Dark Halls - A Horror Novel Read online

  7

  Ryan stuck his key into the front door of his mother’s house, unlocked it, and entered.

  “Ma?” he called out. “You home?”

  Cynthia Herb emerged from around the corner of her kitchen and greeted her son with eyes that defined anticipation. “Well…?”

  Ryan sauntered towards his mother with the swagger of a celebrity, swinging his suit jacket over his shoulder and pumping his eyebrows to complete the effect.

  “You, my darling mother, are looking at the new fifth-grade teacher at Pinewood Elementary School.”

  Cynthia rushed forward and hugged her son. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m so proud of you!” She then held him back at arm’s length. “They let you know already? So soon?”

  Ryan nodded. “I know, I know—it was a shock to me too. I thought they’d at least have me back for a second interview before saying anything. I guess they really are desperate for teachers.”

  Ryan’s mother punched him on his arm. “Oh, stop it—that’s not why they hired you.”

  Ryan tossed his new suit jacket towards the back of one of the living room chairs, but missed, and the jacket fell to the floor. Ryan was indifferent, but his mother snatched the jacket right up and punched him again.

  “I love how you treat your clothes,” she said, dusting the jacket off with one hand.

  “Hopefully, I won’t be wearing that damn thing anytime soon.”

  “Yes, well, your mother paid for it and would appreciate it if her son showed a bit more respect.”

  Ryan kissed his mother on the top of her head. “I’m sorry, Ma. You’re right.”

  This seemed to temporarily mollify her, but did not stop Cynthia Herb from making sure every last dust particle and strand of cat hair—she had three—had been wiped from her son’s black jacket. Satisfied, she handed it back to him and said: “Hang it up. And hang your slacks up too. Do it nice.”

  Ryan was already in the kitchen with his head buried inside the refrigerator. “I will in a second, Ma,” he called over his shoulder. “Anyway, like I was saying, the guy didn’t even look at my portfolio. We barely talked about the curriculum or anything. In fact, I thought I heard him wrong when he told me I had the job right off the bat.”

  Cynthia gave in, carefully hung the jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, then said: “Right off the bat? That’s odd—you were there for over an hour. What did you talk about?”

  Ryan’s head emerged from the fridge. In his right hand was a can of soda; in his left, a porcelain bowl covered in plastic wrap. He waved them around as he spoke.

  “To be honest, the guy was kind of weird. He seemed like he was more into scaring me than offering me a job.”

  “Scare you?”

  “Yeah, you know—all the crazy stuff that happened there over the years…It seemed like that’s all he wanted to talk about. Said he wanted to make sure I didn’t scare easy and ‘freak out’ halfway through the school year. I have to admit, some of the things he told me were pretty messed up.”

  Ryan’s mother walked toward her son and took the porcelain bowl out of his hand. She placed it in the microwave and pushed a few buttons.

  “I could have eaten it cold,” he said.

  “What kind of ‘messed-up’ things?” she asked. “Did he talk about the murders and the suicides?”

  Ryan tapped the top of the soda can a few times before he cracked the tab and took a sip.

  “Yeah, he mentioned them a little. But he talked about some other stuff too. Stuff most people don’t know about. Did you know a nine-year-old boy stabbed the principal in the foot with a pair of scissors? Apparently, this happened after hours. School was empty save for the principal and the kid. Creepiest part wasn’t so much the kid stabbing the principal, but what the kid was doing right before he stabbed him. Apparently, according to the principal anyway, the kid was under some kind of crazy trance, like he was possessed or something. Eyes all rolled back white, speaking in tongues, grinning like a psycho.”

  “You’re kidding me.”

  “I kid you not, Ma. The principal cracked him a good one after he did it, too. Banged him right on the nose. Creepiest thing was that the kid had no recollection of the stabbing whatsoever.”

  Cynthia folded her arms tight to her chest, a pacifying movement she often did when uneasy. Softly, she said: “Just like all the other children over the years.”

