Day 700

The old Fallowbury school bell had never worked until today. Ever since they set it up in the early 1900's the damn thing refused to ring. They only left it there for the look of it, made the place seem smarter they thought. The school was officially closed in 1937 and from there it was a pharmacy, fabric shop, library and for the last twelve years, a World War 2 museum.

They kept the classrooms as they would have originally been, the only newer additions being the information plaques all around the rooms and inside the desks. It was mostly visited by the older generations, the ones who'd lived through it and wanted to relive those fond days where everyone was alive and well and all their joints worked just fine.

Then the bell rang. Over the next three weeks children from London started vanishing and around the same time their shoes were being found by the village signpost. Tiny footprints were found in the mud all around the neighbouring farms along the outskirts and their little fingerprints turned up at glass shop windows but their bodies were never found. Soon enough the school's chalkboard was turned into a memorial for the lost children of London - both past and present.

This continued for around six years and then the new evidence stopped. No more shoes, no more tiny remnants from missing children hundreds of miles from home - no more missing children. However there were always new messages on the chalkboard, just little things like sums and letters. The sorts of things you'd expect young children to learn in school.

The desks seemed to grow more worn and used and nobody could figure out why. Visitors weren't allowed to sit on them but clearly someone was and they were scratching all sorts of words onto them, creepy little phrases like "I miss my mummy"and "Mrs Marsh made me bleed". It wasn't long before the staff set up security cameras trying to catch whoever was doing this, be they guest or staff.

They found the children then. During the night, when all the museum lights were shut off and it was locked until morning a hazy female figure in a long grey dress would come along to unlock the doors. She'd usher in different groups of children each night and take them to the classrooms. Her mouth moved and she seemed to be teaching them something but there was no sound save for the occasional scratching of pencil on paper or desk.

Sometimes it seemed the children, the very familiar looking children, would make a mistake and be beaten for it until they fell to the floor. From there the lesson continued as if nothing had ever happened. Over the school holidays she didn't come in but all the children would appear at their desks, staring at the security cameras with tears falling down their hazy, grey-tinged faces until morning.