“I told the little fuck to give me his lunch money or I’d beat him to death,” Pete said. Todd laughed in response. A bottle exploded inside the cinderblock structure. Followed by another. The smell of cigarette smoke came from inside, mingling with the ever-present odor of old shit.
The pump house had at one time been responsible for pumping sewage from the growing suburbs to a waste treatment facility across town. When it was replaced by newer technology, instead of being torn down, the structure was left to decay on its own. Inside the main room, in the middle of the floor, was a circular hole twelve feet across that led to a network of pipes that had once been connected to the grinder pump that had occupied the opening. Years ago it had been removed for scrap, but no one had bothered to seal the opening.
As the two young boys snuck around the corner of the pump house, the safety of the woods a mere twenty feet away, Jimmy was overcome by a coughing fit.
Drawn by the noise, Todd and Pete stepped out of the pump house and raced towards them. Norman’s fight or flight instinct kicked in and he turned and fled into the woods, leaving Jimmy behind as the two older boys quickly caught up with him.
The next time he saw Jimmy was at his funeral. His body had been found three days later, dumped in a drainage ditch on the other side of town. It looked like his captors had tortured him. Cigarette burns covered his face and one eye had been poked out. The physical evidence at the scene clearly pointed to Todd, who was arrested and later informed on Pete. Both of the boys were sent downstate to a juvenile facility on the eastern shore.
Norman had lied about Jimmy’s whereabouts that first evening, claiming that Jimmy had grown tired at the game and returned home alone. But at night when he was alone, he was faced with the simple truth that he had abandoned a friend. If he had stayed by Jimmy’s side, maybe none of this would have happened. But at the same time, he understood that had he done so he might have joined Jimmy in that drainage ditch.
It’s your fault, Jimmy whispered in his mind, and Norman’s gaze was drawn to the swirling sheets of falling snow that parted momentarily to reveal Jimmy. He stood on the hill opposite the dock. His remaining eye watching Norman with an unnatural stillness as the contents of the other slowly oozed down the scarred flesh of his burned cheek.
“What’s wrong, Norman,” Cody shouted in his ear, the words ripped away by the relentless wind. Norman ignored him, his gaze fixed on Jimmy’s figure standing motionless in the falling snow.
“I’m sorry,” Norman said.
“Let’s get him inside,” Teddy said. Cody stepped around to Norman’s other side.
Norman followed willingly enough as Cody and Teddy led him back towards the building. But he never took his eyes off of Jimmy standing in the falling snow.
Can I come in? Jimmy whispered in his mind and Norman whimpered. You owe me that much, Jimmy continued as Norman slowly shook his head and a moan of terror rumbled in his throat.
“I can’t,” Norman whispered.
“What’s he talking about?” Cody asked Teddy as they approached the door with Norman between them.
Teddy shrugged as he swiped his card and pulled the door open. Andrea was waiting inside and she stepped out to help guide Norman into the safety of the interior.
Chapter 16
She didn’t know how long she had lain there, her hands over her head, the smell of burning flesh heavy in the room. David’s charred body lay a few feet from her, while the sound of that relentless storm raged beyond the wall behind her. She sensed that presence in the storm, an ancient thing that had wandered the world since the dawn of time. Slowly she became aware of others in the room around her, carrying with them a childish terror of all things they didn’t understand, but among them was a soothing presence filled with a desire to protect the others.
“We won’t hurt you,” a feminine voice whispered in her ear, and Jasmine slowly lifted her head. From the shadows they emerged, a group of children of assorted ages, standing around her in a rough semi-circle.
“I’m sorry,” a child’s voice murmured, filled with a genuine regret, “I didn’t mean to hurt your friend.”
“She hasn’t learned to control the fires that live within her,” that feminine voice soothed. “It’s my own fault. I should never have kept them at school that day.”
“Who are you?” Jasmine said as she rose to her knees. Around her she saw the silhouettes, their details wrapped in shadows. There were eight of them of varying heights. Their emotions washed over her like the waves of an ocean crashing upon a battered shore.
Charles was the oldest, full of a remorse that belied his young age. No child should ever feel the guilt that boiled within him. Randy was gone and it was his fault. If he had gotten the wood like Miss Butler wanted, Randy would still be with them. But he was lost in the wilderness of the raging storm, all because he had been too frightened to do what he was asked. He had seen that stranger up close, and his presence had terrified him.
William was four years younger and stood next to Charles. His was a bewildering array of sensations pinning her to the ground and threatening to crush her beneath the sheer weight of his emotions. School for him was an escape from the daily abuse meted out by his coal miner father. He stuttered, and his father held the belief that he could beat the problem out of William.
Next to William was Margaret. Jasmine saw an image in her mind, that of a young girl with long black hair that had been braided into two ponytails that hung down her back. Her father ran the company store where he did everything he could get away with to help the local miners who were forced to spend their meager wages on items priced nearly ten times more than what they could get them for if they had the time and means to travel the fourteen miles to the next town. Margaret could have gone to a boarding school in the next town where she would have been protected from the vulgarities of the miner’s children, but her father felt it best that she attend school with these less fortunate children to give her a better understanding of the world around them. She was the only child in class who could actually pay Miss Butler for her services, a fact she never hesitated to expound upon any time there was a disagreement in the small schoolyard alongside the schoolhouse.
