by Peter Straub
'No, sir,' Morris got out.
'You.' The finger moved to Bobby Hollingsworth.
Astonished, by the time he had passed me and reached the second row of freshmen, I realized that he was going to question every one of the hundred boys in chapel.
He finished with the freshmen and moved on to the sophomores. The rows were close together, and as he swept through the aisles, he bumped against the backs of seats in front and sometimes cracked against them so hard as to jolt them sideways; he took no notice. Our class had turned around on its seats to watch. Each time, the jabbing finger, the accusing shout.
'You. Shreck. Did you steal it?'
I could see his shoulders tremble beneath the fabric of his blue worsted suit.
Mr. Thorpe, who had been sitting at the front in the second wooden chair, stood and walked quickly down the side of the auditorium to confer with Mrs. Olinger. As with the boys whose chairs he had knocked aside, Mr. Broome took no notice. The other teachers clustered around the Latin teacher and Mrs. Olinger.
'You. King. Admit that you stole it. . . . You. Hamilton. You're guilty. Admit it.'
Finally he got to the seniors, leaving a maze of twisted chairs to show where he had been. The trembling in his shoulders was more pronounced, and his voice was ragged from all the shouting.
'You. Wax. Wax! Look at me! Did you?'
''No, sir.'
'Peters! You, Peters. Was it you?'
'Uh-uh, sir, No.'
I watched with dread as he approached Skeleton, half-hoping, half-fearing that Skeleton would begin to shriek. As Broome worked down the aisle toward him, Ridpath never looked his way but kept his dazed, empty face pointed toward the ceiling, fixing it on the spot where the color wheel had revolved during the homecoming dance. Then Broome was there. 'You. Ridpath! Ridpath! Look at me! Did you steal it?'
'ANSWER ME!'
' . . . ' Still that weird silence.
'DID YOU?'
Then we all heard Skeleton's drawling answer. 'Not me, Mr. Broome. I forgot all about it.'
'AAAAH!' Mr. Broome raised his fists in the air and wailed. The teachers at the back of the auditorium leaned forward, afraid to move — all except Mr. Thorpe, who took a brisk two steps toward the headmaster. Broome waved him back.
'Okay. Next boy. You, Teagarden. Was it you?'
And it went on until the last senior had said no. Mr. Broome stood at the end of the aisle with his back turned to the school. The cloth of his jacket shook. I was afraid that he would turn around and start all over again with the freshmen, and looked at my watch and saw that the whole first period had disappeared. Just then a bell rang in the hall. 'Okay,' Mr. Broome said. 'We're not finished yet. One of you has lied to me twice. I am not through with him. Dismissed.'
During the next class I looked through the windows onto the parking lot and saw Mr. Thorpe driving Mr. Broome out onto Santa Rosa Boulevard. An hour later Mr. Thorpe drove back in alone. Mr. Broome did not appear back at Carson for two days.
11
Hazing
After English class the next day we had a free period. Morris and his trio had permission to practice on the stage, and so did Del; the club performances were now only three weeks away. Morris immediately set off around the back of the school and down the stairs — we could see the two sophomores who struggled with bass and drums already swinging open the big door off the downstairs corridor. Del hung indecisively by his locker for a few minutes, wondering how he could work on his act without his partner. Tom had stayed home — gossip told us — because his father had been taken to the hospital 'for good.' Then Del muttered to the rest of us, 'Oh, well, it's better than study hall,' and wandered away after Morris.
'I think that guy's a homo,' Bobby Hollingsworth said. Sherman told him to shut his trap.
After five or ten minutes in the library, I realized that I had left one of the books I needed in my locker. Dave Brick was across the table from me, but he too had forgotten to bring the book — it took a long time to extract this information. Ever since Laker Broome's astonishing chapel performance, Brick had begun to look dopey and half-awake everywhere but in algebra class. 'Hey, I have to look at that too,' he whispered, surfacing out of his daze. 'You can have mine when I'm done,' I whispered back, and got permission to leave the library.
I found the book in the jumble at the bottom of my locker and turned around. The halls were empty. A lively conversational buzz came from Fitz-Hallan's room, a disgruntled roar from Whipple's. A door to the Senior Room at the end of the back corridor cracked open, and Skeleton Ridpath edged around it, still with that moony look on his face. Then he stiffened and turned toward the far corner; a second later he began to run down the empty hall. What the dickens? I thought. Through the thicknesses of glass I saw him round the corner and race down the stairs. Finally I realized that he had heard the piano. 'Oh, no,' I said out loud, and began to go quickly down the corridor. I had just reached the Senior Room when I saw the top-left-hand corner of the door to the stage — all that was visible to me — swing out.
