Dark Halls - A Horror Novel

by Jeff Menapace

  Rebecca’s face popped with surprise. She placed a hand on her chest and shook her head adamantly. “Mrs. Herb, no—God, no. I’ve never touched a drug in my life.”

  Cynthia hung her head, nodded, and sighed deeply. “Okay, I’m sorry. I had to ask.”

  Rebecca placed a hand on Cynthia’s shoulder, hoping her touch was mollifying. “It’s okay…”

  Cynthia went in for a hug. Rebecca hugged her back.

  “What’s wrong with my son?” Cynthia said into Rebecca’s shoulder, and started to cry.

  Rebecca held her tight. “I don’t know.”

  45

  Three of the last four remaining employees from Highland Elementary sat at a local diner. None of the three had food in front of them. Just plenty of coffee.

  “We’re using that poor boy,” Karl said for the second time this evening.

  Both Barbara and Stew looked at their coffee cups.

  “We’re following him like hawks, hoping that he leads us to something we can’t figure out on our damn own,” Karl went on. “You should have seen him tonight. The trance he was under; his episode in the boiler room. I’m telling you, that stuff that came out of his mouth was like nothing I ever seen. It burned me, for Christ’s sake.”

  Stew kept his head down. Barbara lifted hers.

  “We didn’t choose Ryan, Karl,” she said. “We never chose any of them. Ryan went to that school tonight on his own accord.”

  “But we can’t keep the boy there, Barbara. She knows that he can see. She knows that he can expose her. We’ve got to get him out. Tell him to leave.”

  “Seems to me like it’s too late for that,” Barbara said. “It’s obvious she’s already got her hooks in the boy. You think his leaving the school is going to change that? He’s a threat to her no matter where he goes. He can expose her from the moon if he wants.”

  “The boy doesn’t know she’s responsible.”

  “You think that matters to her?”

  Karl shook his head. “Got to get the boy out.”

  “But if he can give us something, Karl,” Barbara insisted.

  “That poor boy won’t give us nothing but another dead body to explain and another notch on Carol Lawrence’s belt.”

  “If it is Carol,” Stew said.

  “You’re doubting now?” Barbara asked.

  Stew sipped his coffee. “After all this time, all we really have is conjecture. We don’t have anything tangible.”

  “Which is exactly why we need the kid,” Barbara said. “He can see; great. The others could see. Unless he gives us something concrete, then he’ll just be lumped in with the others, rubber-stamped as a loony.”

  “John was not a loony.”

  “We know that.”

  A pause in the conversation. Everyone sipped from their cups.

  “I told Ryan in the beginning that I didn’t trust any of you,” Karl said. “I wanted him to figure it out for himself.” Karl’s face was all regret.

  “And he’s gotten nothing thus far,” Barbara said. “Which is once again the precise reason why we need to keep him in the school. Keep him close so he can find something.”

  “Is it possible he did find something?” Stew said.

  “And what? He’s keeping it a secret?” Barbara mocked.

  Stew frowned at her. “I meant that Ryan claims he doesn’t remember anything that happened tonight. Maybe we get him to remember. Let’s face it, if Karl wasn’t there tonight, Ryan would be dead. Karl put one hell of a wrench in Carol’s plan.”

  “Plan?”

  “Perhaps Carol suspected that Ryan did or would find something incriminating tonight. Don’t ask me how, but just suppose she did. She would need him out of the way ASAP.”

  Karl looked up slowly from his coffee, his old face alive with revelation. “I think I know how Carol might have known what Ryan was up to tonight.”

  Stew and Barbara just stared at Karl, urging him to go on.

  “It makes a heck of a lot of sense when you think about it too. Kind of stupid we didn’t put the pieces together already.”

  “Karl…” Stew said impatiently.

  “Who came and picked up Ryan tonight?”

  “His mother and Rebecca—ohhh…” Stew said.

  “What?” Barbara said. “Ohhh what?”

