by Ed Kurtz
Walt’s breath hitched. He hurried to the front door. It was locked. Walt straightened his back and pounded a fist on it hard and fast.
“Dudley? Dudley, it’s Walt Blackmore! I live in the house over the hill? Dudley! I need to see you—it’s an emergency!”
No lights came on. No footsteps sounded from the other side. He kept pounding, but nothing came of it. He wondered if they were just incredibly heavy sleepers, or if perhaps they were on some sort of medication that knocked them out cold.
Or if Gwyn had already come, and now there was no one left to answer.
Panic swelled in his chest, twisted his stomach. How could she do this? Does she have no concept of consequences at all? Even if she gets away with it, what if I’m arrested? Who will feed her then? He backed away from the front door and began to scan the front of the house in a frantic search for another way in. That was when he finally saw the broken window above a copse of rhododendron bushes. It was not merely cracked, but smashed apart. Someone broke into the place.
Someone.
Gwyn.
Walt shrugged his jacket off and used it as a leather shield as he climbed over the bushes and through the obliterated glass. He tumbled over a plush-top window-seat and rolled onto a dusty carpet beneath it. Holding his breath, he listened. It was a creaky old farmhouse with at least two clocks clicking out of time with one another nearby. But he heard nothing indicative of a struggle, much less terror and death. He let his breath out and got to his feet. He thought he heard skittering in an adjacent room, but he wasn’t sure. Probably just a cat, he decided. He moved on.
Halfway across the next room something brushed across the top of Walt’s head. He flinched and threw up a hand to wave it off—it was only a jointed cord dangling from an overhead light. He gave it a yank and a frosted globe burned bright above him, flooding the room with much needed illumination. Now he could see that he was in a dining room crowded with faded and nicked antique furniture. To his left was an equally ancient-looking kitchen. To his right was a short, dark hall that ran alongside a staircase. Recalling the sole light he’d seen from outside the house, Walt went for the stairs.
He was only three steps up when a blood-cooling scream filled the air. It was not a scream of terror—that much was immediately evident. Rather, it was a mad howl, the sort of scream Walt would expect to hear in a turn-of-the-century insane asylum.
He froze mid-step. Part of him wanted to get as far away from the source of that horrendous scream as possible. But another part beckoned him forward, toward the heart of the catastrophe he had no doubt he’d find upstairs. He climbed the rest of the steps, rounded the landing and hurried toward the light at the end of the hallway. When his eyes readjusted to the sudden light in the master bedroom, he whimpered and fell against a worn oak bureau.
Gwyn was on the bed, kneeling in a pool of blood and human remains. Beside her lay the eviscerated corpse of a woman, her torso split open like an oversized Bible. Another corpse, headless, was crumpled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Its head was behind Gwyn, resting on a pillow. It was barely recognizable amid all the blood and stringy red waste, but Walt knew to whom it belonged. It was old Dudley Chapel.
He moaned with grief and horror. “Jesus Christ…”
Gwyn’s glistening crimson head jerked up as a cruel, evil smile slashed across her gore-spattered face.
“Come,” she said. Her voice was abrasive and malicious. “Eat.”
She slid her hands into the slippery offal and brought up handfuls of the elderly couple’s entrails. “Eat, Walt. Eat.”
He spat a single, miserable sob and went spiraling out of the room. As he flew back down the dark hall to the stairs, Gwyn’s pitiless laughter filled his ears. He was disgusted and frightened, but most of all he was worried. She’d been easy to contend with when she was rooted to the ceiling, but now that she was free Walt didn’t know how much longer he would be able to contain her. As long as she was hungry, Gwyn would stop at nothing to feed. And she was always hungry.
Bursting through the farmhouse’s front door Walt ran wildly for the hill, all the while forcing himself to face the fact that if he wanted to keep her at home, he was going to have to bring her meals to her.
