The Third Rule (Eddie Collins Book 1)

by Andrew Barrett

  “Yes, Mr Sherman.”

  “Good,” and then whispered, “because I’ll be damned if you think old Sherman’s gonna clean it for ye.” He looked at the crowd of kids and shouted again, “And I’ll be checking, make no mistake.”

  It was while both of the throwers were propping themselves against the bin that they saw it. Inside the bin, scrunched up like an old hairy handkerchief was proof that the rabbit in Mr Sherman’s gloved hand was not a rabbit at all. That was about all that one of the two kids could take for that day, and he closed his eyes and sank quite slowly to his knees before falling flat on his face into the pool of puke in the grass. “Mr Sherman!” the girl, his puking pal, shouted, as she looked away, greedily sucking in fresh air.

  “What is it now?” he screamed. “I have a lot to be gettin on with, lassie, without listening—”

  “It’s Jasper!”

  He looked at the animal he held with something approaching revulsion. It was not a wild thing that some kids had set about and skinned; no, look at the eyes in front of the skull and not at the sides like a rabbit’s. Look at the teeth! The rabbit was a cat, and the cat was Jasper, Mr Jackson’s pet he kept here at school. Sherman ushered the kids aside, “Alright, break it up you lot and get onto ye classes, eh? There’s nothing else of interest here. Go!”

  He approached the bin as the majority of kids sloped off, and peered inside. “Aye, my word, what has happened to this world of ours, lassie?”

  “It’s full to the brim with weird fuckers.”

  * * *

  “And they’ve broken into the tool shed again, and again into the infants—”

  “Do you think, Sherman, that all this could wait until afterwards?”

  “They want a damned good slap, Mr Jackson; every week they break into the school and—”

  “I’m just pleased you didn’t mention your normal mode of punishment; I don’t think it would have been appropriate.”

  “No, you’re right.” Sherman nodded in regret, holding the bag and its gruesome contents behind his back.

  “I know who did this, Sherman. Greg Bolton. He must’ve come by last night after I phoned his mother, and he trapped Jasper. I know how his devious little mind works. He trapped him, and then he…” His eyes peered again into Sherman’s face, and he swallowed, stopped what he was about to say.

  “Don’t you think we ought to contact the police?”

  Jackson walked away, “No point, not a thing they can do, is there.”

  Sherman shrugged, but he was right about those who broke into school property: they should be skinned alive.

  Jackson headed for the classroom. She’d be there, he knew she would, dropping the little bastard off for lessons he wasn’t entitled to. Well, let’s see how far she got this time, because this time he would call the police, and this time he’d watch them both squirm as he made Sherman unwrap the little bastard’s handiwork in front of two armed officers.

  Only a few of the throng of parents remained in the cloakroom of Class B, nattering as usual, but among them, he could not see Margy Bolton. He turned left into the classroom itself, ignoring the hellos of the parents in the cloakroom and the kids in the classroom.

  He saw her.

  Pressed against the window outside, waving at her son as though she already missed him, was Mrs Tower, very respectable. And next to her was Margy Bolton – the bitch herself! Jackson’s lips tightened into a thin white line. Bolton looked right at him, and smiled.

  Why was she here? He had been very direct on the phone last night: stay away from school and keep your brat at home too. But here she was, and without Greg in tow.

  The ‘lonely corner’ was empty, unfortunately… Why was it unfortunate? It was unfortunate because he wanted to grab the little twat around the neck and pull his rotten cat-killing head right off his shoulders.

  “Mr Jackson, how wonderful,” she smiled as though someone had just offered her, the oldest virgin in town, a fully functioning Kingsize Vibro vibrator and a deluxe inhibition bypass. Her smile was wide and so full that her cheeks almost closed her eyes up. “I’m so excited,” she enthused, “what does it do, though? No one can work it out.”

  The anger on his face melted and became incomprehension. “Mrs Brammer, to what exactly are you referring?”

