The caller had spared the chaplain no detail and Reverend Corman wondered if the whole scenario was not just some plot from a pornographic movie the man on the phone had seen. The man had said that there were things going on after hours in the old School Board building. Bad things. Perverted things, involving members of the Board of Education and young female students from Craven. The man said that almost every night, young girls some not even in their teens were getting fucked while some of the old men participated and some just contented themselves watching. Dear heaven, to think that children, some even younger than his own thirteen year old daughter, Janice, were, according to his source, sucking cock like popsicles and getting their own cunts eaten by dirty old men!
The concerned minister put his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, tipping it up on the two back legs. God, what a business. He would have to expose this dreaded business for the sake of his wife and daughter.
His daughter. He felt a little twinge of pride at the thought of his daughter. Thirteen years old and couldn't be sweeter. Janice was unspoiled and well brought up. He and Julie had seen to that and had brought her up according to God's commandments. They'd never let her run wild. They'd been very strict with her and that was one of the reasons they didn't have to worry about her getting involved in any scandal like the one Reverend Corman had just been told about. He wondered what he would do if he ever caught Janice in a place like that, caught her with some old pervert who was forcing his baby to commit indecent acts. Merciful heavens, the thought of it made him whisper a silent prayer.
If those girls were willing then what they needed was not patience and permissive understanding but old fashioned discipline. He'd take responsibility for administering it, too. He'd go out there and take each one of those youngsters across his knee. He'd pull their skirts up around their waists and then he'd bring his hand down so hard on their quivering little buttocks that their screams would be heard clear on the other side of town. He clenched his teeth in righteous rage as he thought of their jiggling white ass-cheeks turning as red as tomatoes under their flimsy panties. The adolescent girls would thrash and squirm, do anything to escape his wrath, but by the good Lord, he would be relentless! Those kids had the thrashing of their lives coming to them, and he'd like to be the one to give it to them. Sure, they would sob and beg for mercy, beg him to stop the punishment, but he wouldn't listen. He would go on and on, raining one blow after another on their defenseless little bottoms, until he was exhausted.
And some day they would thank him for it, too. It would be a long time before they did, it would be a week before any of them would be able to sit down, even. But someday when they were finally women with husbands and children, decent citizens, free from the sins of youth, they'd thank him. He smiled grimly with satisfaction. And then he heard Dean Lowell's footsteps above the chaplain's small office and the scrape of his desk chair as he pulled it up to his desk.
Reverend Corman waited a few minutes, to give the dean a chance to go through the morning's mail and make his telephone calls and walked up the short staircase from the chapel's small office. The minister stopped at the door, and knocked. Behind the frosted glass window which had 'Dean' stenciled across the front he could see Lowell reflected hunched over his desk. At the sound of the minister's knock, a voice called out, 'Come in.'
The handsome minister turned the knob and pushed the door open. Once more Lowell was hunched over his desk, scribbling something on a legal-sized yellow pad. 'Be with you in a minute, Reverend Corman,' he mumbled, continuing to write. It was one of his little affectations, Bradley noticed. The dean always liked to appear that you were stealing a few precious seconds of his time. It let all the staff know how busily the president of the college was attending to business although, Bradley thought wryly, there certainly wasn't much he could be doing. The school was an institution; it practically ran itself.
Finally, Lowell shoved the pad away from him, then swiveled around in his desk chair, and smiled patronizingly, 'Morning, Reverend.'
'Good morning, Dean Lowell.'
'Fabulous day, isn't it, Reverend?'
The agitated minister clearly did not feel the same way. His day had started out with the alarming anonymous phone call which was his reason for the visit to the dean's office in the first place. It was not a duty he relished, bringing up this most distasteful topic with the outrageous accusations. 'Fine day, Dean Lowell,' he said though.
'What's on your mind… running short of hymn books down in the chapel?'
Reverend Corman shuffled a little uneasily. He cleared his throat, and began, 'Something has come to my attention that I feel I should discuss with you…'
'Well, what is it?' Lowell asked, his face bland.
'This morning I had an anonymous phone call…'
Lowell looked annoyed. 'An anonymous phone call, really Reverend, unless you have something specific in mind… those boys down at Billings Hall are always calling up here with some prank or other…'
'This did have some kind of a ring of truth to it, Dean Lowell.'
'Shoot,' Lowell said, looking quite bored with the whole matter and wondering how he could keep this brief.
'I've heard that the old School Board offices are being used for some sort of uh… parties.'
The minister could not quite bring himself to say orgies.
He looked directly into the eyes of the dean, and thought he saw the faintest flicker of something… shock…? Fear? But whatever it was, it disappeared almost at once, and now he saw the guarded look that was the school administrator's regular demeanor.
'Well, I believe the offices are rented out. So what if they're being used for parties?'
'The parties are not parties in the strictest sense of the word. You haven't heard anything about what goes on there?'
'Perhaps, in passing,' he replied carelessly. 'The building is quite large and there are some big old comfortable rooms there with fireplaces and the like which are very conducive to entertaining. If people want to rent the place and take their friends I don't see any harm in that. Really, if you're referring to drinks being served there, I see no harm in that.'
Corman felt a slow flush crawling over his face. It was just like the dean to dismiss him as an alarmist. Well, he was going to tell the story and that was that. He fought to control his voice; even so, when he spoke, it was choked with righteous indignation: 'Dean Lowell, I am not referring to people having a few innocent drinks with their friends in a comfortable room with a fireplace. I'm talking about sin and degradation! I'm talking about youngsters perhaps from here at Craven committing lewd and indecent acts. Children no older than my Janice putting on sexual exhibitions with dirty old men watching and participating.'
'Watching what?' Lowell's steel-cold, flinty grey eyes were boring into the minister's skull, as if they could see everything he was thinking. 'What were they watching, Reverend?' He shook his head and clucked his tongue. 'Listen, if you want me to do something about this revelation of yours you're going to have to be a little more explicit and present a few facts.'
'All right. The other night there was a little red-haired child of about twelve years of age over there. She was completely naked and lying on a bed and some man about sixty years of age climbed on top of this innocent girl, while about a dozen other men watched, and the first thing you know he spread the child's legs so wide she looked like she'd crack down the middle… and then he put his head down, right there between her legs, and uh… to put it delicately… began to lick her genital area.'
The old man stared at him, not saying anything, his eyes boring through him once again. 'Well…?'
'Well what?'
'What else? Did anything else take place over there or is that about it?'
'The caller said there was another youngster… couldn't have been any older than the little redhead and almost the same thing happened with her except that she was uh… sucking a penis, wrapping it around some old man's penis until it was hard as a rock. And then, God forgive her, she took the whole length of it into her mouth and almost choked on the thing.'
The Dean shuffled the papers on his desk, cleared his throat and took out a cigarette. He stuck it in the corner of his mouth, fumbled for his lighter amidst the papers and took a deep drag. He blew a smoke ring out and watched it float off in little wisps of white, disappearing into stale air. 'Seems to me that this could be a made up story. You have no names, nothing. Some guy calls up and tells you about a red-haired kid that may or may not be