I ran down the stairs and opened the door again just in time nearly to be knocked down by Brown and Hanna, the sophomores working with Morris. 'Don't go in there,' Hanna said, and sprinted up the stairs. Brown was leaning his bass against the wall just inside the door and trying to get outside at the same time, and he just stared at me as if I were nuts. I could hear Ridpath's voice but not his words. Brown left the bass rattling from side to side like a heavy pendulum, and flashed around the door.
I went into the gloom. ' . . . and don't come back or I'll cut your balls off,' I heard Skeleton curse. 'Now for you two.'
The first thing I saw was Morris' pale face far off above the piano, looking both frightened and obstinate. Then I saw Del standing beside a table covered in black velvet. He had turned in my direction. He just looked frightened, and about ten years old. Skeleton's long back hovered before me, about ten feet away. From the way his head was turned, he was looking at Del.
'They have a right to be here,' I said, and was going to continue, but Skeleton whirled around and stopped the words in my throat. I had never seen anything like his face.
He looked like a minor devil, a devil consumed by the horror of his ambition — the shadowy light hollowed his cheeks, somehow made his lips disappear. His hair and his skin seemed the same dull color. He might have been a hundred years old, a skull floating above an empty suit. In the monochrome face, his eyes smoked. They were screaming before he did, so loudly and with such pain that I was silenced.
'Another one? Another one?' he yelled, and jerked himself forward toward me. The light shifted, and his face returned to normal. The purple badges below his eyes looked as though they itched. 'Damn you,' he said, and his eyes never altered, and before he hit me I had time to think that I had seen the real Steve Ridpath, the one his face and nickname concealed. He flailed out and clouted me in the ribs, and dreamily grabbed my lapels and twisted us both about and pushed me back between Del and Morris.
The blood pounded in my ears. I faintly heard the sound of wood on wood — Morris quietly closing the lid of the Baldwin. 'Now, wait a second,' came Fielding's voice.
'Wait? Wait? What the hell else have I . . . ' Skeleton raised his bony fists up to his head. 'Don't you tell me to wait,' he hissed. 'You don't belong here.' He was speaking to Morris, but looking at Del Nightingale. 'I warned you,' he said.
Then he swiveled his head toward Morris. 'Get away from that fucking piano.' He began to move spastically toward Morris, and Morris smartly separated himself from the bench. Nearly sobbing, Skeleton said, 'Goddammit, why can't you listen to me? Why can't you pay attention to what I say? Now, stay away from . . . Christ!' He pushed his fists into his eyes, and I thought perhaps that in fact he was sobbing. 'It's too late for that. Oh, Jesus. You crappy freshmen. Why do you have to hang around here?'
'To practice, you dope,' Morris said. 'What does it look like?'
'I'm not talking to you,' Skelet
on said, and took his hands away from his eyes. His face was wet and gray.
Morris' mouth opened.
'You think you know everything,' Skeleton said quietly to Del.
'No,' Del said.
'You think you own him. You'd be surprised.'
'Nobody owns anybody,' Del said, rather startling me.
'You shitty little bastard,' Skeleton erupted. 'You don't even know what you're talking about. And you're the one who thinks I should wait. Damn. I know as much as you do, Florence. He helps me. He wants to know me.'
By now Morris and I were sure that Ridpath was literally insane, and what happened next only confirmed it.
As scared as he was, Del had the courage to shake his head.
This enraged Skeleton. He began to tremble even more than Laker Broome during the chapel interrogations the day before. 'I'll show you,' he shouted, and went for Del.
Skeleton slapped him twice, hard, and said, 'Take off your jacket and your shirt, goddamn you, I want to see some skin.'
'Hey, come on,' Morris said.
Skeleton whirled on us and froze us to the boards with his face. 'You're not in it anymore. Stay put. Or you're next.'
Then he jerked at the back of Del's dark jacket and pulled it off. Del hurriedly began to unbutton his shirt, which glimmered in the dim light. As if having something to do helped his fear, he seemed calm, despite his haste. His cheeks burned where Skeleton had slapped him.
