The Rainbow Skeleton

As Shanna-Lynn and I walk into the building the world goes silent. The lights in the entry flicker as the door ominously clicks shut. We walk up the stairs, looking at eachother, seeing the apprehension in eachothers eyes, saying nothing as we both wonder silently why everything feels so wrong. We reach the final steps and pull open the heavy door. The halls are empty and a little too quiet. We go to Ms. Donna’s door, it’s closed which never happens, we peek through the door window and gasp at the same time. Just inside the doorway water flows like a moat around the edge of the room. Gators swim in the water. The water itself is ribboned with color, a wide band of red, another of orange, and a third in yellow before the colors repeat; red, orange, yellow, red orange yellow, redorangeyellow….The Rainbow Skeleton! It’s his mark on, left on anything he touches! Touching such an object yourself will call him to you so he can devour your soul! As we get over our initial shock we look beyond the moat, to the rest of the classroom. Ms. Donna! She’s trapped with our classmates on the otherside of the moat! A small square of floor remains above water, still covered with tables and desks, the students and Ms. Donna stand on top of the furniture, just far enough away from the snapping jaws and flipping tails of the hungry looking gators that prowl through the colored waters. Shanna-Lynn flings the door open and calls out, “Ms. Donna! What happened!” We watch in horror as Ms. Donna’s lips move, but we can’t hear her at all. There’s no discernible sound, even the movement of the nearest gator’s tail makes no sound as it swishes through the small waves. Shanna-Lynn turns to me, panic in her eyes. “We need help,” I say as calmly as I can. I take Shanna-Lynn’s hand and pull her away from the open door.  We cross the perpendicular hall, aiming for Ms. Candace’s room. Shanna-Lynn pulls back on me, eyes wide as she looks into Ms. Candace’s door window from a few feet away. I follow her line of sight, I see the flickering lights, then the rising flames as I get closer. There is no way to tell what is happening in the room, the flames in the window reach above my head as I look for any sign of life, but all I can see is red…orange…yellow…. The flames in the same colors as the water, as the Rainbow Skeleton’s tell-tale mark. No help here, I think to myself. I take Shanna-Lynn’s hand again and pull her down the darkened hallway. “Come on! I know where there’s a boat. We can cross the moat and save Ms. Donna. She’ll know what to do.” So we run down the hall to the picture room, there’s a boat in the closet, we used it in the Thanksgiving play as our Mayflower, it may be a prop, but it’s still a boat, surely it’ll float. We look carefully at the door, it’s unmarked, we open it slowly, trying to be quiet so the Rainbow Skeleton doesn’t hear us.  The room is empty.  We sneak inside. We run across the room to the storage closet. We yank open the door. There’s the boat! It’s standing on its flattened stern, the pointed prow well above our heads. We stand on either side and grip the edges, pulling the boat down, trying to go slow, but it falls under it’s own weight, our small bodies not strong enough to hold it up, BAM! The solid wooden base of the boat bounces off the floor a bit then rocks a little to one side. Shanna-Lynn and I stare at eachother, then at the door, then back at eachother…waiting for any clue that the Rainbow Skeleton heard our racket. After a very tense few moments we finally look down at the boat to see how we’ll get it back to Ms. Donna’s door.  That’s when I see it. I gasp. Point. There in the bottom of the boat, centered between the oars and bench seats, is the Mark of the Rainbow Skeleton. Three stripes of color, Red, Orange, Yellow. Clear and unmistakable. I look up at Shanna-Lynn to warn her, to grab her hand again and run away! As I lift my eyes to hers, filled with confusion, she hasn’t seen it! “Behind you!” I point in warning, but it’s too late! The Rainbow Skeleton stands beside her, reaching for her! (AAGHH!)