The End of Never

by Tammy Turner

  Scrambling for his dropped pistol, he spat a wad of blood onto the oil-stained asphalt. The gun rested against the bottom of the fence that enclosed the dumpster and his fingers wrapped themselves consolingly around the cold trigger.

  But his shots missed the tires screeching over the cement curb and onto Tangle Wood Lane. Behind the steering wheel, Cyrus panicked, his claws fumbling to shift the clutch into the right gear. He had not driven more than a hundred miles altogether in his whole life. His bare toes struggled to grip the gas pedal. A Volkswagen Beetle swerved to avoid slamming head-on into the careening delivery truck.

  Under the graceful magnolia trees that threw their long shadows across the street, Cyrus barreled forward down Tangle Wood. He could not have known that of all the directions he could have picked to drive, this one would take him to a dead end. The road tapered eventually into the entrance of Collinsworth Academy.

  With his chest heaving, Officer Scott sprinted to his idling patrol car. He jumped in and slammed down on the gas pedal. His tires swore as he tore away from the gas pump. Chasing Cyrus onto Tangle Wood Lane, he left a quarter-inch of rubber behind.

  “Collinsworth!” the officer figured. He switched on his flashing blue lights and siren. “I’ll trap him there.”

  He did not, as Rhonda had hoped, call for back-up.

  18

  Crash

  Headmaster Sullivan licked his lips. There were still no lights, which he realized as soon as his fingers flicked a switch on the wall. No power meant no students. He might have to cancel the next day’s classes. Drowsy and gorged from pudding, he staggered into the daylight from the dim cafeteria.

  “What a way to start the school year,” he grumbled. Rumors had made their way to him that the Board of Trustees had hired a headhunter over the summer. “Faculty expansion,” they had called it in the e-mail he received before classes started. He knew that they would put his head on a platter if enrollment dropped again.

  Roaming the empty, silent quads, he listened for the buzz of chainsaws. Glancing at his gleaming silver watch, he realized it was nearly two o’clock in the sweltering afternoon. “Long lunch,” he said in excuse.

  Passing Drake Hall, he hastened his steps when he heard the bell tower strike the new hour. It chimed twice over the abandoned campus.

  “Callahan,” the headmaster muttered and chose a cement path toward the main quad.

  On the top of his head, a chocolate glob of pudding jiggled in the sparse strands of his thinning hair. His belly swayed back and forth over his leather belt. Onward he marched, unaware of the melting pudding on his bald spot until a brown trickle ran down the creases of his forehead and onto his eyelids. Momentarily blinded, he stumbled over a gaping crack in the sidewalk. The cement met his palms with a curt smack.

  “Blasted pudding,” he cursed. Of course he knew that he’d put his head in the pudding bucket. But he reasoned he’d had no other choice. No one had seen him do it.

  “YouTube that!” he shouted in vengeance, shaking his fist in the air, still resting on the cement. The infamous Booger Bash episode (as it had henceforth become known among the student body) would not be repeated this time. “One million views,” he spat, but he felt assured that the pudding escapade was still private.

  “No one caught me this time with my fingers where they shouldn’t be,” Headmaster Sullivan said, his head pivoting from side to side for trespassers.

  “Callahan?” he asked into the air. A blackbird perched on the peak of the bell tower answered with a cackle before she flung herself into the air.

  “Callahan!” the headmaster bellowed. The chubby caps of his skinned knees poked through freshly torn holes in his pudding-stained khaki pants. He finally picked himself up from the cement and brushed the dried leaves from his backside.

  He huffed toward the main quad. It was not the same as he’d left it before lunch. There were no trees on the ground, no trucks in the parking lot, no chainsaws buzzing, and no Callahan.

  In his ears, he heard the blood pump through his heart like drumsticks on a snare drum. A sharp, burning, electrical sensation spread from his left shoulder down his arm.

  “Where did that man go, anyway?” he asked the empty quad. Finally, he went to lean against the side of the cannon called Bloody Mary.

  The blue tarp that Callahan had erected over the excavation pit in front of Bloody Mary flapped loosely in a light breeze. One stray, gray cloud floated like a puff of smoke in front of the blazing sun. Dr. Sullivan wiped his brow with the back of his hand and lapped up a few drops of chocolate clinging to his skin.