36
Walt sat naked in the bathtub and ran the shower. He remained there beneath the hot spray until, nearly half an hour later, it turned cold. Even then he let it run for several minutes before he realized just how cold it was. He twisted the knob to shut off the water and hung a fresh towel over his shoulders. It hadn’t done much good. He felt no cleaner than he had before.
He emerged from the steamy bathroom and padded into the bedroom, leaving a trail of wet footprints in the hall. The bed was still empty and the clock read 4:45 AM. Pretty soon the sun would come up. It would burn away the darkness Gwyn needed to sneak back home. He wondered if she’d make it. So too he wondered why he wanted her back so badly. It was her who was dependent upon him, not the other way around. She had nothing to offer him, nothing at all. So why did he pine for her quick return?
Why did he actually miss her?
He scrubbed his damp hair with the towel and then tossed it in the corner of the room. From the bedroom window he could see the first hint of gray on the horizon, dawn’s prologue. He sighed and stretched out on the bed, letting his head sink into the pillow, and closed his eyes. In a few hours he was going to have to go to work. He was exhausted, even a little ill, but he was also a new teacher and there were impressions being made. There was no getting out of it. A brief power nap would do him good.
Walt was well on his way to sleep when the back door squealed on its rusty hinges. He snapped back into full consciousness but kept his eyes shut. Gwyn had returned. She was home.
She came into the bedroom. Walt felt the covers pull back as she slid into bed beside him, draping one cool and sticky arm over his side. A sigh of deep satisfaction passed her lips and Walt smiled at it.
He felt strangely content.
37
Bored to tears, Walt straightened his back until he was uncomfortable enough to stay awake. His ninth graders were busily filling in bubbles on their exam sheets, at least for the most part. Not Jarod, naturally—the diminutive pale blonde underachiever almost certainly penciled in a straight line of all Cs, like he always did. Clem, his partner in crime, was already asleep on his desk, drooling on the test he undoubtedly just failed. Walt frowned at them. Some kids were just hopeless. In the span of a few short years, these boys would be serving Walt his cheeseburgers from a drive-thru window, and that was if things went well for them. They’d be robbing Walt’s house if things went a little less well.
The thought transformed Walt’s frown into a knowing smile. He’d like to see those two failures sneak into his house late one night. See how they’d like coming face-to-face with Gwyn. Her ubiquitous grin would be the last thing either of them would ever set eyes on.
A soft titter escaped his mouth. Several kids looked up from their tests, staring at him. Among them was Alice, the portly kid with the jet-black bob. Walt smiled at her. She hoisted a single, well-plucked eyebrow and returned her attention to the exam.
12. By what method do Romeo and Juliet commit suicide?
Walt was certain that at least half the class would miss that one. One of the options he gave, a joke, offered “jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge” as a viable option. It was option C, so he knew at least Jarod was bound to have chosen it. Idiot.
At the very least the school system might have allowed Walt to teach a more interesting text. Shakespeare was Shakespeare, but he much preferred King Lear or Othello. Still, after the hubbub his mysterious weeklong absence had caused back in the fall, he was hardly in the position to go about demanding curriculum changes.
So Romeo and Juliet it was.
15. When the Prince asks Benvolio, “Who began this bloody fray?” to what does he refer?
Who did begin this bloody fray? Walt swallowed hard. It was easy enough t
o lay every ounce of blame at Gwyn’s feet. After all, he hadn’t put the stain there. He didn’t even know where she came from, much less what she was. Yet there was no denying that he cultivated the monster, even if he hadn’t planted the seed. The option was always present to ignore it, to just let it die.
Was it?
He smashed her head in with a hammer. Enough to snuff anything living thing out, short of a whale. But not Gwyn.
She probably couldn’t be killed. That was the true reason for Walt’s actions, as far as he was concerned. Because if she was going to grow and become whole no matter what he did, it was simply logical to make sure she was on his side.
Someone among the students cleared their throat.
Walt snapped out of his reverie and glanced up at Alice, whose arm was stretched taut above her head.
“Yes, Alice?”