  “Rebecca is Carol’s daughter,” Stew said. “She’s also Ryan’s girlfriend.”

  Karl pointed at Stew. “Ryan’s mother told me she called Rebecca when she couldn’t find her son. Said that Rebecca had a ‘hunch’ that Ryan was at the school, what with all his odd behavior there lately. How much do you want to bet that Rebecca told her mother every damn bit of that?”

  Their shared glance was one of great discovery.

  “It would sure as hell explain why Carol didn’t come along,” Barbara said.

  “Sure,” Karl said. “She needed to stay behind and, I don’t know”—he waved his hands about, a feeble attempt at miming black magic—“do her thing.”

  “Still not sure it’s Carol, Stew?” Barbara said.

  46

  Rebecca and Cynthia drank tea while Ryan slept on the sofa, periodically checking on him to make sure he didn’t perform another disappearing act.

  Confident he was down for the night, Cynthia urged Rebecca to head home and get some sleep of her own. Rebecca reluctantly agreed, insisting Cynthia call her if anything should happen. Cynthia of course agreed, and they hugged goodbye. Rebecca barely remembered the drive home.

  ***

  “So what happened?” Carol Lawrence asked as she met her daughter at the front door.

  “I don’t know, Mom. I honestly don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “I can’t think right now, Mom. Please.”

  Carol patted the air. “Okay, okay…” Then: “You did find him, though.”

  “Yes.”

  “And he was at the school like you thought?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did he say anything? Anything at all? How he got there? Who was with him? Why he was there?”

  Rebecca sighed, exhausted. “He managed to drive himself there while asleep, if you can believe that. The janitor found him, but there was no one else in the building that I know of. He can’t remember what happened. He went right to sleep as soon as his mother and I got him home. He was really sick.”

  Carol Lawrence hugged her daughter, then ushered her upstairs with a loving smile, urging her to get some sleep. When she heard her daughter’s bedroom door close, Carol’s smile dropped like a stone, the fingernails on her right hand—the hand now a fist at her side—digging deep into her palm, drawing blood.

  47

  “It’s almost too perfect,” Barbara said without joy as Stew drove them back to the school to retrieve Karl’s truck. “I mean, she’s got him. She can track every move he makes through her own damn daughter. Which begs another question: is the daughter involved somehow?”

  “Doubtful,” Karl said.

  “We need to talk with Ryan,” Stew said. “And I mean really talk with him. Tell him who we suspect and what kind of danger he’s in, and, most importantly, try to get him to remember what happened tonight.”

  “He knows what kind of danger he’s in,” Karl said.

  “He doesn’t know about Carol, though,” Stew said.

  “Does it matter? We still can’t prove anything.”

  “But if we can get him to remember.”

  “And if we can’t?”

  “John remembered,” Barbara said. “The others too.”

  “John and the others remembered seeing a few things; so what?” Karl said. “Ryan remembered seeing a few things as well. This is completely different. Carol has already made her move on the boy.”

  “And he survived, thanks to you,” Barbara said. “And you’re right; it is completely different. Carol sent that boy on a one-way trip to hell, never thinking for a moment that the boy might return. His returning is our chance to find out what he d
iscovered on that trip. We’ve never been so close.”

  Karl snorted at her metaphors. “Again, suppose we can’t get the boy to remember? Suppose there is nothing to remember? Stew, how long did we search that boiler room before the fire? What did we find? A big fat goose egg, is what.”

  “You were there tonight, Karl,” Stew said. “First John’s claims, and now what you witnessed with Ryan? Are you honestly going to tell me that the boiler room doesn’t hold some sort of significance? That there might be something down there we were simply unable to find? What’s going on with you? Why are you fighting this all of a sudden?”

  “I’m just worried about the boy, is all.”

  “All the more reason we need to get him to remember,” Barbara said. “And soon. As you said, Carol already made a move on the boy.”

  “Why don’t we just kill her?” Karl said.

