In which the dead return and Charles Rowland concludes his education.
Narrator: The school is in the south of England, set around a quadrangle bordered by smooth green lawns. Its pupils have grown up to become politicians, journalists, scientists, and pillars of the community. Over nearly two centuries a number of boys have gone on to lose their lives fighting for king and country in wars all over the world.
It is now December 1990. The long wood-panelled corridors are silent. The pupils have gone home for the Michaelmas holidays. But the school isn't empty.
The attic above the school’s West Wing is huge. Its sloping roofs meet high above the floor, some of which is boarded, some of which is bare, exposing the joists holding up the ceilings of the rooms below. There are cardboard boxes full of junk: piles of old sports bags, cricket bats, deflated leather soccer balls, a Deer’s head trophy and dusty framed photographs of pupils from decades ago. 120 years of school history which it neither wishes to throw away, nor to have around. A lone and dusty bulb hangs from a cross beam high overhead. But most of the light comes from the Gothic window at the Gable end of the roof.
Edwin Paine: Rowland?
Narrator: Edwin Payne is pale and blonde with freckles. He wears a school blazer, school tie, short trousers, and high socks. On his head is a short peaked British school cap. He is looking down anxiously at another boy.
Edwin Paine: Rowland? Are you awake yet?
Narrator: Charles Rowland lies on the floor facing upward. His hair is dark. He's dressed in a sweater with jeans and sneakers. His cheek is bruised. His forehead sweaty. Although he is asleep and perhaps delirious, his eyes are wide open.
Charles Rowland: Mummy?
Edwin Paine: No, it's me, Paine. Do you feel any better?
Charles Rowland: So hot. Am I really here? I had this dream. I wasn’t sure where it was. Paine?
Edwin Paine: Yes? I’m here.
Charles Rowland: Hold my hand.
Edwin Paine: Alright.
Charles Rowland: I think … I … I think it was a dream. But it seemed so real. So real like I was really there. Blood-red worms were feeding on my arm. They didn’t hurt much. But when they fell off and wriggled away, I found my arm was riddled with holes, like something that had been under the sea for a long time.
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Charles Rowland: (Dream) Ewww. Gross!
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Charles Rowland: And I ran out crying into the open. But it was snowing.
Narrator: Charles’s dream is so intense that he feels the cold again just by describing it. The cold of death He feels the crunching under his feet.
Charles Rowland: Only it wasn’t snow. It was the skeletons of birds falling from the sky. They crunched underfoot as I ran and then I saw that they were trying to move. Even the ones I had crunched to bits.
Narrator: Running blindly through the bizarre landscape of Dream, Charles does not notice the tall figure in black watching him grimly. Its eyes are like stars in pools of tar. Its shock of ebony hair framing the chalk-white face.
Charles Rowland: The whole world was covered with a dead bird trying to fly.
Edwin Paine: Don’t worry old man. You’ll be well again soon. It was just a dream.
Charles Rowland: I’m so hot. I want some water.
Edwin Paine: There’s no water left Rowland.
Charles Rowland: Oh.
Narrator: Rowland looks up at Paine’s pale face and blank eyes.
Charles Rowland: Your hand. It’s so cold.
Edwin Paine: Well, that’s not exactly surprising, is it?
Charles Rowland: No. Sorry. I keep thinking I can hear people singing.
Edwin Paine: You can. It’s Sunday morning Rowland. It’s chapel service. They’re singing hymns.
Charles Rowland: Chapel? But who have they got to pray to? That’s sick. Sunday? You said it was Sunday?
Edwin Paine: Yes.
Charles Rowland: Six days then. That’s all it’s been.
Edwin Paine: That’s right.
Charles Rowland: It seems like a lifetime.
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Narrator: Monday. Six days ago. Charles Rowland has just turned 13. In term time, the school dining hall would contain three or four hundred boys, sitting on benches to eat at the long trestle tables arranged along the length of its wooden floor. Now it is deserted. Huge portraits of long-dead headmasters in black robes and mortar boards alternate with tall, arched windows along the walls.
In the most distant corner, a single overhead light has been switched on and at a table that can accommodate twenty, three people are sitting. Charles Roland, the school’s headmaster and Miss Gribble, the school’s matron. A thin woman in her late 40s.
Headmaster: I’m not sure this new chap has the gumption needed to deal with them.
