The Calling: A Supernatural Thriller

by Robert Swartwood

  It isn’t that he wants to be gay, and that, he tells himself, is how he knows he is. He just doesn’t feel the way toward girls that he does toward guys, though he’s never even kissed one before ... though, late at night, while lying in bed, he has wondered what it would feel like. Lips are lips, a tongue is a tongue, so there should really be no difference between kissing a girl and a guy—but Melvin, after much thought, has decided this isn’t true. There is a difference, and he very much wants to experience it.

  This is what I sense Melvin Dumstorf thinking while he sits there, staring up at Jeffrey Snyder. On the outside appearing cool and relaxed and in control of the world, while on the inside falling apart. So when the first mouse skitters from under his chair and between his feet, he doesn’t notice until another one follows.

  Someone whispers behind him, suppresses a laugh.

  Melvin glances back.

  And speak of the devil, Chad Eason—my old beer-pong partner from Thursday night—is sitting there behind Melvin. He’s whispering to Neil Eakins. All Melvin hears, behind Jeff’s low voice booming from the speakers set up around the gym and his own worried thoughts, are the words best prank ever before Neil stifles a laugh. Then Chad notices Melvin looking at him and lifts his chin, says, “Yo Eminem, the show’s up there.”

  Melvin just shakes his head. He turns his attention back up front, to where Jeff continues his speech. He’s hardly been listening the entire time, only knows that the speech is the usual we-as-graduates-must-now-face-the-real-world theme because that’s what all these speeches are always about. The mice he saw are now gone, and he begins to wonder if he really even saw them at all.

  I wonder the same thing, standing where I am, I wonder why I’m here in the middle of the gymnasium like this, when Joyce screams. I glance back, right at where Joyce is trying to stand up on her seat, then past her at the open entrance at the back of the gym. The two shadows aren’t there yet; they still have another couple of seconds or so before they appear. And when they do, will they be carrying what Cynthia Parker was certain they were? Staring toward the opened gym doors, I can’t quite see from where I am, everything is gray (sound, taste, touch), and as Joyce begins falling into the row of students in front of her I connect with Melvin Dumstorf’s mind one last time. Right before there’s another blink and I’m gone from this spot, he thinks What kind of prank is this?

  Only more screams answer him.

  Chapter 31

  I’m still in the aisle between rows, only this time I’m back a couple yards from where I was standing earlier. Of course, earlier doesn’t exist on whatever plane I’m on, because up on stage, Jeffery Snyder is continuing his speech like he has this entire time, and Joyce Parsons has yet to scramble up from her seat and begin crying out. The person who’s not gray like everyone else this time around is named Frank Olson, sitting three people in on his side of the row.

  Frank Olson, who arrived just in time to witness Jeremy and his friends finishing up as they desecrated John Porter’s car Thursday night. Frank Olson, who John told to go ahead with whatever it was they had planned. Frank Olson, who is ninety-nine percent certain it was Chad’s idea to pull their last great prank during graduation.

  I step forward, wanting to look deeper into Frank’s mind, and after a short moment of mental digging I manage to see how this started two weeks ago.

  They are all in John Porter’s garage, sitting around the Firebird John has been restoring for the past couple years. John’s old man has gone up to Ithaca for something and nobody else is home except John’s sister, who’s gotten herself knocked up but has a cute enough face that sometimes Frank thinks he’d still have relations with her, even if she is pregnant. Tyler has brought the weed and Chad has brought the beer. It’s Pabst Blue Ribbon, some pretty shitty beer if there ever was any, but they’re only eighteen and can’t complain. How the fuck Chad manages to always get the beer is beyond Frank, but he doesn’t mind putting in the cash when the time comes. So as they’re all smoking and drinking and having a good time (System of a Down is playing some hardcore stuff on the stereo), someone mentions how they need to pull one final prank, something that will set them apart from all the rest of the wannabes and make them legends. Frank will never remember completely who says this, but he’ll always think it was Chad.

