Jarvis Street Chapter 17
Despite everything, James didn’t sleep for more than an hour that night. Instead, he lay awake until the sun came up and he could leave the room without rousing any suspicions if he ran into Amelia in the hallway.
Of course, that meant he saw her immediately, and she instantly realized what had happened.
“Did you not sleep at all?” she asked as she shrugged on her jacket.
“I got an hour,” he said, trying to sound cheery. “Are you off?”
“Only for a few hours,” she said. “I’ll be back at noon.”
James frowned. “You have five hours off?” he said. “I didn’t schedule you that way, did I?”
She shook her head. “No, that’s an old setup. Oh, speaking of the schedule.”
James’s stomach fell as she looked around the room real quick, then turned back to him. “Listen,” she said. “I’ll take Thursdays if it means Bradley can have it off. You don’t need to rearrange it, he and I can work out weekly or I can just take the extra hours.”
James grimaced. “Amelia,” he said. “I get it, but I don’t want you ending up burned out.”
“It’s just through December,” she said. “Just give him Thursdays off through the semester and-”
Her eyes widened and James wanted to hit himself for not realizing it earlier. Of course Bradley was taking classes. That was why he needed that specific day off, why all the random textbooks showed up around the house, and why he was so secretive about what he was reading. And he’d never in a million years admit any of this to James because he was a stubborn fuck.
And Graham had known him. This all made so much more sense now.
“Shit, don’t tell him you know,” Amelia said quickly. “I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, he didn’t even want me to know.”
“I won’t,” James said. “I won’t tell him. But if you’re okay with that, then yeah, I’ll schedule you for Thursdays.”
“Thank you,” Amelia said, still looking stressed.
“I won’t tell him, I promise,” James insisted. “Or his professor when I get home tonight.”
He watched as the same realization dawned on Amelia’s face. “God,” she said, voice dropping to a whisper. “Poor Graham.”
“Go get some breakfast,” James said. “I’m going to go over to the school in a few.”
“Want some backup?”
“No, go home. Gabriella’s going to be here in a few, I’ll have her take comms while I’m there.”
“Just be careful,” Amelia said. “Whatever that thing and its origin, it was pissed at us. And it attacked so fast. I’m honestly not sure how we got out as lucky as we did.”
“I’ll be careful,” James promised. “I’ve got my hard hat and I’m not going to try anything, just observe.”
After several more promises to be careful, James convinced Amelia to go home. She walked out the door moments before Gabriella walked in.
“Gabs!” James said. “Hey, go grab some coffee. I need your help with something first thing.”
He was afraid she was about to tell him she was quitting and maybe that was why he was talking so quickly, not just the second cup of coffee he was already on.
“What?” Gabriella asked, her usual cheer still diminished as she hung up her jacket and took off her rain-soaked shoes.
“I’m going over to the Jarvis Street School to observe,” James said. “I need you to stay on comms with me while I’m gone.”
“You’re going alone?”
“Just to observe,” James repeated. “I’m not going to try and do anything. I just need to get a better idea of the space.”
“Stay on the line with me the whole time, right?”
“Of course.”
He gave Gabriella a quick hug, then pulled on his own jacket. “Listen,” he said. “It’s you and Bradley until I get back. Just don’t talk to each other if you have to, okay?”
She looked almost offended for a second, then pulled it back. “Yeah.”
“Alright, I’ll call you when I get there. See you in a bit.”
James let the door close behind him and hurried through the rain toward his car. The passenger side window had been open for at least twelve hours now and he cringed as he got in and saw the soaked papers in the seat. But he’d deal with it later. Whatever.
Vibrating a little with the two cups of coffee he’d pounded, James drove along the outskirts of town, avoiding the traffic building on the main roads. He was familiar with the side routes, all of which were fairly deserted as he drove this morning. James had been driving them his whole life. He’d grown up a town over from here and had never felt a huge need to leave the area beyond the four years he spent in Connecticut for college.
And now he was also responsible for keeping everybody safe from the monsters he knew lurked out here. The monsters that could get loose and come calling at any moment. And he needed to stop thinking about that for just a little while, otherwise he knew he’d turn and see Robin sitting in the backseat and that was the absolute last thing James needed right now.