Miss Gribble: Finish your suet pudding now, Rowland.
Charles Rowland: Yes, matron.
Miss Gribble: You need building up.
Narrator: Even when everyone’s gone away, thinks Charles Rowland, the school smells the same. The smell of school is a strange, pervasive thing. It’s disinfectant, wood Polish and ink, chalk dust, pipe tobacco, boiled cabbage, paper, flatulence, and socks.
Miss Gribble: Mmm, delicious, yes?
Charles Rowland: Yes.
Miss Gribble: Yes, indeed.
Narrator: Miss Gribble, the matron is a thin woman, wearing a wool cardigan and a sensible skirt. No ornamentation, bar a nurse’s watch pinned to her lapel. No makeup.
Headmaster: Oooh, capital pudding matron. Capital.
Narrator: The headmaster is an angular-faced man, balding and bespectacled, in his 60s. His off-duty clothing is best described as shabby genteel. He is filling his pipe from an oil-cloth tobacco pouch.
Headmaster: So … Hmmm, what do you have planned for this evening then, aye, young Rowland?
Charles Rowland: I don’t know, Sir. I’ve got to write a letter to my father, and then I’ll probably just go up to the library and read. If the fog lifts, I’ll go for a walk.
Headmaster: Hmm. Good. Good. Keep yourself occupied. That’s the important thing. Keep your mind off it. Hmm. I’ll be in my study. If there are any telephone calls for you, I will come and find you.
Charles Rowland: Thank you, Sir.
Headmaster: Even so, I must say, this is most awkward. I appreciate the fact that your father is in Kuwait in this time of … um, international upheaval. But are you quite sure you have no relatives to whom you could be sent for the rest of the school holidays?
Narrator: Rowland is staring, as if transfixed, at a portrait hanging high overhead of a previous headmaster 90 years ago. A thin skull-like face with psychotic eyes under a mortarboard cap.
Miss Gribble: Charles. The headmaster is talking to.
Charles Rowland: Umm. There’s no one that I know of Sir. Father was going to fly me out to Kuwait in the Holls. I have always spent the holidays with him. Until now.
Headmaster: Hmm.
Miss Gribble: Don’t be hard on the boy, headmaster. Now what I say is it’s all that Saddam Hussein’s fault. Hmm. Poor Mr Rowland didn’t ask to be a hostage, did he? It’s a good thing that we’re both staying on at school over the holidays. Otherwise, I don’t know where the lad could go.
Headmaster: You’re right, of course, Miss Gribble.
Miss Gribble: Of course, I am. And Rowland can keep himself occupied, can’t you, dear?
Charles Rowland: Yes, matron.
Miss Gribble: That’s right. If you get bored, you come on up to the San. I’ll make you a cup of tea and we can have a bit of a natter.
Charles Rowland: Yes, matron.
Miss Gribble: Right. Now, you run along. Don’t worry about the plates. Alfred will clean up later.
Charles Rowland: All right. Thank you, matron. Thank you, sir.
Narrator: As he walks away down the long line of trestles, Charles Rowland feels the eyes of the Reverend AN Parkinson, MA headmaster, 1901 to 1916, boring down upon the back of his head.
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Outside it is cold. The damp winter air hangs in a wet mist over St Hilarion’s School for Boys. Over the world. Charles Rowland shivers as he crosses the courtyard.
Founded in 1802, it was a boarding school for the sons of army officers. A huge Baroque building covered in ivy. Part of it looks like a church, or at least a chapel. Part of it looks more or less like a prison. The school now offers education to anyone who can afford it, particularly to those who live abroad but want their sons educated on British soil. Charles Rowland has been here for a year and a half since his father left the country. His father is an architect. A tall, nervous man who designs hospitals. His mother is long dead. As he walks over to the empty library, Charles is composing a letter in his head to his father. It’s the same letter he has wanted to write for a year and a half and never has. “Please, Daddy, take me home.”
As he enters the school library, the mist swirls about, forming shapes. If he had only turned back to look, he would have seen in it the outlines of boys with blank faces staring expressionlessly from the fog. The dead watching the living with envy.
