Chapter 8

Monday Morning. October 31st. Halloween Day.

Susan Ascot, the high school English teacher, told herself she wouldn't be nervous this time, but like every other time, it didn’t help. She didn’t often have to speak at the morning assembly, but no matter how few and far between the speeches were, she still didn't like doing it. She knew it shouldn't be such a big deal. As a teacher, she was used to speaking in front of tough crowds, but something about speaking in front of the entire school made her queasy as a gutful of oily grilled cheese sandwiches. The air felt different, darker and thicker, probably because it was Monday morning, the worst day of the week for anyone, but it was more than that. It was all those eyeballs staring at her. Fifteen or twenty sets of eyes she could handle, but not several hundred of them, and at least in the classroom she could peer back into those eyes and almost see what they were thinking.

She came in early to give herself enough time to wake up, downed a few cups of the strongest brew she could make. May as well drink oil, she thought. She was originally supposed to announce the upcoming yearbook activities as well as the new chess tournaments starting up that week. She was to discuss the "no jacket" policy and explain why it was a good thing, even though she didn't agree with it herself. She always believed kids should be allowed to express themselves with their clothes as freely as possible, no matter how bizarre some of them looked.

The schedule had changed, however. Now she had the terrible duty of discussing the death of Garrett Tucker, their gym teacher. What a horrible task, telling a gymnasium full of fidgety teenagers one of their favorite teachers was dead. Of course most of them probably already knew, but it would be a shock nonetheless, facing it, bringing it out in the open. Assemblies had a way of doing that, of inciting the very emotions normally locked up in the students. It got them going sometimes, and Susan hated to be the one at the podium when bad news had to be dispersed.

That morning, the teacher's lounge sat empty. A heavy melancholy permeated the halls. The murders in Devonshire took a toll on the townsfolk, and it grew more and more impossible to ignore. In the past it was easier to forget and tell yourself it couldn’t possibly happen again, that it truly was a renegade trucker with a disturbed childhood passing through, and now that people had caught on to the possibility of his existence, he would quietly move on and pick some other town to terrify. If that were true, Devonshire would be able to pick itself up, lick its wounds and get back on living, move forward again and put the past behind it. But now, with Garrett added to the list of horrible deaths, that self-induced fantasy fractured.

Susan tapped a spoonful of sugar into her coffee. It was bitter today. She sat at the short table with the wicker back chair, stirring in the sugar when Mrs. Whitley strolled in, pert and alive as ever.

Mrs. Whitley taught English to the younger grades. She was a frail little woman, well over sixty and quite possibly into her seventies. Her fragile skin lay loose on her bones, stretched too hard and left to wrinkle. She wore several rings on each finger, rings of all types and sizes that clanged together as she ambled down the halls or wrote on the chalkboard. She used her rings as attention-grabbers, clapping them together when students got out of hand. She wore her hair so tight it made Susan cringe, pulled into an old-fashioned bun, the epitome of practicality.

Susan stiffened a little when she entered, feeling suddenly aware that she had been slouching, and Mrs. Whitley laughed.

"What's the matter, Susan?" She went to the cupboard and rummaged through it. "You look peaked. You're not ill, are you?"

"No, Mrs. Whitley." Susan took a quick sip from her coffee. It burned her lip a little. "I'm just going over what I'm going to say at the assembly."

"Oh, are you handling that?" she asked. "I'm so terribly sorry. That will be so hard to do…considering."

"I'll do my best," Susan said.

"I'm sure you will. We'll all be there behind you, you know. Isn't it just terrible about poor Mr. Tucker, though? And his wife being pregnant and all?"

Susan shook her head. "I can't believe it. He lived right across the street from me."

"Yes, appalling. Absolutely appalling. Don't worry, love. This town has been through bad times before and it's come out just fine in the end. I've been here for a long time and I've seen it through thick and thin. Everything will be all right."

Susan took another sip from her cooling coffee and a wave of nausea rippled through her. She fought back the urge to retch.

“Are you sure nothing is wrong?” sweet Mrs. Whitley asked.

Susan tried to shake it off. “Just nerves, I suppose.”

