‘So you came here, and you started to take the souls of the people I care about?’
Kim was sobbing now. ‘I have to keep promise. I cannot defy Kwisin.’
‘For Christ’s sake, Kim! How many souls exactly were you planning on taking? Or is there no limit?’
‘One for every year since Roland Rook married her. Sixty-one. Then Kwisin will be satisfied. Then Kwisin will be able to find peace.’ He looked at Jim in utter distress. ‘Please, forgive me.’
‘Forgive you? You want to encourage sixty-one young people to kill themselves, and I’m supposed to forgive you?’
Jim let go of Kim’s arm and Kim sank to his knees on the floor, still coughing, with tears running down his cheeks. Jim turned back to Second Class Two, feeling angry and helpless.
At the top of his voice, he shouted out, ‘If I ask you drop your box-cutters on to the floor, would you do that for me?’
He negotiated his way between the desks, stepping over Tamara, who was still gasping for breath on the floor. He went right up to Billy and said, ‘If I ask you to pull that stuff off of your face, Billy, would you do that for me?’
Billy stared at him through the cling film, his chest rising and falling underneath his cheap washed-out sweatshirt, half-asphyxiated by his own hopelessness.
‘Would you do that for me, Billy?’ he asked, as quietly as he could.
Billy turned his head toward the classroom door, and then he shook his head.
‘You don’t want to die, Billy, believe me. Dying is no fun at all. Especially if your soul gets taken for all eternity by some vicious Korean demon.’
But Billy wasn’t looking at him any more, and neither were any of his other students, and when Jim turned around, he saw why.
Framed in the doorway was the fox-woman, Kwisin, in her hat and her veil and her shiny gray robes. She hesitated for a moment, and then she made her way into the room, with a curiously stilted gait, and even from the back of the room Jim could hear the sound of claws on the floor.
Every member of Special Class Two stood up straighter as she approached. Leon reached down with his free hand and helped Tamara to climb back on to her feet. The cling film around their faces crackled as they sucked as much air into their lungs as they could.
Kwisin swelled larger and larger, as she had in Jim’s bedroom. Her hat tumbled back, and the veil that covered her face began to rise, as her jaws grew long and pointed, like the fox-demon she was. Her gray silk robe opened up and slithered to the floor, and within only a few seconds she was standing in front of them as a black hairy beast, with poisonous yellow eyes and curved horns and incisors that were dripping with saliva.
The classroom was filled with the reek of smoke and incense and rotting blood, and Jim felt that he was choking.
‘Get the hell out of here!’ he shouted. ‘Get the hell out of here, Kwisin, and leave my kids alone!’
Kwisin stared at him, as if she found it impossible to believe that anybody would dare to defy her. She snarled, and tilted forward, challenging him to come closer. Jim knew that it was madness. She would bite his head off and rip him open, the way that the crows had ripped Tibbles open, and then she would crunch up his soul like Patsy-Jean’s. But all the same he pushed his way between Tamara and Arthur and Janice to the front of the class, until he was facing Kwisin from only three or four feet away.
Kim was still on his knees on the floor, behind Jim’s desk. He was crying out, ‘No, Mr Rook, you cannot defy her!’
Jim seized Kwisin’s front leg. It was viciously prickly, like the thick stem of a thorn bush, and he shouted out, ‘Shit!’ Kwisin immediately knocked him away, and he staggered back against the stationery cupboard with a loud metallic bang, jarring his shoulder. He looked down at the palm of his hand and it was bleeding where Kwisin’s bristles had torn his skin.
Now Kwisin let out a high, ululating scream. Jim had never heard anything like it in his life. It was the sound of human beings in agony, human beings who know that they have been crushed so badly that they cannot possibly survive. It was the sound of people throwing themselves out of buildings, or trapped in burning automobiles. It was the sound of hopelessness, of utter despair. It was the sound of no future.
Without hesitation, as if they had rehearsed it, Special Class Two simultaneously drew their right hands across the left side of their throats, slicing open their carotid arteries. Blood spurted out everywhere, splattering across the papers on their desks, flooding down the fronts of their T-shirts and their sweaters and their dresses, spraying in hieroglyphic patterns on the walls. In twos and threes, the students collapsed, and lay quivering under their desks while their hearts pumped out the last few liters of their lives.
Kwisin, the fox-demon, let out another screech, harsh and triumphant. She threw back her head and raised both of her forelegs, as if she was preparing to welcome the souls of Special Class Two into her dark, bristling embrace.