  “I give up,” he muttered in defeat, bracing himself against the black hull of the cannon.

  His champagne Jaguar sat close by in the main parking lot. Dragging himself to the car, he clutched at his burning chest while his fingers fumbled to unlock the door.

  Climbing inside, he turned the key in the ignition and glanced at his reflection in the rearview mirror. “Madman!” the accusation stumbled from his gaping mouth, the only word he could think of to describe himself. He ruefully observed his chocolate-stained forehead and rumpled hair. Soaked with sweat, his stiff collar now drooped limply. His khaki dress pants had deteriorated beyond repair.

  Warm air from the broken air conditioner blasted from the dash vents, raising the temperature inside the car to one degree less than the surface of the sun.

  “I don’t feel well,” the headmaster moaned. He rubbed his sore left shoulder, the heavy beat of his heart pounding in his ears. A chill shot across his clammy skin.

  Laying his head back against the leather seat, he closed his drooping eyes. He could see that a desert with mountainous sand dunes loomed around him. Circling vultures spread their wings in the sky above his bald, sunburned head.

  When he moaned and shifted in the seat, his rear end was abruptly confronted by the bulge of his wallet. He remembered that it held a credit card: the black American Express with gold letters. Normally, he did not carry it. She never ever let him hold it, unless he was buying a present for her.

  He giggled like a school girl.

  He had borrowed the card from his wife the day before to fill the empty belly of the Jaguar and she had forgotten to ask for it back.

  “Tisk, tisk,” he scolded himself and wagged a fat finger in his own face. “You’re being naughty.”

  Laying his head back against the seat again, he closed his eyes and imagined a new future for himself. Snickering mischievously, he felt warm sand squish between his toes. A pink sunset illuminated the blue water stretching from the palm-lined beach to the far horizon.

  He imagined an island beauty with cascading black hair asking him, “Can I get you another drink?” as she bent over his beach chair to adjust his sun umbrella with her bare, tanned arms. He believed that no one would find him and he began to snicker. The joke built up in his sore gut. His hilarity grew louder, spilling from his throat, until his guffaws shook the cabin of the sweltering Jaguar.

  Behind him, the magnolias of Tangle Wood Lane swayed back and forth in a burly breeze. The black iron gate that separated the entrance of Collinsworth Academy from south Atlanta swung on its hinges.

  What he did not realize was that a white truck was speeding toward his parked Jaguar. Not until the driver figured out that he was trapped inside a dead end did he slam on the brakes.

  Dr. Sullivan did hear a squeal above the slowing rhythm of his pounding heart, but lost in his daydream, he paid no attention to the sound. Suddenly his beach chair cracked beneath him and spat him onto the beach. The thump in the rear end of the car jolted him wide awake. He cursed angrily, his body smashed against the steering wheel.

  He looked at the rearview mirror to see who had done this to him. He saw a white delivery truck squealing in reverse. Ready for battle, Dr. Sullivan scrambled to open his door. Pouring his girth onto the sidewalk, he rolled far away from the damaged Jag. He was startled to look up and see an Atlanta Police cruiser roaring into the parking lot, b
lue lights flashing and sirens blaring.

  Officer “Crunch” Scott had not earned the nickname by driving cautiously. While in the Academy, he’d totaled three cruisers. He had only one driving style: fast and furious.

  The officer’s palms, slick with sweat, slipped off the steering wheel, sending the cruiser veering over the cement curb and onto the sidewalk. Officer Scott regained his grasp and turned the steering wheel hard to the left. His tires bounced against the black asphalt, suddenly gripping the road. With the back end of the car fishtailing, Officer Scott rammed his foot on the gas pedal. His strategy: barricade the only exit before the truck driver could turn around in the parking lot.

  “I got you now!” he yelled at the top of his lungs at his cruiser’s windshield. The Collinsworth entrance gate loomed ahead. He had already been there once that morning and knew classes had been cancelled: no students, no innocent bystanders to get in his way.

  “You’re mine now!” he shouted.

