on having plenty of stiff-poled fun licking her lobes and knockers. But I’m calling the shots now. I say we hang here.”
The door opened below. Then it swung shut. Faster than usual, Sandy thought.
From the landing, only part of the upper door was visible.
A snapping, like the quick sharp shake of a chain, sounded below. The door rattled as if the person who had come through it were trying to open it again.
Then a woman dressed in blue appeared, her short hair in mid-shake as she-Sandy recognized Nurse Gaskin-bounded up the stairs, clutching a large brown folder, the kind with accordion pockets like a briefcase. Bloodstains dappled her dress, reminders of her having witnessed the death of Mrs. Donner’s husband in the band room.
The nurse glanced at them as she sped past, her face full of frowns like grown-ups often got, her fists clenched into tight balls.
She wanted to say something as she went by, but she held back until she was almost at the top. Then: “The bastard locked the door behind me.”
Sandy didn’t need to ask who she meant.
None of them did.
They glanced at one another, then moved as one in sheer terror. Sandy’s head surged with hot flushes of panic.
Gripping the gray railing, she followed Cobra and Rocky, gearing that the janitor would somehow magically rise about them, bursting out of one of the panels fitted into the tile walls. Her flats pounded up the steps. A gray wad of gum lay like squashed putty on the edge of one step.
As Nurse Gaskin shot her hand to the door, Sandy heard another sharp snap, twin to the one below.
Did the sound come before, at, or after the nurse touched the door? It was too confusing to tell. It must have been just before.
Ms. Gaskin’s hand pulled back from the door as if from a jolt of electricity. She jammed the folder under one arm and hit the bar, full force, with both hands, leaning into it.
The door refused to budge.
Sandy and her men had nearly reached the top platform.
Her mind raced.
They would die here. At any moment, darkness would come crashing down upon them. Hands would shoot out in a quick grasp at her ankles, yanking her off her feet.
No! They would shove the door open, the four of them exerting maximum effort to gain freedom.
But what lay in wait for them when the door flew open?
The nurse turned to them. She glanced with sudden alarm over Rocky’s shoulder. He had one foot on the top step and began to look backward.
Sandy was spooked to the max.
She felt the janitor behind her, ready to grab them, skewer them. He was ready to unleash another outbreak of bloodletting.
Then the nurse’s face bloomed with hatred.
She slammed full-force into Rocky, upsetting his balance, sending him flailing off the step.
Then she grabbed Cobra by the hair, yanking him across eight feet of ineffective arm-waving, head-first into the tile wall.
“Whoa,” he had said, “wait a—”
But the headslam cut off his rising protest, and the nurse repeated that headslam as if she had been possessed by a mad plan to butt their way to freedom. A bullseye reddened on the tile wall.
Down below, Rocky landed badly, crying out in pain and disbelief as his body struck stairs and railings, meat and bone out of control.
Sandy froze, unable to move or think.
This wasn’t happening.
The nurse was kind and meek and dorky. It was Gerber Waddell they had to look out for.
But kindly Nurse Gaskin released Cobra with an upward flurry of hands and bent for the brown folder.
Rocky was crawling painfully up the steps toward them, his legs weirdly skewed, his right temple smeared with blood.
Cobra fell, no sound from his mouth, just a resounding smack as his skull struck the floor.
“Don’t,” Sandy whimpered or thought she did.
The brown folder tumbled end over end like a flipped playing card, and in the nurse’s hand was a ball peen hammer. As she passed, she threw Sandy a look of contempt that pinned her to the wall like a moth to cardboard.
Sandy trembled. She was unable to summon the will to cry out or stop the attack on Rocky.
The nurse’s arm swung up.
It swung down.
And Sandy watched the hammer crack open a crater in her boyfriend’s skull, staving it in like the thin hollow shell of a chocolate bunny. His body shook with the viciousness of each blow. Sandy couldn’t look away, no matter how much she wanted to.
Rocky’s cries stopped.
He became a big bloody ragdoll.
Only the nurse’s savage grunts remained, a counterpart to her swung thunks into red flesh. Above those sounds sailed the wisps of Sandy’s whimpering.
At last, the nurse turned away from Rocky and fixed Sandy in her stare. She rose up the steps toward her. Sandy’s legs gave out and she slid down the wall.
Tears blurred her vision.
She was falling and the monster was rising.
“Three’s a charm,” said Nurse Gaskin, low, heavy, and harsh.
She crouched before the girl.
Cold wet metal touched her brow. A tickle slanted across it, a cool drop of blood.
The hammerhead lifted.
Another diagonal, crosswise to the first, traveled Sandy’s forehead.
“Don’t,” she whimpered.
“Hold still now.” Ms. Gaskin gripped Sandy’s ponytail and wrenched it tight. “This will only hurt for a second.”
The blur pulled back and then the punch came swiftly in, leaping beyond all bound, violating Sandy, opening her up.
The stairwell vanished and a rush of stars rode in on a black wave of night.
23. True to Their School
Despite the chaos that had befallen Corundum High, and faced with mounting reports of fresh victims, Futzy Buttweiler had never felt so much in command.
Some enterprising jock had brought several dozen small flashlights from one of the science labs. Their beams now angled crazily across the gym. They had ended up primarily in the hands of natural-born leader types, but other kids held them too, infiltrating the privileged few around the bandstand.
Beyond the people Futzy addressed, the Ice Ghoul loomed out of the darkness. But the papier-mache monster didn’t cow him any longer. Neither did it bring forth memories of Kitty’s death and futtering.
Tonight, Futzy would strike back.
He would triumph over the Ice Ghoul.
Before the night was out, he would see that Gerber Waddell was tracked down and torn apart.
Adora Phipps hugged him.