Jim was stunned. He shouted out, ‘Yaaaaaahhhhh!’ and threw himself at Kwisin again, but again Kwisin knocked him aside with her bristly forepaw, so violently that he rolled right over the top of his desk and fell heavily against his chair. He lay back, winded, but he was just about to climb on to his feet and attack Kwisin yet again when he thought: She could easily have killed me. She could easily have bitten off my head like Charlie the Boston terrier.
He thought of the first time that Kwisin had appeared in his bedroom, too. She had swelled up into this same black bristling beast, with horns and fangs, and she had scared him shitless, but she hadn’t touched him. Maybe there was a good reason for that. Maybe she hadn’t hurt him because he was Roland’s grandson. Roland had deserted Kwisin, just like Lieutenant Pinkerton had deserted Madam Butterfly, but maybe there was still some dark particle in her demonic brain that still loved him – and Jim, of course, carried Roland’s genes.
He gripped the edge of his desk and heaved himself on to his feet. Kwisin was still standing with her head thrown back and her forelegs wide apart, and when he looked around the gloomy, blood-glistening classroom, Jim could see that the souls of Special Class Two were beginning to rise from their fallen bodies. Tamara’s first, semi-transparent and shimmering in rainbow colors, closely followed by Teddy’s and Judii’s. As they glided toward Kwisin’s bristling embrace, all three of them turned toward Jim and gave him sad, regretful smiles.
‘You’re not having them!’ Jim shouted. ‘Do you hear me, you bitch? You’re not having them!’
This time, he didn’t try to launch himself at Kwisin again. This time, he went for Kim, who was still kneeling close beside her. Kim gasped, and tried to struggle, but Jim grabbed him around the neck with both hands and threw him backward on to the floor. He pressed both thumbs into Kim’s throat and banged his head again and again, as hard as he could.
‘You started this!’ he shouted at him. He was so angry now that the spit flew out of his mouth. ‘You started this, just to save yourself! Sixty-one people killing themselves, just to save you! You miserable, cowardly bastard!’
Kim started to turn purple, and let out a thin, guttural whine, but Jim dug his thumbs into his throat even deeper, and banged his head so many times that his eyes rolled up into his head.
Kwisin twisted her head around and snarled at him, but now the souls of Special Class Two were clustered all around her, their arms held out wide, trying to embrace her, and to her they were just as substantial as real, living people.
Jim squeezed Kim’s throat relentlessly. ‘This is finished, you got it? This is over. No more kids are going to die. Not for the sake of your worthless skin.’
At that moment, however, he heard a voice shout, ‘Let him go! Let the kid go!’
He turned around and saw Detective Wong and Detective Madison pushing their way into the classroom, with Nurse Okeke and Dr Ehrlichman close behind them. Detective Wong tugged his gun out of his holster and pointed it directly at Jim’s head.
‘Let the kid go, or I’ll shoot!’
But Jim kept up his relentless grip on Kim’s throat. He couldn’t hear him breathing any more and he thought that he was probably dead, but he wanted to make absolutely sure.
‘Let the kid go, Mr Rook! This is your last warning!’
Detective Wong came across the classroom, his automatic held steady in both hands. What he didn’t realize was that he was walking through a crowd of invisible souls, and that a hideous demon was only two feet away from him. He stepped forward until the muzzle of his gun was pressed right up against Jim’s right ear.
‘Let him go,’ he repeated.
‘I can’t. He has to die. There’s no other way.’
‘Detective!’ called out Nurse Okeke. ‘Whatever you do, don’t shoot! There are things in this room that you don’t understand!’
Detective Wong cocked his gun. ‘I understand that Mr Rook is trying to strangle this kid to death and that I’m going to shoot him if he doesn’t desist.’
‘Detective!’ shrilled Nurse Okeke. ‘There is a demon in this room! There are human spirits! You cannot shoot!’
Now Kwisin had gathered all the souls of Special Class Two together in a restless mingling of light and color and shadows and sliding images. Jim could see glimpses of their faces and their expressions as she pulled them into the darkness of her embrace. She snarled again, and let out another of her warbling, high-pitched screeches. Then she lowered her head and Jim could hear the crunching of souls as she started to devour the very substance that had made up each of his students’ lives – their character, their memories, the love that they had been given as they grew up, sunny days, tears, and then hopelessness. This was what Kwisin fed on.