Jarvis Street School loomed over a small front courtyard as he pulled up in front of it. They had paused the construction until the investigation was over, but there were still a few vehicles parked outside the school and down the street alongside it. James got out of the car and put on his hard hat. Then he called Gabriella.
“Hey Gabs, I’m here,” he said. “Getting my camera on, so let me know when you have a visual.”
He strapped the camera onto his chest and turned it on. “Alright,” Gabriella said after a few seconds. “I can see the outside of the school.”
“Perfect,” he said. “Alright, stay on the line. I’m heading inside now.”
The front door was locked, but he had a key from the Foundation, so he slid it inside and slowly opened the door. Despite everything, a small thrill went through him as he stepped past the DO NOT ENTER sign and into the abandoned school. The front hallway was short and drafty, the small amount of light coming in the single small window that wasn’t boarded up quickly swallowed in the darkness.
James turned on his flashlight and shone it around the hall. There was what was probably an office, which was missing its door and had a few desks stacked inside it. Then there was a staircase leading up to the darkness of the second floor. That must be where the classrooms were. A matching staircase beside it went down into the basement. James walked over to the edge of the stairs and peered down into the darkness at the bottom. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, that blackness didn’t seem to change at all.
“Gab, can you see anything?” James asked, moving his flashlight beam past the stairs and toward what seemed to be the cafeteria.
Several broken chairs were scattered in the hallway leading to the cafeteria. One splintered wooden leg lay on the floor and he wondered if that was what had hit Gabriella as the team retreated the other night.
“Not really,” Gabriella replied. “Your light is helping a little, but I can really only see where you shine it. Are you going upstairs?”
“Yeah,” James replied. “But I’m going to check the cafeteria real quick first.”
He passed the staircase and started walking back toward the cafeteria, shining his flashlight over the floors and walls as he went. More broken wooden chairs littered the floor.
“I think I found the wood it was throwing at you,” he said, shining his flashlight at the floor.
“That makes sense.”
She sounded a little less confident, more withdrawn, so James kept going. If he could keep Gabriella focused on this, they could avoid any resignation talk.
The cafeteria was smaller than he’d expected, about the size of a couple of standard classrooms. There were three bookshelves crammed against the back wall and he could see a fourth one broken on the ground beside the scattered salt circle.
James took a deep breath and tried to relax his mind a little. As he let out a long exhale, he considered the atmosphere. Beyond the surface level creep factor, there didn’t seem to be anything here right now. But that was exactly what the others had said before all hell broke loose.
“Alright, I’m going to head upstairs,” he said over the phone as he stepped out of the cafeteria and started back down the hall.
“There was a little bit more light up there,” Gabriella said. “More windows.”
Good. He walked slowly up the stairs, making sure to shine the flashlight onto the floor as he went. The last thing he needed was to fall through the stairs and break his neck right now.
The second floor was brighter, but the long line of classrooms was even creepier than the first floor had been. It had been a long time since he’d been in school, but the wood paneling was familiar from his own classrooms and he could see a few rusty coat hooks still hung on walls, low enough for small children to reach. James shone a flashlight into a classroom that was dimly lit by the weak light outside. Something flicked across the corner of his vision and he took a sharp breath.
“What?” Gabriella asked.
“Just thought I saw something.”
He stepped away from the classroom doorway. No sign of anything beyond that brief flicker yet. He hadn’t exactly planned on summoning anything, but this short visit wasn’t giving him anything new to go on like he’d hoped.
“Alright,” James said. “I’m just going to go up to the third floor for a quick moment, then I’ll head out.”
While he knew he should have been relieved that nothing was throwing bookcases at him, he couldn’t help feeling a little bit of disappointment. He’d really hoped that this would be the thing that steered him in the right direction. And now he couldn’t think of any way to get more confident in his decision when this ended up being a bust.
The third floor was almost identical to the second floor. He tried to imagine little Madelyn going to class here with her classmates, but the tipped furniture and the faded fire safety poster at the end of the hall underneath the frozen clock were too creepy to make that image even a little comforting.
“There’s nothing here,” James said. “At least nothing that feels like talking. I’m just going to…to…”
He trailed off as a movement down the hall caught his attention. As James watched, a smoky mass slipped into one of the classrooms. He had to follow it. It was calling out to him like it wanted to talk to him.
“James? Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” James said, distracted as he walked into the classroom. “Yeah, don’t worry, Gabs.”
