Whisper Down the Lane

by Clay Chapman

  Mr. Woodhouse was in the middle of the circle. He had no clothes on. He had selected a boy from the ring—duck, duck, GOOSE!—and ushered him into the center and set him down on his back and, oh it’s Tommy, it’s Tommy Dennings, and just as the circle’s swaying reached its peak, the students’ voices no longer their voices but the ululations of something far more carnal, necks bent back, eyes rolling up into their skulls—

  Mr. Woodhouse was staring directly at Sean.

  No peeking, he whispered.

  When Sean shared a version of this with the kind policeman, and then later with the kind Miss Kinderman, and then with the not-so-kind district attorney, he said he was scared of Mr. Woodhouse because now his teacher knew that he peeked when he wasn’t supposed to. He was afraid, very afraid for his life, and his mom’s life, because Sean knew Mr. Woodhouse’s secret.

  The jury heard bits and pieces of Sean’s recorded interviews, but the story now belonged to the prosecutor and Miss Kinderman. Each added their own narrative flourish—making sure that Sean’s words were heard—spinning his story further and further out. Perhaps this unknown assailant heard the prosecutor tell Sean’s story in the courtroom; or heard snippets of it on the six o’clock news from their local anchor; or read about it in the newspaper. At a certain point it didn’t matter who was telling the story. The story belonged to everyone now.

  This unknown assailant must have pictured these ritualistic sex acts committed right there on the floor during circle time, as he—or she—poured an accelerant over the carpet. Kerosene splashed across the blackboards. Over the desks. Along the walls with all their hand-drawn pictures. The Crayola stick figures. Their spiraling eyes.

  This unknown assailant backed out of the room, using the last of the kerosene to draw a highly flammable tail across the hallway floor.

  The fire woke closer to the cafeteria. A slithering snake of flame wound all the way back to Mr. Woodhouse’s classroom and made its hissing presence known.

  The self-portraits turned to kindling. The desks collapsed. The fiberglass tiles along the ceiling blistered and fell, exposing heating ducts and wires.

  The glass within the framed photograph on Mr. Woodhouse’s desk cracked, then burned. The picture of his wife and daughter, smiling for the camera, curled into flame.

  Shortly before two a.m., a truck delivering the local newspaper noticed the smoke. The driver phoned the fire in from the closest gas station.

  By the time the fire department arrived, the blaze had spread through most of the school’s northern hall, where the kindergarten and Head Start classrooms were located.

  Sean woke to the sound of sirens tearing through the street. The rumble of a fire truck passed his window, the flimsy sheet of cardboard taped to the frame losing its grip and slipping to the floor. He lifted his head just in time to see the truck zoom by their house.

  Greenfield only had a volunteer fire service, necessitating the usage of the neighboring county’s department, twenty miles away. By the time their trucks pulled up, most of the building was on fire. The families were already there. They stood before the blaze, faces bathed in its glow. The Gilmores. The Cardiffs. The Dellacorts and Denningses. The Blackmers. The Evanses.

  They came to watch the school burn.

  DAMNED IF YOU DON’T

   RICHARD: 2013

  You’ve made other people very, very angry. Mom’s words keep echoing through my head. Others. She said there are others. Others watching me.

  But it wasn’t Mom. It couldn’t be.

  “Good morning, Richard,” someone says as I pass them in the hall. I don’t see their face. I don’t even know who said it. I couldn’t sleep last night. I can’t focus on who’s in front of me.

  “Morning,” I respond automatically. Was it a teacher? Do they even work here?

  Nod. Smile. Repeat: Good morning, good morning, good morning…

  “Morning, Rich.”

  “Morning.”

  You’re talking to yourself again, Tamara would say if she were here with me, slipping her head into my field of vision and finding my eyes, snapping me back into focus.

  Was I? I’d usually ask, trying to play it off. Sorry…Just got a lot on my mind, I guess.