Nurse Okeke hurled herself across the classroom. She seized Detective Wong’s wrist and tried to twist the gun out of his hand. There was a deafening bang and she fell sideways on to the floor, right next to Kim, with a bloodstain spreading across her white nurse’s coat. She stared up at Detective Wong, her eyes wide, and then at Jim.
Detective Wong shouted, ‘Paramedics! Get me a bus, now!’
Jim let go of Kim. As he did so, Kim let out one long breath, the last air that had been trapped in his lungs as Jim throttled him. Nurse Okeke turned her head and whispered, ‘Is he dead, Mr Rook? Have you killed him?’
Jim laid a hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s OK. Just stay with me, OK? You’re going to be fine. It’s only a gunshot wound.’
‘Only?’
Just then, Kim opened his eyes. He looked up at Jim and whispered, ‘Forgive me, Mr Rook. What you did, I deserved it. I was a coward, you were right.’
‘Can you put things back the way they were?’ Jim asked him.
‘Who the hell are you talking to?’ Detective Wong demanded. ‘Come on, stand up, put your hands behind your back.’
‘Doors close, Mr Rook. But doors open, too. There are so many doors, and all we have to do is choose which one.’
Kim’s soul rose from his body, fluid and iridescent. He pressed his hands with their palms together and bowed his head. ‘Goodbye, Mr Rook. Remember me.’
He walked across to Kwisin and pushed his way in between all of the souls that were gathered around her. He held his arms out wide, and held her close. Kwisin lifted up her head and gave one last screech. Jim didn’t know if it was pain, or joy, or despair. All he knew was that Kwisin would now have the eternal peace for which she had been waiting so many years.
Kwisin began to shudder, and fade. Quite suddenly, she seemed to twist around, like black smoke caught in a gust of wind, and then she vanished. She left behind her the souls of Special Class Two, standing together in bewilderment. Some of them had been scratched and bitten, and some of them were glowing with that dazzling essence that courses inside a soul instead of blood, but most of them appeared to be uninjured.
Jim stood up. Detective Wong pointed his gun at him and said, ‘Hold it. Just hold it right there. You’re under arrest for homicide. Madison? Where’s that back-up? Jesus!’
Jim went over to the souls of Special Class Two, and said, ‘Listen to me. Listen. I know you’re in shock. But what you have to do is go back to your bodies, and lie down, and close your eyes, and pretend that you’re asleep.’
‘We’re dead,’ said Arthur. ‘We cut our own throats.’
‘For once, Arthur, just do what I tell you. Please.’
‘But we’re dead.’
Jim said, ‘We’ll see about that.’
SIXTEEN
He was woken up the next morning by Tibbles licking his face. He didn’t like Tibbles licking his face at the best of times, but Tibbles had obviously just finished a bowl of Instinctive Choice shrimp dinner.
He sat up in bed and pushed Tibbles away. ‘Jesus,’ he said, wiping his face on the sheet. ‘Your breath, dude.’
He climbed out of bed and pulled up the blinds. It was a sunny, clear morning, with only a few small puffy clouds in the sky. He went to the bathroom for a pee, and while he stood there he looked at his face in the medicine cabinet mirror, as if he were looking at a portrait of himself.
He flushed the toilet and washed his hands. He was trying hard not to think about anything at all. He didn’t want to ask himself how he had gone to sleep in the West Hollywood police headquarters and woken up here, in his own bed. He didn’t want to ask himself if any of his students had killed themselves, or if Nurse Okeke had been shot dead. He just wanted to go through today as if it was a normal, boring day.
He put three heaped spoonfuls of Arabica coffee on to brew, and then poured himself a large glass of grapefruit juice. He hesitated for a long time before he switched on the TV, but when he did, the main stories were an unexpected drop in share prices and an air crash in Juneau, Alaska, in which four people had been killed.
It was 7:09 a.m. on September 7, the first day of the fall semester.
He slammed the front door really quickly to make sure that Tibbles couldn’t escape. He double-locked it, just to make sure that Tibbles couldn’t get out and that nothing else could get in.
On his way along the landing below, he hesitated outside Summer’s front door, wondering if he ought to ring the bell and ask her how she was. But then this was another September 7, and he had stepped through another door. Maybe he and Summer would get together, but then again maybe they wouldn’t.
Mrs LaFarge’s apartment was pristine; no smoke stains and no windows broken. As he passed he could see Mrs LaFarge on her balcony, feeding her pet canaries.
He climbed into his car and fastened his seat-belt. He pulled down the sun vizor and flipped open the vanity mirror. To his genuine surprise, he saw that he was crying.
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