Who’s Really In The Dark Here?
I work for a company that does a lot of work in public buildings, installing equipment and furnishings, and refurbishing rooms and buildings. Some years ago, a colleague and I were tasked with going to a local primary school to set up their new library, which was in a repurposed storage room. We were going to be fitting blinds, putting together shelving and fixing it to the walls, setting up the computer, and finally arranging the books in the correct order on the shelves.
Our company had told the school we would need a day and a half, but when we arrived, we decided we could do it in one day if we stayed later than planned. The head teacher, who had shown us into the room, told us that most of the staff would leave at 5:00 pm, but if we needed to stay later, the cleaners would be there until 6:30 and she would let them know that we were there and would need to be let out.
The school had a simple layout. The main building was a long, straight corridor with the school hall/dining room at one end and a reception area with offices opening off it at the other end. The classrooms opened off the corridor on either side, and the little room we were working on was about halfway along. Also on the site, on the opposite side of the playground to the main building, was a gymnasium.
We worked hard and, by about 5:30 in the evening, the library was looking great. We packed up our gear, broke down all the boxes that things had been delivered in, and opened the door to leave.
The corridor was pitch dark. It was winter and thus dark outside, and not a single light was to be seen. Having expected to find the cleaners still working their way through the building, we were surprised.
My phone battery was low, so my colleague shone her phone torch down the corridor and we made our way toward the reception area. There wasn’t a soul around. We tried calling out, but nobody responded. The main entrance doors were locked.
My colleague wanted to update her husband and so called him, staying in the reception area. Meanwhile, I made my way back down the corridor, running my hands along the walls as I couldn’t see, shouting every now and then to see if I could get anybody’s attention.
By horror film rules, we both probably should have been killed, but I digress.
Having had no luck, and having found the doors into the hall locked also, I made my way back to the reception area, where my colleague was having difficulty getting her rather dim husband to understand that her estimated arrival time home was now uncertain. While she was doing that, I looked out the glass of the main doors and saw two people — a middle-aged man and a young woman — wearing tabards with a cleaning company logo on them, crossing the playground. I knocked on the glass to get their attention, and they looked surprised to see us. The woman hurried up to the door, and we talked through the glass.
It quickly became clear that she spoke very little English but was quite quick on the uptake. The man, on the other hand, spoke English perfectly but wasn’t very on the ball. It took a couple of minutes of me shouting through the glass and the woman doing her best to back me up to get him to come over to the door so we could explain the problem, rather than just staring at us in mild surprise from fifteen feet away.
He eventually ambled over, and I explained that we had been working in an enclosed room and had been told the cleaners would let us out.
After a moment’s thoughtful silence, the man spoke thus:
Man: “We’re the cleaners!”
Me: “…Yes, I thought so. Can you let us out?”
Man: “The door is locked.”
Me: “Yes. Can you unlock it, please?”
Man: “Well, I can’t open it, you see, because it’s locked. You see?”
He pointed at the part of the door where the lock was.
The young woman clearly had enough English to be able to follow our conversation, even if she didn’t speak much, and looked like she wanted to throttle her colleague. My colleague was no help, either, as she was deeply engrossed in walking her husband through preheating the oven, which he seemed to find incredibly challenging. I decided to try a different angle.
Me: “Do you have keys to unlock the door with?”
Man: “It was locked up at about 5:00.”
Me: “Okay. Who locked it?”
Man: “I don’t remember.”
Woman: *To the man* “Was you!”
Man: *To me* “She doesn’t speak English. But she might know, if you know any Indian.”
The young woman put both her hands over her face and groaned.
Me: “Do you have any other staff here? Or a manager you could call?”
Man: “Well, we’re only supposed to call them if something’s wrong.”
Me: “There are two people trapped in the building. That’s wrong.”
Man: “Oh, yeah.”
He stared very intently, suddenly, at the ground several feet away, like he was trying to work something out. My colleague was trying to explain to her husband that you don’t peel baked potatoes and the potato skin isn’t poisonous. Abruptly, after about a minute, the man came out of his fugue looking like he was about to shout, “Eureka!”
Man: “The gym! That isn’t locked! You could get out of there!”
The young woman said something uncomplimentary-sounding under her breath and walked away.
I looked out at the gym; even from there, and in the dim light of the playground, it was clear that there was nothing connecting the two buildings. There was no way to get from one to the other without going through this door.
Me: “But we’re locked in this building. We can’t get out of here to get to the gym.”
Man: “But the gym isn’t locked!”
Me: “We aren’t in the gym. We’re in this building, which is locked.”
Man: “But the gym isn’t locked!”
Me: “How do you suggest we get from here to the gym?”
Man: “It’ll be easy because the gym isn’t locked.”
Me: “So, to go into the gym, I need to leave here first. How do I leave here?”
Man: “The gym… it isn’t locked…”
Mercifully, the young woman reappeared with a set of keys and unlocked the door.
Woman: *To the man, shaking the keys* “You leave on floor.”
My colleague and I exited the building, finally. I expressed my gratitude to the woman and ignored the man, who was exhibiting the smiling smugness belonging to a person who has just resolved world hunger, and off we went in my car, very relieved.
And just in case you were wondering, my colleague’s husband somehow blew up several potatoes.