The Things He Heard: A horror novella by Matt Shaw

Author:Matt Shaw [Shaw, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2022-12-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fourteen

Alice and Ben were sitting next to one another. There was a large office desk in front of them. On the other side of that the school’s Headmaster, Mr. Fitzpatrick sat.

It was a little after ten in the morning. Ben had got dressed for school and then gone down to his parents, who were still discussing him in the kitchen. He’d told them he’d heard them talking about him and, he had made it clear he was not only ready to go back to school but that he wanted to. Alice wasn’t so sure, but Roy shrugged. The last thing Roy wanted was to pull Ben away from any kind of routine that he had, especially if Ben didn’t want that. If he wanted to go back to school then, he should be allowed. It wasn’t as though the doctors said that he couldn’t go back. They were only keeping him home because they thought he might need a few days to get over both the incident and the loss of the family dog. Roy convinced Alice that Ben should go back to class if that was what he wanted but, instead of agreeing outright, Alice said she’d talk to the Head first. If Ben was going to be going to that school then she wanted safeguards put in place to stop that kind of thing from happening again. Roy didn’t argue with her. Instead, he actually offered to go with the pair of them and talk to the Head with her but, she refused. She didn’t make any such comment but in her head, she was thinking about how she’d dealt with everything else so - this would have been a walk in the park in comparison.

And here they were.

Mr. Fitzpatrick had a file opened out in front of him. The pages within were notes on Ben, covering both his schoolwork progress and what he was like as an individual. None of it made for outstanding reading but, neither did it read as a horror story either. With the exception of being bullied from time to time, and the incident yesterday - he was, apparently, an average student who might be capable of more if only he’d apply himself further.

After a quick scan of the first pages of notes, Mr. Fitzpatrick closed the folder and pushed it a few centimetres away from himself; an over dramatic gesture to show he was done with the notes. He sat there a moment and then asked, ‘And how do you feel now?’

Ben lied, ‘I feel fine.’

Ben wanted to go back to school because he didn’t want to be a “problem” to his parents. Having heard them struggling with organising his childcare, he knew it would be easier if he just went back to class. It was also easier to distract himself from his cancer whilst being in class too. Yes, he still heard the voice but - at home - it felt like it was so much louder.

‘We’re going to need to talk about yesterday,’ Mr.

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