Where The School Was

​During the covid pandemic I decided to forego working out at a gym and made a commitment to exercising in the great outdoors. I searched around the perimeter of the city for a decent spot where I could take a small amount of equipment and enjoy my workout in the sun. After about half a day of looking I found a deserted playground that was left behind after a school had been knocked down. The surrounding area had turned into fields that were overgrown with weeds and uncut grass. The school that was previously there had existed for nearly a century and had apparently been used to house students that were considered problem children. Kids that were violent and had deeply rooted psychological problems either from birth or abuse or neglect from their upbringing. I had been told that the school was more of a prison than anything. I had heard stories of buses coming in the middle of the night and the clattering of chains and fetters were heard as the dangerous children were taken and locked up in the building, never to be seen again. 

​At one time there was a residential area that surrounded the school but the area had become run down, neglected and soon the residents started to leave and their houses were knocked down. But for years after the school still stood empty and people would break into the building and hunt for ghosts of the children. Before the the school was knocked down it was said to be haunted by the spirits of the neglected kids who had lived there. Over time classified information came out about the school. Supposedly there had been illegal mind experiments done on the children such as electro shock treatment and frontal lobotomies. As the years passed by stories were then fabricated as the lore of the school grew. 

I stood looking at where the school used to be and wondered what had really happened there, but then quickly stopped thinking about it. I turned my attention back to the playground and looked at it from a distance. There was more than enough equipment for step ups, some chin ups, climbing and other physical exercises. There was a chain link fence that surrounded the playground but someone had cut the lock off long ago. I entered inside the grounds and as I got closer to the equipment I noticed that it was rusted beyond saviour and there was no way I could use it without getting rust particles in my face or on my skin. I took one last look at the playground and decided to leave in disappointment. 

But as I was leaving I noticed a large clump of bushes off to the side of the playground. I hadn't noticed it before as it had blended in with the natural landscape. What was most peculiar about the clump of bush, which was about 50 by 30 feet, was the fact it was surrounded by a chain link fence that was topped with barbed wire. I walked towards it and as I got closer I noticed that there was something hiding inside of it. At first I thought it was a homeless man or some kind of animal. The gate was open so I entered the fenced off bush and realized that it was not a homeless man or animal that I had seen. It was a tombstone. There were several dozen of them. They were all unmarked, but in behind each tombstone there was something else. There was a stake in the ground and attached to this stake was a chain and attached to this chain was a child's skeleton. 

I then saw something move in behind one of the tombstones and went for a peek. Chained to a stake in behind the tombstone was a child with a face of a 90 year old man on a seven year old body. He looked at me with wild eyes through his uncut scraggly hair. He growled at like a dog and leaped to attacked me, but the chain snapped him back...