School

The old schoolhouse was a relic of another time. Nature had begun to reclaim it, vines growing over the remnants of the walls and creeping up through the broken floorboards. The other buildings of the settlement had been fully lost in a fire along with three quarters of the people that had lived there. But, that was history: recorded, known, and impossibly boring.
The forest had long been a hot-spot for local for ghost hunters and “paranormal experts” from far and wide. So long as they cleaned up after themselves, and paid for all the necessary camping permits, the park rangers tended to leave the groups more or less alone. The Internet videos and blog posts made for free advertising, and with the latest round of budget cuts that was sorely needed. After the last camping season, they had been able to resurface the primary cycling path which kept the locals happy.
This particular group had one thing that none of the others that had come before them did: a descendant of one of the people from the settlement. It had taken a lot of leg work to get everything verified between local historians and microfilm from the library. But the girl seemed legit, and most importantly, willing enough. Their hope was that the presence of the bloodline would provoke a different response from the spirits. A few orbs and garbled readings on a spirit box didn’t get as many clicks when you weren’t one of the first five people to post them.
Once the sun went down, the paranormal team had started to set up their equipment in the ruins of the one room schoolhouse. Even before the last of the sensor were plugged in and turned on there was a definite electricity to the air like none of them had ever felt. This was going to be big. That or their generator was acting up….
The leader ran out to the van parked nearby to go and get the girl while the other four hunkered down behind the monitors and pulled on their headphones. They started to transfer the baseline readings onto notepads.
It was pretty routine as they waited. The microphones were picking up key words like “fire” and “run” just like they did in most every other recording. It was the voice of the schoolhouse’s teacher, from what most of the researchers could guess. The woman had managed to get all of her students out through the narrow windows, instructing them to run and hide behind the trees far away from the blaze. She saved nearly a dozen lives that day, sacrificing her life to do so. She was lauded as a hero, and the library in the nearby small town was even named after her.
When their leader returned with the girl, and they settled down there was a spike in the activity: A sudden chill, followed by unbearable heat and then…Every sensor dropped to a complete zero, and the voice stopped coming through the spirit box completely.
“Isabelle Sawyer.”
The masculine voice seemed to bounce back and echo off the half ruined walls and old trees. It was like nothing any of them had ever heard. The leader of the group gestured excitedly for the girl to continue.
“Isabelle Sawyer.” Louder, more insistent this time.
“Y-Yes.” The girl stood up from the camping chair, toying nervously with her hands. “That was my great great-”
“Blood of Sawyer, returned to this soil.”
“We want to speak with-”
“A promise a pact as was told. An entrance, an Exit. Blood returns to soil.”
“David, I did not sign up for this shit.”
“It’s fine just-”
Sulfur. The smell was immediate and overwhelming, strong enough to overpower the smell of wet forest and plant-life that had dominated before. The air around the six of them grew hot, and thick, causing the lot of them to choke and cough, grasping at their throats.
“The deed is done, the pact is sealed. The ashes rise anew.”

The local police and the forest rangers would say that a spark from a malfunctioning gas generator that claimed the equipment and the lives of the team, the corpses nearly unrecognizable. The one question they couldn’t answer, though, was how the walls of the schoolhouse stayed completely intact.