by S. T. Joshi
“Well, I like the ‘monster’ here regardless. She has good backstory and she’s scary.”
“Definitely,” Mackenzie said. “Way scarier than the girl in ‘The Ring.’”
“I don’t know about that,” Trudy said.
“Really?” Mackenzie returned, head cocked so that mane of blonde hair hung down behind her like some velvety curtain. “Girlfriend was totally tame and utterly dependant on the effect that made her jump camera frames.”
“The hair in the face was disconcerting.”
“Please. She needed a brush, a hug, and some foot cream.”
“Ha!” Donald said. “For her rotted, waterlogged toes. Ha!”
“So insightful,” Daniel said, rolling his eyes.
“Yes,” Professor Summers interjected. “I was aware of the possible similarities between the two characters, but I had more reservations about the idea that Madeline Murdock had severe special needs.”
“Since when are we so worried about political correctness, especially in horror fiction?” Trudy said.
Summers pursed his lips and shook his head gently. “You misunderstand. I had most of the fellow instructor-characters from Kennedy High worked out in my head, and none of them were meant to play moral compass, including Mike Summers. There was an intellectual snob who would insist it was not in her contract to teach a research paper, an old biddy who was afraid of the move toward holistic grading techniques, since she had gotten by with focus corrections and minimal output for years, and a bald grammar Nazi named Matthew who drilled subject-predicate and dangling participles even to seniors.” He paused. “The point is that Knickman’s big announcement was to be that they were on the verge of adopting the trend of dumping all the special ed. kids in the same classes, thirty at a time, and excusing it by throwing in a special- needs instructor to co-teach. Mike Summers was going to be furious . . . seeing it as a transparent short-cut that bypassed inclusion and turned him into a zoo keeper. That was his connection with Madeline. He only saw those with disabilities as roadblocks, annoyances, strains of a virus that would do nothing but tarnish the paradigm of ‘cool teacher’ he’d so carefully constructed throughout his tenure.”
“Sounds good,” Donald said, his brother nodding in agreement.
“But does it not sound like something else that’s familiar?”
“Like what?”
“Like Jason.”
“Who?”
“Voorhees!” Nicholas said. “Yeah. A kid with special needs that the campers tease and the counselors ignore.”
“Too similar in plot and theme?” Professor Summers posed.
“Definitely not,” Trudy said, pulling her feet up onto her chair and drawing her knees in. “The whole Friday the 13th thing was never even scary, except for a few select moments in the first.”
“I agree,” Daniel said. “You never actually have a feeling of trepidation watching those. You just cheer his kills.” He looked around uncertainly. “If that’s your thing, anyway.”
“It’s true,” Mackenzie said. “The Girl Between the Slats doesn’t spell killfest, at least not now as it stands. It’s creepier. More mystery, depth, and suspense. More a focus on people and their intricate struggles, at least if it goes the way Professor Summers seems to intend.” She looked at him shyly. “Sorry for the third-person reference. Not trying to be weird or anything.”
“No,” he said. “Not at all, Mackenzie. I truly enjoyed this class and I look forward to seeing you all back here on Monday. And since there isn’t anyone else here in the alcove with an office hour during our class time, I think it’s better to reconvene here in the lounge. It’s cozier with the six of us, don’t you think?”
They mumbled agreement. Usually, Trudy stayed behind to discuss some elevated principle, but today she left with the rest of them. Professor Summers pushed up and made his way across the lounge to his office with the limp he’d recently inherited.
In the elevator this morning he’d stopped the door from sliding shut with his ankle because he had his book bag in one hand and a latté in the other. The coed who had called out, “Oh, please hold that!” was grateful, and the awkward moment was rather humorous he’d thought, more her embarrassment than his, and a chivalrous deed well done in the end. But now, he’d developed a bit too much of a hitch in his giddyap, and he hoped he wouldn’t have to put a call in to his primary over it.
He made it to his door and had just gotten out his key when he heard something bump in his office. He stepped back instinctively, winced, then shuffled off left past the corner to look down the carpeted foyer. Professors tended to leave their doors open when they were using the space, yet Pat’s door was closed, as were Tara’s, Robert’s, and Dianna’s. Besides, they were too far away. His office was at the entrance to the alcove, and the sound hadn’t come from fifteen feet down the hall. It had come from just inside of his door, there was no mistaking it.