Morris said, 'Don't do it, Del.'
Skeleton twisted toward us again. 'If you dare to say one more thing, either of you, I'll kill you, so help me God.'
We believed him. He was bigger and stronger, and he was crazy. I glanced at Morris and saw that he was as terrified, as incapable of helping Del, as I was.
'You fucking Florence,' Skeleton moaned. 'Why did you have to be here? I'm going to initiate you, all right.' His face constricted and blanched, then went a dull shade of red. 'With my belt. Bend over that piano bench.'
Morris groaned and looked as if he might faint or vomit.
Del dropped his glimmering shirt — it was silk, I realized — on the dusty floor and went to the piano bench. He knelt before it and leaned over, exposing his pale boy's back. Skeleton was already breathing oddly. He unfastened his belt, drew it out through the loops, and doubled it.
For a moment he simply looked at Del, and I saw on his face that expression I had seen before, of a devil's desperation and need and distrust, of a hungry certainty all mixed up with fear. I too groaned then. Skeleton never paused. He moved slightly behind Del, to one side, and raised the doubled belt and sliced it down on Del's back.
'Oh, Jesus,' he said, but Del said nothing. An instant later, a red line appeared where the belt had struck.
Skeleton raised his belt again, tightening his face with effort.
'No!' Morris shouted.
The belt came whistling down and cracked against Del's skin. Del jerked backward a bit and closed his eyes. He was silently crying.
Skeleton repeated his odd, painful prayer — 'Oh, Jeesus' — and raised the belt and cut down with it again. Del gripped the legs of the piano bench. I saw tears dripping off his chin and breaking on the floor.
And that is the second 'image which stays with me most strongly from Carson. The three lines blistering in Del Nightingale's white back, Skeleton twisting over him in his agony, his face twisted too, the belt dangling from his hand. The first image, of Mr. Fitz-Hallan ironically proffering a ball-point pen to Dave Brick — that picture of the school's health — jumped alive in my mind, and I thought without thinking that the two were connected as two points on a single graph.
'You rich little freak,' Skeleton wailed. 'You have everything.' He broke away from Del, looked wildly at Fielding and me from out of his tortured face, broke toward us and we scrabbled backward toward the heavy curtains. Skeleton uttered a word, 'bird,' as one speaks without realizing it, broke direction again, and threw the belt at the curtains and began to lunge toward the door. We heard it slam; then heard a loud silence.
12
It felt as though a cymbal had been struck in that cavernous dark space, the shattering sound cutting us free from whatever had held us up, held us in place. Morris and I, already sitting, collapsed onto the boards. Del slipped off the piano bench and lay beside it.
I began to go toward him on all fours. Morris followed. Del's face was streaked with what looked like mud; finally I saw that it was the dust melting on his wet face. 'It doesn't matter,' Del said. 'Get my shirt.'
'Doesn't matter?' Morris said as he stood up and went for the discarded shirt. 'We can get him expelled now. He's done. And he hurt you. Look at your back.'
'I can't look at my back,' Del said. He raised himself up on his knees and put one hand on the piano bench. 'May I please have my shirt?'
Morris came up white-faced and handed it over. Del's face was red, but composed. The wet dust looked like thick warpaint. 'Do you need help standing up?' Morris asked.
'No.'
All three of us heard the door opening again, and Morris hissingly drew in his breath; Del and I probably did the same.
'You in here?' came a familiar voice. 'Hey, I can't find you.' Expecting Skeleton's return, none of us could identify the speaker.
'Hey, I was looking all over for you,' Dave Brick said, walking slowly toward us out of the gloom. 'You get that book? Holy cow.' This last because now he could see the way we were staring at him, Morris and I fearfully, Del with the warpaint on his face.
'Holy cow,' Brick repeated when he was close enough to see Del's back just before Del struggled into his shirt. 'What have you guys been doing?'
'Nothing,' Del said.
'Skeleton hit him with a belt,' Morris said, standing up and dusting off his knees. 'He's out of his mind.' ' . . . a belt . . . ?' Brick made as if to help Del put on his jacket, but Del waved him away.
'Really out of his mind. Are you okay, Del?'
Del nodded and turned away from us.
'Does it hurt?'
'No.'
'We can actually get rid of Skeleton now,' Morris hammered on.