  Talking to myself. Talking in my sleep. Talking to someone who’s not even there.

  Kinderman. It has to be Miss Kinderman. The more I think about it, the more the notion takes root. There’s no one else. Who else knew all these pieces of my past? Memories I can’t even remember. She’s the only one. Now she’s pretending to be my mother.

  It has to be her. I can’t shake it now, the certainty of it. But why?

  When winter hits and it’s too cold for me to bike, Tamara, Elijah, and I drive to school together in the family Jeep. But this morning I was out the door before Tamara had even crawled out of bed. I didn’t say goodbye to either of them. I needed to leave before Eli woke. I had to think about how I was going to handle this. The kid thought I killed his cat, for Christ’s sake. There was something he knew. Something he wasn’t telling me.

  Did you think I wouldn’t find you? she’d said. That you could hide from me?

  Kinderman is the only person who makes sense. Has to be her. Had she gotten to Eli somehow? Asked him to play along?

  The Polaroids. How the hell could Kinderman have taken all those photos of Sandy? Five-year-old’s aren’t alone for even a second these days.

  Is Sandy in danger? Why isn’t she saying anything?

  “Morning, Richard.”

  “Morning, Hallie.” Was that Hallie?

  “Morning, Rich.”

  Miss Castevet is no longer the first to arrive at school. Ever since Professor Howdy passed, she’s drifted. She doesn’t say a word when we walk by one another. Her face is downright sour. Jesus, can that biddy scowl. What did I do to her? Why is she looking at me like that?

  Others. The word echoes in my mind.

  Teachers shuffle to the faculty lounge for a top-up, filling their travel mugs to the hilt with coffee before heading to class and beginning their day.

  I should go straight to my room. I should avoid everyone. But my body is locked on autopilot, letting my feet lead me wherever they want, where they always go at this hour.

  Welcome to the teachers’ lounge. Our Alamo. The lounge holds all the essentials for our survival: a fridge full of milk containers and Tupperware lunches. A coffeepot simmers throughout the day, the odor of burnt Folgers filling the room.

  Mr. Dunstan hums to himself on the couch. His face is hidden behind a newspaper, but I know it’s him.

  Miss Castevet sits at the round table by the kitchen area nursing a mug of tea. She’s staring off into space. Her eyes hold on to nothing. Lost.

  Hadn’t I just passed her in the hall? How’d she get here before I did?

  “Good morning, Richard,” a voice speaks behind me.

  I spin around too fast.

  Condrey steps back. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to startle you…”

  “No, sorry, my fault.” How can I play this off? “Didn’t get much sleep last night.”

  “Everything all right?”

  “Just fine.” I never envied Condrey’s job. Always juggling the expectations of the progressive parental pack, keeping the school’s numbers up to maintain its reformist status. She serves so many masters. The board of education. The parents.

  Others.

  “Can I talk to you for a quick sec?” she asks.

  Mr. Dunstan lowers his newspaper long enough to clock Condrey and me, then quickly lifts the paper back up to continue humming. What’s that song? It’s really nagging at me now.

  “I just wanted to check in. See how everything went last night.” She leans in and whispers, “With Sandy’s mom?”

  I can’t meet Condrey’s eyes. I glance off to the side.

 
Miss Castevet is staring straight at me now. Something has snapped her back into focus.

  “Miss Levin called my office a couple of times,” Condrey says. “She won’t leave a message. I haven’t had a chance to call her back, but she’s clearly wound up about something.”

  Just tell her…

  This is my chance. I can tell Condrey everything. She’s opened the door for me.

  Tell her!

  Mr. Dustan’s humming has intensified. It’s like he’s conducting a fucking one-man symphony. The drone is so loud, it’s all I can hear. How can Condrey stand it?

  “I’m talking to all her teachers,” she says. “Just in case they’ve noticed anything.”

  “Anything,” I echo. If I were a bit more shrewd, I would have picked up the context without her having to spell it out. But I’m far too tired for that now. Too numb.

