Halcyon

by Rio Youers

  So much fog, thick with ass-kissery and bullshit: a day in the life of an architect. Edith’s scream blew it apart, though. Martin straightened at his desk. The pencil snapped between his fingers and a thick strip of gooseflesh raced up his spine.

  “Not again,” he said. In the three seconds between one scream ending and another beginning—this Daltrey’s, at the end of the track, and eerily similar it was, too—he recalled Calm Dumas telling them that it would take time for Edith to build her shelter, and that the episodes would continue until then. Martin shouldn’t have been so taken aback, but he was—perhaps because the family had been in such a cool groove since Calm had left. Worst of all, judging by the depth of Edith’s scream … whatever she was seeing, it was bad.

  “Coming, baby. Daddy’s coming.”

  He bolted from his office, took the stairs at a blur and—like last time—felt his injured knee mutter in protest, just a twinge to begin with, then a deeper, tighter pull as he flew down the landing toward Edith’s room. He all but knocked her door off its hinges, throwing his entire weight into it. There were two loud cracks as the frame split and the door bounced off the wall. It came back at him hard, thumping off his shoulder.

  Edith was on the floor, curled into a whimpering ball, a red marker pen clutched in her right hand. Martin went to her. “Babygirl.” He touched her shoulder and she flinched. “Ede, it’s Dad. I’m here now, it’s all—” She looked up. The eyes staring at him were haunted, shocked. Nothing to do with her sickness, everything to do with her condition.

  “Burdock,” she said.

  Martin looked around. Two of her bedroom walls were covered with graffiti. There were dozens—maybe hundreds—of jagged lines and the number 16 scrawled over and over.

  “What are you seeing, Ede?”

  “Burdock.”

  Martin stepped toward the wall where Edith had previously depicted the Buffalo bombing. These new markings were simpler and less varied—just those lightning-bolt lines and the number 16. But no, there was a third symbol, almost lost in the confusion: a heart shape, erratically drawn. Martin ran his fingers over it and looked at Edith. She shook her head. Her mouth wavered.

  “Mom,” she said, and screamed again.

  * * *

  The first gunshots came while Laura was reading “The Devil and Tom Walker” to her freshman English class. There were two rapid-fire blasts, the sound suppressed by closed doors and narrow hallways. To begin with, she thought it was someone striking a locker with a baseball bat. Some jilted jock, perhaps, dropped from the starting lineup.

  All her students looked up, concerned expressions on their faces, but it was prudent, practical Paige Lewis who said what everyone else was thinking: “Were those gunshots?” A ripple of unease moved through the class. Laura closed The Complete Works of Washington Irving and raised one hand.

  “Just stay calm,” she said, thinking they couldn’t be gunshots, but knowing full well they could be. “I’m sure there’s—”

  Her words were cut short by a third blast. The entire class shifted nervously and looked at her with trusting eyes.

  “Lockdown,” she said decisively, preempting the announcement by three seconds. The siren whooped through the intercom—the same intercom that broadcast the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, and these children stood proud and recited their pledge, eyes on the flag. Now the message was very different:

  “SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY. TEACHERS SECURE YOUR ROOMS. THE SCHOOL IS IN LOCKDOWN. REPEAT: THE SCHOOL IS IN LOCKDOWN.”

  Most of her class was on its feet and heading toward the safe corner—the one corner in the room that couldn’t be seen should the shooter look through the window in the door.

  “Stay calm,” Laura said, fighting to keep the tremor out of her voice—to appear calm herself, even though everything inside had turned to icy water. “No pushing, Alex. Slow and easy. Hey, Morgan, keep it cool. Just like your drills. Let’s do this.”

  More shots, and God they sounded louder—closer. She heard children screaming in other classrooms, then yet more shots. A few of her own students were crying shrilly, with others trying to quiet them down. Gemma Baumgartner was locked to her desk, trembling, huge tears rolling from behind her owlish glasses.