  “All right,” John says. He takes a hit off the roach and passes it to Sean. “So what the fuck’s your idea?”

  “Graduation,” says the person who is most likely Chad but might not be.

  “What about graduation?”

  “That’s where we should do our prank. Think about it. The place will be packed. Even that old shithead governor’s gonna be there. We’ll have a huge audience. Whatever happens there nobody’s ever gonna forget.”

  “Okay,” John says. “So what do you suggest we do?”

  They come up with a bunch of ideas, but all of them are stoned and hardly any of them remember any of the suggestions. The thought never occurs to write them down but the only one that sticks out later in their minds is getting snakes. Small non-poisonous snakes that they can sneak into the ceremony and then let loose at the same time. Frank even looks into it, calling around to pet stores. He finds that the snakes they want are simple milk snakes, which, the woman at the store tells him, are a part of the Colubridae family. “Lampropeltis triangulum,” she says, her voice snotty and smug, but the price for the number of milk snakes they need is way too much for any of them to spend, and they decide to scrap the idea.

  “Besides,” John says a few nights later in the garage, this time with some new weed and some new beer (Keystone Light, thank God) and Tool on the stereo, “think about how much fuckin’ trouble we’d get in.”

  “What do you think’s gonna happen to us?” Tyler asks. “They gonna suspend us?”

  “No, dipshit. We’d probably get arrested. Not worth it, you ask me. Shit, I already signed up for the Marines. The last fuckin’ thing I need right now is a record.”

  It was left at that until Denise Rowe’s party Thursday night, when the shit hit the fan. Then John decided they really had nothing to lose and might as well go out with a bang, so he told Frank to get things in order.

  Only snakes, apparently, were out of the question. Mice on the other hand ...

  Of the seven of them—Frank, Randy, Chad, Sean, Tyler, Rich, John—each has four mice hidden under their robes. The plan is to let them loose during Mike Boyd’s speech. They were all set and pumped to do it until they got to school today and saw how much security was around. Rich wanted to back out but Tyler said he’d kick the shit out of him if he backed out now and besides, what did they have to lose, they were graduating, they might as well live it up now than regret it later.

  In the end each of them took their four mice. Sean, whose parents had raised him to be a staunch Catholic (and who now had to wear his arm in a sling after Thursday night), jokingly named his Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. They’ve been keeping them in leather bags under their robes this entire time, tied to their belts. The mice make some squeaking noises, but they can barely be heard in their bags. Shanice Olivarez has looked over at Frank more than once, frowning at him when she hears the squeaking, and each time Frank just shrugs. The apprehension he felt earlier has worn off and he’s set and pumped again, he’s ready to do this. But then something catches his attention. John Porter, sitting two rows behind him, reaches under his own robe. He’s sitting behind Joyce Parsons and whispering to her. She looks disgusted like she always does, like she’s too good and wants nothing to do with him.

  It’s at this point I step away from Frank Olson, position my body so I can see down John Porter’s row and watch exactly what he’s doing. John looks at me—past me, really—at someone on the other side of the aisle. I turn just in time to see that it’s Randy, the other kid I didn’t know Thursday who arrived late to the party with Frank. Randy, catching John’s cue, nods, begins reaching under his robe. He too looks up ahead. I follow his eyes and see
Sean, who nods, then Chad, who nods, and then before I can continue to watch the progress of the signal I turn my attention back to John Porter. He already has his leather bag out from under his robe. He leans forward, whispers something else to Joyce, who turns her head slightly and mouths what looks like fuck off to him. Grinning, he opens the bag, leans even closer, reaches over her shoulder and empties the four white mice right on her lap.