The remaining children were of such a young age that their emotions were a seething cauldron of devotion for their young schoolteacher, who was little more than a child herself. Jasmine felt the teacher’s presence, Harriet Butler, who had left a life of leisure in Baltimore to come to this wilderness to bring knowledge to the less fortunate. She was like a lioness protecting her pride, tempered with a hint of immaturity, a mixture that was so common when the nation was young and still finding its way.
“What happened?” Jasmine said.
Images exploded in her mind as terror washed over her. She blamed herself for what happened. She could have returned home after the accident that claimed her husband’s life only two weeks earlier. No one would have faulted her for that. But her sense of doing what was right compelled her to stay and finish the year. During the summer she would return home, give birth to the child that was even now growing within her, and after that? Well, that was too far in the future to consider at this moment in time.
They had thought they were safe in the little schoolhouse perched at the edge of a vast wilderness. No Indians had been sighted in this area for over twenty years. The only things they had to worry about were the black bears and coyotes. It was winter, so the bears had already bedded down for their long sleep, and the coyotes had found greener pastures at the local farms. The storm came out of nowhere. One moment the sky was a clear blue, the next, dark clouds had rolled in, carrying with them a raging blizzard that battered itself against the walls of the schoolhouse like a wild beast trying to get to the morsels hidden inside.
There were sixteen children in her class, the offspring of miners who toiled in the nearby mines, ranging in age from six to fourteen. Almost evenly split between boys and girls, with the boys outnumbering the girls by a mere two.
Yet anyone who had ever watched a prepubescent boy in the presence of a young girl would understand that the boys only outnumbered the girls in a physical sense. Mentally the girls dominated the boys.
"Charles, would you please bring in some more wood?" Harriett asked her oldest boy, who promptly stood up and turned to the door. "Don't forget to button up," Harriet reminded him as he strode to the door.
"Of course, Miss Butler," Charles replied. Manners were important in Harriett's class, and though the children were born of parents many would view as less than civilized, in Harriet's mind, it was manners that set one apart.
Charles opened the door and stepped out into the raging blizzard. An errant wind shrieked through the schoolhouse and in its voice Harriet became aware of a cold certainty. The wood was not going to last the night, and the little bit of coal they had, much of it brought in by the children in lieu of payment for her services, would not last much longer. They had to get to town. The town offered safety from the storm and if they could make it to the hotel they would be safe. It was only a mile and a half away, but with the storm raging outside it might as well be on the moon.
Harriet had considered tying the children into a line with a rope and leading them to the hotel, as she'd read a schoolteacher had successfully done in Missouri the winter before during a particularly bad storm. Another teacher had attempted the same thing without success. They had not been found until the spring thaw, huddled together in a tight knot no more than a hundred yards from the safety of a railroad terminal.
No, it was better to ride out the storm here. The schoolhouse offered some shelter from the wind, and if necessary they had the desks they could use to keep warm. For now Harriet would use the dwindling supply of firewood and coal available to her. Only in the end, if it became necessary, would she instruct the children to break up their desks.
As Harriet considered their options, Charles loaded his arms with several pieces of the firewood that was stacked in the small shelter built to house it less than twenty yards from the front door of the schoolhouse. There were only a few more pieces left and he figured he would retrieve them on his next trip.
Halfway back, he became aware of the presence of another. He stopped and turned all the way around, searching the storm around him. Nothing moved in the swirling snow. No sound came to him save the shrieking voice of the wind.
"Hello!" he called out, certain that someone was out there in the storm. "We're over here!" he continued, aware that if someone was lost in the storm he was their only hope. From the storm came the sound of approaching footsteps and the swirling sheets of snow parted to reveal a man not twenty yards away, watching him. He was dressed like the drovers who occasionally passed through town as they herded cattle to market downstate. A long leather coat that reached to mid-calf, a kerchief or scarf, and a battered leather hat pulled low over the eyes.
"Hello, can you hear me?" he shouted.
The curtain of snow parted again and the man was gone, leaving only the sheets of wind- driven snow in his wake. The sound of footsteps came from behind him and he spun around to confront whoever was sneaking up on him. Nothing moved aside from the swirling snow.
With a shrug, he continued on his way. Ten yards from the front door, that solitary figure appeared again, no more than twenty feet away, watching him intently. Unnerved by his silent presence, Charles charged the last few feet to the front door, clambering up the steps to get back into the schoolhouse and the relative safety it afforded.
“Charles, you look as if you've seen a ghost."
"There's someone out there, Miss Butler, a man. He didn't say or do anything, just stood there and watched me."
"And you left him out in the storm? Shame on you."
Harriet moved to the back of the schoolhouse and gazed through the single-paned window next to the door.
"I don't see anyone out there. Charles, are you sure you saw him?”
