I climb over the low stone wall that separates the school buildings from the rest of the world. It’s odd how things look different at night. By day, these buildings are packed full of students and teachers, talking, laughing, living. A friendly atmosphere. By night, though, it’s a different story. The buildings loom, impossibly tall, casting foreboding shadows over the lawn. Everything is utterly silent. It seems unnatural, almost, for a school to be this quiet. I move down the drive, and the shadows follow me as I go.
I can almost hear the echo of children’s laughter floating past me, but when I stop and listen properly, there is nothing. The drive and lawns are deserted. The school feels broken, without the students. Dead. It isn’t until you see a school devoid of life that you realise just how alive it is. And how many shadows there are.
I shouldn’t actually be here. I should be at home, tucked up safe in bed. But I’m not. I don’t even know why I’m here. But I am. I start walking again, and the shadows stalk me as I go.
I drift over the drive, and cross the lawns. I ate lunch on these lawns, earlier in the day. My friends and I sat, on the grass, and ate, talked, and laughed. I’m not laughing any more. The grass was dry this morning. Dry, but not unpleasantly so, and a verdant green. Now it is wet, and, under cover of darkness, grey. Just lighter shades of the night. Dead, like the buildings it surrounds, and the shadows that hide it. The shadows that move to chase me as I increase my speed a little.
I am level with the buildings now. I can’t get in of course, as they are locked, but the blinds aren’t down, and I can see the classrooms behind the windows, utterly desolate. Classrooms, of course, are often silent, once the register has been taken, the students have settled, and the work has been given. But it is a busy silence, full of the scratching of pens on paper, and the occasional mutter of a student. This silence, though, this is a proper silence, where there is no noise at all. The classrooms all seem strangely lost. The night has leeched them of their colour. When the students leave at the end of the day, they take the classrooms’ life with them.  
As I walk round to the playing fields, just beyond the administrative buildings, I reach out, and run a finger lightly across the wall. Unlike the grass, it is dry to the touch, and crumbling slightly. It is old. It has seen a lot of life, this wall.
Behind me, gaining speed even as I do, the shadows are thickening.
Leaving the wall, I move over towards the playing fields. These, at least, still seem to have life, granted to them by the trees scattered around, the hedge that surrounds, and the weeds that are slowly but surely creeping over the track. But even that has had its brilliance removed, by the night, the lack of students, and the shadows.
The night is cold, a cold that is enhanced by the lifelessness of my surroundings. I need to go back to my bed, to sleep, and to gear myself for the day of learning that awaits me tomorrow. So I turn, and walk away from the dead buildings and the dead lawns. As I walk, I catch, just on the edge of hearing, the echo of children’s laughter.
I turn, trying to pinpoint it, and the shadows gather themselves. They spring.