“I’m finished, Mr. Blackmore. May I go to the restroom?”
“Sure.”
“May I go to the library after? Until the period is over?”
Several students flashed angry looks at her. Jarod grumbled. Clem stirred, but he did not wake up.
“Yes, all right. But just the library.”
Alice collected her things, slung her bookbag over her shoulder, and marched to the front of the room with her exam crinkling between her chubby fingers. As she handed it to Walt, he noticed the red box of Marlboro cigarettes stuffed into the netted outer pocket of her bookbag. Library, indeed, he thought.
“Thanks,” she said flatly before waddling out of the classroom.
“Tons o’ fun,” Jarod muttered. It was his standard dig at Alice’s weight. A few students around him giggled.
“Jarod,” Walt barked. The kid shot his ice blue eyes at his teacher.
“Uh?”
“See me after class.”
Jarod sneered, and the kids who laughed with him now laughed even more uproariously at him.
They were so quick to turn on one another. Walt thought they were not entirely unlike jackals. Illiterate, unwashed, criminal little jackals. Loathsome creatures, adolescents.
Yet, as he maintained his authoritative glare at Jarod, an epiphany occurred to Walt Blackmore.
Stupid and depraved or not, meat is meat.
Well, Walt thought, conjuring Lord Capulet, we were born to die.
***
As she rounded the corner of the gymnasium, Alice spritzed apple-scented body spray all over herself in an effort to disguise the permeating odor of cigarettes. She was no big fan of girly scents, but anything that prevented detention for the high crime of smoking on campus was well and good in her book. And, in her estimation, apple body spray was the best tool for the job. She fanned the moist cloud over her neck and chest as she came around to the front of the ugly red brick building, keeping her eyes and mouth shut.
And ran right into someone.
“Hey, watch out, Chubs!”
Alice’s heart dropped. It was Jarod.
“Sorry,” she mumbled as she tried to move past the smirking kid.
But Jarod hurried to catch up to her.
“Perfume and smokes,” he gibed. “Don’t go too well together.”
“It’s not perfume.”
“Yeah? What is it, then?”
“It’s none of your business, Jarod.”
“Now that’s not very nice.”
She drew her brows together into a scowl.
“Leave me alone, will you?”
“Hey! I just wanted to thank you is all.”
She stopped walking across the quad, halfway between the gym and the cafeteria entrance to the main building. A few minutes ago she’d been famished, but now her appetite was suddenly waning.
Jarod was a bad kid and everybody knew it, teachers included. It was an inexplicable miracle that he’d never gotten himself booted out of school for just a quarter of the crap he pulled, usually with his lackey, Clem, in tow. It began with pulling the girls’ gym shorts down in grade school, escalated to routine busts for grass and alcohol in junior high, and just that year rumors started circulating that the nasty little monster raped a girl at a barn party. Naturally, nothing came of it. Jarod pretty much always got away scot-free, no matter what he did.
Now that he was expressing an inane desire to “thank” Alice, she felt anxiety creeping in. Nothing good ever came of encounters with this sociopath.
“All right, I’ll bite. Thank me for what?”
“Getting me in trouble.”
“I didn’t get you in trouble.”
“Well, I might have made a little comment when you ditched class for the library. Mr. Blackmore didn’t take very kindly to it, so I got in trouble.”
“I’ll bet I can just guess what you said.”
She’d heard it a hundred times before. A thousand. Tons o’ fun. It never failed to elicit peals of laughter from Clem, who was not so skinny himself. But, of course, it was different for girls. Everything was.
“Never mind that,” Jarod said with a serious look. “Turns out, the old prick gave me a choice.”
“That so?”
“Yeah. He said I can do a week’s detention, seven AM in the cafeteria every day starting Monday. I said I thought that sucked.”
“You told him that?”
“Sure I did.”
“You’re cruising.”
“Ah, fuck it. Fuck him. Anyway, then I get the second option.”
