Saturday
May 30th, 2020
Annie Lytle Elementary School
Formerly Known as Public School #4
a.k.a
The Devil’s School
11:47 pm
The echoes of police sirens, the pops of exploding tear gas canisters, and orders yelled through megaphones to disperse and go home echo down the St. John’s River from downtown Jacksonville and into the Riverside neighborhood. The normal bustle of nightlife has ceased since the Covid lockdowns; some of the bars and restaurants are able to stay partially open by serving take-out through jerry-rigged walk-up counters where they also serve to-go cocktails. The police choose to look the other way so those businesses can still make money. Tonight, people have stayed inside, and the restaurants closed early, with some boarding their windows in preparation, as the peaceful daytime protests downtown are expected to shift into riots once night comes.
A few blocks down College Street, a black 2019 Camaro slowly approaches and parks behind Fiery Piston Garage, which is next to the abandoned and derelict school. The engine shuts off and two teenagers exit the car: a tall, muscular Black boy wearing a green and orange Mandarin High School letterman jacket and a tall, blonde White girl in a black hoodie and leggings.
“Aren’t you scared?” Jason asks.
“No, I’ve been wanting to do this since October, when my cousin told me the stories of her and her friends sneaking in here when they were in high school,” Lexi says with excitement.
She walks around the Camaro and wraps her arms around Jason’s strong left arm and leans in to give him a peck on his cheek. “And why should I be scared? I always feel safe around you.”
Jason smirks but doesn’t avert his gaze from the old, abandoned school. Vines grow wildly on the walls and through the broken windows of the brick and concrete two-story building. Grime covers the massive concrete columns and arches that are at each entrance. Jason had never appreciated the elegant Greek-inspired arches before, even though he saw them hundreds of times underneath the I-95 overpass whenever he drove downtown. The property is surrounded by a chain link fence with razor wire at the top. At the far corner of the property is a chrome Airstream trailer.
“I’m not climbing over any razor wire and getting tetanus,” Jason says. “I’m also not getting arrested for trespassing either.”
“Relax, we’re going to be fine,” Lexi says as she pulls him along with her. She guides him behind the garage, where there is a narrow passage between the wall and the fence. Lexi switches on her phone’s light and looks around until she finds where the fence splits apart. She looks over at Jason and smiles, “Just where my cousin said it would be.”
“What about us getting caught?” Jason asks as he points at the trailer 75 yards away from them.
“Don’t worry about it. My cousin said that’s an Army vet who the owners hired to maintain the lawn and keep the homeless from living here. He’s probably passed out. Plus, the police are too busy with the riots downtown to respond to a trespassing call. We’ll be fine,” Lexi assures him.
Jason smiles at her, “Okay, let’s go check this off our graduation list.”
Jason pulls open the split in the fence and the couple crawls through it.
“Fuck!” Jason reactively proclaims as the sleeve of his letterman jack is sliced open from a jagged link. He innocently covers his mouth with his hands out of embarrassment. A light switches on in the trailer and a silhouette moves around inside it. The couple crouch behind the tree as a man emerges from the trailer. They can’t see him well in the darkness as they peek their heads out, but t
hey can feel his gaze. They stay still for a minute and uneasily watch as he stares in their direction. Jason thinks about telling Lexi to go back through the fence but the man walks to a bush next to the trailer and spreads his legs. The sound of piss spraying on leaves echoes in the darkness followed by the zipping of his pants. The man climbs back into the trailer and the lights shut off.
Lexi and Jason smile at each other and then quietly cross the lawn and climb the steps to the boarded-up entrance. Lexi uses her phone’s light again to look around the corners of the plywood. Her fingers slip underneath a corner of one and pull up, making the board swivel upward and around the axis of its only screw. Lexi holds the board up as Jason climbs through and then Lexi follows, lowering the board back down when she is clear.
Lexi shines her phone’s light into the dark and musty building, but it’s not enough; the darkness consumes the paltry cell phone light. Jason reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a black LED flashlight. He switches it on, and the powerful beam of white light slices through the darkness, revealing a tapestry of satanic, gang, and penis joke graffiti covering the high walls. Lexi gives Jason another kiss on the cheek for being prepared.