  “Car Seventy-seven,” the radio dispatcher said. “Report your position.”

  Officer Scott ignored the call and took his foot off the accelerator.

  “Car Seventy-seven,” the dispatcher repeated, her husky voice muffled by static.

  Officer Scott flipped off the radio and slammed on his brakes as the paved asphalt of Tangle Wood Lane terminated into a dead end.

  The two front tires of Car Seventy-seven came to rest on the peak of a yellow speed bump. Scattered leaves and thin tree limbs littered the deserted parking lot. Dead ahead idled the white truck.

  In the truck, hovering over his steering wheel, Cyrus grinned, his fangs peeking out over his lips. Wagging his tongue, he aimed his front grill at the police car and gunned the accelerator.

  “Chicken!” Officer Scott had time to spit out before his engine died. “No!” he screamed, his fist pounding the dashboard. Again he turned the key, even as Cyrus was bearing down on him. “Tenth time is a charm,” he muttered, when finally the engine revved under the hood.

  By the time the police officer slammed the accelerator to the floor, the grill of the truck had already filled his windshield.

  Cyrus howled as the police car shot forward, and he swerved his truck sharply to the right—just fast enough to miss hitting the cruiser’s front bumper. As if swatting a buzzing fly with his tail, Cyrus brushed the police car aside with the heavy steel grill of the truck. Tapping the brakes, he stared into the rearview mirror, watching the cruiser spin out of control. Finally, a champagne Jaguar arrested the tornado that was Officer Scott’s car.

  Cyrus shuffled out of the parking lot, the wheels rolling north furiously along Tangle Wood Lane. He knew how to find his way home, and getting back there with his passenger would take a lot less time by truck than by paw.

  In the parking lot, two bewildered men each surveyed their wrecked cars and shook their sore heads. “Alive,” they both sputtered and patted their chests as they tallied the damage from the accident. As for the officer’s mangled vehicle, it was echoing a drowsy whine. This was what was left of the emergency siren, which finally waned and died. The blue lights on top of the car were still flashing and spinning, as if the chase were still in progress.

  “This is bad,” Officer Scott said, shaking, as he stared at the crushed grill and dented hood. The two front tires had blown on their bent wheel rims. “I’m sorry,” he apologized to Dr. Sullivan. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding!” he said in a panic.

  Rubbing the dried pudding above his blackened right eye, the headmaster shook his head. “Not blood,” he explained. He sat down on the curb of the sidewalk.

  Officer Scott joined Dr. Sullivan on the curb, his blond head hanging against his knees. “Guess you don’t have to worry about getting a new tire for that spare we put on this morning,” he observed. Although the front of the Jag looked fine, the back end was crushed.

  “Don’t worry about it, young man,” Dr. Sullivan assured him, gazing at the shards of glass scattered over the pavement that used to be his rear window. “I hated that car.”

  Officer Scott smiled only slightly, the possible end of his young career weighing heavy on his broad shoulders. “Can I give you a ride somewhere?” he asked, patting the headmaster’s shoulder as a plume of smoke rose from under the hood of his police cruiser. “After I call for some tow trucks, I mean.”

  Headmaster Sullivan raised his eyebrows. “Oh, no,” he declined. “I’ll walk,” he said, and he headed to Callahan’s on Mockingbird Lane.

  But he could not have known that at that moment, Callahan was tucking a white, button-down dress shirt into his pressed black slacks, planning to meet Alexandra. He considered himself lucky to have found the shirt in a drawer untouched by the beast. He slipped his tuxedo jacket over his shoulders. He swiped a speck of dust from his lapel.

  At the curb outside on the street, an impatient cab driver honked sharply three times.

  “One more thing,” he told himself, and he shook his favorite cape free from a heap of rumpled clothes on the floor. “Travel light,” he assured himself, gingerly navigating the stairs to the foyer. He did not stop to lock the front door, because he thought he had nothing worth the time of a burglar. Climbing into the back seat of the taxi, he laid his cloak across his lap and handed the driver a hundred-dollar bill. “For your trouble,” he explained and rested his back against the seat. “Park View Tower, sir, and hurry, please,” he told the driver.