  “Johnny, help Gemma,” Laura said. Johnny was a cool-headed kid. Chief-of-police material. She could trust him to usher Gemma to the safe corner while she locked the door. She grabbed her keys from the top drawer in her desk. Her cell phone was in there, too, and as she looked at it—as if willing it to happen—the window lit up and the word HOME appeared. Martin calling. Complete coincidence. Or maybe this was already breaking news and he was calling to make sure she was okay. But no, it only felt like forever since she’d heard those first shots. In reality, it had been seconds. The news teams were quick, but not that quick.

  Five more shots rang out, definitely closer, and definitely not some jilted jock with a baseball bat. They spurred her in the most terrible way. “Sorry, baby,” she said. She slammed the drawer and went to the door. She had to do something else before locking it, but couldn’t remember what. Her mind scrambled desperately, and it was only the sight of Johnny coolly escorting Gemma to the corner that helped her remember.

  Check the hallway. Yes, a quick glance left and right to ensure there were no stranded students. Once clear, she could lock the door, then draw the blinds and sit in the corner with the students—wait this nightmare out.

  Laura opened the door just wide enough to poke her head through. She looked right first. All clear. She looked left, and there, maybe ten feet away, was Deena Culpovich, a sophomore, always quiet, without the attitude and confidence of the more popular girls in her year.

  “Deena!” Laura snapped. “In here. Now!”

  But if Deena heard, she showed no sign. Her mouth was slack and her upper body trembled. She was locked to the spot much like Gemma Baumgartner had been locked to her desk.

  “Deena! Now!”

  No response. She stared dead ahead. Tharn, Laura thought, drawing on another favorite from the freshman English curriculum. And what was the protocol here? Should she leave Deena in the hallway, perhaps to be shot to death, and have to live with that on her conscience for the rest of her life? Or should she rush out, grab her, and leave a classroom full of kids behind an unlocked door?

  It’ll take five seconds, Laura thought. Deena was a small girl, the same age as Shirley but perhaps fifteen pounds lighter. Jesus, Laura could carry her in one arm if she had to.

  “Deena!” One last try, but no … nothing. She left the keys hanging from the lock and turned around. “Johnny, if I’m not back in ten seconds, you lock this door. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am, but—”

  “Do you understand?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She nodded—good ol’ Johnny—and poked her head into the hallway again. With the announcement blaring, it was difficult to determine where the shots were coming from. She looked right. Nobody there. She looked left, beyond Deena. Nothing but blue lockers and closed classroom doors. Laura took a deep breath and stepped into the hallway. She made it to Deena in four broad strides and grabbed her wrist. “Come on.” But Deena resisted, trying to squirm her wrist free, shaking, pleading under her breath.

  “Please no I don’t want to die please oh…”

  “Deena, it’s Mrs. Lovegrove. I need you to come with—”

  “Please no please oh please.” She snatched her wrist free. Her eyes flooded with terror. “No,” she whispered. A final, miserable denial, and that was when Laura knew that the shooter had advanced into the hallway behind her. Deena’s eyes might as well have been mirrors, reflecting what she saw.

  “Oh, God,” Laura said.

  She turned and there he was. A small man with a big gun. She watched as he stepped closer, taking aim, and did then the only thing she could think of: she pushed Deena clean off her feet, offering herself—if only temporarily—as the open target.

 
Laura closed her eyes. The last thing she heard was the infinitely satisfying sound of her classroom door being locked.

  Good ol’ Johnny, she thought, and that was all.

  * * *

  The whole point of a premonition was that it happened before the event, but that didn’t stop Martin being sick with fear. He got Edith into bed and stroked her brow until she was dozing, then he staggered to the bathroom and vomited into the sink.

  “Oh, Jesus. Oh, God.”

  He washed his face with a warm cloth and rinsed the sink, then went into the bedroom and picked up the phone on the nightstand. He wanted more than anything to hear Laura’s voice. He didn’t think she’d answer—she switched her cell to mute during classes—but he was going to try, anyway.