They’re silent as they explore the first floor of empty classrooms, broken lockers, and bathrooms with trash from different eras piled up on the floor. They make their way to the auditorium doors and find a courtyard that now has a magnificent view of the night sky and a lush oak tree with sprawling limbs growing through the broken gymnasium floorboards.
Lexi admires the unintentional courtyard as she explains, “This use to be the auditorium until a group of bums lit a campfire indoors and caused a massive fire. It destroyed the roof, making it cave in, but this school was built to last, hence why this old girl is still standing. A century old, neglected, and damaged but it’s going to outlast most buildings built today.” Lexi joyfully spins around Jason then pulls him close as she looks him in the eyes and says, “Let’s go find the boiler room.”
Jason is hesitant. “Is it safe to go in there?”
“Safe from what, the structure or the boogeyman?” Lexi jests.
“The structure. You know that story isn’t true.”
“Which one: The boiler room exploding and killing an entire classroom, the principal being a Satanist and performing ritual sacrifices with students, or the disgruntled janitor losing his mind and becoming a cannibal? I prefer the Satanist story over the other two.”
“Come on, be serious,” Jason says unamused.
“I am. Even though the boiler room is more plausible, I would like to think that this school got ‘The Devil’s School’ nickname from the Satanist principal,” Lexi teases.
Jason looks uncomfortable which only endears him more to Lexi.
“Nothing tragic happened here,” she reassures him. “Other than the interstate’s construction, which cut off the school from its original neighborhoods, and the standard inept bureaucracy of wasting a good building. You know I don’t b
elieve in the urban myths. I thought it would be a good memory for us to finally do a traditional trespassing while we’re young and before we graduate. The shutdowns, pandemic, and riots are scary enough. I just want to go back to a time when we can be kids for one more year instead of worrying if we could die from a cough or become pariahs because we disagree on a subject. And I want to be normal with you.”
Jason smiles and brings Lexi in for a warm hug and kisses her sweetly.
“I know. I want a normal high school experience too. But we’re not kids anymore; we haven’t been since Brandon’s dock party last year,” Jason jokes.
Lexi gives him a sweet kiss back and pulls him along. “Come, my love. Let’s go take the picture in the boiler room and then we can go get some Whataburger. My treat.”
They cross the dilapidated floor of broken wood and foliage, and climb onto the auditorium stage, gingerly walking over broken floorboards before making it backstage and to the hallway parallel to the I-95 overpass. Pentagrams, Latin phrases, and horrific images of demons are spray painted on the high walls and vaulted ceilings as they go deeper into the school. Jason finds an old wooden door lying on the floor next to a doorway with a plaque above it proclaiming, “Maintenance Room.”
“I guess we found it,” Lexi says as she’s about to enter.
“Heeee. Huhh. Heeee.” Someone’s loud wheezing is heard along with steps echoing from the opposite end of the hallway.
Jason instinctively grabs Lexi and pushes her behind him as he switches off his flashlight, hoping they have not been seen. The wheezing and the steps grow louder along with the sound of something heavy being dragged through the debris-covered floor. A glisten from the floor next to him catches Jason’s eye as he sees an iron pipe next to the doorway. He picks it up and slowly and quietly pushes Lexi back the way they came.
“Heee. Huhh. Heee.” The wheezing grows closer and louder as it reverberates off the concrete walls.
A silhouette slowly emerges around the corner, the wheezing and walking stop, and the sounds of cars driving over them on the overpass fill the silence. Jason and Lexi’s hearing sharpens as they feel their hearts pump harder in preparation for their bodies to run or fight. Jason crouches down and readies himself to swing the pipe. He switches on his flashlight and a beam of bright white light burns through the darkness, landing on a filth-covered elderly man with both a wild and dingy beard and hair who is wearing soiled military fatigues. Behind him is a bloated army duffel bag.
“Hey!” The homeless man yells in a hoarse voice. “This is my hideout. Get the fuck out of here!”
Jason cautiously lowers the iron pipe and yells out, “Sorry, sir. We’ll leave now.”
Jason turns to Lexi and is about to tell her they are leaving but he finds her face horrified, twisted in terror as she stares at the maintenance doorway. ...
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