Chapter 5
2073words
Not walking away or exiting through a door—truly disappearing, like a shadow melting into deeper darkness. I blinked, and he was gone, leaving me to wonder if he'd ever been there at all.
I stood alone in the laboratory, my heart hammering against my ribs. The horror of Blake's "wonderful eternity" sank in—consciousness fragments harvested from teachers and implanted into children, trapped forever in bodies not their own, experiencing a fractured half-existence for centuries.
I stared at the pulsating organs in their glass prisons, at the monitors displaying every corner of the academy, at the blood-crusted operating tables. Now I understood everything—what the children truly were, what had happened to my forty-six predecessors, and what awaited me if I stayed.
But understanding the horror didn't tell me how to escape it.
I recalled Susan's invitation: "Tonight, when everyone is asleep, come find us." Now I understood—it wasn't Susan speaking but some fragment of a former teacher trapped inside her, reaching out through her borrowed voice. They wanted to tell me something.
But did I dare meet them? Did I want to know more than I already did?
I checked my watch—8 PM. Outside these walls, the world continued its normal rhythm—families eating dinner, watching TV, living ordinary lives. Meanwhile, I stood in this underground chamber of horrors, confronting a secret that would shatter any conception of reality most people held.
Every instinct screamed at me to run, to flee this nightmare and never look back. But I couldn't—not because of Blake's invisible tethers, but because of my own conscience.
I left the laboratory and retraced my steps to the surface, each footfall heavier than the last—not from physical exhaustion but from the weight of what I now knew.
I carried the terrible truth about those twenty-seven children—not children at all but vessels housing fragments of forty-six former teachers. When I thought of Susan's desperate eyes, Tommy's emptiness after punishment, the blood at Johnny's mouth, I felt a storm of emotions I couldn't even name.
Guilt? Perhaps. But overshadowing everything was fear—raw, primal fear that I would be the next one dismantled, my consciousness scattered among those children like seeds in a field.
I had already become complicit—pressing the punishment button, following those monstrous rules, choosing to stay for a paycheck. The worst part? Even knowing what I knew now, I wasn't certain I would have chosen differently this morning.
Tommy's desperate words echoed in my mind: "We're all dead, aren't we? WE'RE ALL DEAD!"
He was right, but selfishly, I thought not of their suffering but my own desperate circumstances. I was dying too—not physically, but the slow death of unemployment, bankruptcy, homelessness.
I hadn't come here with noble intentions to protect or educate children. I came for seven hundred dollars—for rent money, for groceries, for one more day of survival in a world that had already discarded me.
I made my way to the main hall and collapsed into a chair, burying my face in my hands. Moonlight streamed through the tall windows, casting an ethereal glow over the portraits of children lining the walls. Their painted eyes seemed to follow me, accusing me of complicity in their eternal imprisonment.
Sarah's words haunted me: "Some people never make it out."
Now I understood her meaning. It wasn't some supernatural force that trapped us here but the crushing weight of reality itself—the desperate need to survive another day. When you're truly without options, you'll accept even the most horrific circumstances.
I could walk out right now, drive back to my apartment, and then what? Send more unanswered resumes? Watch my bank balance hit zero? Field more calls from debt collectors? Listen to my ex-wife's lawyer explain how I was worthless?
And what about those twenty-seven children? The terrible truth was that I didn't know what to do for them—wasn't even sure I truly cared enough to try.
The final words from the 46th teacher's journal echoed in my mind: "May God forgive us all, because Blake never will."
He had discovered the truth just as I had, yet chose silence and ultimately acceptance. Perhaps he too had been desperate—rent to pay, debts mounting, a life crumbling around him.
Would I become the 47th to surrender?
I stood and paced the moonlit hall. Logic screamed at me to flee, but reality whispered a harsher truth—where would I go? Back to my failed life? Back to unemployment, poverty, and humiliation?
I thought about why I'd become a teacher in the first place. All those noble claims about helping children and shaping futures—lies I told myself. I became a teacher because my useless degree qualified me for nothing else. Now I faced the highest-paying job I'd ever find, though the cost was my very soul.
I replayed the day's events—pressing that red button, watching Tommy's spirit break, following rules designed to perpetuate monstrous crimes. I had already become complicit.
But wait—was I truly complicit?
I recalled Tommy's rebellion—his tears, his cries for home and mother. But if he truly was Tommy Johnson who vanished in 1967, his mother had been dead for decades. The home he desperately wanted no longer existed.
Perhaps by pressing that button, I'd actually helped him—ended his suffering, stopped his futile longing for a family long gone. He seemed peaceful afterward, didn't he? No longer tormented by impossible desires.
What power did I have anyway? Could I, a broke, unemployed failure, possibly stand against Dr. Blake? Against a system that had operated for a century? Against what was clearly a government-sanctioned project?
The answer was obvious: none whatsoever.
Who would I even call? The police? They'd think I was insane. The government? According to everything I'd seen, they were complicit. The media? Who would believe such an outlandish story?
Could I save the children? They weren't even fully human anymore—their bodies modified, their minds fragmented. Even if I somehow freed them, what kind of life could they possibly have? They'd been this way for decades, some for nearly a century.
Perhaps, in some twisted way, their current existence was better than the alternative. They didn't have to face unemployment, eviction, divorce, addiction—all the cruelties of the world I knew too well.
Susan's invitation returned to me: "Tonight, when everyone is asleep, come find us."
