“-always making fun of me-”
“-flunked me-”
“-narced on me for changing grades-”
It all kept rolling, the petty hatreds and accusations and suspicions until it became a sort of mindless chant, building inside each and everyone of them to a pulsing, deadly crescendo and the very air was roiling with heat and malevolence.
And it was then that first true incident of mass insanity in Greenlawn struck. The students went after Mr. Cummings, kicking and scratching and punching and biting him. They went after him like animals with sheer bloodlust and brutality. Something inside them needed voiding and that something needed a common enemy and in their dying teacher, they found it. They crowded in, beating him to a pulp, trying to twist his limbs off and stomping his guts to sauce. They did not even slow down until their fingers were red, their mouths drooling, their clothes spattered with blood.
And the only thing that really slapped them out of it was a voice that cried: “What in the name of hell is going on here?”
The voice belonged to Howard Sullivan, the head custodian. Known as “Sully” to faculty and students alike, he was much loved and had been at Greenlawn High since the days of the Kennedy administration, was only a year shy of retirement, in fact. Anger was a rare commodity for Sully; he liked the kids, year after year, he honestly liked the kids. Liked their fads and music and devil-may-care attitudes. He said they made him feel young and custodian at the high school was the only job he could land where he never really had to grow up.
But today, Sully was mad.
He was shocked and sickened and beyond words. He waded right into the mass of students, pulling them away from Mr. Cummings, actually shoving them out of his path.
When he got a good look at Cummings’ corpse, he looked at the circle of students around him. He saw their vacant eyes, their grinning mouths, all that blood on them…smeared, splashed, dripping. Tears rolled from his eyes. “Kids…Jesus Christ, what…what the hell are you doing here? What have you done? What the fuck have you done?”
The students pressed in closer.
Sully looked from face to face, saw what was coming, tried to get away, but it was just too late.
They fell on him.
Like lions falling on a gazelle.
And behind them, Billy Swanson grinned…
8
Louis Shears made it home and as he walked through the door, he swore to God he would never leave it again.
The world had gone mad and he was content to leave it to its own devices. He shut the door behind him, locked it. And then on second thought, he threw the deadbolt. He walked into the living room and then the kitchen, feeling like some wind-up toy soldier going first in this direction and then that. He sat in his recliner, got up, sat on the couch, then he got up again. Went to the cupboard above the refrigerator and pulled out a bottle of Chivas Regal. He poured himself two fingers in a water glass, swallowed it down, then poured himself another.
You better get a grip already, he told himself, and that sounded good in theory, but in practice…well, it was something else again.
He sat back in the recliner.
Pulling from his drink and peering out the picture window, the world seemed all right. Cars passed on the street and leaves fluttered gently in the trees. He could hear the sound of a lawn mower and some kid going up the sidewalk on a skateboard.
These things were the normal sights and sounds of an August afternoon.
But what about what happened on Tessler Avenue? Where did any of that fit in? How did he qualify what he had seen this day? Two guys beating a kid near to death with baseball bats and then the kid attacking him and those whacked-out cops showing up? Where did that fit in the annals of a late summer’s day? Where did you find the box that would hold such things or a label to slap on it?
“You don’t,” Louis said. “You don’t even try. You just sit here and get drunk. Get shitfaced and forget about it.”
Very nice, very nice, indeed.
But hardly practical.
He thought about the steaks and the wine out in the back of the Dodge. The meat needed to be gotten into the fridge before it started to turn. Those porterhouses were nearly two inches thick, custom cut, and had cost him nearly fifteen bucks a throw.
He just couldn’t leave them out there.
But that’s exactly what he was planning on doing.
The cellphone in his shirt pocket jingled and he jumped, nearly spilling his drink. He put it to his ear, almost expecting one of those crazy cops to be on the other end. But it wasn’t them. It was Michelle.
“The weekend stretches out before you,” she said. “I hope I didn’t interrupt your nap.”
Louis started laughing. No, honey, I wasn’t taking a nap. I was sitting in my recliner sucking down whiskey. You ought to see me. Buttons popped off my shirt, bloodstains all over it, my throat bruised from some mortally wounded kid who decided to have one last hurrah and strangle me.
“What’s the matter, Louis?” Michelle said. Even half way across town over at Farm Bureau Insurance, she could sense it on him. That something was most definitely wrong.
“Where should I start?”
“Oh no…you didn’t get the accounts, did you?”
“Oh no, I got them. That part of my day was fine. It’s just that this town is going crazy. I’m just wondering if you can buy straightjackets in bulk, because I’m thinking we’re going to need a lot of them.”
Michelle said, “Oh, you heard then?”
“Heard what?”
“About the bank.”
Louis felt a heaviness in his chest. What now? “Tell me,” he said.
“I only know what they’re saying,” she said. “I guess an hour ago some old lady came into the bank across the street, you know, First Federal, and wanted to close her account. The teller told her she needed a slip to do that and the old lady just went ballistic. Get this, she whipped out a knife, a big knife, from her purse and stabbed the teller. Stabbed her like five or six times. At least, that’s what they’re saying. We heard the sirens. It was awful.”
“Shit.”
“It gets worse. The old lady supposedly walked right out with her bloody knife, sat on the bench outside, and then…well, she just slit her wrists. Slit them, Louis, and then folded them in her lap and calmly bled to death.”
“Who was it?”
“I don’t know. But they said she was smiling. Just sitting there, bleeding to death…and smiling.”
Louis swallowed. “The teller survive?”
Michelle said she didn’t know. “She lost a lot of blood, I guess. Louis, it was Kathy Ramsland.”
“Kathy?” Louis said. “Oh, Jesus, Vic’s kid sister?”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Calling Kathy a “kid” was maybe overdoing it in that she was nearly thirty. But, hell, Louis had grown up next to her, hung out tight with brother Vic right through high school.
Sitting there, the booze bubbling and acidic in his belly, he was picturing Kathy as a kid. Pushing her around on her bike when she was learning to ride without the training wheels. Making her up as Bride of Frankenstein for Halloween. The awful stories Vic and he used to tell her to scare the shit out of her. The time her hamster died and she buried it in the backyard in a metal Band-Aid box and then he and Vic digging it up a week later to see what it
