Ark of the Lost Angels

Redford High School _{(Credit: Thomas Hawk)}

Places for many people tend to absorb the sound of the masses. Large crowds would shatter eardrums and rewrite the world if only the sound was muffled by the mass of humanity. Creation and mitigation in laughter and tears, in triviality and solemnity, in the earthshattering and the frivolous. For generations. The same heartaches and triumphs in the same place repeated again and again over many souls.

Now this cathedral of learning is silent, and the echoes of the light steps in my boots thunder around the shattered hallway. The smell of old linoleum, metal lockers, and generations of students tell me the aged building still holds onto its past so desperately, like a mother not ready to let go of her grown child. This place was built to teach and nurture students, that has been its only purpose. Why should anyone be surprised, then, when even after it has been put out to pasture, it cannot quite accept its fate?

Inside the science lab, equipment is scattered as if in the middle of an experiment. Beakers sit in their cabinets, waiting to be used for chemistry experiments that will never happen. The lights are still on, and some of the electronic microscopes and other lab equipment would fire right up. The gas for the Bunsen burners probably still turns right on, even after all this time.

The auditorium remains intact, with dust covering those uncomfortable chairs, but the wall sconces still lit. The house lights anticipating the rise of a curtain that shall never be lifted. The glass on the ticket booth is intact, and stacks of old programs fell like dominoes, papering a floor with the same ugly, well-worn high-traffic carpet which deadens my footsteps in the rest of the room. Which did the same for so many years’ worth of parents proudly watching band concerts, choir recitals, and play performances, or mandatory assemblies on not using drugs or becoming the best self with students boredly looking at the walls or the floor or anywhere but the speaker in which they have zero interest. No more lectures will be given from the stage, no more music to fill the air, or monologues to steal the show. The stage feels hollow knowing that it’s seen its final bow. Did the children offering it even know they would be the last ones?

The gymnasium stands silent. The scoreboard stands, waiting for its bulbs to light up and show the progress of a volleyball or basketball game once more. The only squeaks on the worn wooden floor are mine. A cracked glass backboard and a slightly limp hoop don’t dull the mental image of the senior making a last desperate three-point shot to clinch the school’s berth in the playoffs on the last game of the season. I can even point towards what used to be the student section noted by the drooping banner now barely affixed to the wall, close my eyes, and hear the roar of the crowd as the most important sports moment in their history happens. The beauty of this place is that it became those kids’ whole world for a few years, before they went forth into the real one.

Children used to learn here, a number of them, year after year. The halls used to be filled with laughter and conversation. Decades worth. Some of these halls were walked by children and parents, perhaps even grandparents. The styles changed, the topics of conversation evolved, but the core experiences never wavered. Teenagers met in these halls, fell in love in these halls, fell out of love in these halls, had the most beautifully banal conversations that they wouldn’t remember in the years to come, but which made each day its own masterpiece. One day, all of it stopped. In a way it was never meant to.

Silence in a place that used to be so alive just doesn’t feel right.

And down the road is a house, its inside covered in dust. There was a family there once, with children who would run and play up and down the staircase. Now the only indications they were there are the little scuff marks on the steps, the scribbles on the wall, and toys rotted by dust and unfriendly passage of time. All that stands here are shattered remnants of lives mostly forgotten now.

A mother once stood by the display cabinet next to the door, and pulled a winter coat around her child, sliding mittens onto small, eager hands in anticipation of a day spent playing out in the winter snow.

In one of the bedrooms upstairs, the wall above an unused dresser is occupied by a painting of a solitary tall ship exploring the open seas. I don’t have a face or a name for the little soul who once slept here, but I know a little something about who they were.

Perhaps the children who lived in this house went to that school. Now the only remnants of their existence here are ghosts and echoes, long since forgotten by most people. Yet, the faintest outlines them are visible to me, based on the fragments left behind. I wonder which of the lockers with burgundy paint chipping off belonged to them. What photographs of significance were stuck on the backs of the locker doors which had been slammed shut thousands of times in a haste to get to class were now just decaying adhesive from tape long-since peeled off.

Souls are a transient thing. The history of a place is filled with the memories of countless lives whose stories are now lost like tears in rain. The only testaments to their existences are imperceptible scuff marks on linoleum floors or initials carved into the wall in the corner of a stairwell, or the stain from a spilled science experiment, or a forgotten toy in the basement, or a sock lost behind an abandoned dresser.

The only markers of authors which completed these chapters in the book of life are unidentifiable fragments telling stories long forgotten which still echo in the cold and lifeless wind around these palaces of ghosts.