The Deal by David Gallie Page B

were used for the
kindergartners
    There was six rooms in total and the first
five that I came to had no doors blocking their entrance so I
peeked inside, not exactly sure what I should expect to see. I
actually felt a little let down when the rooms appeared to be
barren of anything. Most of the furniture that was worth using had
long since vanished and the rest dragged out into the hallways of
the school.
    A few items of clothing had been
left behind and I noted in the far corner of room four there was an
old mattress with a dirty sheet crumpled on top. I assumed it
would make a natural shelter for any homeless soul in the area so
again there were no red flags there.
    As I moved to room six, the only one with a
door, I tried peering through the small glass window, but the room
seemed to be in total darkness. I could feel my brow furrow as I
tried the handle and found that the door was locked, not jammed
shut, but actually locked with a key.
    I glanced up the hallway and
into the
darkness of the other side of the
building. I could see and hear no one else and it certainly didn’t
look like anyone had stayed behind to keep maintaining it. So why,
was the only room in the kindergarten with a door, still locked at
all?
    Now my curiosity was really
getting the better of me and after a moment’s thought, I
decided that I needed to know what was in that classroom . It
was possible they used the room as storage before closing the
building and all I was going to find was stacks of tiny chairs and
tables.
    Then again there could be something else much
more valuable in there, valuable to me at least.
    I raised my leg and lashed out at the door.
The air with filled with a loud crack as the hinges gave way and
the door fell backwards into the room.
    As I stepped into the doorway I
could feel the gooseflesh return with a vengeance and cover me from
head to toe. I could even feel my balls shrivel up a little as I
looked into the room. The window on the door had actually been
covered with a black paint. The classroom itself was actually
brightly lit by the overhead fluorescents.
    Soft toys of all sizes and descriptions lay
scattered around the floor as if they had been dropped in mid-play.
To my left was the teachers old pine desk complete with a tub full
of pencils a photo frame and a few sheets of blank paper ready to
be scribbled on. A chair had been pushed into the opening under the
desk and the whole room had a warmth about it that made me feel
like it was still very much in use.
    The photo frame was the main
item that caught my interest and would surely tell me who the
teacher of the time was. However as I moved to take a closer look
at it, I began to notice little details I hadn’t spotted on my
initial glance round the room.
    The soft toys were matted with
blood and on the floor near the toys, I could make out the
silhouettes of where a body had once been. A child’s body. I could
feel my terror rise as I noted that there were at least six such
silhouettes that I could easily pick out.
    I glanced back at the photo-frame, praying
that I wouldn’t see her face, but my heart sank like a stone in my
chest when the first person my eyes fell on was Lisa. She was
standing behind the kids in a group photo. She wore that smile
which had won me over instantly and in her eye’s I could still see
that lust for life that she had always had even after five years of
being with me.
    My brain reeled as I glanced back
up at the room again, and it seemed like the amount of blood shed
in the room was even more than you would see on a normal day
at the slaughterhouse. There was no mistake that the kids had
suffered a horrible and violent death.
    I turned my attention back to the photo and I
tried to concentrate on Lisa, but it was hard to ignore those
innocent, smiling faces. Each of them at the beginning of their
lives which seemed to have ended horribly in this room, in a
kindergarten of all places. Worst of all it seemed their teacher,
my wife,