Alice winced, certain she was about to hear about the sort of thing she heard on the news all the time but had never seen in front of her eyes. Was her teacher blackmailing Jarod for sexual favors?
“Said I can drop by his house. Tonight.”
“Oh, shit.”
“That’s what I said. I’m thinking this old faggot wants to ream me. I mean, I was about to knock that queer right out of his fucking chair!”
She shook her head and clicked her tongue. Alice wasn’t particularly enthused by Jarod’s abundant use of homophobic epithets—the closest girls like her ever got to the opposite sex was by way of gay boys—but a perverted pedophile English teacher was another can of worms altogether.
“Did you go straight to Principal Byrne?”
“Fuck no, I didn’t. Blackmore didn’t say anything gross, not yet anyways. He said he wants me to know Romeo and Juliet like the back of my hand before he makes me retake the goddamn test. You believe that shit?”
Alice said, “Hmm.” It still didn’t sound right to her. Not in the least. A teacher asking a student to visit his house? Alone? Nothing good could come of that.
“I don’t know, Jarod. Sounds…skeevy.”
“One, I’m not letting any fudge-packer within a county mile of my shithole.”
He was counting off on his fingers. Alice resumed her sneer.
“And two, this is a winning situation for me. And, I think, maybe for you.”
“I don’t even want to ask,” she said. “In fact, all I want to do is eat my lunch. Alone.”
“I don’t wanna get between a big girl and her lunch,” Jarod said snidely. “But why don’t you hear me out first.”
A long, heavy sigh spilled out of her mouth.
“Can you make it quick?”
“Jesus, you are hungry.”
She glowered at him as she curled her right hand into a tight fist. One more remark like that was all she needed.
“Okay, here it is. I’m going to rob him.”
“What? Who?”
Why is telling me this? Why can’t he just leave me alone?
“Who do you think, dummy? Blackmore.”
“You’re going to rob our English teacher.”
“Ain’t that what I just said?”
Before she could stop herself, she erupted into laughter. In a way, she was glad for the unintended punchline; it made the bad medicine of having to waste time talking to the mean little gnome go down much smoother. They weren’t friends, often as he acted like they were.
As for Jarod, he was far less amused. He
furrowed his brow at Alice’s mirth.
“Knock it off,” he growled. “I’m dead serious.”
“I know you are,” Alice managed between gasps for breath.
“That’s what makes it so funny.”
“You don’t think I could pull it off?”
“Of course not. I mean, no offense, but you’re what? A straight-D student?”
“What’s that got to do with anything?”
“Just that thieves are supposed to be smart. The dumb ones always wind up in jail.”
“Ah, I get it. You think I’m dumb? You think I’m going to end up in the slammer?”
“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”
“Okay, just watch me. I was going to cut you in because I could use a wingman, but fuck that. I’m going in solo.”
“Yeah? What about Clem?”
Jarod blew a sharp puff of air through his nose.
“You kidding? He’s functionally retarded.”
“At least we can agree on one thing.”
“I guess,” Jarod groused.
Alice shook her head again and made for the cafeteria door. Jarod reached out and grabbed her hard by the wrist.
“Hey!”
“Since you’re not interested in my offer, you had better keep your fat mouth shut, got it?”
“Let go of my wrist!”
“You hear me?”
“I heard you!”
“Keep it zipped, Chubs. I mean it.”
“All right!”
She wrenched her arm free from the little guy’s grip. With a snarl and a roll of the eyes, she hustled into the cafeteria.
Asshole, she thought.
38
Forgoing actually looking at them, Walt stuffed all of the exams from the day in his briefcase. There were seventy-three of them: the total of his first, third and fourth period students. Walt sincerely doubted there would be more than five A-level tests in the lot. He had no intention of finding out tonight, either.
Tonight, he was booked.
As the latches on his briefcase snapped shut, a familiar shape filled the doorway to his left. Short pudgy arms crossed tightly over her enormous breasts and the black Dimmu Borgir T-shirt that was stretched across them.