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Charles Rowland: (Reading from The Scarlet Pimpernel) She looked through the tattered curtain across at the handsome face of a husband in whose lazy blue eyes …
Narrator: Bookshelves filled with dusty old hardback books surround Charles Rowland, who sits on a high-backed chair reading an elderly copy of the Scarlet Pimpernel. On the other side of him is a window pained with leaded glass. It’s now dark outside. If Charles glanced up, he would see ghostly faces pressed upon it, looking in on him as he sits in his little circle of light, reading. But he does not look up.
Miss Gribble: Rowland. Charles.
Charles Rowland: Huh? Hello?
Miss Gribble: I know there isn’t a lights-out bell with everyone away, but still. Spit spot. It’s time for you to get some sleep, young man.
Charles Rowland: All right, matron.
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Narrator: Even when it’s empty, thinks Charles Rowland, you’re never alone in a school. It belongs to all those dead people. All the other kids, the ones who sat at your desk or slept in your bed or ran down the corridors 100 years ago. They never go away. He enters the dormitory.
The dormitory lights are out. It is a long room with a low ceiling. Iron frame beds are ranked along each side. Their metal springs exposed. Thin mattresses rolled up on top for the holiday. Only Charles’s is made up of threadbare sheets and a scratchy woollen blanket. Beside the bed is a little wooden locker. Charles is too busy putting on his pyjamas to see the vague faint outline of a boy upon each of the other beds watching him climb into his. Even when you’re alone, you’re not alone.
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Back in the present, half an hour has passed.
Rowland still lies on the attic floor, Paine sitting next to him, his blank eyes and translucent face bearing a worried expression.
Charles Rowland: Paine? What was it like? After you died?
Edwin Paine: Not very nice. I went to Hell. I think it was Hell. It was like a nightmare. The kind where you know it’s a nightmare, but you still can’t wake yourself up. It was just corridors. And I was hurrying down these corridors because I knew I was late for something. But I couldn’t quite remember what. And then I realised that there was something behind me. Something horrible. But it was always one or two bends of the corridor behind. And even though it wasn’t making any noise, I knew it was always there. And if I started to run, it would get me. So, I just kept walking as fast as I could down these corridors with something silently walking behind me. Something sad and lonely and terrible. Something that had all the time in the world.
Charles Rowland: How … How long did this go on for?
Edwin Paine: What year are we in now?
Charles Rowland: 1990.
Edwin Paine: About 75 years, I suppose. But it seemed far longer.
Charles Rowland: Paine.
Edwin Paine: Yes?
Charles Rowland: I’m … I’m not afraid of dying.
Edwin Paine: You should be.
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Narrator: Tuesday. Five days ago. Charles Rowland comes down to the dining hall for breakfast. But there is nobody there and no breakfast in sight.
Charles Rowland: Hello?
Narrator: Puzzled and hungry, Rowland goes to the boys’ cloakroom lobby. It is lined with lockers above which old-school photographs slowly fade. Forgotten. Long dead boy’s faces staring out blankly.
Charles Rowland: Uhhh. Maybe I ate them all. Ah!
Narrator: In his locker, he finds his last packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. Then he walks outside, to the War Memorial, where he will eat the whole packet.
Charles Rowland: (Reading while eating) In memory of those boys from St Hilarion’s who lay down their lives in the Great Wall. 1914 to 1918. Andrews RM, Awcock GC, Barrow Lt, Beetle J, Bleek TL, Brunt-Smith KW, Cheeseman NK, Cook S, Crotty RR, Cuthbertson SMLW, Davies P.
Narrator: The mists still hang low around the school. They have swallowed the playing fields and the pavilion, and the art rooms. Rowland is cold and his hair and skin feel damp. He eats his biscuits on the circular wooden bench around the base of The War Memorial.
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At lunchtime when no one has appeared in the dining hall, he goes up to the headmaster’s study.
Headmaster: Come!
Charles Rowland: Excuse me, Sir. I’m ohh … I thought you were alone. I didn’t mean to disturb you.
Narrator: In front of Rowland is a large desk behind which is seated the headmaster. Standing next to him is a severe-looking older woman wearing granny glasses. Her clothes look more in the style of the 1920s than anything recent. She rests a maternal hand on the headmaster’s shoulder.
Headmaster’s Mother: Hmm, Theodore, who’s your little friend?
Headmaster: Ah. Rowland. Yes, Rowland, this is my mother. Mother, this is Rowland.
Charles Rowland: Err … Hello?
Headmaster’s Mother: How’d you do, young man?
