Maybe it is, thought Lenore, and the thought saddened her immensely. So many of the students were either predator or prey, in actuality or in training, and so whenever a fight broke out they had to see it, as though watching fights would provide them with clues about how to act in their respective roles.
Sarah was also looking closely. But not at Albert anymore; Sarah was now focused intently on Lenore. The cheerleader's face was curled in a derisive, malicious smile, as though she knew all about Lenore and knew that a confrontation with this particular teacher could actually be won by a student.
"Enough or what?" asked Sarah with a snort.
Lenore blushed. Sarah might be right: Lenore was the type of teacher that even a student could get away with bullying sometimes.
Sometimes. But not today. Not when the target of the bullying was someone as obviously harmless and good-natured as Albert. Besides...Lenore had a bit of a talisman - a silver bullet of sorts - in the case of the rude young woman who now looked down her nose at her.
Lenore leaned in close and whispered her secret to the cheerleader: "You leave this boy alone right now, or I'll tell everyone why you never cheer at the swim meets."
The sentence had the desired effect: Sarah's mouth opened, then shut again. The girl's perfectly tanned face turned a shade lighter as the blood drained from it. Then she mumbled, "I'm not very hungry now," and left the line, pulling her cronies from the cheerleading team along with her.
Lenore turned to tell Albert he could go to the front of the line. It would be paltry repayment for the constant humiliation he had to stand at the hands of people like Susan, but it was what Lenore had power to do.
Albert, however, was gone. She cast her eyes around, looking to find him, and saw one of the nearby doors - the opposite side of the cafeteria from the one that Sarah had gone through, thank goodness - swinging shut as Albert went through it and disappeared.
Lenore hurried out after him, managing to catch up to him in the school's "quad" - the common area that was directly behind the cafeteria and in which the students tended to congregate after eating their lunches.
"Hey," she called. Albert didn't so much as pause. If anything, he sped up, as though afraid that Lenore would be the one to bring the next round of bullying into his life. She had to physically grab his arm to arrest his movement.
"You okay?" she asked.
Albert tried to look sullen and tough, but all he could manage was a visage of half-veiled fear. "They're all out to get me," he said.
"Sarah's just a teenage girl," Lenore said, even though the "just" was a stretch. Sarah was the most stereotypically nasty teenage girl she had ever had the misfortune to encounter. "Teenage girls can be difficult sometimes," she continued.
"It's not just them," responded Albert. "It's everyone." He blinked back tears, clearly trying vainly to hold onto whatever perceived dignity he might be retaining.
"Come on," said Lenore. "I'm sure it's not everyone."
"It is," insisted the student. "It's everyone."
Lenore touched Albert's arm. She smiled, trying to make a connection with this sad, lonely boy. "Not everyone," she said. "Not me."
Albert looked at her, and Lenore was heartened to see what looked like a smile trying to break through his expression of dismay.
"Why won't she cheer for the swim meets?" he asked suddenly.
For a moment, Lenore's gentle smile faltered. She didn't know if she should tell what she knew. She had found out the information when in the school office one day: one of the school's two counselors had left a file open on one of the tables, and Lenore had happened to see a notation inside it, so she didn't know if it would be any kind of a breach of confidentiality to talk about what she had seen.
But then she decided: she had made no promise to keep the contents of the file secret. It had been an accident that she had found out. Besides, if revealing the information would keep Albert safe from future attacks, then it would be worth it.
"She's afraid of water," said Lenore. "Like, really afraid. She won't even get near a pool."
The smile that Lenore had seen fighting to emerge from Albert's expression was just millimeters away from seeing daylight now as he practically inhaled this wonderful bit of information as to his nemesis' Achilles heel.
But then, in the instant before the smile could emerge fully formed, like a butterfly from its chrysalis, Lenore's own expression changed from reassurance to horror, and she screamed as Albert's eyes started to bleed.
Only no, it wasn't blood. Instead it was some kind of viscous black fluid that was dripping now from his eyes, his nose, and had begun spurting from the boy's ears.
Lenore screamed again, backpedaling wildly, tripping over several nearby students and bringing all of them down in a heap.
Silence reigned in the quad as she regained her feet.
She slowly looked back at Albert, prepared to rush him to the school nurse, or perhaps even just to get him in her car and bundle him off to the small hospital in the next town.
What she saw stopped her heart.
She saw nothing. Albert was fine. No blood. No black ooze dribbling in spurts from ears and nose and eyes. Just a sad-faced boy with concern writ large in his eyes.
And then the worst thing Lenore could think of happened: Sarah West, bitch-cheerleader extraordinaire, had apparently come out onto the quad during the momentary fracas. She seized the moment: "Geez, Freakshow, you even frighten the teachers," she shouted.
The students all laughed, obviously scrambling to grab onto any excuse to break the uncomfortable silence.
Albert looked around at the laughing faces and pointing fingers, and Lenore could practically see the thoughts in his mind: his worst fears being realized as all his peers pointed and laughed at him. They were all against him.