  Mrs Brammer pointed to the golden ribbon dangling from the ceiling. Its lower end was five feet from the ground, and tied beautifully in a bow. Taped a little higher up was a card that read:

  Have a Splendid time

  Pull me hard at ten-past nine

  Jackson stepped closer, inspecting the note. “But I… it has nothing to do with me, Mrs Brammer, I can assure you.”

  “It’s almost ten past,” she said, smile emblazoned on her face, a face adored by the eighteen kids who screamed all around her, pulling at her skirt, demanding they be the one to pull the beautiful ribbon. “Would you pull it for us?” She turned to her class. “Wouldn’t that be nice, children, to have Mr Jackson pull the ribbon?” The eruption was instant, hands in the air, kids jumping and screaming, surrounding the two adults who stood by the golden ribbon.

  At its ceiling end, the ribbon was fastened to a large tube, decorated in shiny paper, glitter and glossy stars better and brighter than any Christmas cracker you could wish to buy. If anyone had looked closely, they would have seen that between the top edge of the cracker and the vent in the tiled ceiling from which it appeared to hang, there was no golden ribbon, only plain old white string that passed right through the grille and into the void above.

  “Oh please, Mr Jackson; it would mean such a lot—”

  “But who put this here? What is it?” He looked around at the window, but Margy Bolton had gone, leaving Mrs Tower standing alone.

  “Please, Mr Jackson!” the kids yelled.

  Behind him, Aimy slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. Her smile at seeing her kids was genuine and warm.

  * * *

  She stood next to Jo Tower, the toffee-nosed bishop’s daughter who thought her kid was better’n anyone else’s. Out of the corner of her eye, she looked at Jo Tower and envy trickled from every pore.

  Margy peered into the classroom and noticed Greg’s ‘special’ place was empty. Then, that lanky bastard Jackson flew into the room searching for Greg, she presumed. A little tingle ran up Margy’s back, and she could not even begin to stop the smile that spread on her face like spilt blood spreading on a shiny floor. He was dumber and more predictable than she could have hoped for.

  I guess he found the fucking cat then, she thought. And that was good, because it meant he was angry, not thinking straight.

  The kids surrounded Jackson and the Brammer bitch, and together they giggled like the fucking Von Trapp family. She could see him reading the note, could imagine the kind of questions flowing through his brain, but understanding the excitement of the kids, and the reluctance to upset them. She also saw him glance at her once or twice, wondering why she had come at all since Greg was not actually here.

  Well, the answer was soon at hand.

  Behind Jackson, the classroom door opened and Aimy came in. Margy’s chest nearly exploded and her eyes widened so much, they could have fallen out and rolled away. “Aimy, you stupid girl!” Margy screamed between clenched teeth, and she could feel Tower looking at her. Margy waved her arm and banged on the glass. It rippled, bending her reflection. No one heard her.

  Margy looked at the clock on the classroom wall, and her hands fell to her sides. “Guess you’ll not be meeting me, then,” she whispered. With a shaking head, Margy walked away.

  * * *

  Jo Tower could see the big hand on the wall clock trundle around to ten past nine. She gasped as Greg Bolton’s mum banged on the glass; and she continued to look as the woman said something about a meeting before just walking away, glancing over her shoulder and checking her watch again. What Jo found strange about Mrs Bolton’s slightly hurried walk was when she tossed what looked like silver
coins into the grass on her way out.

  Jo’s attention returned to those inside the classroom, and in particular to Ben who was standing rigidly in a corner speaking with Miss Aimy, looking up at her admiringly.

  And then something very odd struck her. What was all the fuss about at the school gate? And even stranger, why was Mrs Bolton here, when clearly her son wasn’t, and then there was the golden coloured ribbon hanging down from a cracker attached to the ceiling, and why were they standing around it as though it were some kind of shrine, or Maypole?

  Her mind ran at a thousand miles an hour, her eyes were everywhere at once because Jo knew something was seriously wrong here. It thudded home and now it was Jo Tower’s turn to bang on the window, to shout into it, but all her actions couldn’t touch the enthusiasm of the kids as they danced around the Head and Mrs Brammer.

