The Calling: A Supernatural Thriller

by Robert Swartwood

  I look around, at the teachers and principals and administrators and even Mike Boyd in the chairs on the stage behind the lectern, at the band on the platform, at the people in the bleachers. None seem to notice me. Even one of the police officers, standing near the stage, hasn’t looked my way. I’m here but I’m not here, I realize, as I take a step forward and glance toward where I found Moses sitting earlier. Yes, I can just see Moses, I can see him sitting there, slowly looking around the gym for anything suspicious. And there, beside him, is a white kid whose parents were murdered less than two weeks ago. His eyes are closed, his mouth slightly opened.

  What’s happening to me? I ask myself, but it’s not like in a dream, where I have no control over what happens, and internal questions like this one go unanswered. I understand immediately what’s happening to me—or at least I have a sense—and when I look around once more at everyone in the gym I realize that everything is gray, everything is colorless, except Jeffery Snyder. He’s the only one with color, the only one I can sense. I know his birthday, his America Online password, his old locker combination, and as I take a step closer to him I know that, as he’s speaking, he’s thinking not about his words but about how he’ll die a virgin.

  He’s never had a girlfriend, he’s never even had the nerve to ask anyone out, even though some girls have expressed interest in him in the past. One girl in particular is Sarah Porter, who, though he was not aware of it, once had a crush on him. But Jeffery was intimated by her older brother, thinking that if John Porter found out Jeffery asked his little sister on a date then bad things would happen. So he chickened out, just like with all the other girls he once had crushes on, and in the last three years he has become addicted to looking at porn on the Internet.

  I pause, seeing all of this in my mind. I can hear Jeffery speaking, continuing his speech, but his words are lost to me. All that I hear are his internal thoughts, about how his parents have just recently gotten a cable modem and how he has been spending more and more time on the computer, liking how the images and videos load faster than with the old dial-up. I see everything that Jeffery has seen, all the websites he’s been to, all the pictures of big-breasted women with their legs spread open wide and long hard cocks pushed up their asses.

  I take a step back, breaking the montage of pornographic images, and somehow manage to look even deeper. I see how Jeffery thinks he’ll never find a girl who likes him for who he is, and that’s why he’ll die a virgin. He’s going to Syracuse in the fall and hopes to find a girl there who will put out but figures he will, in the end, have to pay some prostitute to have sex with him. Some high-priced prostitute too, not one with diseases, he doesn’t want to get sick.

  I take another step back, reminding myself of what I’d done to my grandmother and her friends back at Alice’s. Here is almost the same thing, only I have no control over these memories, no power at all over these deviant urges. Without thinking I ball my hands into fists—and how I’m actually able to feel them even though I’m not really here is beyond me—and take three steps forward.

  A scene materializes in my mind, a party Jeffery invited himself to over the winter and which he had felt totally out of place. He ended up snorting cocaine. He didn’t know what to expect and wasn’t even sure the crack worked right, so he tried it two more times. Everyone else just laughed and cheered him on. Then later he was upstairs and walked in on Tommy Wertham having sex with Reece Davis ... except Tommy was the only one really having sex. Reece was passed out on the bed. Tommy looked back grunting. A huge grin spread across his face. He said Hey Jeff, you want the sloppy seconds? and Jeffery had stood there for just a moment, before bolting out of the room and into the bathroom down the hall, the one that reeked of bleach. He threw up before he even made it to the toilet.

  As Jeffery speaks I realize that, as he looks up from his note cards, he’s searching the faces of his graduating peers. He has already spotted Reece and Tommy, and the thought of outing Tommy as the one who raped Reece has crossed his mind more than once. Just stopping mid-sentence and pointing out into the crowd, telling everyone here that Tommy raped her like she was nothing and then offered him the sloppy seconds. But Jeffery, though the thought does sound righteous, will do no such thing. He doubts Reece even knows what happened that night, and even if she does she probably has forced herself to forget. It’s her dark secret of shame, unlike Tommy who has probably told all his friends, who then went and told their friends. Has it gotten back to Reece that it was Tommy who violated her?

