had been too great.

You felt the heavy tool in your hands

And the powerful glee

As it swung to its target.

 

But it was the impact that it made.

The feel of it through the wood

Through your arms

Through your body.

 

The glorious feeling of control.

That you and you alone

Had caused the mysterious light of life

To snuff out in this very place.

 

Still boiling, still needing it,

You sunk the blade into

The fallen.

 

The solid chunk of noise

As you split open the head.

The crunch of bone as the jaw

Broke free and hung by a tendril.

 

And only then the foot.

The foot was last.

A swift and forceful blow

And you had the five trophies in your hand.

 

“You did this. You remember now, boy?”

 

There’s a noise of metal on stone

And we see he’s dragging a shovel.

It is bloody and rusted.

It is clean and sharp.

 

He swings at me first

And catches my head,

Sending me screwballing

To the floor, spitting teeth.

 

You reach out to me

But he’s quicker than life.

The blade whistles through

And sinks into my hand.

 

Fingers fall.

Blood sprays.

He’s laughing.

He’s laughing.

 

You yell something meaningless

And ram him hard

With a desk scratched

Deep with your name.

 

It catches him in the middle

And the two of you slide across,

Screaming and laughing

Until he crashes, caught between desk and wall.

 

He pushes you away

And rakes four red lines

Across your neck with

Rancid blackened nails.

 

He’s quick. Years of rage

And injustice fuel it.

A fist to your skull

And a sharp kick send you to the floor.

 

“You ingrates. You wasted me.”

 

There’s a fallen book by me

And its all I have to throw.

He turns to me as it hits

And you take the opening.

 

You pick the fallen spade

And you swing it like that day.

You swing it and you feel the connect.

Hard and soft. Just like that day.

 

It takes another hit

For the head to fall.

And it takes many more

Before we are sure he is gone.

 

You patch me up

And we stand amongst the blood

Of Mr Masri,

You and me in the old schoolhouse.

 

 

 

 

Part Six

 

I rest against you

As we stumble out

Past schoolrooms

And the broken past.

 

Adrenaline has turned

To something else

Almost transcendent.

Almost divine.

 

The glazed brick walls

Switch to wallpaper

And the floor

Is carpeted with rose.

 

“I need to...”

 

But you know.

You know me.

And you sit me

Gently to the floor.

 

I’m still leaking blood.

It pools out and blots

In beautiful fractals

As I watch myself go.

 

You try one of the doors

But it is key-code locked.

Still you push the buttons

In ignorant hope.

 

You kick the door

And the noise booms down the hallway

But the door barely moves.

They are built to keep out monsters like you.

 

“Try that one.”

I point to a door of bruised purple

And you push it, kick it, ram it

but it is unmovable.

 

“5394.”

 

You look at me and I see your look.

Wary and confused.

Those old memories are bubbling up.

And you’ve no claim to them.

 

Your shaking fingers make mistakes

And it seems to take an age

Before you get the numbers right.

But the door doesn’t give.

 

“CX first,” I say

“Try CX first.”

 

C

X

5

3

9

4

 

And then you twist the handle

And the door swings open.

 

You turn and for a moment

I think you’re going to leave me.

Leave me to slowly die.

To slowly disappear from you.

 

But you reach down and lift me.

The memory of your arms around me

Sends a shock of fear

And I whimper into you.

 

“You’ll be ok,” you say

And you drag me,

Weak and brittle into the room

Into a chair of soft paisley.

 

Decades ago this was a bedroom.

Dust has settled thick

And browns and oranges

Are muted with fallen grey.

 

"Look," you say.

 

You're holding a brown envelope.

Blank. Anonymous. Private. .

Left behind for someone else.

Left behind to be left alone.

 

"Open it," I say, trying to fill the fear.

 

Your fingers tear a line down its edge

And old papers carefully folded

Tumble out, sliding through

And settling to the floor.

 

It’s me.

 

An old photo as sharp as ever.

Crisp kodak colours

Of a bright day

By a vibrant sea.