  “Yep. I’m telling you this guy Jerry Hansen—that was his name, the HR guy—he was like a fat little Vincent Price. One ghoulish tale after the other.”

  The microwave beeped, and Ryan retrieved the bowl. It was rice, veggies, and diced chicken, and half of it was in his mouth before it had a moment to cool. He garbled a curse with his full mouth and immediately took a big swig from his soda to put out the flames.

  “Serves you right,” Cynthia said. “You eat too fast.”

  Still chipmunk-cheeked, still chewing, he blew his mother a kiss.

  “Did you get to see the school? Or were you just in HR?” Cynthia asked.

  Ryan swallowed. “No, I got to see it. I met someone else from HR there for paperwork and stuff. Got a decent look around. Saw my classroom.”

  “And?”

  Ryan shrugged. “It’s a classroom.”

  “How does the school look?”

  Ryan shrugged again. “Looks like a school.”

  Cynthia made a face. “Smartass. I’m talking about the damage that was done after the fire.”

  “No traces as far as I could tell. Like it never happened.”

  “I imagine the district is hoping everyone else will soon adopt that line of thinking.”

  Ryan shoveled in more food, thought of the crazy lady who’d approached him by his car outside the human resources building. Wouldn’t count on it, he thought.

  “So, now you’ve got a job,” Cynthia went on. “No subbing, no long-term subbing, but a real contract. A permanent gig.”

  Ryan chased his mouthful down with more soda and burped lightly into his fist. “A permanent gig, Ma. I can finally get out of your hair and start looking for my own place.”

  “Oh, sweetheart, you know I don’t mind having you here.”

  Ryan knew that she didn’t. His mother was quite possibly his closest friend. They had been by each other’s side through much hardship over the years, and their loyalty to one another was unequivocal.

  “I know that, Ma, and I don’t mind living here; I really don’t.” And there was truth to this. Home-cooked meals? Laundry? A mother whose company you actually enjoyed instead of avoided? The only downside was, of course, the whole dating situation. Awkward thing to meet a nice girl out on the town, only to tell her you’d moved back in with your mother. True, he’d done so because every penny he earned from the plethora of shit jobs he held down went to tuition, and there was a kind of nobility in that, he supposed, but still, young men who lived with their mother would always carry a certain stigma, likely pioneered by that infamous proprietor of the good old Bates Motel.

  “However,” Ryan went on, “I think that at thirty, the time has come for me to move out of my mother’s basement before I start attending Star Trek conventions and the like.”

  “You just got a late start, sweetheart. You floundered for a little while, but you eventually found your feet. Your life is just starting.”

  She smiled a mother’s smile at him, and Ryan’s heart turned to goo.

  He hugged her tight, pulled away, and pretended to punch her lightly on the chin. “Thanks, Ma. I think I’ll keep you around a little while longer.”

  “Wait until I’m worth more money before you get rid of me.”

  “I’d get the house.”

  “You’d have to split it with your sister.”

  “Balls.”

  8

  Ryan stood at the head of the classroom, facing all twenty-eight students, all of them boys. No girls.

  Whenever he spoke, they laughed at him. When he tried to speak louder, they only laughed
louder.

  And then silence. But only silence; the children’s behavior did not change. They still taunted and pointed at Ryan, unaware that their once resounding laughter no longer had a voice. A silent film of students taunting their teacher.

  Ryan tested his own voice and found it useless, too. He was sure he’d spoken, felt the subtle vibrations of his vocal cords working; it was the volume that was broken. His volume, maybe? Had he gone suddenly deaf? Was the reason the children no longer registered the truth that their laughter had lost its voice was because it hadn’t? Good lord, did the fault lie with his hearing?

  Ryan went to speak again, louder now, to ask—beg—the children to stop laughing for just one damn minute and tell him whether they could hear what he was about to say.

  Ryan opened his mouth, but got no further. Anything he had to say, mute or otherwise, held no chance of coming out once he saw their eyes. They had gone white, all of them. Their laughter, still silent—everything still inexplicably silent—continued more so, their mouths—bigger now? Are they…bigger???—seemingly stretched beyond anatomical capacity in the throes of their uproarious fits.