"Yes ma'am, as sure as my Paw belongs to the country store!”
Several of the children laughed at this. It was a well-known fact that every miner in the area belonged to the country store, which was an extension of the coal company. It was a sorry state of affairs many would complain, that one’s earnings were taken back by a store operated by the very company that paid them to begin with. Yet they continued to shop at the company store, just as they continued to live in company housing. Practically every penny the miners made in the deep mines went right back to the company that paid them, with interest to add insult to injury.
“Hush now, children, we don’t need to speak of these things,” Harriet admonished them.
“I still don’t see anyone out there. Maybe we should try to bring them into the schoolhouse so they can get warm.”
Harriet turned from the window as a nasty gust of wind rattled the small schoolhouse to its very foundation. The Riley girls clung to one another in the far corner and wept as the wind shrieked with a vengeful voice.
“Everything will be fine, now just settle down, we have firewood, coal, and shelter.”
“Miss Butler, I see him, he’s over here, just outside the window,” Margaret, a small redheaded girl, cried out from the window she stood next to on the south side of the room. At that moment the wind threw a broken tree limb into the side of the schoolhouse. The window shattered next to Margaret and she was showered with shards of glass, some of which cut her freckled face. Margaret dropped to the floor, howling with pain, as the rest of the children moved away from the window and the wind that had now found its way inside.
After making sure Margaret was okay, Harriet tried to cover the window with a blanket. It did little to keep the searching fingers of the cold at bay. Snowflakes found their way into the warmth of the schoolhouse, melting at first as they settled on the warm wood, but in no time the cold made headway and a small pile of snow accumulated on the floor beneath the window.
Harriet kept the children close to the pot-bellied stove as the cold slowly ate away at the warmth given off by it.
“Charles, we need more firewood.”
“Can Randy go this time, Miss Butler?”
“What’s wrong, Charles?”
Charles glanced at the front door of the schoolhouse.
“I don’t wanna go back out there!”
“Fine. Randy, could you get us some more firewood, please?”
Randy jumped to his feet. Though smaller than Charles, he could handle the task requested of him. Randy smirked at Charles as he pulled on his woolen jacket.
“Don’t!” Charles said.
Randy walked to the front door and stopped.
“What’s gotten into you, Charles?” Harriet asked.
Charles shook his head.
“He’s out there, waiting for one of us.”
“Who’s out there?”
“The stranger, he’s waiting for one of us to come out so he can come in.” Charles moved away from the door and sat with the young children who were huddled around the stove.
“Don’t let him in, Miss Butler,” Charles said, then turned his attention to the stove in front of him. Several of the smaller children watched her with frightened eyes. It was bad enough they were trapped in the middle of a blizzard, but to find out there was a bad man out there who wanted to do them harm was too much for them.
“Please don’t let the bad man in, Miss Butler,” Rebecca cried from her perch in front of the stove.
“Please don’t,” whispered Victoria, a small blonde girl who like a few of the others had only started attending class this past fall.
“There’s no bad man out there.” Randy turned to the door. He slipped into his worn coat and stopped with his hand on the handle. “Watch and see, I’ll be back,” with that he flung open the door and vanished into the storm.
Harriet closed the door after him and stepped to the window beside the door to watch his progress. One moment he was there, the next he was gone, swallowed by the raging storm. She waited at the window, her gaze shifting from
the children huddled around the stove to the swirling sheets of snow beyond the window.
***
Randy easily made it to the small shelter where the firewood was stored. There were only a few pieces left, and they were wet from the driving snow; nonetheless he gathered up what remained. As he hefted the last piece of wood, he looked at its weathered gray surface. This piece was much older than the others. Intricate carvings covered its surface, blending with the grain that stood out in sharp contrast.
As he held it, an image formed in his mind. The flickering flames of a fire illuminated the impassive face of the totem. Shadowy shapes moved around the flames; part human and part animal, they pranced and leapt and reared up in mock combat as they danced around the fire. He shook his head as the image faded, suddenly overcome with the desire to return to the safety of the schoolhouse. He was about to turn back when he spotted movement out of the corner of his eye.
He stood still, his heart thundering in his chest, as the short hairs at the nape of his neck stirred. He was such a braggart. His father always said his mouth was going to get him into trouble one of these days, and it looked like that day had arrived.
From the corner of his eye he spotted the movement again, a solitary figure that walked effortlessly through the driving sheets of snow, drawing closer with every step.
“No!” Randy whispered as terror blossomed in the pit of his stomach. He wanted to drop his armload of wood and flee to the schoolhouse, but it was no use, he stood rooted in place, his terror locking his legs so that they ignored his repeated pleas to flee.
“Randy,” a voice whispered to him, carried on the shrieking wind.
“No!” Randy moaned as the figure neared. His pants leg darkened as his bladder released its contents. The figure was only a few feet away now, moving resolutely towards him, a wide brimmed hat pulled down low to cover his eyes. Randy saw a flash of dull yellow at the stranger’s chin. A beard that hung below cruel lips spread in an evil smile.
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