Haunting Winds

Chapter 3

Clouds were approaching from the east as Mrs. Santos gathered the students in the quadrangle. Lucky for the students, the stars were out tonight, but not for long it seemed. The wind was beginning to pick up and the local news reported a storm was supposed to come in two days from now. This wouldn't be the first time they predicted the weather wrong. Three telescopes were provided to help with the activity for the night and each stood on its own tripod. Each student would get a few minutes to look through the devices and look at the stars, but not much more would be done to help them with the experience. No lesson on the stars, no constellations to be pointed out.

The activity was dull and not enough to keep the interest of the students for the two hours that was allotted to them. Before long, the students had gone their own ways, sitting in groups to talk amongst themselves. Mrs. Santos did not try to keep the students' focus on the activity either. She did not know much about the stars herself, so she let the students enjoy themselves.

The school grounds were deserted save for them. The quadrangle was surrounded by two adjacent buildings. The five-storey building that faced the street across the quadrangle housed the pre-school and kindergarten classrooms and the basketball gym for the grade schoolers. The adjacent six-storey building was for the grade school classrooms, school offices, and the auditorium.

Across the street were the high school grounds and the school parish as dark as night could be and completely desolate. Very few streetlights stood in the street. Most had been damaged by hooligans, which made walking through the street fairly dangerous at night. The students had fluorescent lights turned on for them on the ground floor hall of the grade school building, where some students had gone to sit on benches, while some chose to sit on the quadrangle floor under the moonlight.

Robert climbed on top of the stage where the supervisor and a student stand every day to give announcements and sing the national anthem in the morning. As soon as Robert got up, he howled like a wolf. David and his other classmates who were with him joined him and were shushed at by Mrs. Santos.

David jumped down from the stage four feet above the ground and landed on his feet. "Parkour!" He shouted

Robert sat on the edge of the stage and followed David down. "That's not Parkour. Parkour is where you jump up walls," he said.

"No, it's not. It's all kinds of things. My uncle in college does it. He jumps down from high places."

Robert climbed back up the stage to try and jump down the stage again, but as he stood on top he saw the shape of the high school building, a black monument against the dark blue sky. "Hey, David. Come up here," he called to his friend. "Look at the high school. It looks even scarier than our building."

"Yeah. Have you every been there? The parish has a parking lot in front of it which looks like a graveyard at night with an ugly tree in the middle of it."

"Yeah. I haven't been there, but I've seen pictures. What do you think it's like over there?"

"My mom keeps saying it's much harder, and we have a whole lot more to study."

"Not that. What do you think it's like over there at night? Do you think there are more ghosts out there than here?"

David hadn't thought of that. He had never heard any ghost stories concerning the high school grounds. He thought maybe it was because the high school students were no longer afraid of ghosts, making fewer stories about them. David took a deep breath of cold air and sighed. He noticed Robert looking up at the windows and asked him what he was doing.

"Nothing, just keeping an eye out. A ghost might be looking at us from the windows. That'd be awesome," Robert said.

David chuckled, both amused at his friend's eagerness to find a ghost and a little frightened that he might actually succeed. Just because he wanted to see one for himself doesn't mean he wasn't afraid of them.