  For an instant Joyce does nothing but simply stare down at her lap with wide, unbelieving eyes. At the same moment, seeing this, Frank Olson wonders to himself why he’s always the last to know what’s going on, and he despises that John Porter always seems to forget him unless he needs something. Then, a second later, Joyce—

  BLINK

  —knows something is wrong here at this graduation, but he just can’t put his finger on it. Alan Hoffman, who has worked at the Star-Gazette for three years already, has covered his share of high school graduations, and he knows that the amount of security detailed right now is much too excessive, even if Mike Boyd was once the governor of this fine state.

  Alan is a short man with the beginnings of a potbelly and a camera case slung over his shoulder, a mustache that just doesn’t look right on his face. He stands near the back of the gymnasium, facing the stage. He, just like Cynthia Parker, is of the opinion that Jeffery Snyder is one of the most boring speakers he’s ever heard. He feels bad for the kid though, because it takes balls to get up in front of people like this, even if it is for a stupid graduation. Alan’s taken two shots of him already, both of which he knows will never make the layout because who really cares about the salutatorian anyway? He wonders not for the first time and certainly not for the last why he’s always given these boring asinine assignments, when other photographers like Sharon and Matthew get the sports events and crime scenes.

  Except this, he knows, is really his fault. Matthew had been away on Tuesday, when the call came in about something out on 13 near Bridgton, but Alan was going out to lunch and decided not to take it. Couldn’t be anything, he thought, probably just some vehicle accident, and it wasn’t until he came back from Subway that he found out what really happened. How this kid who had been abducted sometime Sunday night was just found. Sharon, who even told the boss to “throw Alan a bone,” had captured some really good pictures even though nothing was shown in her shots except a depression in the grass.

  I glance around me once more, at everything that’s gray—I see Moses still scanning the crowd for anything suspicious, me still with my eyes closed—and without hesitation I follow through with the idea that had blossomed in my mind when I was first up on stage with Jeffery Snyder. I walk the four steps toward Alan Hoffman until I’m forced to walk another step into him. Just like I thought, the man shivers only slightly, a chill passing through his body, but he thinks nothing of it. Really, I think nothing of it, because now I’m seeing and feeling and thinking everything that makes Alan Hoffman the man he is. The spirit or force or whatever that is Christopher Myers has no control here, is only along for the ride.

  Yes, I’m irritable because I missed out on the opportunity to get some shots of where that kid was found, but what really pissed me off was just yesterday, in the mail, I got a response from Newsweek that no, they’re not looking for any new photographers, thank you for asking. It was really nothing more than a stupid form letter and I was mad for nearly the entire day. Even when Shelia came home and tried to cheer me up I hardly said more than three words to her.

  And Shelia’s another thing that’s begun to piss me off. I’ve been with her for two years and still she loves her work more than she loves me, she loves those fucking retards she works with down at the home. She’ll never leave Elmira, she’ll never follow me if I take a job somewhere else—and this, I tell myself, is the reason I haven’t even tried, knowing deep down inside it’s because I’m just not good enough. Our relationship is going nowhere, has been really since we started, and we’ve only discussed the possibility of marriage to fill conversation. When I met her she was a virgin and said she was going to wait until she got married, but it didn’t take me long before I got her to change her mind. Only four months, and while that might not be a record I sure felt damned proud of myself and have sometimes even bragged about it down at the bar with a few of my buddies. Still, the fact that I’m Shelia’s first isn’t enough for her to love me, and that’s what really pisses me off.

  Maybe I’ll break up with her. Ask out Stacey in advertising that I sometimes flirt with. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Fuck Shelia and those fucking retards, they can love each other as much as they want for all I care.

  Pissed, determined, I decide to take some random shots of the crowd in the bleachers. There’s no reason for this, it’s just because I’m bored, and I manage to click off only one shot when I first hear the girl scream. It’s so out of place, so unnatural for this setting, that at first I’m not even sure I heard it. I’ve been anticipating somebody’s cell going off in the middle of the ceremony (and how this hasn’t happened yet is a miracle; really, somebody should contact the fucking Guinness Book of World Records) but nothing like this. Then others begin screaming and shouting, too, and I look up at all of them near the front, all on their feet.