Perhaps those trapped consciousness fragments wanted to tell me something important. But did I really want to hear it? I already knew more than I could bear.
I thought of the complex emotions in Susan's eyes—despair, pain, resignation. Then I thought of my own reflection in the bathroom mirror this morning—the same emotions staring back at me. We were all suffering, just in different ways.
I stood up, decision made.
I couldn't run—I had nowhere to go. I couldn't fight—I had no power to resist. I could only accept reality, just as forty-six others had before me.
Perhaps this wasn't such a terrible fate.
I considered my current existence—failed marriage, financial ruin, dead-end career. Each morning brought fresh misery, each day another struggle just to survive.
But if I became part of Blake's system, if my consciousness were fragmented and distributed among the children, I'd never face these problems again. No more rent worries, no more legal threats, no more desperate job hunting.
Perhaps losing my individual consciousness wasn't the worst possible outcome. Perhaps it was actually a form of release.
I walked toward the academy's entrance, moonlight at my back casting my elongated shadow across the marble floor. That shadow no longer seemed like something following me but like something I was leaving behind.
In the entrance hall, Sarah still sat behind her desk, as if she hadn't moved since I'd last seen her. She looked up, those gray eyes showing no surprise—only deep, knowing recognition.
"You're still alive," she said, her voice carrying a complex emotion I now understood.
"Yes," I answered simply, "I'm still alive."
She removed an envelope from her desk drawer and placed it before me. "Today's pay."
I approached and took the envelope. Inside lay seven hundred-dollar bills, warm as living tissue, those faint red stains now unmistakably blood. Yet I felt no revulsion—they were just currency now, the means to my survival.
"Mr. Thompson," Sarah asked softly, "will you return tomorrow?"
I studied her empty eyes, devoid of emotion yet somehow knowing. Suddenly I recalled how the 46th teacher had never signed their name in the journal—and now I understood why.
"Sarah," I asked carefully, "how long have you worked here?"
Her gaze drifted momentarily before refocusing. "Four years. Since December 2019." Her voice carried a weariness that transcended physical exhaustion.
December 2019—immediately after the 46th teacher's final journal entry.
"Were you… were you also a substitute teacher before?"
Sarah remained silent for a long moment before slowly nodding. "Yes. I once stood where you stand now." Her voice dropped to a whisper. "I pressed that button too. I also… thought I could change things."
For just an instant, something flickered in her vacant eyes—a flash of anguish quickly suppressed, as if by external force.
"Dr. Blake said I was exceptionally 'cooperative,'" she continued, her voice flattening. "He rewarded me with this position. Now I help new teachers… adapt to our system."
A chill ran down my spine. "Sarah, do you remember your life before this place?"
She met my gaze, something complex flickering behind her eyes. "Yes," she whispered. "I remember my studio apartment, my crushing student loans, coming here because I was desperate for money."
She paused, her voice growing fainter:
"But those memories… they feel like they belong to someone else. Like watching a stranger's life through thick glass. I recognize the events as mine, but I can't access the emotions anymore."
She regarded me with something indescribable in her expression—not sympathy or understanding but a hollow recognition of shared fate.
"I will," I said. "Tomorrow at two o'clock."
Sarah nodded, her lips forming a perfect smile that never reached her eyes.
"Very good," she said. "Remember the rules, Mr. Thompson. The rules…" She paused, seeming to search for words. "The rules are for your protection. Just as they protected me."
I nodded and turned toward the exit. As my hand touched the doorknob, Sarah spoke behind me:
"Mr. Thompson." I turned back to face her.
Her expression remained placid, but her voice carried a strange hollowness: "I was the 46th. You are the 47th. Perhaps… perhaps one day you'll sit where I sit, greeting the 48th."
She paused before adding: "This isn't a threat. Just… a fact."
I walked to the parking lot, passing the row of 46 dust-covered vehicles. Now I understood—these weren't abandoned but preserved, like museum pieces. Just as Sarah had been kept on as receptionist, these cars remained as evidence their owners had once existed as complete individuals.
Perhaps none of the teachers had truly disappeared. Perhaps they all remained, like Sarah, serving different functions within the academy. Was Nurse Betty once a teacher? Were Blake's other assistants former substitutes as well?
The thought filled me with both horror and perverse comfort. At least we didn't truly die—we continued existing in some form.
I approached my Corolla and reached for the door handle, but it wouldn't budge. The door was locked, though I distinctly remembered leaving it unlocked.
I tried all four doors with the same result. Though the keys were in my pocket, the remote wouldn't work no matter how many times I pressed it.
Standing in the silent parking lot, surrounded by 46 other permanently abandoned vehicles, I finally understood.
This was part of the system. Once you accepted this position, once you made your choice, there was no turning back.
I had no choice but to walk down the mountain.
I began the long trek down the winding road, moonlight casting long shadows across my path. The twenty-seven stone markers seemed to watch me pass, their carved dates gleaming in the silvery light.
I eventually made it back to my apartment—a dilapidated studio in the city's cheapest neighborhood. Peeling wallpaper, leaking pipes, mold in the corners—but it was all I could afford.
I placed the seven hundred dollars on my coffee table. The bills remained unnaturally warm, those faint bloodstains more visible in the harsh overhead light.
I walked to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A half-empty bottle of whiskey waited inside—my only friend these days.
I needed a drink.
