The Unlikely Wing

As a teacher I believe education should be fact-based. I like it that way. I teach it that way. Old-school perhaps, but this is an old school. And old schools always have ghosts — or so the children claim.

I’ve not seen one. I’ve never feared them. Fears are for the children and I’m here to reassure. Also, religion holds me in comforting arms — if anything is unknown to me, it is known by another.

My soul is kept well. I’m not one to believe in falling angels, singed apparitions or other darker forces of our keepings. The fantastical, needy rantings of children I’m more than aware of — and of their nightmares. I deliver knowledge, hope and encouragement, and the best version of the truth I can muster, hopefully uncluttered by my creeping cynicisms. Still, there’s only so much I can do with their dreams, and visitations...

Pastorally, I slowly peel back the amniotic veil; I let beams of contemporary life seep through my careful hands. I protect and explain. Logic is my best tool. My faith is mine alone; it has no place in the classroom. I knew the game by now. Yet it took a child to challenge everything.

It was a regular day. It was mid-term. The usual homesick grumblings long swept under the carpet. We keep them busy. It works for them and us. But there are many issues. Not many as serious and as unbelievable as this one. I won’t name the child but they came to me sheepishly and muttered under their guarded breath.

“Mr Jay, is there a teacher who runs in the morning?” the child enquired.

“Not that I know of, why do you ask?” I replied.

“Well, I sometimes run, if I can’t sleep.”

“Yes, I’ve heard. But no, I can’t think of anyone mad enough,” I teased.

And they were gone on their way. Out of my class and off to another.

—

Clearing up, I spotted a blue notebook under their desk. No name. I opened it. First page blank; the second page held simple diary entries, as if drafted for later detailing.

Tuesday: Cold but dry. Same route the other way round. Teacher on edge of wood said well done, said keep going.

Wednesday: Saw teacher again. Don’t know him but there’s lots of teachers.

Friday: Why is he always there?

I closed the notebook, closed the classroom and walked to my home on the grounds. My mind raced for a minute and my eyes were drawn to the distant wood-fringed playing fields.

It was late when I got home; I turned a few more pages and read on. This time the writing scribbled and free:

I saw someone running on the opposite side of the fields. It was strange as his feet didn’t match the speed he moved at, a bit like when you see those delivery bicycles that everyone knows have a battery but the riders fake pedal.

And he was above the ground a bit, I think. I looked back over my shoulder, then slipped, my foot slid sideways across mud, and I was down.

He was right there, though. He put a hand out to help me but I felt nothing, just air. Damp cold air. And a scent of something... like oil, like the smell inside the car hold of a passenger ship.

Did you see him, sir? Was he there?

Childish ramblings, but precise… I thought again about my duty of care: a child writing about random interactions with unspecified adults, our conversation in class. Some children won’t tell you direct; it’s often coded, or hinted, or suggested in their behaviours. But this…

Ok, I’m getting involved. But for now I’ll return the notebook. Maybe just leave it in their accommodation and they’ll not think it ever lost, and not be worried. I’ll call the police at lunchtime. I sent myself an email as a reminder and turned the lights out.

And he was there.

—

Sat on the strip lights, chained to the ceiling, wrapped in broken wing. A bat of a man, face poking over tattered plastic, clawed of foot, damp of soul, broken of heart, crying over me.

As I lay again in one of their beds, his damaged wings wrapped around me, and I felt safe.

I woke pre-dawn, washed with cold water and grabbed my running shoes. The dream a mild bruise on my consciousness, but my worry real. My urge to protect, strong. According to the diary the boy doesn’t run on Tuesdays.

Today is Tuesday. Today, I solve this.

I started steady… damp quickly creeping into my shoes… across the fields and to the woods, and there he was. Closer, till I knew his face. I even knew his name… We’d been in the same class when we were also children at this school.

What the fuck is he doing here? And he moved — he moved like pixels fighting in the air, like a pre-migraine play of light, an arc of pain — and he was gone.

I ran home. Blinded. I showered, thoughtless, welcoming the rainfall effect. I called the police. And made tea. And held off the wave of wonderings.