Though Susan wasn’t so sure. It felt different from nerves. Susan has always been a little psychic, not like a mind reader, but intuitive, in tune with something just outside of the world. Her grandmother was the same way. When she felt this way, it usually meant something was wrong, or something bad was about to happen. Bad omen.

When Mrs. Whitley finally left the room, the nausea passed. Susan took a deep breath and followed her to the gym to take care of business.

##

When the assembly started, Joe and Lisa had strategically positioned themselves at the lowest end of the retractable bleachers. Students filtered in quickly and the place was filling up. Usually, on assembly mornings, an annoying squabble filled the air, along with an encapsulating laughter of cliques and groups mingling. But this morning there was none of that. This morning carried a stifled silence now, with students moping around like zombies, as if the school had been punched in the collective gut. Joe and Lisa fought a couple of sophomores for the rights to their seats, but in the end they won and sent them off with sulking glares. They would be able to easily slip from their seat and move through the back doorway without being spotted by any teachers if they timed it right, but already their timing was off.

"Where the hell is Burt?" Joe eyed the clock. It was past eight and Burt wasn't there yet.

"He's always late," Lisa said. "What are we supposed to do about him?"

"We can't wait." Joe grew annoyed. Every time he had a plan, something went wrong with it. "We're going to have to do it without him."

Lisa shrugged. "Fine. But let's hurry, before I lose my guts."

When Ms. Ascot stepped to the podium in front everyone, Joe tensed and leaned toward their escape route.

"Ms. Ascot is talking today," Lisa said. "Bummer."

"What do you mean?" Joe craned his neck over the crowd looking for any sign of Burt.

"Ms. Ascot," she said. "I talk to her all the time. She hates talking at assemblies."

"I'd rather be doing that than doing what we're about to do."

“Yeah, me too. Let’s do it.”

Together, they slipped through the side gymnasium door, unseen.

##

To Joe, school hallways were strange without students bustling through. Dull echoes followed as he passed along the lockers and quiet footfalls became echoing thuds. They were no longer filled with scuffling feet and were now long, polished bowling alleys. A wave of guilt flowed through Joe, seeing how clean the halls were. He couldn't believe the same man whose house could have won an award from Better Homes and Demolition had done the cleaning here.

Without frenetic students rushing through the halls, the school was a dried out, empty husk of a heart without its beating lifeblood. An ominous dark cloud hung over it, spreading over the whole of Devonshire, and Joe felt it originating somehow right here.

Stanley Gruber is not the one…but he knows. He knows.

His father's words echoed in his head. Everything was twisting in on him. He glanced at Lisa. What should he tell her? He already told her about his father. She had been far more receptive than Burt, but despite it all, some part of it didn’t feel real. The possibility still existed that this reality lived wholly in his deranged, insane-in-the-membrane head. Now was not the time to discuss this with her. They had their current task at hand and he no idea what the outcome would be, but somehow he knew this would determine all of his future actions. Stanley Gruber knew. What did he know? Did he know about the demon? Or would he simply confirm the clanging fear in Joe's head, that he had gone completely nuts, a still very real possibility.

Lisa looked over at him and tried to smile, but it was only a weak twist of the lip.

"We're going to be all right," he said, but as they turned the corner, they bumped directly into Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson was one of the out-of-town teachers that taught in the middle school. He was an obese fellow who always wore a tie, usually some variation of brown, and a man with a reputation of being strict with his students.

Joe and Lisa looked up at him with big moon eyes, knowing they were caught and thinking fast about how they were to explain their absence from the assembly, but Mr. Wilson didn't seem to have the life in him they would have expected.

"Aren't you kids supposed to be in the assembly?" His voice droned, devoid of emotion.

"Yes sir," was all Joe could manage to say. "Yes sir."

"Then you better hurry," he said. "It's probably started by now."

He walked on, right by them and turned the corner without a look back. Joe poked his head around the corner and watched him go, then leaned against the wall with a sigh.

"He must have known Mr. Tucker pretty well," Lisa said, and Joe agreed. They moved on.

At the entranceway to the basement level, they crept through and closed the door silently behind them.

Darkness enclosed them.

Joe reached his hand out for light switch, but Lisa drew into him.

“Wait,” she said.