  Behind Drake Hall, amid the overgrown weeds and cigarette butts, Dr. Sullivan gauged the height of the stone wall that separated his campus from the cemetery on the other side. Crawling across on his stomach, he ripped a button from his dress shirt.

  With his belly poking out from the gaping hole, he staggered past the headstones, his shoulders shivering despite the August heat. He reasoned Mockingbird Lane should be on the other side of the low hill that he was climbing. He crept up the knoll slowly, panting for air in the muggy heat.

  “Ah, ha!” he shouted from the peak. “I knew it.” His eyes lit on the roof of Callahan’s rented Victorian.

  The downward slope of the hill helped renew his race past the weathered headstones and the puddles of red mud that pooled across the ground. Finally, he rested his arms atop the stone wall that separated the perimeter of the cemetery from the city street.

  Meanwhile, Callahan, in the back seat of the taxi, narrowed his eyes on the signet ring he twisted around the ring finger on his left hand. He did not notice the headmaster shimmying over the wall and to the sidewalk.

  “The Order will not believe me,” Callahan muttered to himself. “Kraven—the Dragon King—is real.”

  In the front seat, the cab driver made the sign of the cross, then lurched the taxi from the curb.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Sullivan had staggered to his feet on the sidewalk. Snarling and filthy, he clambered across the street toward Callahan’s house like a determined zombie. Dragging himself through the mud-splattered front yard and up the rickety wooden porch steps, he gasped and raised a clenched fist.

  Resting his heaving weight upon the front door, he knocked once and stumbled forward into the tiled foyer. “Hello?” he called from his knees. “Hello?” he yelled up the staircase. He helped himself up with a firm grip on the banister.

  There was only silence: no answer, no footsteps.

  Suddenly there was the clap of a wooden screen door at the back of the house. This noise lured him down the hallway from the foyer to the kitchen.

  “Callahan?” he shouted when the back door rattled again in the breeze. Grumbling, he latched the door for good and peeked out at the backyard.

  He noticed a gaping hole in the dirt. “What in the blazes is he doing out there?” Dr. Sullivan said. “I need to remember to check his resume again.”

  His eyes landed on the kitchen counter. “Now what have we here?” he asked, his fingertips gliding giddily over the thick, gold chain.

  Wrapping the treasure around his neck, he stifled his chuckling when a determined knock
rapped on the front door.

  He waited silently and motionless, hoping the visitor would go away. But the creaking hinges announced that there was another visitor to the house. Dr. Sullivan held his breath as footsteps walked toward him down the hallway from the foyer.

  “You’re not Callahan,” the bearded man greeted the headmaster.

  “Mr. Frost?” Dr. Sullivan asked of the apparition, just before the intruder lunged at him.

  Stumbling backward, Dr. Sullivan slipped against the ceramic tiles. Abruptly, the back of his skull cracked against the countertop.

  “Frost!” he stuttered, looking into the intruder’s face as he slipped into unconsciousness.

  19

  Stupid Girl

  O-M-G, Alexandra thought when she shut her bedroom door behind her and slumped to the floor. She was beginning to suspect that Benjamin was the most handsome boy who had ever spoken to her in the whole seventeen years she had been alive. As such, she was mortified that he was in the living room, looking at pictures on the table of her when she had braces and a frizzy perm.

  Behind her back, a wet nose sniffed at the crack at the bottom of the door, while a pair of anxious paws scratched at the polished hardwood floor. “Jack, hush,” Alexandra said. She cracked the door open to let her bulldog inside the bedroom before he mauled a hole through the wood.

  “It’s okay, little man,” she said, stroking the top of his furry brown head. She patted her lap for him to curl up with her.

  Jack nuzzled her palms with his curious, twitching muzzle. With the scent of dried blood clinging to his flaring nostrils, he growled and backed away from Alexandra. Stuffing his hind end under the bed, he crawled backward and huddled against the wall under the mattress, his body shaking.

  “What’s wrong, Jack?” Alexandra pleaded with him. She crawled on her hands and knees across her bedroom floor and raised the ruffled bedskirt to peek at the dog.

  He smelled the blood on her hands and quivered, barking at her.