  Jo turned and ran up the ramp and into the cloakroom where a couple of mothers still nattered. Her shoes slipped and she went down, smacking her knees into the painted concrete floor, dragging her hands and nails against the wall, and bumping her head against the doorframe. The mothers gasped and began moving toward her, but before she had even come to a halt, Jo was scrabbling to her feet again without taking her eyes from the classroom. She ran for the door, screaming for them to stop, for Christ’s sake stop and move aside. Her hand clamped the doorknob and turned it.

  * * *

  He turned but she had gone. His eyes narrowed to slits, and he wondered why she had come here, if not to drop her brat off at school. Maybe she wanted a fight with him; maybe she just wanted to see his face now that he’d learned this school was a large enough place to skin a cat. Maybe there was some kind of trade-off going on here; you kick my boy out of school, I peel the skin off your pussy. She was a sick woman, as sick as the boy she spawned, and he was glad to see both their backs.

  To Mr Jackson, Mrs Brammer appeared even more excited than the kids did. And now that the bitch had gone, he could actually pay the class and their exuberant teacher a little attention. “My,” he said in a deep voice, rubbing his chin, “what have we here?” He developed a large grin in response to the kids’ screams, and Mrs Brammer clapped her hands together before her large breasts, and looked so happy that Jackson thought she would pee herself.

  “What time is it, Jodi?” he asked. “What time is it, Ben, and Andrew, Michelle? What time is it, everyone?” They all shouted and Mr Jackson tilted his head downward, hand cupped behind his ear. “I can’t hear you. What time is it?” It was like a pantomime, and it gave him the spark of an idea for Christmas this year.

  Sherman had done a splendid job of decorating the ceiling, but the question why he had decorated the ceiling didn’t even occur.

  Everyone shouted, all eighteen children, Mrs Brammer at the top of her girdle-busting lungs, and even shy Aimy, all yelled, “Ten past nine!”

  “Here goes!” Mr Jackson theatrically re-read the card and then pulled the beautiful golden ribbon. And as he looked up towards the ceiling, anticipating a loud crack and feeling the tickle of crepe paper shapes spilling into the air and tickling his cheeks, he noticed a tiny red smear on the ribbon. It looked just like blood, uncannily like it. And for the briefest of moments, he thought that maybe he shouldn’t have pulled the ribbon, because where else had he seen blood this morning? His cat had been stripped of its skin and he thought he knew who had done it – Margy Bolton. She would have blood on her hands, wouldn’t she? Even if she’d washed her hands, there’d still be smears of it left, wouldn’t there?

  But this thought was preposterously late. As the door burst open and a woman screamed into the room, Mr Jackson gave the beautiful golden ribbon a mighty tug. All eyes looked upwards and something unexpected happened.

  Everyone blinked.

  Everything ran in a time so slowly, so painfully slowly, that those standing below the vent as it gushed a translucent yellow liquid onto them, could do nothing about it. The liquid flooded through the vent for a short time, quickly as though it was storm rain gushing from a drainpipe. Its vapour seared the air, it was acrid, and it took their breath away.

  The liquid splashed everyone, soaked them through in less time than it took to move aside. It spared no one, except Ben, standing in the far corner, and Jo, just sliding into the classroom. It leapt into their eyes, stung them before they could blink and penetrated their thin clothing as though it wasn’t there at all, and then it stung the skin on the young ones, and on the adults, like an acid. They inhaled it and they swallowed it; eyes widened, mouths opened to scream, arms outstretched, fingers straightening, curling as the fluid ate them.

  But it wasn’t acid.

  It splashed onto the floor, its vapour leaping around the room in a fraction of a second. It caught the light like the sunlight trapped in the mist of a garden sprinkler. If it weren’t so painful, it would have been beautiful.

  Mr Jackson’s right hand was still in the process of pulling the beautiful golden ribbon as hard as he could when the decorative cracker went bang! The last dregs of petrol poured into the mass of flames that erupted like an inverted mushroom cloud bursting into the classroom.

