It was about 2 o’clock in the afternoon, mid January, with the rain lashing on the window panes and the biting wind howling outside when the stranger first arrived. Walking down the streets with resolute determination he headed towards the school …
Rachel threw the curtains together, tightly shut. “No” she said to herself, “it cannot be, he cannot be” she peeked out through the mocha brown curtains to find his icy blue eyes staring straight into her own. Rachel gasped out in surprise and hid behind her desk. “Get a grip, women!” she told herself. “There is no such thing as ghosts and he does not exist, that is all in your past. You need a holiday.”
All of a sudden the phone started to ring in its usual dull and droning tone. Rachel picked it up. “Headmistress of Barkley Comprehensive, may I ask to whom I am speaking?”
“Keep telling yourself lies Rachel, then one day you might just believe them.” The dialing tone began as the phone was put down. Leaving Rachel standing speechless.
That night Rachel pulled out a green box from beneath her bed. Her chest tightened. She slowly pushed the buckle and lifted the lid. It creaked with age. In it there were several paper files. Rachel took out the first of the cream folders. In it were photos. Photos of when she was young. Hot tears ran down her cheek as she had a flash back of her child hood.
*the girl aged ten was being pushed on a swing, screaming “Higher! Higher!” when her demand was met she squealed with glee. She felt so free, and so high! And then all of a sudden, it stopped.
She was dragged back to reality. As she got of the swing she saw her father talking to the police man. “We are very sorry; there was nothing we could do,”Her father sat her down that afternoon and explained that a man had shot her mother. The police had luckily turned the corner to find them, but when he saw them he pulled the trigger and ran. That night Rachel cried until she had no tears left.
However, things in the next three years got rapidly worse. Her father started drinking. At the beginning it was not much. “Just a small drink with my mates,” he had said. Then it escalated to the point that she came home every night drunk and that fact soon led to her being hit and shouted at. Not very Father like. Then one night, he did not return. She was 14. She was too scared to stay until she got a phone call from the police telling her that the same fate had happened to father as well as her mother, so she ran away. She packed her bags and got a bus to her aunts’ who had brought her up ever since. She had grown up believing she was an orphan.*
Rachel got up and solemnly closed the lid with a soft click. He had left her so vulnerable, and with so little and now he had come back to haunt her.. He had ruined that part of her life all for the sake of alcohol and bad memories. Now she knew what she must do, to rid her life of him, and to stop him haunting her forever.
It was in the papers later that month. Man brutally and mysteriously killed. Police suspect potential murder. On the following page, “head teacher resigned from local secondary, out of the blue, no reasons given.”
