by Ray Garton
“Alanis,” Oz said again.
Willow said, “I lost interest in Alanis after she read her high school yearbook — or whatever that was — out loud and sort of put it to music but not quite.”
“Jewel,” Oz muttered to Willow, “sings her own poetry.”
“Hey, I heard that,” Xander said defensively. “Jewel is a very deep chick.”
Cordelia laughed derisively. “Deep chick? You wouldn’t know deep if somebody threw you into it.”
“That’s funny coming from the intellectual equivalent of the Grand Canyon,” Xander said. “Great depth, very little content.”
Cordelia’s mouth dropped open as she turned to face Xander. “Little content? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, some shrubs here and there, maybe a few wild goats.”
Willow sighed. This is getting old.
“At least I don’t go around pretending to be something I’m not,” Cordelia replied.
“Oh, like I do?” Xander asked. “What do I pretend to be that I’m not?”
“A biped.”
“Hello, Willow.”
Everyone looked up, including Willow, as Mila stopped at the table.
“You hadn’t come to my office yet, Willow, so when I saw you here, I thought I’d give you this.” She pulled an empty chair from the next table and seated herself beside Willow. From her purse, Mila removed a tiny red box and handed it to her.
“Thank you, Ms., I mean, Mila.” She opened the box and removed a wad of tissue, which was wrapped around a miniature version of one of the statues she’d seen in Mila’s office.
“My brother makes miniatures as well,” Mila said. “You admired the statue of Rama in my office, so I thought I’d give you one of the little ones.”
Willow was stunned by the intricate detail of the piece. It was every bit as vivid as the one she’d seen in Mila’s office, only much smaller. There was a tiny loop atop the head for a chain.
“This is so beautiful, Mila! Thank you!”
“I thought it would make you smile. That’s why I brought it.” Mila stood. “Feel free to drop by the office, anyway.”
Willow thanked her again, then Mila left. When Willow turned back to the table, still looking at her tiny gift, she lifted her head to see that Buffy had joined them. She sat across the table next to Xander, looking at the thing in Willow’s hand.
“What’s that?” Buffy asked.
“Oh, it’s a gift from Mil —, Ms. Daruwalla.” Willow handed the miniature to Buffy. “It’s the Hindu god Rama. Her brother makes them. He’s got, like . . . industrial-size talent. She has more in her office, and —”
“But why did she give it to you?” Buffy asked, frowning.
Willow froze. There was no anger or threat in Buffy’s voice at all, it was just a simple question, but an iciness fell over Willow that made her feel defensive, on guard.
“Because she’s a very nice person,” Willow replied, “and because I was admiring the statues in her office.”
“What were you doing in her office?” Buffy asked.
Willow took a deep breath, and when she spoke, a note of sternness crept into her voice. “She invited me in. We talked awhile, had some tea, and looked at her brother’s statues.”
“Oh.” Buffy shrugged dismissively. “That’s weird.”
“What’s weird about it?” Willow asked defensively.
“Well, I mean, what are you doing?” Buffy asked. “Becoming friends with the faculty or something?”
Willow felt her heart machine-gunning her ribs. “It just so happens that I think she’s too cool to be faculty. And besides” — she stood and put the miniature sculpture in her purse — “maybe sometimes people have to look for friends in weird places, because the friendships they’ve already got have gone cold.” Willow spun around and nearly knocked her chair over hurrying away.
“Hey, what’s that supposed to mean?” Buffy called defensively.
Willow didn’t reply as she crossed the cafeteria and pushed the door open hard with a stiffened arm as she left.
Oz scratched the back of his head and screwed up his face before asking, “ Little too Waco?”
“What?” Buffy asked. “I was just asking. She was the one who went all Carrie.”
“I think you’re all weird,” Cordelia said.
“By a show of hands, please,” Xander said. “Who gives a monkey on a rock what Cordelia thinks?”
No one raised a hand.
Cordelia clicked her tongue and exhaled explosively. “You know, I don’t have to sit here and take this.”