  Probably, Jeffery thinks, though she will never do anything about it. But what Jeffery finds most unsettling is the reason he became sick that night. It wasn’t from the cocaine or the fast food he had earlier or the scene he just witnessed. No, rather than all of those things it was for a split second he had almost taken Tommy up on his offer. He couldn’t believe he considered doing to Reece what he saw done on the countless porn sites he’s visited over the past three years. A primal, prurient urge caused blood to surge into his penis, hardening it more than ever, and for an instant he almost nodded and said that yes, he would like the sloppy seconds.

  But he couldn’t do that. He’d known Reece since the fifth grade—she had even given him a Valentine’s Day card that year, shaped like a boat—and for some reason it felt wrong. And, Jeffery realized, it felt even more wrong that maybe he would have gone along with it had it been anyone else but her.

  This all flashes through me for the space of a couple of seconds, though really for me time has stopped. I’m in a gray world, standing next to the only person with color, the only person with life. He’s a scared young man, addicted to sex even though he has never had it and thinks he never will. And why I’m looking into his life makes no sense to me, but an idea comes to mind, an idea that wants to command whatever metaphysical body I possess to continue walking forward.

  But before I can do this, a girl in the chairs in front of the stage cries out. Jeffery pauses, looking up once again from his note cards, and now I’m seeing the girl through his eyes. Her name is Joyce Parsons, she was one of the cheerleaders during football season, and now she’s standing up from her seat. Her arms are held out at her sides as she stares down at the floor. She screams again and tries to jump up on her seat, but her heel slips and she starts to fall. Others close by begin screaming. Jeffery just stands there, staring out at the crowd, out at Joyce. For the final instant I’m near him, before I’m blinked someplace else, I sense his thoughts. He can’t help but wonder what he would do to Joyce Parsons if he ever found her unconscious.

  • • •

  STANDING IN THE bleachers, now on the left side of the stage, I stare across the gym and again spot Moses and myself. Moses is still looking around the crowd for anything suspicious, and the kid next to him still has his eyes closed, his mouth opened. Jeffery Snyder is still speaking on stage, and when I glance at the rows and rows of students sitting before him, I realize Joyce Parsons has yet to stand up. A few words of Jeffery Snyder’s speech catch my attention and I understand that it’ll be another minute or so before the girl screams. Right now he’s standing there, reciting the speech he’s spent hours and hours writing and rewriting, while unconsciously thinking about how he’ll die a virgin. Unlike before, he’s now gray, just like everyone else in the gymnasium is gray.

  Everyone except the woman sitting in front of me.

  Her name is Cynthia Parker and she’s with her husband Ben and nine-year-old son Ricky. She should be down in the seats along with the rest of the proud parents, but her daughter Michelle gave her tickets away to a friend who had an oversized family of eleven and needed extras. Cynthia, though she claimed she was not upset, has not yet forgiven Michelle for doing such a stupid and inconsiderate thing.

  Like up on stage, I look around me. Cynthia and her family are actually in the middle of this section of bleachers, so the space behind them is not empty. There is another family there, an uncle and aunt and three cousins who came all the way from N
ebraska to see someone named Jimmy Guernsey get his diploma, and where I find myself standing I’m actually straddling the uncle’s one knee. I want to step away to someplace where I’ll have more room but it will be next to impossible to attempt without touching someone ... and here, I wonder, what will happen if I were to touch one of these people? Would they shiver, feeling a chill race through their body? Would they somehow see or sense me?