  Ryan slammed the bottom of his fist on his desk and cried out. And his voice was heard, by him and the children; their laughter stopped, but the grins—too big, too fucking big—remained.

  Silence again. And Ryan went to speak again. And, like moments before, he got no further. The children had begun to chant in whispers, all of them in unison, not one out of sync.

  The volume of their chant grew, loud whispering now, like hisses from a den of snakes, their eyes still impossibly white, grins still impossibly wide, the zeal in their expressions growing with Ryan’s blatant fear.

  Working in the same unison of their chant, each child simultaneously withdrew a pair of scissors from their desks, each pair twice the size of their prepubescent hands, each pair as sharp as a surgeon’s blade; the irrational but rational order of the mind in dream state making this last fact a certainty without the need to touch the scissors’ steel.

  His feet now of course leaden, denying him movement, Ryan turned helplessly towards the classroom door. He saw the old principal, Mr. James, staring back at him through the small rectangular window of the door—the inexplicable logicalities of the dream world assuring Ryan that it was indeed Mr. James staring back despite his never laying eyes on the man before.

  And oh, how Mr. James was enjoying himself. Pointing and laughing at Ryan through that little rectangular window above the classroom door, his laughter as hard and as maniacal as the children’s had been.

  Ryan turned back to his class, noticed that all twenty-eight boys had now drawn back their arms, scissors cocked. Ryan held up his hands, pleading.

  All twenty-eight fired, Ryan waking with a cry before the blades found their target, recalling the cruel and illogical truths of the dream world he’d just experienced, now more than a little grateful for one more: you always woke a second before impact.

  ***

  Ryan had never pissed the bed before. Even during his most booze-infested nights of debauchery when younger, he had never pissed his bed. He now wondered, with no amusement, whether he’d popped his cherry tonight. He was soaked.

  Ryan quickly rolled out of bed, stood, and patted himself down. His boxer shorts might have been the only thing that was dry. The rest of him—tee-shirt, hair—was soaked through with sweat. His bedsheet and pillow too.

  Any relief Ryan might have felt for not pissing the bed was short lived. The remnants of the dream still hammered his pulse and stuck him with a twinge of shame. To be so physically affected by a nightmare.

  “Fucking Hansen,” he muttered.

  Ryan headed up the basement stairs and tiptoed into the kitchen. There was one bottle of water left in the fridge, and he chugged it down in one go.

  “Ryan?” His mother calling down from upstairs.

  “Yeah, it’s me, Ma.”

  She came downstairs in her night-robe. All three cats followed her down, took turns weaving in and out of her legs, meowing, hinting that getting a jump on breakfast might be a great freaking idea, please.

  Cynthia frowned at her son or, more accurately, his appearance. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “You’re as white as a sheet. Are you sweating?” She placed her palm on his forehead. “You don’t feel warm.”

  Ryan pulled his head away and placed the empty water bottle on the counter. “I’m not sick, Ma; I just had a bad dream, that’s all.”

  Cynthia frowned again. “A nightmare?”

  “And then some.”

  “You never get nightmares.”

  “I know.”

  “What was it about?”

  Ryan turned on the kitchen faucet, bent, and splashed water on his face. “All the crazy stuff the guy from HR told me about today,” he said to the sink.

  “Here—” Cynthia pushed a dish towel at her son.

  Ryan groped for it blindly, grabbed it, thanked her, and toweled off.

  “I guess the fat little Vincent Price got to you after all,” she said.

  Ryan returned what amounted to a courtesy smile and tossed the towel on the counter. “I guess he did.” He then frowned. “Did I wake you? I was trying to be quiet.”

  “I heard you shout.”

  “I shouted in my sleep?”

  “Well, I hope it was you. Otherwise there’s someone else in here with us.”