He repositioned himself back in front of his office and paused. Was it Yvette? They hadn’t shared the space for two years, ever since he’d attained full-time status, so he didn’t think it was her that was poking around in there. Besides, they had held class right here in the lounge for the last two and a half hours, and he’d been in the office right before it to throw his coat over the chair. He would have seen her go in.
He brought up his key, inserted, turned, and gave the door a push.
There was something on his chair.
It was a mud-stained kickball that had moist spots with strange etchings around them. They were bite marks, and the only inconsistency in all the whitened impressions was the missing front right incisor.
Dr. Michael Summers shut his laptop, leaned back, and ran his palm over his smooth, bald crown. He hadn’t taken a classroom assignment in years, and he missed it. He hadn’t tried to write anything creative for just as long and that had been worse somehow, as if some fundamental connection to his current position of Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences had been corroded and severed . . . the inspiration for it all lost in the scatter of time. He had started on this path as the young tenth grade English teacher with the moussed-up top and Hollywood bangs, all bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and pure piss and vinegar.
He’d understood kids, their clumsy passion, their insight and anger. But as a result of all the silly and destructive boardroom politics he’d moved on, earned a second master’s in order to become the lowly adjunct professor slumming between universities until a full-time position opened at Widener where he moved all his books to the third floor of the Kapelski building, first office on the right in the alcove where he set up camp for a good while, where his hair went partially grey, where he grew a matching goatee as if it was his plan all along, where he taught lower-level rhetoric and the occasional fiction class out in the lounge.
After the doctorate, there was a chance to move up the ladder, and he took it. The decision wasn’t an easy one and he’d called his father about it, actually. A retired professor himself, he’d claimed that these kinds of opportunities only came around once in awhile, and even though it was clear that his “rebel son” didn’t like meetings and mission statements, it was better to dictate policy than to become no more than the hired help architecting someone else’s vision of the landscape.
In the end Dr. Summers didn’t despise it as much as he’d anticipated, but it wasn’t the classroom with its teachable moments and glorious student epiphanies. In fact, the most contact he had with underclassmen of late was as mediator in a string of plagiarism cases, and for the first time in his career he wasn’t in their corner. There were grade grievances and lawyers, policy meetings and enrollment projections.
And this was his cherished Christmas break, his time to relax. He’d made a personal vow not to check his e-mail and go putting out fires, and he’d gotten out his laptop to unwrap an old guilty pleasure, that Big Mac at the drive-thru, that Fridaythe 13th sequel you’d neve
r admit you got off of Netflix.
Writing fiction was like getting back on a bicycle, right?
It had gone well in more ways than he had anticipated. He liked the falling snow as background motif just as much as that weather-worn slat fencing that leaned and rambled across the hillside. He hadn’t had to stretch all too far to “see” it either; the window in the third-floor den overlooked his sprawling back yard where the Feinbergs’ ancient alternating rail barrier divided their properties. It was an ugly, outdated piece of construction, but had become a part of his collective subconscious, his background mural, and he found it comforting somehow. The flurries just made it that much easier to write about.
In terms of problems and logic errors, he felt that he’d come out of this rough draft with a “pass-plus” or so. He agreed with “Nicholas” character that the curricular phraseology in the first Mike Summers section in the parking lot was too rich, ringing of “Momma, look how good I’m writing here, huh?” and that it would have to be trimmed. The physicality of the office lounge in the fiction class scene was rather incomplete, yielding a muddy sort of impression of the logistics, and the biggest disappointment was Mackenzie Dantoni, the blonde bombshell with a brain whose type he knew all too well but somehow couldn’t draw with any sort of credibility. First off, he’d initially sold her as an expert in character dissection, yet merely delivered a detail hound, sort of borrowing from the “Trudy” character’s skillset. The blonde hair hanging like a curtain was a clumsy metaphor, difficult to visualize, and she was more a cliché than the girl who sat across the aisle and took your breath away.
He’d vaguely wanted to make her akin to a young Stephanie, and had wound up painting this poor dear in a startlingly unflattering manner when compared to her better. But his deceased wife was a tough act to follow, her memory still haunting him in life and in fiction. All his “Mike Summers” characters had lost a “Stephanie,” but that was as inaccurate as all those mirrors of his own persona being portrayed in a modern timeline. In reality, he had married Stephanie Walker in 1984 straight out of college, and they’d put off having kids while they built their careers. He taught at Kennedy High for the rest of the decade, worked his adjuncting shuffle through most of the ‘nineties, his full-time stint up until the Phils won the series in ‘08, and that’s when they’d thrown away the diaphragm.
