The Dark Corner

Niamh McKiltrick had been excited to start the new year at school. She would be in Primary seven, ten years of age, now at the top of the metaphorical school food chain that had seemed to drag on for so long when she had begun her education at age four. There would be no more older children pushing her out of the best, most comfy chair in the library. No stealing of the chocolate bar that she so treasured to get in her lunch on a Friday. No more being the little fish in a big pond. The thrill of it had ran through her for most of the month of August and had intensified when her mother had taken her shopping down at Annie’s uniform and formal wear shop. One more year until she would be in big school. She was a big girl now, she felt, not far off being a teenager, and school this year would be the best year yet. 

September 1^st rolled around as swiftly as the autumn breeze seems to fall over night, sweeping summer away like a rake with crumpled leaves and Niamh skipped into school that morning, chattering animatedly with her friends in the schoolyard, their voices rising on the wind like the hum of bees.  

It wasn’t long after this that the St Augustus Primary School’s P7 class received news of their new teacher: Mr Mulvinchy. The thirty or so pupils were gathered in a moderately sized classroom on the second floor of the school (consequently it’s top floor – it was a small-town school and only held just over 200 pupils), and a communal groan reverberated around the room’s four nine-paned windows, so loud that Niamh, though disappointed herself, thought the windows might shatter. The school principal, Mrs May, a prim but kind little woman, always dressed in a navy linen skirt-suit, tried to de-escalate the situation. 

‘Calm down children. How is Mr Mulvinchy going to feel if he hears you going on in such a way? That’s not very kind, is it?’, she said, her voice trying to be stern and urge discipline, but only relenting in its giving away of her agreement with the children. 

‘No, Mrs May,’ they chimed out in unison. 

‘That’s right. Now, I don’t want to hear any more complaining about Mr Mulvinchy. I’m going to bring him in now.’  

The children heard her kitten heels clank out of the classroom, and clank back in, this time returning with the sullen figure of Mr Mulvinchy. He was a tall, lanky man, somewhere in the late fifties, the signs of aging and years of screaming at children showing in the wrinkles that gathered around his eyes like a solemn congregation, and the trio of lines that folded his forehead. His hair was dark, thinning and rapidly greying. His stern, pale eyes hid behind a pair of ancient steel-rimmed spectacles. 

‘Good morning, children’ he drawled. 

‘Good morning, Mr Mulvinchy’ the children replied together, in as perfect sync as an army squadron. 

‘I think I’ll let you take it from here, Mr Mulvinchy.’ 

‘Thank you, Mrs May.’ 

Mrs May left the room and thus began Niamh’s horror. 

Niamh was an intelligent girl, and she knew that some teachers, especially those as naturally disposed to be nasty as Mr Mulvinchy, will often pick one student – a sacrificial lamb, perhaps – to be their victim for the duration of the school year. 

Niamh also knew in that moment, when Mr Mulvinchy’s stern eyes scanned the classroom and fell on her, that she would have the misfortune of occupying that most unenviable position. 

It started off slowly as these things often do; telling Niamh off for talking, even though it had clearly been Oisin McConville who sat next to her in class, that had triggered the conversation. Then the cruelties amped up; he critiqued her drawings, told her off for not paying attention, even when she had answered his questions correctly, berated her for her creative writing (something that Niamh prided herself on, being of the disposition to love English and Art), and screaming at her for not saying her prayers in morning assembly (she had, in fact, been saying her prayers, praying that Mr Mulvinchy would catch a cold and go home sick, and that she might be free from him for a week – what he didn’t know wouldn’t KILL him). 

Mr Mulvinchy had that unhappy ability, which sometimes you will find that teachers have, especially those most dreaded, of seeming to be able to read your mind. It was on one of these occasions, that he seemed to be able to ramp up his daily torture of Niamh, with as little reason as all the other times. He claimed that she did not do her times tables correctly and sent her to stand in the corner, with her back to her classmates, a new kind of humiliation that Niamh felt particularly keenly being a shy but proud child. She stood in the corner, fighting back tears and made a pact with herself that her tormentor would pay for his cruelty towards her. 