  “Jesus.” One of the cats, Sebastian, an orange tabby, jumped on the countertop. Ryan absently stroked him while reflecting on his dream, on the sobering fact that its intensity made him cry out in his sleep. “Must have been a hell of a shout if you heard me from upstairs. Did you not take your Benadryl tonight?”

  A problem sleeper who’d tried every drug on the market to find shuteye, nothing, at least according to Cynthia Herb, worked as well as good old over-the-counter Benadryl. Zonked her good. “No, I got my fix. It still woke me, though. It was a hell of a yell, honey. You sure you’re all right?”

  Ryan flashed on the dream again. He then flashed on the odd time he brought home a girl after a night out, a girl who didn’t mind getting playful in his mother’s basement, Ryan confident those quarters were soundproofed with Benadryl and two flights of stairs. His face reddened as he now wondered how many times he or his lady friend for that evening might have woken his mother during such an occasion.

  Pleasant thought. What, the nightmare didn’t fuck with your head enough?

  “Yeah—I’m good, Ma.”

  Cynthia went to the cabinet, retrieved a glass, filled it with water from the automatic dispenser on the fridge door, and then handed it to her son. “Here—have a little more water and then try going back to sleep. It’s still early.”

  “Any more water and I will piss my bed.”

  “Huh?”

  “Never mind.” He took the glass of water but didn’t drink it.

  She patted his cheek and smiled. “See you in the morning. Come on, babies,” she then called to the cats. Two of them followed her back upstairs. Sebastian stayed put on the kitchen counter, staring hard at Ryan. About that early jump on breakfast thing, that feline stare said.

  Ryan fed him, the act an attempt at taking his mind off his dream. He bent and stroked the cat who was eating greedily from his bowl.

  “You ever have bad dreams, Sebby?”

  Sebastian continued to devour his food.

  “No, I suppose not, ya spoiled little bugger.”

  He gave the cat a final stroke, smiling at the simple pleasure he was taking in his early meal. “Don’t tell your mother,” he joked. “You owe me one, buddy.”

  9

  Rebecca Lawrence arrived at Pinewood Elementary early Monday morning, before the building had officially unlocked its doors. The back seat of her car was stuffed to capacity and looked as though she was planning a trip cross-country. She was excited, she was anxious, she needed to pee, and she wanted a cigarette.

&nbs
p; Rebecca had attempted to quit smoking on her twenty-second birthday. It was a bumpy attempt at first, with the occasional one slipped here and there, usually out drinking with friends (those times were the worst; it was not unusual for her to go through half a pack in a night) or in times of stress. Now, however, as a teacher who would no doubt be preaching health and well-being to a bunch of six-year-olds, she figured it best to drop the habit completely before stepping foot one into her classroom.

  And so now, at twenty-three, she had officially kicked the habit, but the urges still taunted her, especially during those social outings and moments of stress, the latter currently taunting without mercy. Should she sneak one now? She was quite sure she still had half a pack buried somewhere in her glove compartment. How old and stale they likely were crossed her mind, and the risk of carrying the odor of smoke into the building on her first day for a quick drag or two of something that probably tasted like shit buried the idea. She opted for her go-to during such times: gum.

  She dug in her pants pocket for the pack she always kept, unwrapped a piece, and began chewing with a purpose. Better.

  She checked her watch. Five to eight. Five minutes until the building opened, or so she was told. Anxiety continued to tickle her belly. The kids weren’t even arriving for another week and a half, yet the fingers of anxiety continued doing their thing.

  She chewed faster. Sometimes her mind was her greatest foe. Her ability (habit) to entertain every little worst-case scenario—what if the staff hates me? What if I finish setting up my room and it looks like crap? What if what if what if—was likely the reason she still lived at home with her mother. Was assuredly the reason she had not entertained a serious boyfriend in over two years. Home was safe. Being single was safe.

  Oh, she’d had her flings in high school and college, even a year or two after graduation, that stretch of time when most refuse to accept that college life had ended and the real world had begun, but she never secured anything serious. Her friendships too were similar. Sometimes frequent, sometimes fun, but never reaching “bestie” status.