Dedication

      This story is dedicated to my friends in Bruce County, Ontario. I continue to be inspired by the area’s beauty and mystery.

      CHAPTER

       one

      Knees and elbows pumping, the two men shot out of the building like a dragon’s fiery breath was scorching their asses. As the shorter of the two reached for the door handle of a battered Ford pickup truck parked at the curb, his feet lost traction and he skidded into a snowbank. His companion leaned against the tailgate and pulled a phone from his pocket. When he saw the Cherokee bearing down on them, he ran toward it, waving his arms.

      Neil Redfern slammed on the brakes and stopped his vehicle in the middle of the street. When he got out, his hand automatically went to his Glock. “What’s the problem, sir?”

      The man leaning on the Ford had a tall, lean build, and sported a black beard and moustache. Both men wore heavy plaid shirts with black toques pulled down low on their foreheads.

      Seeing a uniformed cop, the bearded man slumped over, inhaling lungfuls of icy air. He motioned with a flashlight at the two-storey brick structure behind him. For now, he seemed incapable of speech. Neil looked at the other man, who was sitting on a mound of snow, rocking back and forth, hands shielding his eyes. He was mumbling non-stop, but Neil couldn’t make out the words.

      “I’m Police Chief Neil Redfern. Is someone in danger inside?”

      The two men looked at each other, then shook their heads.

      “Am I in danger if I go in there?” He wasn’t wearing a shoulder radio, or a vest, and didn’t want to walk into a shitstorm without backup.

      Vehement head shakes from both men, but Neil wasn’t risking his life based on what they thought.

      The lettering on the truck spelled out davidson and cutler salvage, and a heavy chain led from the bumper of the truck to the entrance of the building. The double entrance doors had been pulled away from the frame and lay on the ground. The words Lockport H.S. 1961 were incised on a stone arch across the front of the building. The windows had been boarded up and fitted with iron bars.

      The bearded man gestured to the old high school with one arm and poked himself in the chest with the other hand. “I’m … I’m Fang Davidson. That’s my cousin, Larry Cutler.”

      “Why are the doors on the ground?”

      “We bought the salvage rights for the building. It’s going to be demolished next week. We have to take what we can now. Nobody gave us keys, so we had to break the doors down.”

      Cutler had regained coherency. “Tell him what we found, Fang.”

      Fang clamped his lips shut again, looking as though he was going to pass out or puke.

      “Take your time,” Neil told him. If one of them didn’t spit it out fast, he was calling for backup. The day shift was already spread thin due to a flu bug and the Christmas parade about to start over on Main Street. He didn’t have to strain his ears to hear the Salvation Army band trombones warming up with “Good King Wenceslaus.” The parade was the reason he had been using the back streets to get home from the station.

      Neil turned toward the curb to try his luck with Cutler. Davidson clutched at his arm. “No, I … I have to show you.”

      Neil shook Davidson off and focused on Cutler. But now the man refused to meet his eyes.

      He called the station on his cell. “Lavinia, I’m about to enter the abandoned high school on the corner of Brant and Chippewa Streets. Two men, Larry Cutler and Fang Davidson, requested assistance. Yes, I said Fang. If I don’t call back within ten minutes, send backup.”

      “Okay, let’s go.” He led the way inside, his Glock in one hand and Davidson’s flashlight in the other. Davidson and Cutler followed close behind.

      Cutler crowded against Neil. “Straight down the hall. At the end, hang a right. Second door on the right — the girls’ locker room.”

      “You won’t need the gun,” Davidson contributed, his voice cracking.

      “Stay back,” he ordered them.

      A few metres inside and it was dark as a crypt. Staying close to the wall, they passed an opened door leading to the offices. Metal lockers lined both sides of the hallway. All were wide open and empty. He stepped cautiously over buckled flooring and fallen ceiling tiles. The hall ended in a T-intersection. Neil swept the weak beam of light to the left before turning the other way. About twenty metres in, he passed the closed door of the boys’ locker room. Another ten metres and he faced a yawning blackness.

      “In here?” Neil indicated the opening with the flashlight. The door had been propped back. Without stepping into the room, he couldn’t see an identifying sign.

      “Yeah,” Cutler confirmed, pushing up against Neil. “In a locker.”

      Neil elbowed him back. “Stop breathing down my neck.”

      He edged into the space, back against the wall. Only the sounds of the salvagers’ breathing behind him broke the silence. On the left bank of lockers, the first half-dozen doors had been flung open, some hanging loose from one hinge.

      Neil swept the light inside the opened lockers. They were empty except for a few items of stained fabric and some tattered textbooks. He sniffed: mould and stale air.

      He indicated the first closed locker. “This one?”

      “Yes.” It was Cutler’s voice.

      Davidson’s respiration increased. Neil’s skin tightened and he moved farther away from the men.

      “Was it closed when you got here?” Neil positioned himself in front of the locker.

      “Yes. They all were.”

      “So you closed it again?”

      “Guess so. Must have been reflex.”

      Neil reached out with his left hand and grasped the handle. His right hand tightened its grip on the gun.

      Davidson croaked, “It’s … It’s …”

      Neil threw the door aside and jumped back.

      He didn’t expect the dry, brown heap of bones that lay on the bottom of the locker. The rib cage had settled gently onto the smaller bones and cradled the skull on top, like a pyramid-shaped Halloween decoration.

      With a soft clacking sound, one long bone and a few smaller ones tumbled out onto the chipped tile floor. The rest of the skeleton shifted, releasing puffs of dust and fragments of cloth or paper. Leaning in, Neil observed a layer of dehydrated body fluids and decomposed flesh under the bone heap. Some of it had dripped out and dried in a half-metre-wide stain on the floor.

      The skull tipped off the rib cage and dropped onto the edge of the metal locker, rocking twice before falling to the floor. It rolled across the tiles and stopped, the teeth resting against Neil’s boot.

      He flinched and backed up another step. The mandible broke away from the skull, as if the mouth had opened wide in soundless laughter.

      Neil shook off his revulsion and noted the rows of flawlessly formed teeth. Then, his attention fastened on the left temple. The area near the orbital bone was a jagged black void. He reached for his phone.