Charles Rowland: Very well, thanks. Um, how are you?
Headmaster’s Mother: Dead. I died in January 1942. Upon my death, I found myself in hell. This did not come entirely as a surprise to me.
Charles Rowland: Ohh?
Headmaster’s Mother: Theodore’s father, who outlived me, had quite ruined my nerves and constitution by compelling me to submit to certain Hunish practises in the marital bed. I suppose I could have asked for a divorce. But how would that have looked? I could not have stood up there and told a judge the revolting things that Theodore’s father forced me to do. I banned him from my bedroom, and he slaked his unnatural lusts upon the housemaid.
Charles Rowland: Gosh.
Headmaster’s Mother: As I said, I went to Hell where I was punished painfully and at length. Punished and punished and punished. Theodore! What do you think you’re doing? Smoking is a revolting habit. Give me that pipe.
Headmaster: B-but mother. I am headmaster.
Headmaster’s Mother: You are nothing of the kind. Your Mother’s little boy.
Narrator: She kisses the top of the headmaster’s bald head.
Headmaster: That’s right, mother. Sorry. Mother.
Charles Rowland: Strange people.
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Narrator: Charles finds himself wondering about insanity, but adults are strange, and he has few criteria by which to judge them. He heads for the sanatorium. Charles claims the stairs to the San.
Miss Gribble: So good, and quiet. So well-behaved.
Narrator: Through the open door, he can see the matron wearing a white coat. Her grey hair let down. She is holding something, but the door hides it from view.
Miss Gribble: Charles? Hello, dear. Come in. I’ve got some children to introduce you to. I haven’t seen them for so long.
Charles Rowland: Matron?
Miss Gribble: Well, one of them I never really saw at all.
Charles Rowland: Oh …
Miss Gribble: Now this is Veronica. She died a long time ago. She was a cot death, my little darling.
Narrator: In the middle of the white sparse sanatorium with its outdated medical equipment, the matron stands holding two babies, one in each arm. The one on the left arm is in shadow. Charles cannot make out its features. The one in the right arm is a year-old baby, with pale translucent skin and staring blank eyes. Miss Gribble looks down on it adoringly.
Miss Gribble: A cot death. And we put it in the ground. But I knew she would come back to her mummy. Her mummy and her baby brother.
Charles Rowland: Brother?
Miss Gribble: I --- I think it’s her brother.
Narrator: The other baby in her arms is small, malformed, and covered in blood, which is smeared itself on her lab coat. It has huge white pupiled eyes, no nose, a gaping mouth and one hand that is a claw. It hardly has legs.
Miss Gribble: It never actually got born. I was only sixteen. I caught German measles and --- err, say hello to Charles, baby.
Baby: He—llo --- Char-les.
Charles Rowland: Uhhh! No!!
Miss Gribble: Charles? Don’t you want to play with my babies?
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Narrator: Charles Rowland returned to the dormitory. Hungry and scared. That evening, he stared out at the mist as night fell.
Alfred: Leave me alone, Lydia. You’ve been dead ten years.
Lydia: You can’t abandon me and the baby!
Charles watches as Alfred, the school groundsman, runs past, pursued by a woman and a child. The mist swallows the three of them. He will see none of them again.
He sits up in bed that night, hungry and frightened. Nobody comes to turn off the lights. He lets them burn. Eventually, Charles Roland falls asleep.
Five days later in the attic, he drifts back from remembering to find Paine still sitting beside him.
Charles Rowland: Paine? Why are you -- up here? I mean, why did you hide in the attic?
Edwin Paine: Because my bones are up here. In that trunk, see? This where I is where I died. They hid it here. No one ever found it.
Charles Rowland: Ohh.
Edwin Paine: Honestly, I don’t think they could have looked very hard. All their stuff is still here. They hardly even covered their tracks. You can still see the circle they drew on the floor over there.
Charles Rowland: The painted markings?
Edwin Paine: This is where they used to come. You see. At night trying to raise Devils that never came. They’d dress up and they’d do stuff. They’d kill frogs and rabbits and cats ---
Charles Rowland: --- and you.
Edwin Paine: And me.
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Narrator: It is Wednesday. Four days ago.
Cheeseman: God, it’s a bug!
Barrow: Yuck a bug. Wake the bug up, Cheesy.
Charles Rowland: Huh?