  “Have you seen any signs of trouble?” she asks, rather diplomatically.

  I focus on Miss Castevet. She hasn’t blinked. Her eyes sharpen themselves against me. I notice the corner of her mouth lift into the slightest smirk. She’s grinning at me.

  I can tell Condrey is losing her patience. “Have you?”

  Mr. Dunstan’s song drills into my head. The drone of bees. A whole hive. I can see them pushing against the insides of his cheeks, his face bulging, pulsing, alive with writhing insects, his mouth full of them, struggling to break free, break free and sing, sing, sing their song for all to hear.

  “I haven’t.”

  “Nothing?” Condrey sounds doubtful. “Nothing at all?”

  “Nothing at all.” I turn to the coffeepot. I open the cabinet above the sink and grab a mug, any mug. This one reads: don’t talk to me until this mug is empty.

  “Miss Levin has been a handful all year,” Condrey says behind my shoulder. “Don’t worry, I’m dealing with her.”

  I turn toward her. There must be a puzzled look on my face because she winks right at me, as if to suggest that we’re in this together. Or is it something else?

  Why would Condrey wink at me? Why is she smiling like that? “It would help if you could keep an eye on Sandy for me. Make sure she’s okay. We need to stay on top of this.”

  “Of course,” I say, pouring coffee.

  “Has Sandy…talked to you at all? Said anything that might lead you to believe there’s something going on at home? Anything?”

  This coffee is going to eat a hole through my intestinal lining. I can already taste the acid building up in my stomach. But I have to occupy my hands with something. Focus on something, anything, other than this conversation. Other than Miss Castevet—her eyes following me across the room. Other than Mr. Dunstan’s insectal sonata. I have to keep myself from humming along. It’s in me now. I can’t get the ear-worm out of my head.

  “She hasn’t said anything to me,” I say, just to fill the air with the sound of my voice and block out everything else. I pull the half-gallon cardboard carton of milk from the fridge. There’s a black-and-white photograph of a face on the carton’s side. A boy smiles back at me. His pixelated face is blurry due to a misprint, his features smeared away from where they’re supposed to be.

  have you seen this child?

  It’s Eli. His face is on the carton. The milk slips out of my fingers. Condrey and I both leap back as it crashes to the floor.

  Mr. Dunstan finally—finally—stops humming as he lowers the newspaper. The room sounds so quiet now. The silence is worse. It’s somehow even louder now than when he was chanting. He was chanting, wasn’t he?

  Condrey says something, but I can’t hear anything other than the reverberations from Mr. Dunstan’s song. I thought he stopped. Did he pick up the chant again, or is it in my head?

  The song. What is that song?

  Milk gushes over the floor, pulsing out from the carton. I lean over to pick it up and then turn back to the other teachers in the lounge. “Which one of you did this?”

  Miss Castanet doesn’t say a word. Dunstan shakes his head a bit too quickly.

  “Richard?” Condrey asks. “Are you okay?”

  I have to pinch my eyes shut for a moment, squeezing them tight before opening them again and discovering the face of another child, some other boy, not Elijah, smiling at me.

  I nod to Condrey. Even approximate something like a smile. All good.

  “Just let me know if anything comes up.” Condrey keeps at me. She’s choosing to pretend nothing happened. “If we miss something, we could really be in trouble.”

  Dunstan’s humming again. I almost yell at him to shut up shut the fuck up but I have to keep it together.

  The song. Now I remember where I heard it. I knew I recognized it. It’s from the made-for-TV movie, during the opening credits sequence.

  I leave the spilled milk behind and rush out of the teachers’ lounge and into the hall.

  “Richard—” someone calls out.

  Get to class, I think. Just get to class. I’ll be safe there. In my room. I pull out my keys, rattling in my hand as I fumble through them before finding the right one and bring it up to—

  The door to my classroom is open.