  “Come again?” Stew said.

  “Kill Carol. Hell, I’ll do it myself. I’m old. I’ve lived a good—well, I’ve lived a life.”

  “And all your years going on about wanting to live long enough to see whatever evil inhabits the school die before you do?” Stew said.

  “If I kill the bitch, then it will die before I do.”

  Stew bit back a smile. “Sorry, Karl. Not an option.”

  “You say that now…”

  48

  Ryan sat alone in the auditorium, dead center, several rows back. On stage, before the great red curtains, was an easel, the easel supporting a sign. “Pinewood Elementary Talent Show,” it read.

  The lights dimmed. Complete darkness for a moment. Then a solitary beam of light from overhead, illuminating a lone stool on stage, a microphone on its stand before the stool, the red curtains now drawn. Inexplicable applause in the empty auditorium as a woman took center stage. She was dressed in black. Her hair, long and full, was black. All of this in stark contrast to her ghostly white face; her ghostly white face in stark contrast to her piercing black eyes. The woman carried a large suitcase, this too black. The initials “HT & TC” were clearly evident in red lettering on the case.

  The woman took the stool. The inexplicable applause from the empty auditorium died down to a low hush, then total silence.

  “Good evening,” the woman said. Her smile was enormous. She bent and opened the suitcase and pulled a large ventriloquist’s puppet from it. The puppet’s attire was identical to that of the ventriloquist’s. Only the head was different. It was Trish’s head. And it was no toy copy. It was Trish’s real head, gray and lifeless, dead eyes fogged over into a milky white, absurdly disproportionate to the rest of the puppet’s body.

  “My name is Helen Tarver. My friend Trish and I would like to give you a little show tonight. Would that be all right?”

  Another round of applause.

  “Say hello to the nice people, Trish.” Helen Tarver’s hand did not reach behind Trish’s back to operate her the way a traditional ventriloquist would its puppet, but instead balanced the puppet’s body on one knee, using both her hands to work the slack flesh on Trish’s full face.

  “Hello, nice people,” Helen Tarver said out of the corner of her mouth, working Trish’s jaw and lips, her voice high and playful as Trish’s had been.

  “Tell the nice people what we have in store for them tonight, Trish.”

  Again, Helen attempted to operate Trish’s lifeless mouth. And Trish’s head promptly rolled off the doll’s shoulders, Helen failing to catch it in time, the head hitting the stage and rolling to a stop on one side, milky dead eyes staring at nothing.

  “Whoops!” Helen Tarver exclaimed.

  The crowd roared.

  “All part of the show, folks,” Helen said with that enormous smile.

  The crowd roared some more.

  Helen Tarver stood and snatched Trish’s head by her curly mop of dark hair. Returned to her stool and placed the head back onto the doll’s shoulders. A definitive click! and the head was reattached. But different now. Trish’s face came alive. Her ashen tone was now pink and healthy. Her milky dead eyes were now wide and brown and bright, brimming with life. Her eager smile bunched her cherub cheeks just as they always had.

  The doll with Trish’s head jumped off of Helen Tarver’s lap and began to walk towards the end of the stage. It teetered absurdly from side to side as it did so, the weight of its human head on its plastic frame making the job a grotesque chore.

  It reached the end of the stage, fixed on Ryan, and grinned at him. “I see you, Ryan,” it sang in Trish’s voice.

  The auditorium went black, the sound of something small hitting the floor with a grunt right after. Footsteps now—tiny clacks from plastic feet on concrete, the clacks broken and awkward in rhythm, likely continuing to struggle remaining upright while wearing Trish’s head.

  So—a pause.

  No more footsteps. But something. A shuffling. A scuttling. Definitely more than just two feet working together.

  Crawling.

  Yes. It was crawling now, and quickly, perhaps realizing it had better mobility this way, the rows of chairs in front of Ryan being bumped and jostled as it scuttled closer.

  He heard labored breathing one, maybe two rows away.