Skinner: What’s your pathetic name, bug?
Barrow: Twist his ear, Cheesy.
Charles Rowland: Oww!
Oh, God. What a subhuman moron. Come on, scum bug. What’s your name?
Charles Rowland: Ow, please. It’s Charles Rowland.
Cheeseman: That’s better bug. I’m Cheeseman.
Barrow: I’m Barrow.
Skinner: I’m Skinner. We’re old boys.
Cheeseman: Very old.
Barrow: Hahaha. Twist his ear again.
Narrator: The three older boys, teenagers stand by Rowland’s bed. Cheeseman has a vicious grin. He’s middling size with cropped red hair. Barrow is hefty with a twisted smile. Skinner is tall with sunken cheekbones and a cruel mouth. They all wear school uniforms, so it’s hard to tell what era they lived in. They are certainly no longer alive. All have the blank, white irised eyes of the dead.
Parkinson: Stop that!
Cheeseman: Get off him, quick. It’s Parkinson!
Parkinson: You three. You silly boys.
Charles Rowland: Who is that?
Cheeseman: “Who’s that?” It’s the headmaster you germ.
Charles Rowland: It can’t be the one from the painting, he’s dead.
Cheeseman: Shut up.
Parkinson: I know you three, don’t think I don’t. Get away from that boy. Barrow, Cheeseman and … Skinner, isn’t it?
Barrow: Yes headmaster. Sorry headmaster.
Parkinson: I never trusted you three. You did something to that boy, didn’t you? The one who disappeared.
Skinner: Not us sir. No sir.
Parkinson: Liars. Still, it’s all history now. Assembly in ten minutes in the main hall. And you, live boy, clean yourself up.
Charles Rowland: Yes sir.
Skinner: We can wait, little bug. We can wait.
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Assembled Ghosts: “And in the countenance divine …”
Narrator: The school hall is large, with a stage at one end, upon stands the dead headmaster, Mr Parkinson. His audience is entirely composed of dead pupils, except one. Charles Rowland’s pink face and dark eyes stand out in the middle of a row of pale-skinned, blank-eyed schoolboys, aged between 9 and 17.
Parkinson: For those boys before or after my time, my name is Parkinson. I was headmaster here from 1901 until my death in 1916 and I am headmaster here today. We exist, as the Chinese would have it, in interesting times. However, despite any tribulations we might have experienced, we are all now back at school. At the old school. And I will not tolerate slackness or lack of discipline from any of you. Evil little boys. You all died here or had no place else to which you could return. It seems that I am the only master who has resumed his duties at St Hilarion’s. Very well. Evil little boys. I am the only master. I will teach you what I learned in Hell. I learned so many things. You boy. The boy blubbing, front row, what’s your name?
Simon Mould: Mould sir. Simon Mould.
Parkinson: When were you here?
Simon: I died in 1953 sir. I hung myself, sir. I’m sorry sir. I didn’t mean to sir.
Parkinson: Of course, you meant to, you silly little boy, now stop blubbing or I’ll give you something to blub about. … I will spend today drawing up a timetable for the school. So, this day will be devoted to silent study. I’ll want to hear silence from all of you.
Peter Hinchcliffe: Sir?
Parkinson: What is it, boy?
Peter Hinchcliffe: What’s the point? I mean, what are we going to study? Dead languages?
Parkinson: The point?!
Peter Hinchcliffe: Ahh! My eye!
Parkinson: You will mind your manners, boy. Who are you?
Peter Hinchcliffe: Peter Hinchcliffe sir. I choked on my own vomit in 1977 sir. Booze and pills. Ahhh, sir, my eye is hanging out! Ahh!
Parkinson: Get your hair cut, Hinchcliffe. You are schoolboys, you are at school, and you come to school to study. Therefore, you will study. Mensana in corpore mortua, aye boys. A healthy mind in a dead body.
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Narrator: Charles Roland sits hungry in a classroom surrounded by dead boys and tries to focus on his textbook. After a while, he becomes aware that no one else in the room is breathing. In the afternoon, the dead headmaster sent the boys down to the school lake to bathe.
Charles: Ahhh!
Narrator: Charles felt his lips turning blue. His fingers and toes became numb. No one else seemed to notice the cold. He almost forgot how hungry he was.
