When Monday morning rolled around, Jesse arrived at school to learn that the pest control company still hadn’t found the bats’ roost, despite the swarm being seen leaving every night since at sundown to go hunting. Every day they searched the whole football field plus the surrounding buildings, yet left shaking their heads in confusion. As such, football and cheerleading were still on hold, meaning he still had the investigation ahead of him. He had been hoping the adults would be able to sort everything out and prove that there wasn’t a monster roaming around, but no such luck.
Once the final bell rang for the day, Siobhan texted to the group chat:
Siobhan: remember guys, keep ur eyes peeled for nything wierd.
Noah: does that include whatever they pass for food in the cafeteria?
Alicia: Let’s each take a section of the school to search so we cover all our bases.
When Siobhan and Alicia had been added to the same group chat, neither of them had said anything about it, barely acknowledging the other’s presence. Jesse presumed that they were attempting to be professionals, putting the investigation first before their feelings, but he still felt nervous anytime one of them posted in the chat, like at any point their argument would crop up again. He had a sneaking suspicion that Noah felt the same way, which is why he kept trying to ease the tension in the chat by cracking jokes. He didn’t know if it was working, but he appreciated the effort all the same.
After some back and forth, bickering over who got to search where, Jesse was assigned to the western side of the school. There was a meeting for the teachers and staff that afternoon (he could hazard a guess as to why), so he was able to search the classrooms and even the library without any trouble.
He wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking for; just anything out of the ordinary, he guessed, but he found nothing of the sort. Without their teachers in them, the classrooms were all left in the dark, only the blinded windows illuminating them. Through the dimness, he saw no traces of anyone, or anything, in each classroom, nor any sign that anyone had been aside from the teachers and students. The same thing was true of the library, where the rows and rows of bookshelves would have provided ample opportunity for something to hide just out of sight. Judging by the silence of his text notifications, his friends hadn’t found anything either. Oak Hollow Middle School was monster free.
He was heading down the central hall, mentally preparing for how he was going to tell the others he told them so, when he heard a loud clang come from the direction of the cafeteria.
That could be anything, he debated with himself, then sighed inwardly. But I still should go check it out.
As a last thought, he pulled out his phone, holding it in front of himself to record on his camera. He had done the same thing when searching the classrooms, just as a precaution, and had subsequently filled up his phone’s memory with footage of absolutely nothing. Still, better safe than sorry.
The cafeteria was eerily empty, the lunch servers having already headed home for the day after prepping tomorrow's meals. He’d never been in the large room outside of school hours and it felt like something straight out of a horror movie, even though everything looked normal. The lack of people made the rows of tables seem never-ending and the sound of his footsteps bounced off the walls like he was walking through a cave system instead of a school cafeteria.
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The clang had come from the back, where the kitchen was, and as Jesse crept forward, he could hear other strange noises; something that sounded like plastic tearing and... a pig snorting?
Gently pushing open the door to the kitchen, he saw that it was an utter mess back there. Plastic utensils and trays were thrown haphazardly onto the floor, and as he made his way through, he almost slipped on some vanilla pudding that left a streak from where it looked like someone had smeared them into a smiley face.
And the pudding was far from the only food like that. Ketchup stained the walls like a scene from a bad slasher movie, and the mashed potatoes had been rolled into balls and stacked on top of one another with a baby carrot and some peas shoved into them to make the ugliest snowman he’d ever seen. It was like a group of toddlers were told the adults were gone and they could do whatever they wanted and had a field day in here.
The strange noises continued, growing louder as he carefully made his way through the mess of a kitchen, until he came to the freezer in the back. The heavy door had been propped open with a cardboard box full of frozen peas and he turned the flashlight on his phone on so he could get a better look inside.
That was a mistake.
As soon as the light shined into the freezer, Jesse only had a second to register a large bat-like creature crouched in the middle of the storage unit, face buried in a bag of French fries, before it let out a shriek, lunging at him.
“Human!”
“Argh!” Jesse hastily stepped back, slipping on one of the piles of mashed potatoes and landing flat on his back.
He felt the air rush past him, but saw nothing, and he laid there for a couple seconds more before hesitantly pulling himself up.
Blinking, he realized he was completely alone in the kitchen, and for a split second he wondered if he had imagined the whole encounter, until he remembered the phone in his hand.
Reviewing the footage he captured revealed the horrible creature, right as it had lunged at him; sharp fangs, leathery wings, a pair of spiraling horns, and beady eyes that were burning with malice. Definitely not his imagination, and definitely not a bat either.
He sighed before sending the video to the group chat. He was never going to live this down.
“’It was just a normal bat,’ huh? ‘You’re seeing things, Noah.’ Now who’s seeing things?” Siobhan had taken it upon herself to stand up for Noah’s honor, gloating about the existence of the strange creature as soon as he had met back up with the others. She shoved her phone in Jesse’s face, giving him a close-up look of the monster from the kitchen.
He swatted it away. “Alright, I was wrong, we have a monster haunting our school, are you happy now?”
“A little bit,” she admitted.
Their group had gathered once again in the parking lot of the school, this time in a secluded part near the edge of campus. It was unlikely anyone would come bother them over here, and if someone did, they could just pretend that they were waiting for their parents to pick them up.
“I guess this explains everything that’s been going on with the cafeteria food,” Noah remarked.
“Great,” Alicia said. “Now that we know we’re dealing with a monster, what is it?”
Siobhan scowled. “Why are you looking at me?”
“Aren’t you into all of that occult stuff?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t actually believe in it until recently. I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Maybe Bella knows,” Noah suggested.
“Oh yeah, we could ask her,” Siobhan agreed readily.
Jesse held out his hand. “Wait, slow down. You want to go back to Gravewood? Again?”
“Unless you have any better ideas for how we’re going to get rid of that thing?”
The situation had quickly snowballed from investigate to exterminate. This was all sounding too hasty to him and he’d rather not have to make yet another trip to the monster infested neighborhood if he could help it.
“We’re jumping to conclusions again,” he tried to reason. “Maybe what happened in the kitchen scared the thing off, in which case, we don’t even need to do anything else.”
She nodded. “Then when we talk to Bella, we’ll ask her about its territorial habits.”
“Nice plan, Jess.” Noah grinned.
Yeah, he walked into that one. He looked to Alicia for help. Surely, she would be against this plan, right?
But the expression on her face was one of determination, and in that moment, he realized that she would do anything to get that monster out of her school.
He sighed. “There’s no way we’re not going to Gravewood is there? Fine. Let’s all meet up tomorrow afternoon.”