—

The knock came, as it should, early in the morning. The more serious the crime, the earlier the knock. Even in the age of Wi-Fi video doorbells the police still call it ‘the knock’. It’s a thing, and the thing needs an element of surprise to work its magic.

‘Helping police with their enquiries’ is a coded phrase. You hear it on the news and think one thing: suspect.

Pleasantries passed quickly across the terraced doorstep. Heavy steps crossed the ‘Welcome’ mat and continued through to a kitchen-diner that had seen better days and better food than the ready meal poking a lonely plastic head out of the crumb-dusted pedal bin.

I heard later from a contact at the police station that they’d opened with a direct question:

“Can you tell us where you were on the following dates?”

It was, apparently, easy enough for Carl to answer and to evidence: for two of the dates he was on a work course in Luxembourg. And for the remainder, he was driving to the office and had proof of the early commute — thanks to the compulsory tracker on his car, something he considered rather Orwellian — but everyone wants cheaper premiums, right? So, five dates, five bomb-proof alibis.

It took detectives less than 24 hours to cross-reference the information with managers in his workplace; he even had the ticket stubs from the airline and the booking was still saved. The insurance company were also quick to fess up the details — and he even matched it with his ‘Find My Phone’ app. Bang to freedom.

Later the same day, the police called and told me they were happy with their initial investigations but, due to the severity of the claims, would do a little more ‘digging’.

But what of the notebook? And what of my encounter? I don’t know what I saw, but it was something. Sometimes seeing nothing is better. I wasn’t going there; I know my Gods. So, I decided to return the notebook. Close this down right now — and pray, hard.

—

I wandered into the dormitory and planned the caper step by step; I’d just enough time before the children would come racing through between lessons, and I knew this place like the back of my hand.

I found the child’s top drawer locked — I felt guilty for even trying it — so I teased at the drawer below. It barely budged. I pushed my fingers inside, over the top of the lip and pressed down to free up the blockage and pulled again. It shuddered slowly forward. Inside, it was packed with notebooks, all the same colour. Some stacked, others rolled. Packed in. Crammed. Odd. I slid the top one toward me, lifted it, then the next in the stack…

Epiales, My Silent Memory, A Flock of Frantic, The Processing Train.

Eleven years old. They are eleven years old. Epiales is one of the Greek children of the night. A Flock of Frantic? What is this?

Then they came for me. Shouting and trampling into the dorm, racing to pick up forgotten things. I stuffed the found notebook in the drawer, somehow, then created the bluff: I opened the nearest window — it squeaked in its sash then clattered to halfway.

“Open your windows in the daytime. It smells like a sock graveyard in here!”

They were around me, past me, scurrying, grabbing, replying with token “yes, sirs,” then gone. Then I left. And sat alone in this ancient place. In this sagging armchair.

I’ve always found it soothing here, reassuring even. Comforted by history and familiarity; proud I was the bringer of change to this limping antiquity, enjoying the energy of their youth as mine fades.

That evening I told the children that because of the icy ground, it was too dangerous to run in the mornings. It was their last day before the holidays; we didn’t want any accidents now, did we?

And I ran again.

—

I started steady… at first around the tarmac ring road, past the sleeping dormitories, then onto the fields. I felt the happiness-sapping damp. Clotting cloth. The cold bites sharpest just after sunrise, its last stand taken fighting death by evaporation.

As usual the fields were wet with dew, almost sweating out the damage from the term.

I spotted a distant figure.

I stood silent in sodden trainers and watched it fall. It skimmed tree tops, sent black birds across a mist-filtered sun before clattering across the black slate chapel roof. Falling, failing, it slid grabbing and cursing into the iron gutter. Somehow, as it dropped the remaining metres to the floor, it managed one last beat of a single wing. “Fuck’s sake,” I heard it say, landing hard.

And there it was. There something was. There he was.

It was Carl — a version of him at least — and yes it was the same ‘teacher’ we had both seen from our morning runs, and yes, he had been in my class when I too was a pupil of this place. I’d tried to escape, but it had called me back. And who was I to refuse?

Groans and under-breath mutterings followed as he dragged his scruffy wings together. He stumbled a few metres to a drain cover, then fell through it. Through it. Straight through a steel drain cover.