There is no food that night. After lights out, when the other boys are in their beds, Charles creeps out of the dormitory, driven by hunger. The school kitchen is huge, full of long work surfaces, big saucepans, and gigantic ovens. There is no food to be seen. Charles enters the vast and empty darkness and searches the cupboards.
Charles Rowland: Oh, thank God! Bread.
Skinner: Well, look who’s sneaking out of the dorm after lights out, Cheesy. It’s the new bug.
Cheeseman: We said we could wait, new bug.
Barrow: We don’t like you, new bug. We think you’re pathetic.
Skinner: We’re going to make you sorry you were ever born.
Charles Rowland: Three against one’s not fair!
Skinner: “Fair?” What’s fair? Cheeseman was killed in the trenches after he was expelled. He was only 17. Barrow and I had already died of diphtheria. Was that fair? We were only kids.
Cheeseman: We sacrificed a boy, all three of us, to the devil. We did stuff from old books. We did things you wouldn’t believe.
Barrow: But when we went to Hell, they didn’t care. They hadn’t even known. They laughed at us.
Cheeseman: That’s not what I call fair. All the trouble we went through with the little brat. Drinking his blood. Hiding the corpse. Stealing the host from the chapel. And nobody in Hell gave a toss. We burned anyway. Just like you’re going to, bug. Turn on the hob, Barrow.
Barrow: Say, “I’m just a pathetic snotty little bug not fit to lick the shit from your arses.” Go on, say it.
Skinner: Grab him.
Cheeseman: Get his shirt off him.
Charles Rowland: Let … me … go … you … bastards!
Cheeseman: Get his arms up.
Skinner: We’re going to spitroast you, bug.
Charles Rowland: When the headmaster catches you … you’ll be in trouble.
Barrow: Got him.
Cheeseman: Skewer him, Skinner.
Skinner: Do his nipple! What’s he going to do to us, aye, bug. Kill us? You scummy little kebab!
Charles Rowland: AHHHHHH!
Barrow: I smell bacon.
Cheeseman: Say it.
Charles Rowland: I’m … I’m … I’m a
Skinner: Oh, bloody hell fellows, he’s out cold already. We’d hardly started.
Barrow: In our day, a good new bug would last for much longer than that. Remember Summerville or Bartlett-Jones? Or the Yates twins?
Cheeseman: Those were the good old days.
Barrow: Ha-ha, the happiest days of our lives.
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Edwin Paine: Come on old fellow. Come on. You’ve got to get up. Come on.
Charles Rowland: Please. Please … don’t hurt me. Not … anymore.
Edwin Paine: It’s alright. Buck up now. Nobody’s going to hurt you. Honest. I know where we can hide.
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Narrator: Thursday. Charles Rowland spent the next day unconscious. Bruised, burned and bloody. On the floor of this attic. One of the many to be found underneath the roofs of the old school. Friday. Charles Rowland was delirious. He talked to people who were not there. Muttered snatches of gibberish and fragments of nursery rhymes. His rescuer, Edwin Paine (1901-1914) tended to him as best he could. Saturday. Rowland regained consciousness, although he was weak and in pain. The skin on his back was pealing and his sweater was matted with puss.
Edwin Paine: Let me take you to the San. Matron needs to look at your back.
Charles Rowland: No… I don’t want to go.
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Narrator: And on Sunday, about half an hour after our story began…
Charles Rowland: Paine? Have they stopped singing?
Edwin Paine: Yes.
Charles Rowland: That’s good. I … thought that maybe it … was … me.
Narrator: On Sunday, Charles Rowland died.
Death: Hello, Charles.
Narrator: Death is not what Charles expected. He sees an elfin face with an expression of mingled concern and greeting. The girl wears a bodysuit and legwarmers with high-top trainers. She is “cute as hell,” terminally perky, utterly alive and making no effort at all to be this cool. Her ankh pendant glitters in the cold light from the window. Charles gets up from the floor. His mortal remains stay where they were.
Charles Rowland: Is that me? Gosh, I look terrible.
Death: Nah, your body doesn’t look that bad. I’ve seen much worse.
Charles Rowland: I haven’t.
Death: Okay Charles, enough sightseeing. We have to go now.
Charles Rowland: What about Paine?
Death: It’s you I’m here for Charles, not him.
Edwin Paine: It’s… it’s fine, Rowland. Don’t worry about me. You go.