  Ryan picked up his feet and hugged his knees. Shut his eyes tight in spite of the surrounding black. “Please go away,” he begged. “Please…”

  Something reached up and touched his foot.

  Ryan screamed and leapt from his seat, tumbling backwards into the row of bolted-down seats behind him before hitting the floor. He immediately went to get up, but his right leg had become wedged between two of those seats behind him. He lay trapped and blind on the auditorium floor.

  “Please…” he begged again, all but wept. “…just go away…”

  Something licked his ear.

  He screeched and jerked his head away. Tried to pull his leg free to no avail, resorted to swatting blindly in the dark, hitting nothing.

  Lips at his ear again, so close he could feel and smell its breath, hot and foul.

  “Miss me?”

  “Trish, please…”

  “Let me in.” It stuck its tongue in his ear.

  He went to jerk his head away again but could not. His body was suddenly useless.

  The tongue burrowed its way in, its impossible length pushing through his ear canal, entering his mind, probing inquisitively and with oh-so-ill intent as a snake might when happening upon an unattended nest.

  “Mine…” These words, hissing inside his skull, no longer Trish’s voice.

  “Mine…” These words, spoken by Carol Lawrence, who was reclined comfortably in her chair at home, eyes closed, directing Ryan’s dream while her daughter slept, her daughter perhaps dreaming herself. Dreaming about the well-being of the boy.

  Such a thought tickled Carol.

  It did not, however, tickle her as delightfully as the fact that she had been able to enter the boy’s dream, a feat she had never managed before. Either she was becoming more powerful, or the boy’s psyche was becoming that much more fragile. Either prospect was just fine, the latter perhaps the better of the two; her strength had plenty of time to grow. Ryan needed to be taken care of sooner than later. The boy had proved to be durable—and damned lucky. She told him so:

  “No Karl to help you this time, Ryan…”

  Trish’s tongue continued encircling the nest of Ryan’s mind, growing satisfied that the nest was indeed unattended, telling him so in the same detached voice that was no longer Trish’s,

  (“No Karl to help you this time, Ryan…”)

  its ill intent pulsating, keen to strike and latch on and not let go until Ryan was all but—

  Gone?

  Ryan had vanished from the auditorium.

  Carol sat upright in her recliner. “No!”

  Sounds of Rebecca waking, her bedroom door opening, hurried footsteps into the den to check on her mother.

  “Mom?”

  Carol’s angst was very real, and her explanation
for this angst was technically accurate.

  “It’s okay, sweetheart,” she said. “Just a bad dream.”

  “Oh, don’t you start now,” Rebecca said, clearly referring to Ryan.

  Carol forced a smile.

  “You sure you’re okay?” Rebecca asked.

  “Fine,” she lied.

  “You coming to bed? You’re not gonna sleep in your chair all night, are you?”

  Carol flirted with the idea of staying put, making some sort of excuse about wanting to sleep in the den tonight, and then attempting to enter Ryan’s dream again. Only she wasn’t sure she’d be able to. Something had broken the connection. The lucky little bastard had slipped away from her yet again. How? Had her bravado about entering Ryan’s dream state been premature? Did it require more time, more work?

  “Yes,” she finally said. “I mean, no—I’m not going to sleep in my chair all night. Yes—I’m coming to bed.”

  Rebecca waited for her mother to gather herself, then saw her off to her bedroom. They hugged goodnight, and Carol closed her bedroom door behind her.

  The lucky little bastard. What saved his ass this time?

  Sebastian the cat had saved Ryan’s ass. He did not, however, save Ryan’s balls.

  Asleep on the sofa, in the throes of his nightmare, Ryan—his lap in particular—had apparently looked like a damn fine place for Sebastian to settle in for his fiftieth nap of the day.

  Unfortunately—no, quite fortunately—Sebastian did not stick the landing quite right, and landed not on Ryan’s lap, but smack on his groin, jerking Ryan awake with a groan.