What Mr Mulvinchy did not know was that Niamh had unwittingly been practicing black magic. It began on one misty autumn day, during morning break in the schoolyard, surrounded by a group of her fascinated peers as she asked for the devil to scratch at her friend’s back, and, as the devil or whatever evil presence will do with something so malleable as the mind of a child – it took hold. She taught the other children her ‘game’, and they oohed and aahed in horror as three red streaks ran down the length of Mary Toner’s back.  

‘That’s to mock the holy trinity,’ said Angela Clark, a diminutive girl, with blonde pigtails, with the dark certainty that children will sometimes have in things.  

‘See, I told you!’ exclaimed Niamh triumphantly to James Moore, who had doubted her when she had told him of what she could do. ‘See, I just tell the story, then trace my fingers on her back and the devil scrapes her.’ 

‘Okay,’ said James, not quick to be impressed ‘what else can you do then?’ 

Niamh thought about it for a second, then shouted, ‘I can open up the gates to heaven!’ She had always had a flare for storytelling and loved when she had her classmates undivided attention. 

‘Does anyone have a coin?’ she asked to the fascinated crowd. 

‘I’ve a pound my mum gave me,’ piped up Josh Grew ‘but you’ll have to give it back!’ 

‘I’m not going to steal it Josh, give it here.’ 

Josh passed the coin over, watching it covetously, a look of suspicion simmering behind his eyes. 

Niamh looked around at the crowd, ‘We say the spell,’ she said, her voice low, adapting the air of someone conveying something very secret – even desperate. 

‘And then we ask whoever comes through the gates of heaven to answer yes or no questions when we flip the coin. Heads is for yes, tails is for no. But we absolutely have to close the gates when we’re done – or bad things could happen,’ she finished ominously. 

‘And who told you that?’ heckled James, a look of disdain on his small, bespectacled face. 

‘My friend. She knows all about this stuff.’ 

The truth was that Niamh had learned all of these dark arts from a ‘friend’. It started off simply, innocently, as things in childhood often do. As imperceptible as breathing. She had been playing in the park that sat at the base of the hill where her granda lived and desperately wishing that she had a friend to play with. In that very moment it seemed as though her wish had been granted, for a little girl, perhaps a year younger than herself judging by her smaller stature, idled into the park with a pale, dark-haired woman. The resemblance between the two was striking and Niamh surmised that this must be the girl’s mother. The woman whispered something into the girl’s ear, then left the park. The girl ambled slowly over to the swings and began swaying herself to and fro, her feet dragging on the ground. It didn’t look like much fun. 

‘Do you want me to push you?’ Niamh had asked. 

The girl nodded, and the friendship was commenced. The two were thick as thieves from then on. They spent most of the rest of the summer together, Niamh teaching the girl how to play simple games like hopscotch and tag, for strangely, she had never heard of these common amusements of childhood before. In return, the girl – her name Mora, Niamh had learned – taught her black magic. They played these games every day until summer’s end, always meeting in that same park. Niamh never saw the girl’s mother again, not until the last day she saw Mora. On this day, Niamh led their session of ‘magic’, for that was all it was called between the two despite its dark nature, and Mora had smiled, looking pleased, something she did not do often. Then, as swiftly and as unmarked as stars appeared in the sky, the dark woman appeared at the park gates. She cut a strange figure, her dark lacey dress and pale face, with its purple half-moons under her eyes set against the neon greens and blues of the park gates, slides and swing-sets. She simply stared in at the girls – she stared and stared, until Niamh wondered how long someone could go on staring without blinking, and then it dawned on her that the woman was wearing a sheer black veil, which obscured her pupils, the only perceptible impression of the eyes being the bright white sclera. 

Mora saw her and gasped. She ran off to the gate, without a word of goodbye to Niamh and disappeared with the woman. Niamh continued going to the park every day until school started, but never saw her again, and still wondered where she had gone and why she had left without saying goodbye. A month feels like a decade to children of that age, and Niamh had felt their friendship keenly, and felt betrayed by her new friend. It had been as though they had known each other all of their short lives. 

‘What friend?’ asked James, mocking Niamh now, looking around himself searching for the invisible friend ‘did you make them up?’ 

‘No’ huffed Niamh, stamping her foot and looking angrily at him ‘her name is Mora, and I met her in the park over summer. She doesn’t go to school here.’ 

‘Okay, I believe you,’ said James sarcastically, rolling his eyes. 

Niamh sighed in frustration and turned away from James to the rest of the crowd. 