  Before I can do anything though, I glance once more at Cynthia Parker. Her back is to me, so I can’t see her face, but I know what she looks like. The curve of her jaw, the definition of her cheekbones, the slope of her nose. She has always considered herself an attractive woman, and even now, at forty-two, she is debating whether or not to start an affair. She’s been working as an RN at St. Joseph’s for nearly a decade, and has recently become infatuated with a young man named Juan. He just began working as an orderly on her floor two months ago, but she knew from the moment they first talked that there was something between them. He’s over ten years her junior but still there’s an intriguing look in his dark Spanish eyes every time he talks to her, something that makes her remember her college days when she went out with her sorority sisters every weekend. And his accent—good Lord, it reminds her of Antonio Banderas in that Zorro movie. Some of the girls at work have joked with her about when she’s going to go after him but she merely laughs it off, saying she wishes. She knows the flirting between them is completely innocent, just as he knows she’s married with children. Yet every time they are together she feels something there, some magnetic pull that is almost too strong to ignore.

  Again, just like with Jeffery Snyder, I begin to wonder what any of this has to do with what’s happening now, why Moses and I are here, when I realize something. Cynthia was one of the nurses on duty the day I was brought to the hospital, when I rode up to the third floor and walked down the hallway to Joey’s room. She had been one of the many on that floor who got a glimpse of me and had wondered just what was going on. The police hadn’t explained much, and all that any of them knew was that the boy had been assaulted to the point where he was very close to death. Then, when the heart monitor at the nurse’s station went off, she had been one of the three nurses that rushed into the room. She had been the first nurse to grab me and try to pull me away. But she hadn’t kept her mind completely on task. Not that it would have changed anything in the end, but she had been thinking about Juan, about what he might do to her if and when he took her panties off. Would he be gentle, she wondered, or would he be rough? Would he bite her nipples, would he squeeze them hard? Would he take her from behind like that one boy had that night her sophomore year at school when she’d had too much vodka and had gotten really horny?

  These were the thoughts that went through Cynthia Parker’s mind in the last few moments of Joey Cunningham’s life. She never faltered in her work, however, though she would wonder later, after the rush had left her, if maybe things would have turned out differently had she been concentrating more on saving the boy. She couldn’t help that her thoughts kept returning to Juan, just like she couldn’t help that she was falling more and more out of love with her husband every day. She didn’t want to hurt him though, just as she didn’t want to hurt her children. But she had needs, she had wants, and she didn’t think it was fair that she needed to be chained down in a loveless marriage just because it was convenient for everyone else.

  She glances down at her program to remind herself who’s speaking. Jeffery Snyder, in her opinion, is the most boring person in the world. She wants to yawn but manages to suppress the urge. Instead she glances out over the crowd on the gymnasium floor, the place where she should be sitting right now. She spots Michelle at once, sitting between Daniel Paolangeli, one of the school’s football stars, and Joyce Parsons, one of the school’s many sluts—at least, this is the gossip Cynthia’s heard from other school parents. Right now it looks like Michelle’s whispering to Joyce, just as many of the other students are doing right this moment. Cynthia can’t blame them. If Juan was here right now, she has no doubt she would be whispering with him as much as possible, probably place her hand on his leg, move her finger up and down the inside of his thigh.

  A hand touches her knee, startling her enough that she actually jumps. She looks over, sees Ben staring back at her. He gives her a curious look, as if to ask if she’s okay, and then smiles. He mouths I love you and she smiles back, takes his hand and holds onto it. And as she does she imagines that the hand belongs to Juan, and that if she were naked in her bath right now, she would guide the middle finger of his hand inside her.

  She looks up then, back at where Michelle’s sitting and whispering with Joyce. A few of the students, she notices with amusement, have made messages on the tops of their mortarboards with masking tape. She can barely read them from where she sits—and again, the fact that she’s way up here in the bleachers makes her angry at her daughter—but one of the boys sitting one row in front of Michelle looks like his mortarboard says CLASS COCK, though that can’t possibly be right, one of the administrators would surely have yanked him from his seat if that was the case.