He ran out of the quad, eyes awash in tears.
And Lenore, stunned at the fact that she had just seen a student hemorrhaging what looked like old motor oil and then just as suddenly return to normal, didn't do anything. She just watched him leave.
What's going on? she asked herself.
She didn't know the answer. But she thought of Sean Rand disappearing, and then of Albert's horrifying visage as he had...bled...and for the second time that day she pulled her sweater tightly around her shoulders even though the weather was warm.
What's going on in Rising?
***
SIX
***
Jason held his flashlight high so as to take in as much of his surroundings as he could. His flashlight was powerful but small, so that it created an almost laser-like beam that slashed through the darkness in thin slivers, illuminating only glimpses.
The glimpses were enough.
Blood was everywhere; he could immediately see what Hatty had meant when she had said there was "too much blood." Shelves were knocked down, and....
Jason knelt and felt at the floor of the basement. It was concrete, tough and unyielding. But in spite of the strength of the material, he saw what he could only describe as long furrows or gashes in the ground. As though...
(as though a monster's claws had gashed the place while gutting the boy)
...as though something had gone to town on the floor with some kind of chisel or something.
Jason pursed his lips. What could have caused this? he wondered.
Then he whipped around suddenly.
Had something moved behind him?
He cast his light around as he again sensed as much as saw something moving, something dark and dangerous. He was reminded of another dark time, another dark place, and could almost hear a gun cocking, could almost feel a man lining up a woman and her innocent son in his sights.
Jason turned again, soon finding himself spinning around, ever more disoriented and afraid.
There! He had heard it that time, he was sure of it! A gun cocking. Just like...
(just like that night)
...he had heard countless times at the Academy in
Los Angeles, just like he heard all the time now when he practiced at the makeshift firing range he had created behind his own home.
Then the beam of his flashlight caught something. Something dark and small and round. Rolling along the floor toward him.
Jason stooped and picked the object up with trembling fingers.
A black crayon.
He flashed back to that night, that dreadful night, and once again...
Elizabeth's feet disappear into the darkness of the alley.
Jason is almost there. But too slow. Moving too slow.
Something rolls out of the alley: a single crayon. Black.
Complete silence, save only the sound of blood pumping in his ears.
He runs as though through syrup, cloying and nasty, pulling him one step back for every two steps that he takes.
He can hear his watch ticking. Slow. Everything is slow. Tick...tick...tick....
Then, at last, a pair of hard, fast sounds pierce the night: two gunshots.
Jason felt every fluid ounce of blood drain from his face in an instant; felt himself grow cold and weak and faint as his heart started pounding again at his ears. He shone his light all around, but he was alone.
Only him and the ghosts of the dead in this room, in this place, in this entry to Hell.
He left then, almost running out of the basement, sure when he reached the top that the door
(and the door was closed had he closed it he didn't remember closing it so what could have closed the damn thing)
would be locked to his touch; that he would have to stay and learn in the most horrifying fashion exactly what had taken Sean away.
But no. The door opened easily on well-maintained hinges, and Jason was through the door in an instant, fairly slamming it shut behind him in his hurry to get away.
It was only after he had been standing in the kitchen for several seconds that he realized he was still holding something tightly in his hand.
The crayon.
"Aaron?" he whispered.
The name of his dead son seeped into the still depths of the house, like the susurrations of dying leaves as they cast themselves from a tree that would sleep through the winter, leaving behind so much of itself in the process.
Nothing moved. All was silent, dark, deep.
Haunted.
A chill prickled at the back of Jason's neck as the word leapt into his mind unbidden. Haunted. Ghostly. The ghosts of the past were here.
He left the kitchen quickly, and for some reason he felt himself consciously avoiding looking at the microwave. Even though he had unplugged it, even though there was no way that it could hurt him, even so he did not want to look at it, convinced for a moment that if he did he would once again see those horrible, blurred green numbers.
Haunting him.
He went back into the entry, then went up the steps to the second floor. He was spooked, but he still had a job to do. Still had a boy
(no boy there was too much blood, far too much blood)
to find.
He went into the first room and could see at a glance that it was little Sean Rand's room. Bed shaped like a racecar, a pinboard with family pictures above a used desk that had clearly been inherited from his daddy, a chest of drawers. It all fairly screamed out to him of Sean's presence.
Jason poked through a few things, but found - as he had expected - very little. Only evidence that a truly nice kid had spent hours of happy time here. He moved to the desk and opened a drawer, then cried out in disgust as hundreds - no, thousands - of black, writhing cockroaches squirmed over and upon each other within the drawer. Jason felt himself propel backward, knocking into the bed and falling onto it with a small cry before managing to stand up again.
He could hear the cockroaches hissing. Did cockroaches hiss?
He reached out to slam the drawer shut, to trap the vile insects inside until he could come back with some gloves and find out what had attracted them to this place...then he stopped in mid-motion.
The roaches were gone.
But what was there - what had not been there before, he was sure of it - was equally disturbing.