‘He doesn’t believe me, so I’ll just show yous.’ 

Niamh said the incantation, slowly, deliberately, every word etched into her mind by this point. She then took the pound coin in hand and asked the question. 

‘May I open the gates of heaven?’ 

She flipped the coin, and it landed on heads. She looked at the crowd. 

‘That means yes,’ she told them. 

‘Did you go to this school?’  

The coin flipped. Tails. 

‘That’s a no,’ she informed the crowd. They gathered in, their interest growing. 

‘Are you a child?’ 

Coin flip. Heads. 

‘Do you like me?’ 

Coin flip. Tails. 

Katie Brannigan gasped from the sidelines. Niamh continued. 

‘Do you like anyone here?’ 

Coin flip. Tails. 

‘Are you bad?’ 

Coin flip. Heads. 

This time, Mary Toner jumped forward, and grabbed Niamh’s arm ‘I don’t like this game anymore Niamh, it doesn’t feel right.’ 

‘It’s okay,’ soothed Niamh, patting Mary’s arm. She had always been a nervous girl, and Niamh attributed this reaction to that nature in her, ‘it’s just a game Mary.’ 

‘Well, I’m not staying here anymore for it. It doesn’t feel right Niamh. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so.’ 

And Mary walked off through the crowd to the bench that sat at the school wall, laid down and looked up at the clouds, seeing what shapes they would make. 

Niamh almost didn’t notice Mary’s departure as absorbed as she was and continued. 

‘Are you evil?’ 

The subdued current of murmuring that had been travelling through the crowd now quieted to complete silence. 

Coin flip. Heads. 

Bethany Hughes screamed, its shrill keenness reverberating through the school grounds. Mr Mulvinchy appeared, as if from nowhere, broke through the crowd and stood over Niamh, his face taut and fuming. 

‘What is all this Niamh McKiltrick? Starting trouble as usual?’ he fumed. 

‘N-n-nothing sir,’ Niamh stuttered, her body flooding with fear as the pound dropped out of her sweaty palm. 

‘If you won’t tell me, I’ll ask the other children to. But bear in mind Niamh, if you don’t tell me, you’ll spend the rest of the school day standing in the corner of the classroom. Would you like that?’ 

Niamh shook her head but did not say a word. 

‘Alright,’ said Mr Mulvinchy, relishing in the imminent punishment ‘who’d like to tell me what Niamh was doing here to cause such a commotion?’ 

For a couple of seconds, nobody answered, and Niamh thought that she was home safe. Then she saw Mary Toner rise from the bench in the corner of her eye and move through the crowd.  

‘I’ll tell sir.’ 

‘Go on then, Mary’ he said, glaring down at her. 

‘She was talking to ghosts, sir. I didn’t like it, so I moved away.’ 

For a moment Mr Mulvinchy looked as though he was going to burst out laughing. Then, without warning, he began barking at the top of his lungs ‘THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GHOSTS! AND, FOR ENGAGING IN SUCH SILLINESS YOU CAN ALL COME IN FROM YOUR BREAK TEN MINUTES EARLY!’ 

A communal groan resounded and died with one look at Mr Mulvinchy’s red, splotchy face; his eyes crazed like a wild animal. He turned around to face Niamh again. She shuddered. 

‘And for you, Miss McKiltrick,’ his voice died down to a low, measured tone, one which Niamh found to be worse than the shouting, ‘you can stand in the corner until the day’s end and clean the classroom for me for half an hour, after everyone else has gone home.’ 

‘But it’s Friday!’ moaned Niamh, her tongue getting the better of her before she could control it. 

‘All the more reason for you to have this punishment. Maybe I’ll finally put you in line Niamh.’ 

He made Niamh walk back to the classroom in front of her peers, their furious eyes burning into her back, her head hung in shame. She felt like she had been the orchestrator of their doom. She hated Mary Toner in that moment. But the dislike she had for Mary could not possibly match the plethora of hatred she had for her teacher. Niamh went into her corner and turned around to face the wall. It was a pale yellow and flaked in places with a decoration of cobwebs. 

‘No Niamh,’ Mr Mulvinchy almost sang. He was at his most happy in doling out a punishment. ‘You’ll face the class this time.’ 

Niamh turned around to face the class, and endured their glares all afternoon, until the bell rang. 