  No dice, as expected. Her voicemail response: “I’m either busy or frantically trying to find my phone. So try me again later, or leave a message and I’ll call you back. If this is Martin or the girls … dammit, I love you.” He ended the call, tapped the green dial button again, and got the same response. This time he left a message.

  “Hey, honey. So yeah, eventful morning: Edith had another episode. A bad one.” He paused, thinking but not saying, It involved you but I don’t know how and just the thought of that made me yodel groceries into the goddamn sink. The room pitched giddily. He sat on the edge of the bed to keep from losing his balance, then ran a hand across his forehead and continued, “She uh … purged, I guess. Drew all over the walls. Like I said … pretty bad. She’s sleeping again now but you should probably come home. I’m declaring this a two-parent situation.”

  Not knowing Laura’s timetable, and not satisfied she would get his message anytime soon, he decided to call the school office and have them page her, partly because she’d want to know what was happening at home, mostly because he was desperate to hear her voice.

  He dialed. The line was busy. He waited two inexorable minutes and tried again. Still busy.

  “Aw shit, come on.”

  That was when he heard the first sirens. Not a lone cruiser or ambulance, but an orchestra of wailing, speeding emergency response vehicles.

  If he hesitated, it was for just one second. He swept into Edith’s bedroom, cursing as his ACL offered another warning throb. “Sorry, babygirl,” he said, scooping Edith into his arms. “We’re going for a drive.” He hobbled downstairs, grabbed his phone and keys on his way out the front door, and reeled across the driveway to his car.

  The sirens were a swirling backdrop of sound, impossible to pinpoint where they were heading. He propped Edith on the backseat and buckled her in, then jumped behind the wheel and gunned the ignition. The radio came on loud but didn’t envelop the sirens. Martin jabbed the off button, popped the transmission into drive, and roared out of his driveway. He didn’t check for oncoming traffic—missed an old Dodge pickup by a matter of inches. The Dodge let rip with the horn and its driver flipped him the bird.

  Martin booted the accelerator and screeched down Melon Road, touching sixty by the time he hit the all-way at Juniper Avenue. He slowed down but didn’t stop, blew across it aggressively, forcing a Chevy with the right of way to brake hard.

  Keep your cool, he thought, but it wasn’t easy, and whatever cool he had cracked down the middle when he saw two cop cars bolt west on Main, heading toward Flint Wood High. He snatched his cell out of the passenger seat and dialed Laura again.

  “Come on, baby. Let me hear your voice.”

  He knew Laura as well as he knew himself. She would’ve grabbed her phone when she heard the sirens—would’ve seen the two missed calls. Heck, she was probably texting right now to assure him that she was okay: Jeez, a lot of noise out there, huh? All fine here. Any idea what’s going on? That imaginary text seemed so real—so Laura—that tears spurted from his eyes and he wiped them away as her voicemail message chimed in his ear.

  “I’m either busy or frantically trying to find my—”

  He thumbed the end call button, then dialed again.

  “Please, baby … please.”

  It was a five-minute drive to Flint Wood High. Three if the traffic was good and the lights were kind. Martin got to within three blocks away when he realized that most of the sirens had fallen silent; the town’s emergency units had reached their destination.

  A chopper—either a news team or police—hovered in the air above the high school.

  Martin turned left on New York Avenue, barely able to focus through the tears in his eyes. He might have believed that everything would be fine if not for Edith’s premonition—that single love heart almost lost among the lightning jags and 16s. Mom, Edith had said when Martin touched it. He thumped the steering wheel with his left hand. His right still clutched the phone.

  “… try me again later, or leave a message and I’ll call you…”

  A hundred yards from the school, he saw the cruisers and ambulances parked haphazardly, lights beating red and blue signals into the air. Crowd control barriers were being set up. A fire truck blocked the road ahead and the traffic had backed up. People flowed along the sidewalk toward the school.

  Martin made a right turn and approached from a different direction. The traffic was lighter here. He parked as close as he could. Edith mumbled in the backseat. She said she wanted to go home.