“Oh, I know,” Xander said with a nod. “You sit here and take it because you really like it.” He grinned.
“That’s it,” Cordelia said. She scooted her chair back, stood, and picked up her lunch tray. “I’m going someplace where I can digest my food.” Cordelia walked briskly away from the table.
Oz and Buffy stared at Xander as he resumed eating his lunch. Finally, he put his fork down. “Okay, okay, I’ll go talk to her.” He grinned at them both, picked up his tray, and followed Cordelia.
As Buffy watched him go, she said, “That’s not a relationship. It’s a two-person soccer-fan riot.”
Oz took a bite of food, chewed it slowly, swallowed. “What’s the sitch?”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve seemed . . . different lately. Willow, too. Both distant.”
“Maybe it’s the exams,” she said with a shrug. “Or this thing that’s eating the meat off bones. I don’t know. I didn’t realize I seemed any different.”
Oz took a couple more bites of food and chewed fast this time. “I should go find Willow.”
“Yeah, well . . . she needs a thicker skin, I guess.”
Oz frowned as he pointed to Buffy with his fork. “That’s what I mean.”
The corners of Buffy’s mouth turned downward very slowly as her eyebrows rose. She looked at the clock on the wall. “I’ve gotta go to the library and meet with Giles. I just came here to pick up a portable lunch.” She stood, but before she could say anything more, there was an explosion of sound on the other side of the cafeteria.
Buffy looked in the direction of the sound. Several people suddenly shot to their feet to get out of the way of something. A fight.
Oz stood in time to see a folding chair fly through the air and crash onto a table. A tight group of students scattered to avoid the chair as it skipped off the table and clattered onto the floor.
“One little mistake and you won’t let me forget it!” a voice shouted. It sounded female, but it was so ragged with anger that it was difficult to tell.
Buffy and Oz moved toward the racket.
“One mistake?” another voice shouted back. This one sounded female, too. “You do it all the time!”
More crashing, a few startled cries from onlookers.
When they got a better view of the brawl, Buffy stammered, “Is that . . . no, that couldn’t be . . . is it?”
Oz’s mouth dropped open for a moment. “Get ready to believe.”
Miss Gasteyer and Mrs. Truman, Sunnydale High School’s two art teachers — their faces bloodied and hair splayed in all directions, Miss Gasteyer’s fat bag swinging violently from her shoulder — were fighting with fists, feet, teeth, and nails. And if the animal-like savagery in their faces was any indication, they intended it to be a fight to the death.
Willow felt foolish the second she sat down in front of Mila’s desk. Her throat stung from crying on the way to the guidance counselor’s office and her cheeks were sticky with tears. She rubbed a hand downward over her face, then swept a knuckle across each closed eye.
“Willow, what’s wrong?” Mila asked.
“I don’t know,” Willow replied with a sniffle. “I wish I did. I mean, if I knew, there wouldn’t be anything wrong because maybe then I could fix it.”
Mila leaned forward and locked her hands together on the desktop. “You seemed just fine in
the cafeteria a few minutes ago. Tell me, Willow, what is the matter?”
“My friend,” Willow said, trying not to cry anymore. “My best friend in the whole world, Buffy.” She stopped to wipe more tears from her eyes.
“Have you two had a fight?”
“Well, that’s just it. We haven’t. But for some reason, it feels like we have. There’s so much tension between us all the time. In fact, all my friends seem . . . well, preoccupied. But with Buffy, it’s different. Worse.”
“Perhaps they are all just concerned about the tests coming up,” Mila said. She smiled encouragingly. “With that many tests all at once, most students tend to become preoccupied.”
“That’s what I thought at first,” Willow said, nodding. “And that may be the case with the others. But with Buffy, it’s something different. And what’s worse is . . . well, I sometimes find myself . . . y’know, getting, um . . . getting really angry with her. Like just now in the cafeteria. She said something about the gift you gave me, and I snapped at her, and she seemed to get angrier, and . . . I don’t know.” She bowed her head and let more tears fall.