  Then, all at once, she notices Michelle’s head jerk suddenly to the left. Beside her, Joyce has begun shaking and waving her hands around like her feet are on fire. She cries out and stands, tries to jump up onto her seat but slips and falls into the row in front of her. More screams erupt from the students and Cynthia realizes the boring Jeffery Snyder has stopped his speech.

  I take a mental step back, watching the ensuing chaos from this new vantage point. I focus in on Moses. He’s half-standing now, trying to get a better look at what’s happening, and isn’t even aware that beside him my body is still motionless, my eyes closed.

  Something in Cynthia’s mind brings me back to her, and I realize that movement has caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She looks over at where all the graduating students have entered. Sunlight pours in and she sees the shadows of two figures from outside heading toward the entrance. She can’t be certain, but it looks like they’re carrying something in their hands.

  A split second before she realizes what it is they’re carrying she squeezes Ben’s hand very tightly and—

  BLINK

  —I’m standing in the middle aisle, between the chairs set up on the gym floor. Up on stage, Jeffery Snyder is repeating the words of his speech I’ve heard two times already. I look around quickly, just like I did up on stage, seeing only gray bodies and gray faces and then, at once, I spot the one person here full of color and life. And I can’t help but begin to smile, even with everything that’s happening—and everything, I realize, that will.

  It’s Melvin Dumstorf, the best goddamned white free style rapper in Chemung County, the one with the dope ninja skills, and he’s sitting near the middle of his row, between Markus Duncan and Sandra Dull. His arms are crossed and he’s staring up at Jeff on stage like this all bores him, like he doesn’t have a single care in the world, when in reality that’s very much not true. Just yesterday his grandparents flew in from Massachusetts, a surprise visit as his grand-pop called it, and while it’s nice having them here, their arrival has certainly complicated things.

  There are five people between me and Melvin, so I’m not able to get as close as I’d like. The idea that came to me up on stage with Jeffrey Snyder—and here I glance up there, for some reason expecting to see a ghost of myself standing beside him—keeps gnawing at me, wanting me to give it a try. But here the only way it might work is walking over five people, and I still don’t want to touch others if I can help it. So I just stand here, staring intently at Melvin, trying to look deep inside his mind, deep inside his soul, to understand why now, out of everyone else, I’m focused on him.

  The free styling, I now see, is something that does not come naturally to Melvin, though it might seem that way to dozens of drunk and high teenagers. Ever since he became a freshman, he knew he would need something to help set him apart from everyone else, som
ething that would make him cool, and so he chose rapping. He looked up websites, he read books, and he practiced continuously in his room with the door closed. His parents knew about his hobby but never said anything to him, though he knew he disappointed his dad. Even the juggling disappointed his dad. But, he felt, his free styling and ninja skills didn’t even come close to disappointing his old man as much as his true secret would. Because ever since he turned fifteen, Melvin had begun questioning his sexual preference. He was even planning to finally come out to his parents this weekend, but now, with his grandparents here, he knows he will have to wait.

  No one at school knows about him, because he hasn’t told anyone. There are a few students who expressed their homosexuality over the course of the year and while some were accepted, a few were not. Melvin was uncertain how it would be for him and so, instead of expressing himself freely like he seems to do constantly in his raps, he decided to lay low. He knew, after nearly two years of worrying about it, that he was gay, but he wasn’t sure what the next step was. Coming out to his parents was the biggest step, in his opinion, but he still wasn’t ready yet. His mom would understand and accept him—he was almost one hundred percent certain on this point—but his dad was a whole different story. The news, he knew, might literally give his old man a heart attack.

  He’s dated girls of course, has even had sex with two of them, at parties where everyone was drunk and horny and he was the center of attention, having performed his free styling that he’s practiced again and again. He hates it when people think he rehearses, even when it’s true, so at Denise’s party the other night, when Chad Eason said he was rehearsing, it really pissed him off and he had, after getting that citation from the cops and finally making it home, cried himself to sleep.