that gaped before her.
Fido and Patrice gazed about wildly. A brandish of knifes angled out to ward off any attacker.
Before Kyla could warn them, even as words took shape in her confused brain, she saw the thing tumble into view, a dark furball in the darkness, coming quick, separating itself from the chute and leaping free.
Was it a huge black spider rolled into a ball, ready to spear out its legs and scuttle murderously toward them, stinger out, its dark dangle of limbs silently going dandle-dandle-dandle?
The thing bounced once on the heaped laundry, leaving a blotch of gore across the white expanse. Then it smacked the concrete by Fido’s feet. The crack of a bat upon a skull. Splintered bone. It rolled furiously, flop-flop, hair-face-hair-face.
Bowser McPhee, Fido’s ex-boyfriend.
His skin was gray verging on blue, bruised, upsplashed with blood to the jowls.
The neck had been sheered through in one clean sharp slice.
Kyla wondered why Fido’s screams sounded so high. Then she realized all three of them had merged their screams, a braid of terror tightly stranded together.
She froze. The head before her, with its baleful blinkless stare, held her in thrall.
If the killer happened to appear now, Kyla realized, she would be as helpless and doomed as a deer startled into dumbness on a dark highway, creamed by the rig that pinned it to the night with its high beams.
22. A Proliferation of Deaths
Dex and Tweed huddled together on the band room floor against a ten-foot-tall gray-painted door. A fan of such doors swept off in either direction. Theirs housed sax cases, the others timpani, trombones, tubas, every band member’s weapon of choice.
They couldn’t be sure, of course, that the storage space behind one of those doors hadn’t been emptied out before anyone arrived, an easy point of access for the killer.
One level down, the lone dim bulb atop its stand feebled light into the room. At its base was a dried pool of blood, hastily mopped, from the death of Bix Donner, the husband of Tweed’s tenth grade bio teacher.
Dex had thought the rogue slasher would not return to the scene of his crime.
He wasn’t so sure any more.
The crazy bastard’s preternatural vision, Dex was starting to fear, had them in his sights. The slow cold hand of paranoia slid its fingers along his spine and dug its nails into his brain.
Yet perhaps the cause of his rising panic was not paranoia at all, but survival instinct.
“Poor Mr. Donner,” Tweed whispered, breaking the silence like a shout.
Dex raised a finger to his lips. At her ear: “Keep an eye out. He could rush us from anywhere. If you even think a shadow moved, let me know. Don’t assume you’re imagining it, okay?”
Tweed nodded.
She mouthed something soundless. Dex thought it was “I love you,” though the weak light made it impossible to be sure.
The bulb flickered as if a moth flitted back and forth over it. Then it went out. Blackness rushed in to surround them.
One squat upper window glowed with enfeebled moonlight that shot down head-high to carve a far sliver out of one wall.
We’re sitting ducks, thought Dex, we’ve got to get away from these doors.
He took Tweed’s hand and helped her up, the rustle of her dress concealing perhaps the groan of a tall gray door’s hinges.
Dex felt a breeze. The passing of someone’s body before them? At any moment, Tweed would cry out from a lethal wound. Or a knife blade would violate him, pricking out the heart of his life.
“Hold me,” said Tweed.
Dex gave her a quick fierce hug, then said, “Come on.”
Holding Tweed’s hand, Dex slid his right shoe along the platform. He was no longer certain of the four-inch drop to the next level, where the trumpets and French horns sat.
It wouldn’t do to trip and tumble. They’d be dead in an instant.
Tweed said, “Not so fast!” Panic at being dragged along in the darkness. She bumped him, then regained her balance.
“Another level now, watch your step,” he said. “Clarinet section. Okay, we’re off the risers. Past the piano. I can make out the band room door, coming up on the blackboard now.”
He felt along it. Soon the door.
The killer’s eyes burrowed into their backs. He would never let them escape.
But what if he were right outside the door, waiting for them in the hallway?
Tweed tugged him to a halt. “Dex, I heard something. Out there.”
And the band room door opened, gray on black. A figure slipped through. The door hissed closed behind it. Dex rushed whoever it was, grappling with the shape, his fists darting out, trying to stun their attacker, to get the upper hand.
No resistance. A woman’s voice shouted out, “Hey, wait… what-?”
“Miss Phipps!” said Tweed.
Adora Phipps, Dex thought. She’s safe. But he felt down her wrists just in case.
Empty hands.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s us. Me and Tweed. We thought you were—”
“I’m not. But I’ll be damned if I know who is. Listen we’re trying to round everyone up, get them back to the gym. It’s the safest place, and Mr. Buttweiler’s got a plan. Come with?”
Dex nodded.
“You bet,” said Tweed relieved.
“Ditto,” said Dex, realizing his nod had failed to register.
“Good, let’s go.”
After groping about for it, the door made a vertical gray line. Then that line gaped into a rectangle wide enough for them to pass through one at a time.
Jonquil Brindisi walked as if she had been thoroughly oiled, her lubricious limbs animated by sheer desire. She loved the mayhem, the chaos, loved them to distraction.
Once Gerber Waddell was found, she would join in the futtering. But if she found him first, she planned to fuck the simple dweeb, feeling his lovely violence invade her as she tied him down and rode him.
Just imagining it made her gasp.
She had already dragged Claude into a supply closet after Elwood Dunsmore had been found torch-faced by the entranceway and Futzy’d rolled in the mutilated zippermouths. Claude kept up his but-I’m-married routine until she yanked his fly open and filled her throat close to choking.
Then his pretzel of words, the syntactically convoluted bullshit he had made a part of himself, turned into barnyard grunts and oh-yeahs and suck-me-darlin’s. She had left him panting, his organ still thick despite its hot spew. He tasted like pea soup pureed with pearl onions.
Thus, Jonquil had mused, do the greater vices ever overwhelm the lesser.
Now she was on Gerber’s trail.
More precisely, she was up for whatever the fates delivered. She craved the killer. And she felt that the strength of her craving ought to be enough to draw him out.
Until now, Gerber had been a sexless dolt of muscles and nods, thinning hair and stupid grins. Who would ever have guessed at the dynamo of hatred which had clearly simmered inside him for years, exploding at last into this amazing orgy of bloodletting?
Swimming upstream of the fleeing students, Jonquil had heard talk of terrible screams and the whining of buzzsaws. Up ahead, she saw the closed classroom door.