 

I’m wearing a t-shirt,

Green with yellow,

That says

“Mr Drunk”

 

It’s me and you.

 

You’re next to me.

Friendship close with a

Friendship smile.

Arm around my neck.

 

“Read it” I say.

 

You fold out a letter

Written in black ink

In jolts of time

When courage allowed.

 

“Read it” I say.

 

 

Part Seven

 

My doctor told me to write this.

Told me to spout my thoughts

To the page to give my

Fear a sense of the real.

 

So here goes.

 

I loved you.

Whatever that means.

 

Love takes so many forms

And is untameable.

Uncontrollable.

It pulls you which way it pulls.

 

Through all the friends,

Through all the girls,

You and I seemed a constant.

A tight duo that faced all of it.

 

We have secrets together

And moments that cannot be shared.

Young boys exploring

As our tastes and wants refined.

 

That sunny day in Wales

Under the mighty water,

Falling over us as we

Shrieked and shared.

 

I remember it often.

I return to it.

And I wonder if that’s when

Our lines split away.

 

It was only a year later

After a long term of tease,

That you split open Mr Masri

And coated us in blood.

 

I blame you.

Do you hear?

I blame you.

For all of it.

 

I blame you for the trial

That split my parents

That killed my father

That shattered my life.

 

I blame you for the stories

That weaved themselves

Around our names

Wherever I went.

 

I blame you for the boys

We treated so badly

In this rotten place

That makes us all the worst we can be.

 

I’m sorry to them all.

I wasn’t an unwilling passenger.

I could have left at any time

But you were so alive. So compelling.

 

You burnt so hot, so bright.

I was drawn to you.

But your fire is all-consuming.

You need to own everything.

 

Even me.

 

And that’s it.

 

You took it from me.

The last thing you could take.

My trust. My hope.

My only friend.

 

You.

You took it.

I don’t blame you.

I don’t.

I.

 

 

Epilogue

 

It was a hospital once,

It was a school once,

It was a borstal once,

It is a prison now.

 

A place for jangled souls

whose moment of brief evil

have cut sharp into the

timeline of life.

 

A place where minds are re-knitted

and re-stitched.

Where doctors of wealth listen

To the fancies of men with nothing.

 

It’s just you.

Just you and you alone.

You, broken and hopeless.

Alone in the old school house.

 

Tight straps of leather

Cut into your wrists

Cut into your ankles

Cut into your being.

 

Ragged dreams of past urges

Criss cross your thoughts.

Make your limbs twitch.

Make your mouth curl.

 

The control you felt.

The hefty drive of shovel into bone.

The blood and the screams

All from you and you alone.

 

You feel yourself dream-fall,

Catching yourself.

That plummeting moment

When Jimmy J fell.

 

A tragic slip down tragic stairs,

White walls speckled with blood

That always leaked through

Every new paint job.

 

You never told me

But I knew.

You were so quiet

When his name was spoken.

But I saw in you a smile

That was only ever our smile.

 

I never expected it.

With all the evils

I knew you for.

I never expected it.

 

The look on my face

As you turned on me.

After all those years.

All those unknown years.

 

As you held my tired self

Almost tenderly.

And how you ruined me

For no other reason

Than any reason you know.

That you alone know.

 

You left me, you remember?

Still dazed, still tied.

You left me. Alone and violated

and never to be fixed.

 

You read about it later

When they let you read again.

A fleeting newspaper,

a fleeting mention.

“Young male found dead

In local borstal”

Was all I was worth.

Fifteen lines followed

and that was me gone.

 

Nothing about the hopes I’d had

torn out from me.

Nothing about the man I could have been

about the boy I was.

Just the facts.

Just the facts.

 

An overdose.

The same drugs that fill you now

That take you on this twisted

False ride that I couldn’t ride anymore.

 

And then the last person who knew you,

Who knew you before,

Was gone.

There is no one left to sing for what you were.

 

It’s just you.

Just you and you alone.

You.

Broken and hopeless.

You.

Alone in the old school house.

You.