Tales Told at Marites Canteen

Chapter 7

The wind and the thunderstorm is growing exponentially fierce by the minute. The crescendo of howl was punctuated by another scream.

Joe Sase shuddered involuntarily, thankful that it was raining hard, hiding his unsteady physique and the blushing embarrassment from his fellow night guards, for his trembling hands had nothing to do with the severe weather.

Something falls in his head, and he gingerly felt the object, it is cold. He looked at it, but he knew the answer before he sees it.

Ice!

And more came felting them.

He run for cover as he did so he futility protects his head against the onslaught.

"What's going on here" he growled, as the two roving guards joined him at the base of the left wing of the old building. Sase is seasoned enough at this post that the silhouette, dark as it might have been, is enough to recognize Raymundo 'Mang Manding' Caperlac and Noli 'Tanke' Duremdes.

Panting. He gave them a fraction of a minute to gather their breath.

"Chief?" confusion was noticeable in Duremdes' voice.

Sase held his reply, in the midst of chaos and utter darkness, his mind is in high gear. The intermittent flashes are wrenching him back-and-forth between here and a fast-largely forgotten conversation he now violently felt important.

"Manager?" It was the voice of Caperlac.

At the corner of Sase's eyes he realized that Mang Manding is rapping the third flashlight hoping it would work again. He check his phone to use it as light source but it was drained.

A flash...

"Drained too!" Duremdes remarked to his unasked question. "'twas fully charged before the rain" he added apologetically.

To the younger Duremdes: "Let's go upstairs" while at the same time motioning to Capelac to go around the side of the Library.

The older man bolted as instructed. He didn't bother to grope the darkness for an umbrella, they are all soaking.

Second, later, he too sprang into action towing Duremdes with him.

"Didn't you check whether there are students up...?" he barked at his subordinate, though he regret asking the before he finished the question. He was being unfair to the man. He is one of the reliable security officers of the school.

Thankfully, Noli wasn't offended. Instead, he observed between puffing for air "Chief, the shriek sounded like it came from an older woman!"

"I haven't seen one enter at the gate nor when I was rounding" he added.

"Perhaps, she entered through the back gate" retorted the lead Guard. Muscle memory enables them to glide through the building sans illumination. They were half-way along the long flight of stairs..

....

In less than a minute they were at the landing of the building's second floor. The younger man is still fumbling for the key to the gate that will give them access to the roof deck through this reading center. What he is searching for is an old key, the padlock is of the archaic type, and Noli wouldn't be surprised if somebody told him it is as ancient as the building itself.

"Aha! Here it is" Joe took the key...

As the man worked the lock, Duremdes craned his neck behind the thickset man through the murky glass of the window panel.

... and inserted it into the lock, ...

"see anything?" 'twas Sase

He shook his head

"N-no!" he replied embarrassingly, realizing that his gesture was lost in the darkness.

.... turned and clicked. Wrenched the iron gate open, and both hurried through it as soon as it was wide enough to accommodate them. They cross the space in just a few long, urgent strides. One groped for a chair, as the other yanked the window open.

They climb the window one after the other. As they did so they saw a glimpse of a scene that sicken them through strobe-like lighting, more ferocious and now, more frequent.

Joe landed at the two-meter-high deck with a grunt. "I'm getting too old for this," he said to himself. If there is a consolation, Noli was in far worse shape than he was. The man roughly half his age landed bottom first, slumping on the water-lodged deck. He offered his hand, and the other grabbed it. Pulled.

"Hey, chief I sure checked this floor..." he stammered, shocked "... I always made it sure"

Sase, slapped the other's shoulder hoping that convey: not to worry, that he believed. However, what they saw needed their action, badly and fast.

There close at the edge of the maroon GI roof stood a terrified... student? He too was puzzled by this. True to his word, this subordinate of his is one of those he admires his dedication to work and his strictness especially when I come to discipline.

Unabated, the thunderstorm and the howling wind is sweeping the student over the railing, she was face was as white as a cadaver, and her trembling body was dripping wet, but her gaze is fixed on...

Sase looked up at ... What the ...? the eyes of the storm? Darn!

"Hey" the guard recovered his sense "stay where you are" he pleaded urgently. The student apparently does not hear him, as she continues to back away from the unseen terror.

"Funny," he thought. Her uniform seems odd. He's no fashion guard, chucked at the mental image, but her set seems thirty years outdated. He was sure, her now-married daughter wore the same design back in the day. Her skirt uniform is cut near-ankle-length long.

Crack, a particular loud thunder. It forces Sase's mind to focus on the situation at hand. When Duremdes lunged forward, knocking Joe sideways in the process. He landed with a skid, then a sickening splash grasped the air as his hand misses the student who was one step too many.

The man everyone called 'tangke' tumbled over the restraining wall of the roof and he vanished.

Sase recovered from his trance, and looked down, with the reflex brought by the decade-old job, he was just in time to catch the other guard's leg as he fell to what would have been a certain doom.

With a heave, he pulled the larger man over the ledge. As he did so, his ear and the gray matter in between continue with their assessment of what is going on. No thud or slash?

Silence, save for the grunting and the heavy breathing.

A crash! The two men fell back to the roof. Quickly, Sase stood and looked over the jutting wall.

No student?

He saw Enteng, their chief utility, crossing the pathway between the gym and the library, below, with a wheeler full of garbage bags. Serenely doing his routine closing task as if nothing unusual just happened.

"Why the heck the ground is dry?" observed Noli

"My God!" Aghast, Sase's heart skipped a bet. Now realizing the fact. Didn't it rain cats and dogs just a minute ago? He whirl, the roof deck is bone dry, too! He looked up, the sky is clear, the full moon bright.

"What's going on here?" It was Duremdes.

Joe did not reply.

His mind is furiously trying to remember something... a conversation? A scene? ... something, that may tell him the answer to the question that has been just asked.