In their fury and their fear, no one, including Niamh, remembered that she had not closed the gates of HEAVEN after opening them. 

The classroom emptied and Niamh glared at her teacher, wishing that he would retire, or move to China, or relocate to a different town. Or maybe – just maybe – a small, faint voice in the back of her head said – he’ll die. His car will CRASH on the way home. Or a ferocious dog will EAT him. Maybe he’ll FALL down the stairs or THROW himself out a window. 

Niamh gasped and shook her head. Where had that come from? She despised her teacher, but never before had she wished harm to his life, never before had she wished him, or anyone, DEAD. 

It was so definite. The end of all things. And yet… 

‘Niamh, you can clean the tables now’ said the dreaded Mulvinchy, his bespectacled nose buried in an exercise book.  

Niamh scrubbed the tables and scrubbed them again, and after being forced to scrape chewing gum off their undersides, Mr Mulvinchy, satisfied in his torment, finally let her go home. 

Niamh left the school gates, too proud to cry in front of the tyrant, and burst into tears, a flurry of negative emotion gathering in her head like thunderclouds. 

Inside the school, Mr Mulvinchy remained.  

The rest of the school staff had gone home, all happy that it was the weekend. Some going for cinema dates, others taking their children to the park, some even going out for a night on the town. But not Mr Mulvinchy. 

In the stale, colourless classroom he remained, marking textbooks, his tweed blazer whispering as it grazed along pages, and he stamped GOOD WORK, or more often than not TERRIBLE – NEEDS IMPROVEMENT.  

Through the paned windows the powdery intoxicating blue of the early evening deepened into a crimson band, before becoming an engulfing navy darkness. 

It was 8:10pm. Over five hours had passed since school had ended. Mr Mulvinchy looked outside at the hopeless darkling sky, devoid of any stars, and sighed, stretching his arms, a satisfying crack resounding from each shoulder. He got up, straightened his tie, and headed for the door, his brown leather briefcase in hand.  

A small blue bouncy ball rolled down the long corridor, slowly, and bounced into the toe of Mr Mulvinchy’s immaculately polished shoe and rested there. 

‘Hmph. Who’s there?’ he growled. 

THUMP. THUMP. THUMP. 

The thumping sounded to be coming from the roof above him. The school staff had left. They’d all stopped into his classroom to tell him they were going, knowing his habit of staying in the school after hours to do marking. 

There was no one here. Unless… 

‘Which one of you ill-reared miscreants are up there?’ he roared. 

THUMP – THUMP – THUMPPPPPPP. 

It was definitely coming from the roof. From the attic. It would be easy for a child to hide up there he reasoned. Hundreds of old boxes, desks, stage transitions and other school shrapnel that had built up over the years. But they wouldn’t hide for long. Not on his watch. 

‘It’s a pity they banned corporal punishment,’ he shouted down the hallway, ‘but I might disregard that tonight.’ 

He steamrolled down the hallway, his face reddening, his cold grey eyes bulging out of his face. He looked like a very tired, very old, overworked bull. But he was determined. He would identify his target and administer a fitting punishment. 

Reaching the far end of the hallway, his polished brogues clicking against the marble floors, he reached the point below the attic. In a classroom to his left a window lay open, wind whistling languidly through its crevice, tickling the curtain as it went.  

Hmph, he thought. It’s October. What teacher would have the window open in the icy cold of late October. 

Brushing this thought aside, he ducked into the small school storeroom on the right side of where he stood in the hallway, the moonlight casting a ghostly shadow over its paned door. For a moment Mr Mulvinchy felt something close to fear, as he spotted his own ghostly countenance in the door’s panes. 

Entering, he grabbed a folding ladder and positioned himself in the hallway again, standing below the attic’s opening. He put the ladder up and climbed its steps to the top. A thin, barely perceivable string protruded from the attic, and he grabbed on it, wishing he could wrap its sharp cord around whoever the culprit of this prank might be. 

The attic yawned open, a chill, dank gust of air emanating from its opening like stale, dead breath, and he pulled himself into its depths, unable to see a thing. Behind him, the wind shrilled through the window and funnelled up the attic’s opening, howling like a creature of the night. 

There was a blueness to the attic. He couldn’t explain it. Even in the pitch blackness. He could not see a thing. A shiver ran down his spine. He couldn’t remember the last time that had happened.  

KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCKKKKKKK. 

This time it was undeniable in its grating volume, screaming out from the depths of the attic in front of him. His nerve suddenly returned to him. Now, he had them. Oh, just wait till I have you.  

Cursing himself for not bringing the torch that he kept under his desk for power outages, he fumbled along the narrow stretch of the low-ceilinged attic, his hands grazing against the wall in an attempt to perceive where he was going. He persevered for a while, stumbling over boxes of books and an old Christmas tree.  

‘OH FUCK IT!’ he roared into the seemingly empty attic ‘I’ll get you you wee shit!’ 

Just as he was about to reach the attic’s end, he tripped over something again. This something had none of the familiarity of old schoolbooks. He felt around in the darkness, trying to grasp his way back up to a standing position. He had placed his hands on it. It was so cold, so slimy, and suddenly Mr Mulvinchy felt that old fear return, this time tenfold and he wished desperately that he had not come up to the attic, oh dear Christ no why have I come up to the attic oh why oh why oh fucking whyyyyyyy. 

He pulled himself to his feet in blind panic, and scrabbling his hands against the raspy stone wall he felt a blind and whipped it open. The moon, higher in the sky now swathed the old attic in its ethereal light, and on the floor just centimetres from him, Mr Mulvinchy saw it. 

He was not sure what it was, only that his heart had probably stopped when he saw it. On the floor, gazing up at him with yellow animal eyes, beaming out of the darkness like lanterns, was a child. Or rather some grim imitation of what a child should look like; its hair was white, lank and clung to its face as though it had been engulfed in water, its body was thin, too thin, it had a starved appearance. It wore no clothes but had neither the semblance of a boy or a girl, or any living creature he had ever seen. Its skin was pale, translucent, putrescent – and its mouth, it’s horrible mouth – thin and red and full of malice, slavering down its sunken chin. But those eyes. OH CHRIST THOSE EYES! 

Mr Mulvinchy stumbled back as the creature rose – yes, a creature, for that was no child – and moved slowly towards him, elongating above him, its evil mouth twisted in a smile which exposed a long, jagged set of canines.  

Mr Mulvinchy started to pray. 

‘God our father, who art in heaven…’ 

He backed further away as the creature advanced. 

‘Hallowed be thy name…’ 

It let out a horrid, jagged growl which screeched out on the wind, more preternatural than itself. 

‘Thy kingdom come – thy – thy – thy will be done…’ 

Mr Mulvinchy started weeping. 

‘On earth as it is in HEAVEN’ 

He fell backwards over a battered old chair. Now he was shaking. 

‘Give us this day our daily bread’ 

He grappled back to his feet, shaking and whimpering, the thing glowering out of the dark now inches from his face, its foul, putrid breath filling his senses. 

‘And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.’ 

Oh please dear Jesus don’t let this happen to me. This cannot be real. This cannot be real. OH CHRIST IT’S REAL! 

The creature lowered it face to that of the ashen, aged husk of Mr Mulvinchy’s. Its long claws traced along his neck. 

‘And lead us not into temptation; but deliver us from EVIL’ 

Mr Mulvinchy shuddered and jolted backwards, falling headfirst through the gaping attic door, into the engulfing, deadly silence of the school below. His body crashed against the metal rungs of the ladder and landed in a heap on the floor, the snap of his neck breaking interrupting the overarching stillness of the school.  

The creature descended from its grim keep – it had been a long time since the last feeding. 

*** 

Somewhere in the darkness, Niamh McKiltrick awoke, her teddy bear grasped between her arms, a cold sweat covering her back like a film, rivulets of tears streaming down her face, screaming for her mother. 

Her mother and father busted into the room, the commotion scaring them half to death. 

‘What is it Niamh, another nightmare?’ 

‘Mr Mulvinchy’s dead!’ She turned to them, her eyes wide and round and like no child’s should ever be and screamed ‘MR MULVINCHY IS DEAD!’

Andrea Cartmill is a 25-year-old writer from Armagh, Northern Ireland. She has written a handful of published short stories, one of which was previously published in ‘The Dark Corner’. She has always loved the spooky and strange and loved to tell ghost stories as a child, something that she has carried into adulthood. Her love of horror in literature began when she first read ‘Dracula’ in secondary school. She is currently working on a psychological horror novel which she hopes to have published someday.