Mila took a tissue from an ornate wooden box and handed it Willow, who dabbed at her eyes, then blew her nose. She tossed the tissue into a small wastebasket at the end of Mila’s desk, then stood.
“I’m sorry,” Willow said. “For bothering you with this, I mean. It’s silly, and I should probably —”
“No, no, Willow,” Mila said. She stood, too, and came around the desk. Sitting on the front edge of the desk, she took Willow’s hand in hers. “Nothing is silly that makes you hurt this much, so you mustn’t talk that way. I’m glad you felt you could come to me with this. And I’m going to give you a piece of advice, so listen up.” She grinned. “The only thing that will solve this between you and your friend is communication. You must talk to one another with no interruptions, with nothing to get in the way. You can do that whenever you wish, of course. But I think you should do it right now. Go back to the cafeteria, find Buffy, and go someplace quiet where you can talk. You’ve still got most of the lunch hour ahead of you.”
Willow thought about it a moment, although she didn’t really need to. She knew immediately that Mila was right. It wouldn’t be easy, but she knew it was the only way to close the gap that had opened between her and Buffy.
Willow thanked Mila for talking to her, then headed for the cafeteria. She walked at a brisk pace, wanting to get it over with before she changed her mind or just plain chickened out. Things had become so tense between herself and Buffy that the idea of approaching her and asking to go someplace where they could talk was a bit unnerving . . . and the fact that they were best friends made that part, the unnerving part, disorienting, head-spinning. It felt so unnatural, so unreal to her, and yet it was very real.
As she neared the cafeteria, Willow frowned at the loud noises coming from inside. What sounded like cheering was accompanied by erratic clattering noises. Something heavy slammed against the cafeteria’s double doors; the safety glass in the left door shattered into tiny hail-like pieces and the leg of a chair appeared for just an instant, then fell away.
Uh, oh! Willow ran the rest of the way and pushed her way into the cafeteria.
A large group of kids were gathered in a semicircle, cheering and pumping their fists in the air. The broken door had brought an explosion of laughter from them, but their attention was not diverted for long.
They were cheering on a fight, and when Willow saw it, her eyes became almost as wide as her mouth. Miss Gasteyer and Mrs. Truman were fighting like a couple of punks in the street . . . and no one was stopping them! Mrs. Truman’s left eye was swollen shut, Miss Gasteyer’s lower lip was twice its normal size, and both of them bore bloody scratches and cuts on their faces.
Beyond the group of enthusiastic observers, Willow saw Buffy and Oz coming forward.
Miss Gasteyer got Mrs. Truman with a hard uppercut. Mrs. Truman’s sensible shoes left the floor for a moment and she fell back onto a table. Miss Gasteyer grabbed something off the table, something shiny, and lifted it high, then brought it down.
“No!” Willow cried at the last instant.
Miss Gasteyer buried a fork halfway up the handle in Mrs. Truman’s throat.
The second she saw the fork, Buffy yelled, “Stop her! Somebody stop her!”
But the students crowded around the two fighting women were too busy cheering and yelling to hear her.
Miss Gasteyer brought the fork down once, twice, a third time. As warm blood spattered from Mrs. Truman’s gurgling throat and landed on some of the onlookers, the voices died down. A girl screamed. Then another.
Buffy knocked her way through the crowd like a wrecking ball through an old concrete wall. By the time she got through, Miss Gasteyer was going out the door into the hallway. Buffy slapped a palm on the tabletop, vaulted over to the other side, and hit the floor running. Mrs. Truman was still alive on the table, but barely. Someone would try to help her, but Buffy knew they would not succeed. Blood spurted in rhythmic strings from Mrs. Truman’s severed carotid artery, which Buffy knew could not be repaired.
She went through the doors and saw Miss Gasteyer nearing the corner at the end of the hall to her right, her bag slamming and rattling against her left hip as she ran. The woman disappeared around the corner in an instant.
Buffy ran at full speed. A couple of students — a confused-looking guy and a clearly annoyed girl — stood in the hall with their backs pressed to the wall, staring at the corner that Miss Gasteyer had just rounded. They turned to Buffy and watched her run by.