She leaned against Joe. Her warmth enveloped him and he flushed.

“What?”

Lisa kissed him. She tilted her chin to him and pressed her lips into his, and his skin exploded with heat. He kissed her back and it felt right.

“I’m sorry,” she said when it was over.

“Don’t be sorry,” Joe said.

“I’ve been wanting to do that a while. I figured now would be the perfect time.”

“It was.”

“Good,” Liss said. “Let’s keep moving, though. I really don’t want to get stuck down here, okay?”

“Deal.”

Joe fumbled over the wall for the light switch. His hand brushed along a slick layer of moisture, humidity produced from the hot running machinery below. A stench filled the place, a mixture of oil and mustiness, like an old damp closet, not so far off from the stench of Stanley’s house. Here was truly the dark kept secret of the school, the place it would have never wanted anyone to see, because only then would one truly know it.

"Come on," Joe heard, and then a light above them flickered to life. His heart froze momentarily until he realized Lisa had her hand on a switch. "Got it."

Joe resumed breathing. "You scared the hell out of me."

"I think we've been saying a lot of that lately." Lisa turned away from the door.

A short flight of stairs led downward into the basement. A thirty-watt bulb cast off a pale yellow glow, barely illuminating the top of the stairs. Rows of cleaning supplies and oozing plastic bottles of pink and green and blue liquids lined thin shelves along the stairwell shelving. When Joe was six he remembered he used to take his mother’s cleaning supplies and mix them all into a big bowl, awaiting a chemical reaction that would produce a magical cure-all or maybe even a superhero potion. He wished he had one of those now.

Down below, the light dissipated and left the bottom of the stairs in sullen darkness.

"I'm going to kill Burt," Joe said. "We could really use him about now."

Lisa's hand shot out and took his. She squeezed tight and her arm pressed against his. Under other circumstances, Joe might have enjoyed it, but he was just as scared as she was.

"Let's go." They descended the stairs slowly.

At the bottom, they fumbled around for more light switches and found a string dangling before them. Joe yanked it and a hazy light came on over their heads, painting the area in a reddish hue. A narrow corridor stretched ahead of them. Moldy sheets of old plywood covered the walls. A dampness settled along the concrete floor, and the musty smell was much stronger down here.

Lisa's hand gripped Joe’s tighter.

"This is where he hangs out."

"Yeah."

"Well," she said, "Let's hurry up and get out of here."

They moved quietly along the corridor until they reached a “T” junction leading left and right.

"Which way?" Joe asked.

"That way I guess." Lisa motioned to the left. "Who knows?"

The corridor continued ahead a short distance and turned right again, where they found a series paint-peeled doors filled with more cleaning materials, stacks of recycled paper, and a sink closet for dumping mop buckets.

Further down, after pulling several strings for light, they came across a larger room filled with discarded school equipment. The plywood sheets disappeared, leaving the dusky concrete as stark and ominous as ever.

"Look." Lisa pointed to a shadow filled corner. "There's a cubby hole."

They clambered over the muck for closer inspection. Stanley Gruber’s characteristic stacks of junk stood everywhere, teetering.

Lisa shivered with a chill.

“You okay?” Joe asked.

“There’s a set of drawers down there,” she pointed to the floor.

“Hmmm...”

A worn antique dresser leaned against the interior of the cubbyhole covered with stacks of old books. Joe nudged open the bottom drawer with his foot.

“What’s that?” Lisa squinted at it through the darkness.

Joe bent down and pulled a ratty magazine from within. It was news printed and torn along the edges, worn from constant handling. With disgust, he turned the pages.

“Porn,” Lisa said.

“It’s torture porn.” He dropped the magazine like it had suddenly sprouted talons and struck him.

He slid the drawer closed again with his foot and turned back to Lisa.

“There’s something definitely wrong with this guy...”

Something stung the back of Joe’s head.

It felt like a hot knife had pierced the skin, taking him off-guard. He stumbled forward into the wall and clocked his forehead. It was only an instant, and when he finally regained his composure, he tried to turn, but his head swam with dizziness. He fell to his knees, catching himself with his left arm.

He wasn’t sure what just happened to him. It felt like a giant bee shooting its stinger into the side of his head.