  “What the hell?” I mutter. I raise the camera, sight at the twenty or more students moving frantically around, press the shutter twice. I only pause when I notice a man making his way toward where all the students entered the gym almost a half hour earlier. He’s moving fast and reaching into his jacket.

  “Stop,” he shouts, pulling out a gun from inside his jacket, “drop your weapons!”

  I see the two boys then. Both dressed in black, one wearing a trench coat, they’re jogging through the open doors and—and oh fuck, they’re carrying rifles. They ignore the man and continue forward into the gym. The one in front even begins to raise his rifle.

  The man with the gun doesn’t hesitate: he fires three times, hitting first the boy in the front and then the boy in the back before hitting the first boy again. Blood splatters from each of their chests. The second boy falls to his knees moments before the first boy does. Then they’re both on the ground.

  At first I don’t know what to do. I just stand there, staring down at the two fallen bodies, as uniformed police officers start swarming them from all angles. Then something in the back of my mind whispers award winning and I think that maybe yes, I will break up with Shelia later tonight. This is, after all, my lucky day. At once I aim the camera and begin—

  BLINK

  —waiting in the van since eleven o’clock. Dressed in black pants and black T-shirts (Adam’s shirt has Slipknot on the front, now turned inside out), they were roasting for nearly a half hour when Martin finally pulled out his bag of hash. Usually he grins at Adam before rolling their joint, but this time he just went straight to work. The fuzz was outside but neither of them cared, and after Martin lit his and took a hit, he passed it to Adam who took two hits and then just stared out at the gym.

  I’m crouched in the back of the van, actually feeling a bit vertiginous after my experience walking into Alan Hoffman. Of course I’m no longer inside, I’m out in the parking lot, but I know that Jeffery Snyder is continuing halfway through his speech, everyone inside listening to it for the first time while this would be my sixth. The van, though I can’t feel it, is stifling hot, and it’s messy as hell. I try not to pay too much attention to it right now (not to the mattress or the pair of rifles on top), because I understand whose van this is, and I know what’s going to happen very soon. Not only that, I recognize these two from the other night at Denise Rowe’s party. The one who was drenched in beer is behind the wheel, his name is Martin Luhr, but the one who has color, who has life, is Adam Grant, sitting in the passenger seat, both of his feet up and pressed against the dash. I take a step forward, trying to look deeper into Adam’s mind. I’m not sure I want to step into him, at least not yet, not after the restriction I had in Alan Hoffman, because once I was in I w
asn’t able to step out until I was blinked here.

  The windows of the van are down. Martin doesn’t want to run the engine because he fears it might attract attention, which Adam thinks is funny considering that the outside of this black piece of shit is an eyesore everywhere it goes. So there’s no A/C and they have the windows down, but not all the way.

  Martin picked up the rifles last night. They’re two match rifles, EA-15 Golden Eagles with .223 caliber and twenty-inch Douglas Premium barrels. They’re nearly ten years old and have their serial numbers scratched off. Martin drove all the way to Syracuse and bought them both—along with two boxes of Wolf Ammunition—for five hundred bucks from a guy who sometimes sells them heroin. (He even admitted to Adam he used the fifty bucks he had left over on a hooker he picked up on Canal Street behind the Greyhound Bus Station; he wanted her to fuck him and she said no way, not for that little, so he got a blowjob instead.)

  That morning they had breakfast at a greasy diner in Big Flats, both ordering hotcakes and sausage links and coffee and then stiffing the old bat of a waitress out of her tip. Adam doesn’t know about Martin, but he didn’t sleep very well last night. Even this morning, while they ate at their booth in silence and chain-smoked Pall Malls, he kept yawning. Then they got into the van, drove behind the Elmira-Corning Regional Airport, and silently loaded the Golden Eagles. Finally they drove here to the high school, the radio playing some kind of rock music, though if asked Adam would be hard pressed to say what because he can’t recall a single song.