Death: I took him already, Charles. And he’s still dead. Now it’s your turn.
Charles Rowland: No! If he’s not going, then neither am I.
Death: I don’t have time to argue, Charles. There’s … too much going on right now. Look … you’re coming with me. He stays.
Charles Rowland: He’s, my friend.
Death: Take my hand, Charles.
Charles Rowland: N… I’m not going anywhere. Not without him. I’m sorry. I’m just not going.
Death: Charles! … Okay. Okay. Fine. Stay. There really isn’t time to argue about this, and I don’t have the energy. I’ve got too many things to worry about. Stay if you have to. I’ll catch up with you later.
Charles Rowland: Erm… thank you. I really mean it. Thanks.
Death: Yeah? Well, I’ll pick you up when things are less crazy, Charles. You take care of yourselves.
Edwin Paine: So, what are we going to do now?
Charles Rowland: I’m not sure. But I can tell you what we are not going to do. We’re not going to be staying here any longer.
Edwin Paine: Huh?
Charles Rowland: Is this trap door the way out?
Edwin Paine: Leave the attic? But we can’t. I mean… my bones are up here.
Charles: Well? So are mine. Not to mention my flesh and hair and stuff. But I don’t see why that means I have to sit around up here until she comes back for us. Anyway, I don’t feel ill anymore. I feel fine. Dead, but fine. Come on.
Edwin Paine: Rowland. I’m scared.
Charles Rowland: Look at it this way. Do you want to be a ghost in the attic all your life?
Edwin Paine: Yes… You’re right. It’s part of growing up I suppose.
Charles Rowland: Come on! There are steps.
Edwin Paine: You always have to leave something behind you.
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Narrator: The two dead boys walk down the corridor that passes the headmaster’s office.
Edwin Paine: What about all the rest of them? Do you think they’ll ever have to go back to Hell?
Charles Rowland: Go back? I don’t know. I think Hell is something you carry around with you. Not somewhere you go.
Edwin Paine: Hmm.
Charles Rowland: Shh! It’s the headmaster. His doors open.
Edwin Paine: He can’t hear us. He’s not dead.
Charles Rowland: But his mother is. Oh my God, he’s got no clothes on in there.
Theodore’s Mother: Now then, Theodore. Mother’s going to tell you some more of the horrid things your father did to her. After all, we don’t want you growing up like your father, do we?
Theodore: No, mother.
Edwin Paine: Come on, let’s go.
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Narrator: They pass the kitchen.
Barrow: Cheeseman! You brute! Stop it!
Cheeseman: Sorry, Barrow old man. But with none of the little tarts to fag for me and Skinner, it’s going to have to be you. We have to have our little fun.
Barrow: Oh you…
Skinner: Language Barrow. Language.
Charles Rowland: They're doing the same things they always did.
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Parkinson: Cognito ergo sum. Descartes’ maxim was unphilosophical in the extreme. Why? Because he presumes the existence of the thinker --- Stop that, Connolly! He might as well have said that a rose is red and therefore it exists, “higher than himself a man can no man think,” – Tupper! As the learned Protagoras once said --- Manson, put that away! Just because I’m not looking doesn’t mean I can’t see you.
Charles Rowland: The same thing again. They’re doing it to themselves. That’s Hell.
Edwin Paine: I… don’t think I agree. I think maybe Hell is a place. But you don’t have to stay anywhere forever.
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Edwin Paine: So where are we going now?
Charles Rowland: I don’t know. Away from here. I’m sick of this place. There’s a whole world out there. Hey, Paine. I bet we’ve got a while before they sort the mess out, and she comes back to get us.
Edwin Paine: I’m game if you are. Um, you can call me Edwin, you know. If you want to.
Charles Rowland: Oh. Fair enough. I’m Charles.
Edwin Paine: Charles? What will your father think about you being dead?
Charles Rowland: He’ll probably be relieved. I don’t think he ever liked being a parent. And my mom won’t mind. She’s dead already. So, she won’t be prejudiced.
Edwin Paine: How long do you think we’ve got until she --- catches up with us again?
Charles Rowland: I don’t know, but we might as well make the most of it. Just take it as it comes.
Edwin Paine: Death, you mean, or life?
Charles Rowland: Either. Both. Anyway, I think we’ve learned all we’re going to at school now. Let’s see what life’s got to offer us.