“Oh...”

Another sting slammed into his temple, that same burning feeling, and he fell backward onto the wall this time, barely aware of his surroundings now, perhaps in a dream.

The scream brought him out of it. Lisa’s voice erupted from the dark and reached a high point in the air, piercing his eardrums.

What’s happening to me?

The horrible sound came again. The scream.

Lisa’s voice.

“Lisa...” he heard his own voice as if separate from himself, but the sound came out like a bitter squeak, barely audible.

Reality warped.

The room spun in slow motion. He saw shoes, not Lisa’s but someone else’s standing before him, and he tried to follow the shoes upward, looking at the grimy brown pants, all frayed at the bottom. It didn’t take long to realize who the shoes belonged to.

Stanley Gruber.

Joe’s head bumped the floor. He shoved himself away from Stanley. Already, knots rose on the sides of his head. Stanley Gruber had struck him with something. He couldn’t tell what, but whatever it was, it was as hard as a brick.

Joe waited for another blow to come, the final one that would take not only his consciousness but possibly his life. Lisa’s screaming died away and he wasn’t sure if it was because she had stopped of her own accord or if he just couldn’t hear it anymore. Stanley Gruber’s shoes shuffled toward him and Joe gathered the strength to look up. The muscles of his neck ached like all else but when his eyes met Stanley’s, he found the anger seething in them, and the conviction. He also saw Stanley’s hand rise, ready to strike with the same weapon. It was an old hammer handle.

Joe brought his arms up to protect his head from the coming blow, shot his right foot upward, blindly. It connected full force with Gruber’s groin, halting the arc of the hammer handle.

Stanley released a coarse gasp and staggered back a step.

Joe’s head throbbed. His mind slipped away. Stanley lurched when Lisa leaped into his field of vision. At the last foot of Stanley’s backpedal, Lisa lifted a long-handled broom, bristles up, and gave him a hard shove that knocked him off balance. He fell to his left and barreled into one of his stacks of boxes.

“Damn it!” Stanley cried out and scrambled to his feet, still holding his crotch.

Lisa screeched and almost dropped her broom as Stanley pressed toward her. Joe, only half aware of what was going on, lumbered to his feet and threw himself at the man. What he hoped would be a full-blown tackle turned out to be more of a pin-wheeling stagger. Still, the force of his body weight caused Stanley to stumble away from Lisa. Joe managed to hook his arm around the janitor's neck and hold himself there.

Stanley Gruber growled, phlegm bubbling in his throat. He brought his left elbow up, connecting with Joe’s ribs. A dull thud rebounded through his torso. Joe’s breath escaped. He lost his grip and fell to the floor. Stanley leaned down, his face only inches away from Joe’s now, his breath stinking like stale cigarettes and halitosis.

“You’re dead, you little bastard.” He raised the hammer handle. Joe prepared himself to die.

“Hey!” Another voice.

Stanley turned to it and then he was sailing across the room. Another pair of shoes entered Joe’s field of vision. It was Burt.

“What the hell? Why’d you guys come down here without me?” Burt hoisted Joe up to his wobbly feet. “What did that dirt bag do to you?”

Lisa positioned herself so Burt stood between her and Stanley, but Stanley wasn’t moving. She still held a tight grip on the broom handle. Stanley lay against the wall, slumped over like a wrinkled blanket, stunned.

“He knows,” Joe breathed, holding his pounding head. “He’s not the killer, but he knows who it is.”

“What?” Aggravation pulsed in Burt’s voice. “I thought you said it was him?”

“I thought so, too,” Joe said, “but I was wrong.”

Burt took a menacing step toward Stanley. “Well if he knows, then let’s make him tell us.”

Stanley focused on Burt and he pushed himself as far back to the wall as he could go.

Joe waited. And watched. Stanley looked pissed off as all hell, but he didn’t look scared. Maybe he was wary, but he wasn’t scared of Burt towering over him. They all knew Burt could kick the hell out of the janitor in about five seconds, but there was a madness in Stanley’s eyes, something that said he didn’t care how much you kicked the hell out of him. Stanley might not have been afraid of Burt, but he was afraid of something, Joe realized.