Well, mostly. A section of wing remained. I took a couple of steps closer and saw the wing was made from tent poles and plastic sheeting, bulldog clips and elasticated hooks. The frame was bent in places — damaged from the fall or just haphazardly imagined and taped in place in a lonely basement. A budget Batman had landed. Badly.

I heard curses booming from the tunnels below. Suddenly the wing inverted, like a bust-up umbrella in the wind, and then shot through the steel grate. A pause, then a thud. I heard a groan, some grumbles, scratchings and scurryings, and smelt European tobacco. And that was that.

—

The school day passed fast. Last day of term and we got all but a few of them away by 15:00. I returned to the scene of the fall, but couldn’t face it for long. I had time, just couldn’t stay. I walked the grounds and thought of the tunnels. All the teachers knew about them, yet most of the children didn’t. And for good reason.

I passed bunker doors that too led underground. To nowhere. The tunnels were arteries of power cables, Victorian plumbing and chugging, clanking heating systems; the bunkers dotted around the school were from the war and padlocked beyond the strength of our scheming pupils’ grubby hands.

I drank till late. Alone. Until darkness fell, heavy as it does in winter, folding light back over rooftops, pushing it down chimneys back into houses and internal wirings to then blare data entertainment back at our vacant faces.

—

I felt stone cold through my feet. A tiled kitchen floor on concrete, poured over miles-deep earth. There was full-moon light but no moon: heavy cloud cover a filter, a lampshade softening the power of ages. I dressed and headed back to the boarding house, to the dorm, to the drawer.

The children gone, I was free to roam — which I often did. My secret excursions.

Crossing the car park I felt a chill on my neck, and pushed on, pushed open the house door. This time the drawer opened easy. A lone notebook within slid toward me. Once I’d got it home, I read again. A5 in blue. Lined and margined. The book untitled.

Page 1 empty.

Page 2:

I fear the loneliness. I fear the dark. I fear the day, but love the break of day.

I see something no-one else does, before the madness and the driving fear of life here.

They say there are tunnels underneath where we sleep, filled with dead from the war. That a corpse train takes them from there to the underworld — you can hear the train at night. Rumbles. Every night it rumbles deep under our tired bones... Everyone talks about it. The older boys the most. They say there are ways down, but the last child who went never returned.

I don’t sleep well. I run from something in my dreams and when I wake, before everyone else, I creep on herringbone floors, across carpets of razors to dress, and to run in search of the sun. I’m so cold. At night I write this diary. By the morning I’ve forgotten everything, and when I read it back, it doesn’t make sense — it’s someone else — I don’t even know some of these words.

I found more:

He was flying above me, falling but flying, beating wings that were slowly failing him, gliding, diving, climbing again.

He was kinda graceful… but just as he swooped low a wingtip scuffed the ground. And over he went. Like one of those old war planes landing on a ship… anyway, when he got up he tucked them in… like a Gannet folding its wings. Damaged wings.

I’d made tea. I drank only a sip. I read the notebook entry again then stayed awake till dawn. The longest wait, like a soldier’s wait spent on their belt buckle, cold to dirty bones. Bathe me with something warm, please. And sweet and cigarettes and into the next day.

—

A couple of years later I received another call from the police — my contact at the station — asking if I fancied a pint. I was curious. They were a contact, not a friend, and their tone was, frankly, off. But a pint is a pint, so I agreed.

Pleasantries passed quickly. There was something on their mind. Something unexplained. In the further investigation it was discovered that Carl regularly published dream diaries under a pseudonym. All the dates matched.

The living, you see, haunt as ghosts. And all ghosts love an old house.

—

You can see anything you want in clouds, pretty much. There’s many angels — an uncanny coincidence — there’s distant lands and false horizons, sculpted altostratus plateaus, there’s even mythical creatures — the daytime cousins of those universally accurate star signs.

Well, just now and again a small figure falls. Look closely and you’ll see its wings, smouldering with guilt, fighting to stay above the hard top, puffs of smoke appearing comedically behind as it flaps hard trying to climb. Look closer and you’ll see its screaming face on fire. Teeth pushing through dripping gums.

And if you are close enough you’ll hear:

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.”