column of the paper, but he'd always had the impression that Wheeler was something of a sleaze and a charlatan, a man who aspired to and was perfectly suited for televangelism. He didn't like Wheeler, and he didn't like his wife working for Wheeler, but at this point it was probably wiser for him to say nothing about it.
He was not sure if he could bring himself to be supportive, though.
Buford himself, a blond crew cut ex-Marine gone only slightly to seed, stepped up to the window. 'Whatcha want today?'
'I'll take a double cheeseburger, large fries, and an extra-large, super-thick chocolate shake.' Buford grinned. 'Bad day, huh?' 'And it's not over yet.' 'That'll be four forty-five.'
Rich broke out his wallet and handed him a five-dollar bill.
Buford gave him back two quarters and a nickel. 'So, do you think there really is a vampire?' 'What?' Rich stared at him.
Buford shrugged. 'Rumors.' 'There're no such things as vampires.'
'Well, even if there are, I've got enough garlic in here to hold them at bay until dawn.' Buford laughed.
Rich forced himself to smile. ''Look, I have a few things to do, so when my food's ready, give me a holler. I'll be in the truck.'
'Will do.'
Rich walked slowly back to the pickup. Even Buford was talking about vampires.
He would call Robert tonight when he got home. The two of them had a lot to discuss.
Sue stood next to the gym, looking down the hallway.
It felt strange being back here again. She had not re turned to the high school since graduation, and although it had only been two years and she had not, to her knowledge, grown, everything seemed smaller: doors, drinking fountains, lockers. It was like visiting a school built for munchkins. : I It also seem el somewhat threatening, and that was not something she would have thought possible. For her, school had always been a refuge, a haven where even the uncivilized were forced to behave in a civilized manner. The micro society created by teachers, administrators, and the other adults in authority had created for her a very pleasant environment, a sharp contrast to the rougher and more chaotic world outside the school boundaries.
But everything had changed. That familiar society had shut off for the night and left in its wake this scaled- down and darkly alien travesty of her old stomping grounds. She glanced to her right at the door to the girl's restroom and was thrown off by its surprisingly diminutive stature. It was probably just her imagination, but, like everything else, the doors in the buildings looked as though they had shrunk and been reduced to dimensions more appropriate to a junior high school.
She stared straight ahead. The hallways had not shrunk, however. They seemed to have grown much longer.
And darker.
She shivered, turning around, and looked back toward the parking lot, but hers was still the only car in sight. Orce again, she faced the hallway. It looked like a runnel or a cave, the staggered shadows forming stalactites, stalagmites, d outcroppings of stone. The shadows overlapped, created shapes where there weren't shapes, darkened areas that were already dark. There were lights on, but they were few and far between, and Sue wondered if perhaps she'd misread the class schedule and come on the wrong day. The only illumination seemed to come from downward trained vandal lights on the corners of each building and from single bulbs housed in protective mesh which hung down from the ceilings of the hallway at long intervals. The lights near the lockers were off, and the windows in all of the classrooms were black.
She peered down at the schedule in her hand, trying to read in the gloom. No, today was the fourth. The class was supposed to start today.
So why was the school so empty? Why was no one else here?
And why was she afraid to walk down the hall? Silence.
That was the primary reason she kept standing here. The silence. Not a sound disrupted the complete quie rode of this place, not a voice or footstep disturbed the perfect noiseless ness It was like being in a vacuum, or a tomb. Even outside sounds from the other parts of town did not appear able to penetrate the invisible sonic barrier which seemed to surround the school.
This was stupid. She was just being dumb. The reason everything was dark and silent was because night classes were all held on the other side of the school. Out of habit, she'd parked in the student lot on the south side of campus. She should're parked in the faculty lot on the north side. All she had to do was walk down the hallway, past the lockers, and through senior corner to get where she was supposed to be.
But she didn't want to walk down the hallway.
She peered into the dimness. Was it her imagination, or were the hall's irregularly spaced lights less bright than they had been just a moment before? And had the shadows shifted? She cleared her throat, and the noise was like a gunshot in the stillness. Why couldn't she hear any noise from the other side of campus?
Then something moved at the far end of the hallway. Her heart lurched in her chest. A black amorphous shape had passed through a patch of dull light, moving from one shadow to another. She thought she could still see it, darker than its surroundings--jet against charcoal--but the specifics of its form were so vague that she could not be sure.
Sue took a deep breath. She was not afraid of the dark, had never been plagued by that traditional childhood fear. But she could not shake the feeling that someone--s0something--was waiting for her at the far end of the hall. She had an impression of size. And tremendous age.
It was the vast age that frightened her the most.
Her mouth was dry, her hands shaking. She turned around and hurried back out to the parking lot, to the car. She fumbled with her keys, trying to open the door, certain that if she turned around she would see, coming up behind her, that ancient black shape, large and getting larger.
She found the right key and unlocked the door, banging her knee on the metal as she pulled it open. She scrambled into the car as quickly as she could, locking the door before daring to look where she'd been.
There was nothing there. The parking lot was empty. Still hyper consciously aware of the fact that she was alone out here, that if something happened there would be no one to hear her scream, she slipped the key into the ignition, started the engine, and peeled out.
She did not know why she'd been so stupid, why she hadn't realized immediately that the parking lot was empty because night classes were held on the other side of the school. She'd told Janine and promised her parents that she would be careful, and instead she'd behaved like a complete idiot.
She thought of Manuel Tortes, tried to imagine what a man would look like who'd been totally drained of blood.
She drove down the small dirt road around the school to the faculty lot. Here there were lights, and other vehicles, and small groups of people walking toward their classrooms. She pulled into a parking space next to a Dodge van. The terror and the panic subsided somewhat.
A moment before she'd been half ready to run screaming through a group of strangers, warning that the monsters were coming. But now, though the fear was still strong within her, though when she looked toward the darkened southern haft of the school she could still see in her mind that black and shifting shape, the idea that some sort of... monster lay crouched and waiting within the confines of the campus seemed absurd and melodramatic, the product of an overactive imagination.
Still, she could not shake the feeling that she had been in very real danger.
Maybe she would tell her teacher that she'd seen someone suspicious lurking in the hallways and let him find someone to check it out She walked toward the office, following two old women armed with paintbrushes and sketch pads who were obviously here to attend an art class. Outside the office, they parted ways, the two women heading toward the multipurpose rooms to the left, Sue going toward the right.
She found room 211, her old sophomore English classroom, easily enough and entered. Again, everything seemed smaller than she remembered: the desks, the blackboards, the room itself. So far, she was the only student here. The teacher, a clean-shaven man in his early to midthirties who looked vaguely familiar, stood next to the front blackboard at the head of the rows of empty desks and smiled at her.
Both of them glanced up at the wall clock at the same time.
'Five minutes to go,' the teacher said. 'I don't think we're going to have a very big class.'
Sue smiled politely back at him and sat down at a des in the middle of the room.