  Greg Bolton’s plastic chair in the naughty corner, warmed, distorted, melted and pooled on the floor quicker than it took Aimy to run for the windows, her hair on fire and the skin around her eyes already peeling off her face like rashers of streaky bacon. She wanted to reach for the window catches, with her dying breath, if that’s what it took, open them, and get the kids to safety.

  But the latches were closed. And they were locked. The silver keys were missing. Aimy wrestled desperately with the latches, pulling one completely from the window frame until the enormous heat pulled the very life out of her and she slumped to the floor.

  Mr Jackson stood on the piece of floor on which he would die less than thirty seconds after letting go of the beautiful golden ribbon. His shoes would melt into the linoleum and would provide the only clean piece of floor, unaffected by fire, smoke and subsequent water damage, for the fire investigators to look at. He boiled almost instantly, as did Mrs Brammer, who fell to the floor screaming, holding her flabby arms up to protect her flabby face in a gesture about as effective as a government health warning on a Cruise missile.

  The flames of individuals were lost among the flames of the many. The inverted mushroom expanded rapidly and filled the classroom, climbing the walls and tracking across the ceiling to meet itself in the centre of the room where it radiated heat downwards and destroyed even those hiding farthest from the centre of the flame.

  Jo screamed and held onto Ben. They very nearly made it back to the door, which had swung shut again after Jo barged her way in. They were only two or three feet away from it when they went down, Ben underneath and Jo over the top of him trying, or so it later looked to the investigators, to protect him from the enormous heat. They lasted only seconds before the searing temperature rendered their lungs empty black bags, useless for everything except determining they were still alive when then the fire raged. Then the radiated heat from above pounced on them too.

  At the door, screaming as the classroom turned a hot golden orange, were two mothers who had been talking in the cloakroom.

  The glass turned a brilliant orange, trimmed at the edges with a dark red blending into black; and they swore the window bulged, rippled and shrank, cracking in wild curved lines. They heard the children screaming and then the window blew out altogether and the white ceiling tiles disappeared into the orange-lit roof cavity as though sucked into world never seen before.

  The windows looking onto the playing fields, where Mrs Tower and Mrs Bolton had been standing only minutes before, burst outwards and sprayed toughened glass over a hundred yards. Following the glass was a flame front and a small shock wave hovering around the 300° mark.

  Everyone inside Class B was dead.

  The Yorkshire Echo

  PAC Founder and eighteen children murdered in school firebomb

  Eighteen children and
four adults burned to death in an East Sussex school yesterday. The shocking news erupted shortly before lunch after firefighters battled for an hour to bring the blaze under control. The Chantry House School and nearby houses in Blackstone were evacuated.

  Among those thought to have perished in the blaze is Josephine Tower (38), one of the co-founders of the People Against Crime (PAC) movement, and her six year old son, Ben.

  A Sussex Police spokesperson said that a preliminary examination of the scene suggests arson, and if that is the case, then a full murder investigation will be launched. The spokesperson went on to say that enquiries are still in their early stages but it seems the classroom was engulfed in a fire ball strong enough to blow out the windows. Police are refusing to speculate at this stage of the investigation as to whether the attack was meant personally for Mrs Tower, or was an act of sabotage against the school. Terrorism has been ruled out.

  The school is not expected to re-open for a month to give investigators time to gather evidence, and to allow for rebuilding. The funerals of those killed will be announced by the Coroner later next week, a full service will be held at St Marks this coming Sunday, with a contribution from Sir George Deacon. Police are still urging any witnesses to come forward in what surely ranks as one of the most horrific crimes on English soil this century.

  Mrs Tower’s co-founder, Emily Cooper, was unavailable for comment today, but PAC issued a statement offering sorrow to those killed and expressing disgust at the perpetrator. The statement said this was precisely the kind of crime PAC had campaigned against for so long, and expressed regret that The Rules had not been in place earlier. There is no shortage of objectors to the legislation and speculation will surround this crime until the offender is brought to justice.