Buffy could hear Miss Gasteyer’s running footsteps echoing away in the main hall around the corner. And something else . . . the jangling of keys. Half a second before she rounded the corner, she heard a door slam.
The hall was empty, which was typical at lunchtime. There was activity to be seen through the open doors of some faculty offices, but Buffy ignored it. That wasn’t the kind of door she’d heard slam a moment ago. It was a heavier door, much more solid. She walked at a hurried pace, looking around frantically, then stopped in front of the stairwell. She turned around and walked back, slowly this time, and stopped in front of the door that led to the school’s basement.
It was set back in a small rectangular niche, bathed in shadow. It was brown-painted steel, and it was locked.
But Miss Gasteyer might have a key, Buffy thought, remembering the jangle of keys she’d heard. She remembered the slam of the door, as well . . . solid, heavy, like this one.
As soon as Mr. Snyder heard of the soon-to-be broken basement door, he would no doubt find some way of tagging Buffy with it, and he would love doing it.
Buffy looked around to make sure she was alone as she muttered under her breath, “Oh, well, some things can’t be helped.”
Buffy slammed her foot into the door. The deadbolt gave, the door flew open and clanged into the wall on the other side. Buffy stepped through and quickly swung the door closed behind her. It wouldn’t latch anymore, but she didn’t have time to worry about that.
The temperature in the stairwell was cooler than in the hall, and it was darker than Buffy anticipated. She hadn’t bothered to look for a light switch inside the door. At the bottom of the stairs, it was colder, but there was light coming from the other side of a tall set of shelves. She froze when she heard a sound and listened carefully.
It was more than one sound, actually. Somewhere, something was dripping steadily. A clock ticked. And something else, something wet and smacking and . . . was that a snarl?
Buffy started moving through the long shadows of the basement, following the sound.
Eating. Something was eating.
She moved faster, around the shelves, past several broken chalkboards leaning against a wall, around stacks of old wooden chairs with metal legs, past outdated classroom desks.
Slurping and sucking sounds and harsh, throaty grunting.
Sounds like more hellhounds.
The wet chewing and grunting was suddenly replaced by rapid hissing whispers.
Buffy pulled and jerked her arms from their entanglements, got to her feet, and rounded another tall set of shelves. She skidded to a halt.
Overhead, two tubular flourescent lights glowed through an opaque plastic cover; one of the lights hummed and flickered. Buffy found herself in a corner that was blocked into a cubicle by the shelves. There were more cluttered shelves on the two cinder-block walls that met in the corner.
Something lay in the middle of the concrete floor within the makeshift cubicle. It was the remains of Miss Gasteyer. They hadn’t quite finished with her. Nearly all of her body had been stripped of flesh, and blood dripped from her bare ribs. But most of the internal organs remained, and there was still skin on her fingers; her nails appeared to be clawing at the floor. The skin on her face and head was still intact, but her eyes were gone, and empty, bloodied sockets stared blindly upward.
Buffy looked around quickly: the shelves, the dark corner, the shadows, even the ceiling above the flickering flourescent light.
Where were they? They couldn’t have gone out without getting past her. But the basement seemed to be empty except for Buffy.
She took two steps toward Miss Gasteyer and hunkered down to get a closer look. The woman’s clothes were scattered over the floor in torn shreds. Her bag lay a couple feet away on its side, its contents spilled on the concrete.
They didn’t get past me, she thought. They’re here. I can feel it in my — She glanced at the skeleton, winced, then began to stand.
There was a rushing movement in the air and several feet hit the floor around her.
Small feet.
Children’s feet.
Buffy rose to her full height and looked down on them, all six . . . no, all eight of them. Or were there more? They were dressed in blue jeans and polka-dot skirts and sneakers and pumps and a Daffy Duck T-shirt next to a Jurassic Park T-shirt . . . the way little kids dress. Except the small clothes didn’t look right. They seemed to have no texture. It looked as if the clothes had been painted on the children’s bodies.