  “Soon, baby,” Martin said. Sweat glimmered on his face and throat. His shirt was gummed to his back. “I need to … go do something. But I’ll be right back, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Martin got out of the car and lurched toward the school, managing maybe twenty paces before his damaged knee finally popped. He buckled but didn’t go down, and flat-out refused to be slowed down. Grimacing at the pain, he braced the injury with one hand and limped on. With his other hand, he dialed Laura again.

  “Come on, sweetheart. Please, please…”

  The chopper thundered overhead and sirens whooped intermittently. Martin reached a crowd of onlookers and pushed through. He heard whispers as he made his way to the front: “… don’t think it could ever really … lone shooter, that’s what … oh my God, it’s just…” Students and teachers, escorted by police, streamed through the main doors and down the front steps. Most of them were crying. Others were too shocked. Martin looked for Laura. Didn’t see her. He dialed her number yet again. How many times now? Ten? Fifteen?

  “I’m either busy or frantically trying…”

  He ducked beneath the police tape and took three faltering steps before a cop stood in his path.

  “Stay behind the tape, sir. It’s there for a reason.”

  “My wife’s a teacher here,” Martin said. “Laura Lovegrove. She—”

  “I appreciate your concern, but you need to back up. I can take…”

  She carried on speaking but Martin didn’t really hear. He’d spotted Stephen Griffith in the stream of people walking down the front steps. Stephen was a fifty-something geography teacher who’d once drunkenly shared with Martin that he was having an affair with a former student. Now he imparted information of a very different nature. He looked at Martin with pouchy, wet eyes, gave his head a near imperceptible shake, then glanced quickly at his feet and kept walking. And that was when Martin knew. He just knew.

  The strength went out of his good leg and he crumpled to the sidewalk. Someone—the cop, perhaps—tried to help him up, but he wasn’t ready for that yet. He looked numbly at the cell phone in his hand. At some point, he’d dialed Laura again.

  “If this is Martin or the girls … dammit, I love you.”

  11

  Sixteen dead—a number that came as no surprise to Martin. Ten students. Four teachers. A school counselor. The sixteenth victim was the shooter, Glenn Burdock. He didn’t take his own life and no cop gunned him down. His weak, miserable existence met its conclusion by way of William H. Finch, aka Old Finchy, a sixty-two-year-old science teacher and gun advocate, who also happened to be a former field rep for the New Hampshire Friends of NRA. Old Finchy exercised his constitution
al rights by keeping a Beretta 92 in a “secret drawer” in his classroom. Apparently several senior teachers—and the school board, who’d given its written authorization—knew it was there, but ascribed to the belief that a little extra security was no bad thing. Besides, Old Finchy was responsible—knew his way around a firearm. And yes, it was possible a student could have found that secret drawer, but unlikely. Principal Moira Keene defended it as a calculated risk.

  On this occasion, the risk paid off; Glenn Burdock was closing in on fifteen-year-old Deena Culpovich—who was sprawled across the floor in a state of shock—when Old Finchy crept into the hallway behind him. At a distance of approximately thirty feet, he raised the 92 just like he did at the range, fired once, and blew a hole through the back of the shooter’s skull.

  For Glenn Burdock, there was no martyrdom, no ride to Glam Moon. He died just like every mass shooter before him: in a frenzy of hate and national disgrace. Old Finchy experienced quite the opposite reaction. He was hailed a hero, a poster boy for the NRA and the “Arm Our Teachers” supporters. He appeared on CNN’s State of the Union and shook the vice president’s hand.

  He was at Laura Lovegrove’s funeral.

  * * *

  Martin eulogized briefly, brokenly, about love, gentleness, and memory. He touched on—because how could he fully describe?—Laura’s eagerness to care, her unwavering inclination to see the good in all people. The funeral home chapel was full, but he spoke primarily to Edith and Shirley, never losing eye contact with them, as if imparting their mother’s final and most valuable lessons. A huge photograph of Laura floated on a projection screen to the left of him. Her coffin was improbably close.