“Tell us about the demon,” Joe said. He didn’t expect the reaction he got.

Stanley’s face twisted into a wretched grimace. A weak, helpless gurgling crept up and out through his throat like a chain rattling up and out of him.

“What do you know about her?” Tears welled up in Stanley’s eyes. Something took the life right out of him, pummeled him down to the bone.

Her?

“I know enough to know it’s been here a long time and that it’s been killing people.”

“Leave her alone!” The janitor buried his face in his hands. He wept openly, shoulders heaving, his entire frame quivering.

“What’s going on?” Burt asked. “How do you know all this?”

Stanley peered up into the dank room. His eyes shook in their sockets. The tears stopped, replaced with a desperate fear.

“Is she here?” He spoke into the air, directed at no one. “Are you here?”

He was an entirely different man now, irrationality taking over his personality like a strange virus.

Burt shook his head again. “What the hell is he talking about? This guy’s on dust or something.”

“She’s not here.” Joe said, though he couldn’t be sure. “Who is she? Who’s the demon?”

“Oh my God, what can I do about this? What can I do about this?” Stanley’s mouth went off into a string of mumbling they could no longer hear.

Burt gave the man another shove, but it was of little consequence.

“Do you understand how serious this is?” Joe moved ahead of Burt who was ready to deliver another blow. “If you know anything about these murders, you have to say something! You have to do something about it, or you’ll be an accessory! They’re going to put you in jail!”

Stanley snapped out of his madness but only for a moment. At the threat of jail, a strained snicker crossed his lips.

“Jail? You think I’m afraid of jail compared to what she can do to me? Do you think I care about that at all?”

“How could you do this?” Joe asked. “How could you let it happen? How could you let it kill?”

“I didn’t let her!” Stanley spat. “I had no choice, don’t you understand? She feeds on me...she feeds...”

His voice trailed off into a series of stifled sobs, the sniveling of a madman.

Burt pulled his foot back to give him another kick, but Joe stopped him. Lisa put her hands on their shoulders.

“We should go. I don’t think we’re going to find out anything else from him.”

What in the world were they supposed to do about a demon?

##

Susan surveyed the student and faculty crowd from the podium. The chaotic hum of their voices echoed through the gymnasium. The teachers sat patiently behind her, legs crossed, waiting for her to take control. This was terribly uncomfortable. The specter of death tainted the air. Mr. Tucker’s death touched much too close to home.

She gripped the microphone and slipped it from its stand. A twang of feedback shot through the gym and a collective cringe rippled through the crowd. Susan cleared her throat and brought the microphone to her lips.

"Good morning, everyone. Could we please quiet down…thank you."

She drew another breath and readied to begin her speech, but another wave of intense nausea flooded her, follow by a disorienting wooziness. It lasted an instant, coming on so suddenly she thought she might faint, as if a drug had been released into her bloodstream. She steadied herself with the microphone and knew immediately this was no panic attack. This had to do with something else, something devious. She felt this before. It was the same feeling of panic she experienced when her mother died years ago, when Susan was still in college. Only this time, it was much more profound.

She fought to steady herself but failed. A moment later, Susan hit the floor of the stage, gasping, her mind reeling in a surrealistic swirl of overhead lights. Thoughts of the future embarrassment she would face when she had to stand before her English classes again entered her mind briefly, but fled away when she began to feel the…evil.

There was no other word for it. Something told her this feeling crushing her was the presence of evil. She glanced up dizzily from the floor, expecting to find something hovering over her, dark eyes that peered straight into her soul and caught her like an insect wriggling in a spider’s web, but no eyes were there. Instead, the steady gleam of the ceiling lights gradually came into focus, the dreariness slipping away from her. But the dread did not dissipate. Even as Mr. Palsgrove heaved Susan up from the floor, the feeling of dread and evil grew, slamming into her.

“The mur...mur...” She tried to gain her footing on the stage, the gasps of the crowd coming into her ears.

“Susan, Susan,” Mr. Palsgrove was saying. “Are you okay? What’s that you’re saying?”

“The mur...murderer...is here,” she said. “I can feel it.”

The room spun once more and before the blackness came, Susan heard the sounds of shrill laughter in her ears.