He opened another drawer, and it had more of the same. Another drawer, and still more. Soon all the drawers in the room were open, and Jason felt something inside himself slide, as though he were a mountain and a part of him were sloughing away to plummet thousands of feet, never to be found again.
It can't be, he thought. Not here, not like this.
Every single drawer held the same thing. Thousands of them, all exactly the same, all bringing forth memories of a night - of the night - with their dark, burgeoning power.
Crayons. Thousands and thousands of black crayons. Just like the one that Aaron had dropped before....
Jason stared at the crayons all around him, unsure what they meant, unsure what to do. He actually pinched himself, hard enough to draw blood, to make sure he wasn't stuck in some insane dream; to make sure that he wasn't going to wake up and find himself still hunting in the woods.
He looked over then, and saw one more thing that chilled him to the bone.
A clock on the windowsill. Digital. A happy clock, Donald Duck with a clock inset in his belly. Normally this would be nothing but a fun though kitschy child's plaything. Three-fifteen in the afternoon and all's well.
But as Jason watched, the numbers shifted. Blurred, just like the microwave clock had done, the numbers suddenly disappearing in a faded swatch of gray on the LED screen. And again he heard Sean's mother, Amy-Lynn, saying "The clocks" in that gravelly voice from beyond.
A cloud moved over the sun outside.
Shadow draped the room in darkness.
Jason's breath caught in his throat. He stared at the clock for along moment. Then the cloud moved past the sun. Light returned to the room, and with it the clock returned to normal once again. Jason felt himself breathe once more.
At least, he breathed until he looked again at the desk. And this time the breath didn't catch in his throat, no this time it exploded out of him in an insane rush of air that left him instantly gasping. Gasping in the center of a room filled impossibly with darkness and black crayons and blurred clocks and there...on the desk...in a place where just a moment ago there had been nothing, there was now a piece of paper. Large and white.
The kind that children drew on in school.
Jason couldn't move for a moment. Then he did move. He grabbed the paper and crammed it in his pocket, then left. Fast.
The paper felt like it was burning him all the way down the stairs, charring a hole in his pants and then in his leg itself, searing its way through to his femur.
The paper was large and white. The kind that children drew on in school. And on it, in large, panicky letters written in black crayon, there were four words. Four words on a paper that Jason was damn sure had not been there only moments before. Four words that chilled him even as they burned:
I wiL be FiRSt.
***
SEVEN
***
Lenore drove slowly down the street. It was deserted, which was unusual for this time of day. Generally there would be kids playing, neighbors chatting.
Today, however, there was nothing. And she had the strange feeling that she was being watched; as though the silence that had enveloped the town hid within it some kind of watchful, angry presence. Something that resented the inhabitants of Rising; something that wanted the town for itself.
Still, Lenore continued looking.
Finally she saw what she had hoped she would: after hours of rolling up and down Rising's streets, over and over, she saw Albert, camcorder in hand, filming his feet as he walked dejectedly down the sidewalk.
She pulled up next to him and rolled down her window.
"Albert," she said.
His head jerked up to look at her. He looked afraid, as though he had not noticed the car pulling up beside him. Worse still, when he did see the car and who was driving it, the look of fear only int
ensified. He cringed as though about to be struck some serious blow, the look of someone who had been beaten down so many times that this was the only way he had left to react.
He saw her, and started running.
She got out of the car without thinking, pausing only to turn off the engine before running after him.
"Albert, wait!" she hollered.
"Why? So you can make me look stupid again?" he shouted back, not slackening his pace, rapidly drawing away from her.
Lenore tried to keep up, but was no match for the heavy but deceptively fast kid. He leapt over an ivy-laden fence, halting only an instant at the top to scream at her, "You're all out to get me!"
Then he was gone.
Lenore's shoulders drooped. She had wanted to explain; to tell him...
What? Sorry I shouted but I saw your eyes start to bleed?
She turned and walked slowly back to her car. What could she have told him? And for that matter, what had caused that strange vision in the middle of the school?
A cloud fell across the sky. A storm was coming.
She walked by a house on the way back to her car and heard a chilling sound: the sound of a door shutting and a lock being thrown. In all her time in Rising, she could not remember ever hearing those sounds together before. Locks were something that out-of-towners used, not the people of this hamlet in the mountains. It was a measure of the fear that had fallen over the town, though, that people were actually trying to keep the monsters at bay with such basic methods as turning locks.
The wind blew for a moment, and Lenore could see stray wisps of fog curling down from the mountains, beginning the long crawl toward Rising. Soon, if they continued unabated, the fog would roll over the town, and all would be lost in the white darkness. Fog in Rising could reach otherworldly levels, making it all but impossible to move about, so thick that you could literally lose sight of your house - lights ablaze and all - within ten feet of exiting. It was never a death-sentence, as the fog usually came when the temperatures were fairly warm, so it wasn't as though getting lost would mean anything other than getting wet and uncomfortable until you could find your way to a friendly haven, but the fog was tremendously isolating and even frightening.
Rising Fears Page 5