Brick went ' . . . geez . . . ' and sat down on the piano bench. 'Right here?' he asked stupidly. 'In school?'
Morris was looking thoughtfully at the piano and the bench. 'You know what I think,' he said.
'Uh?' Brick said. Del, who was still facing the curtains, and I said nothing.
'I'm thinking that's the second time Skeleton went nuts when he saw me playing that piano.'
'No kidding,' Brick said, gazing in wonder at the piano.
'Why would he do that?' Morris inquired. 'Because he put something there he wants to keep hidden. Sound good?'
Brick and I looked at each other, finally understanding. 'My God,' I said. 'Get off that bench, Brick.' He jumped away from the piano bench, and he and I lifted the lid as Morris folded his arms and peered in.
Brick screamed. Something small and crystalline flew up out of the bench, a silvery mothlike thing that rattled like a beetle. Dave Brick's scream had jolted Del out of his trance, and he turned around and watched with the rest of us as the small silvery thing flew in a wide arc across the apron of the stage and fell with a soft thud into the pile of old curtains.
'What was that?' Morris asked.
Brick ran heavily, echoingly, across the stage to the pile of curtains. He bent to touch what lay there, but pulled back his hand. 'That owl. From Ventnor.'
'But it flew,' Morris said.
'It flew,' I repeated.
'Yes,' Del said. I glanced at him, and was startled by the shadowy smile I saw lurking in his face.
'You shook the bench,' Morris said. Brick leaned down and picked up the owl. 'That's what happened. You shook it.'
'No,' said Del, but no one paid any attention.
'Yeah,' Brick said. 'We both did, I guess.'
'Sure you did,' Morris said. 'Glass owls can't fly.' He leaned over again. 'Well, what else do we have here?' And pulled ou
t copied exam after copied exam. 'Well, now I know why he used to sneak back up here all the time. He wanted to make sure it was all still where he put it. When we tell people about this, he won't last another five minutes at this school.'
'We've got him by the short hairs,' Brick said, suddenly stunned by joy.
Del looked at all of us and said, 'No.' He extended his right hand toward Dave Brick, and Brick came toward us and put the owl in his hand. 'Wait a second there,' Morris said, but Del was already raising his arm. He hurled the owl at the stage. It made a noise like a bomb and flew apart into a million shining pieces. Dave gawped at him in sheer dumb amazement for a moment, and — you have already guessed it — wept.
Del walked out after that, just before the bell rang for a new period. 'What do we do?' Brick asked, wiping his face on his sleeve. 'We go to our next class,' Morris said firmly. 'And after?' I asked. 'We find someone to tell all this to,' Morris said. 'I get a funny feeling about all this,' I said. 'Like maybe Del won't help us.' Morris shrugged, then looked uncomfortable. 'The owl,' Brick blubbed. The three of us looked at the fragments on the stage — nothing faintly owllike remained. 'We didn't shake the bench,' Brick said. 'You had to,' Morris said. 'No,' I said, and heard myself echoing Del — no was about the extent of what he had said ever since Skeleton had run out. I could still hear the rattling noise it had made as it flew. 'Darn,' Morris said. 'We have to go. Look.' He faced me, still believing that something reasonable could be extricated from a scene in which one student insanely beat another with a belt and glass owls flew thirty feet across stages. 'Fitz-Hallan likes you. He eats you up. Why don't you talk to him about this?' I nodded.
On the way to my next class, I passed the Senior Room. A student was laughing in there, and all of my insides tingled. I knew with a cave dweller's atavistic knowledge that it was Skeleton Ridpath, all alone. During a free period, I did go to see Fitz-Hallan, but he was no help; Carson closed ranks, denied the mystery.
13
Thorpe
'I have spoken to Mr. Fitz-Hallan,' he said, 'and last night I communicated with Nightingale and also with his godparents, Mr. and Mrs. Hillman. This morning I spoke privately to Morris Fielding. Now I must ask you, is there anything in your story you would care to change, in the light of its quite extraordinary nature?' Mr. Thorpe glared at me. He was controlling his anger very well, but I could still feel its heat. We were in the office Thorpe used as assistant headmaster, a bare cubicle on the other side of the corridor from the secretary's offices. Mr. Fitz-Hallan was sitting in a typing chair beside Mr. Thorpe; I stood before the metal desk. Mr. Weatherbee, my form adviser, stood beside me.