  I notice the glow first. The slightest flicker of firelight in the otherwise dark room.

  Someone broke into my classroom. My room. I feel the sting of it, the very violation of this intrusion. I should turn on the lights. There are no windows in my room since it’s located in the middle of the building. With the lights off it’s truly pitch-black. But something tells me not to hit the switch. I want to see what’s laid out before me. Take it all in the way it’s meant to be.

  By candlelight.

  The desks have been rearranged into a circle. A ring of red and black votive candles are positioned on the desktops, drawing me in but not quite illuminating the center of the circle.

  I step inside, even though I know I shouldn’t. I shouldn’t be entering this space.

  Run, Sean says. RUN.

  But I can’t. I can’t turn back. Not now. Not ever. Someone has done this for me and me alone. They want me to see this.

  To bear witness.

  The flames flicker when I step in, my very presence in the room disturbing the air. My eyes roam, adjusting to the darkness, seeing what I couldn’t before. All the pictures on the walls, all my students’ drawings, have been defiled, each one crossed out with frenzied Xs. Pictures of families slashed in magic marker. Ceramic pinch pots shattered. Our papier-mâché projects have been torn open and thrown to the floor. But the center of the room is clear. Clean.

  I want to be clean.

  There are markings on the floor. Even before I can see it completely, I know what it is.

  A pentagram.

  Just like the opening scene from the movie. Like the ritual I described to Kinderman. To all those adults who lapped up my story like so much spilled milk.

  I feel eyes on me. The shadows in the room shift. Something is moving. Behind me. Over my shoulders. In the corners. Something hiding inside the dark. I turn and see them. All of them.

  Dolls. A ring of puppets stripped of clothing. They’re the same kind of anatomically correct puppets you’d find in a therapist’s office. Point to where the bad man touched you…There have to be dozens of them, too many to count, all of them left in various sexual positions around the room. A fucking orgy in the toy shop. I can almost hear them moaning—no, singing.

  I walk toward the pentagram.

  This is for me.

  All for me.

  That’s when I see it. A severed hand. Perched upright, palm facing the entrance. Facing me. The fingers are so small. Even from a safe distance, I can tell it’s a child’s.

  The gray boy. He’s come back for me.

  His fingernails shine like the sun, the tips on fire, burning toward heaven.

  Waving at me.

&
nbsp; Hungry, Sean? Take. Eat. For this is my body…

  Someone shrieks behind me, pulling me out of my reverie. Miss Gordon screams in the doorway.

  DAMNED IF YOU DO

   SEAN: 1983

  “If you’re just now tuning in, you’re watching Satan’s Playground: Devil Worship in America,” Manuel Cassavetes soberly intoned, speaking directly to the camera. “I’d like to encourage parents to please make sure your children are not watching this unsupervised.”

  The glare of the studio lights was too bright for Sean. He couldn’t help but wince and squirm in his seat. His hair clung to his sweaty brow. His suit was itchy. His collar only grew tighter at his neck, his tie constricting around his throat.

  “What you are about to hear is shocking,” Mr. Cassavetes continued. “It is heinous. But above all else…it is very, very real.”

  Sean kept his attention on his host.

  “Though we may never know what the exact number is,” he said with scripted precision, “as of this live broadcast, it is estimated that there are over a million practicing Satanists in the United States. One million. The mind can only reel at such a staggering figure.”

  A woman from the studio audience gasped, using her hand to fan herself with Pentecostal furor. She reminded Sean of Miss Betty. How long had it been since he’d seen her?

  This felt more like church services to Sean. Mr. Cassavetes preached his own televised form of fire and brimstone. The producers populated their pews with a motley assortment of audience members—churchgoers, self-professed devil worshippers, heavy-metal fans, and schoolmarms. A few waved homemade signs.

  keep satan away from our babies.

  mcdonalds donates 2 the devil! ray kroc gives 20% to satan.