Stephanie was forty-seven when she died giving birth to his Georgie. All the charts and graphs warned that it was too late to try, but she’d still seemed so young and so strong. She was tall with daring eyes and beautiful knees. God, she looked good in a skirt! She was a senior lecturer at Temple for seventeenth century poetry and she’d still hushed a room when she entered it. She was the type who could wear stiletto heels to a department function and get away with it, drinking white wine with the vice president of the college and saying things to her like, “What an exquisite elder faerie you’d be.” She sang rock and roll opera style in the shower, she was one of those nutcases who wore face paint at Philadelphia Eagles home games, and she made sitting under a tree and reading a book seem like art.
Dr. Summers carefully used his index fingers to wipe under the rims of his eyes, then made a loose fist and bumped it against his lips. To say that he missed her made the feeling sound trite. It was horrifically empty now in the hollows of his heart, in the corridors of this house with its grand banisters and elevated ceilings.
All empty except for his Georgie, his love.
“Daddy!” the boy called, as if on cue. “Come look, come now! Please, Daddy, come see back yard, come see, come now!” Dr. Summers pushed away from his desk and made for the hall.
Georgie wasn’t supposed to be downstairs by himself, especially at night. He was probably looking out through the sliding glass doors, watching the snow. In fact, considering the muffled nature of his son’s plea, it was probable that his nose was pressed right up against the glass, his breath-clouds advancing and receding like misted little spirits.
Dr. Summers rose and pulled firm his robe-tie, marveling (and not for the first time) over the odd acoustics of the place. Georgie could pad down the hall to the bathroom up here and Michael wouldn’t know he was there until the flush. On the other hand, the boy could be building a Lego castle in the living room or playing “Teletubby hockey” (Tinky Winky was the puck) out in the back den, and you could hear him puttering around as if he were next to you.
The stairs had a long sweeping curve to them, and tonight Dr. Summers wished he’d had one of those silly rail riders they advertised on the same channel that plugged the walk-in tubs, hearing aids, and call-button necklaces you used when you’d fallen and couldn’t get up. In his hurry to leave the house four days ago, he’d cracked his ankle at the base of the coffee table, and the 600 mg. ibuprofen wasn’t helping that much. He
limped down the stairs, and his son’s voice carried to him: “Hurry, Daddy, or you’re gonna miss it!”
God, what a gem. If Stephanie only could have seen what she gave to this world before leaving it. True enough, Dr. Summers coddled him, but how could he help it? Georgie was the model boy, soft blond hair curling at the top, crystal-blue eyes, heart-shaped smile welcoming the world. He had a smidgen of chubby-cheek syndrome, but it was the last of the baby fat he was shedding. He was gorgeous, and it wasn’t just “Dad” saying it with the equivalent of a loving parent’s “beer goggles.” Georgie was just that boy you wanted to put your arms around and squeeze. Everyone said so.
Dr. Summers almost tripped over the lip at the edge of the kitchen. He’d initially been against having a rise there going from carpet to hardwood, but the installer had said this was the type of tongue and groove that warranted a step. It was the way royalty did it in one of those Middle Eastern countries Dr. Summers couldn’t remember at the moment, and when he was tardy lifting his knee his toe grazed the edge, almost sending him sprawling. There was that moment before pain that felt plush and high, and then the shooter through his ankle made him bite back a shout. Blasted contractors. They’d been a nuisance, and he’d succumbed to suggestions he’d been against simply because guys with tool belts, suspenders, and leather knee pads always seemed so damned sure of themselves.
He limped across the floor, past the island with the pots and pans hanging on the square rack above it, and when he got to the back den he froze in the archway.
There was his Georgie, pressed up to the glass. The lights were off, but the auto-floods in the back yard were shining, doubling the snowflakes with their shadows and casting a pale wash over the figure on the other side of the transparent door, twinning him. It was Madeline Murdock in Catholic school clothes, broken neck, head leaning so far to the left that her ear was pinned to her shoulder. They were playing mirror, hands splayed out to the sides, but she was taller, making the image of the cross gain two levels. Georgie was stretching his neck, trying to pull his head down to the side, but couldn’t manage to get it quite parallel.
“This is my special friend, Daddy,” he said, “and this is my special hug so I can be just like her.”
She started to lift her head off her shoulder, and it lolled around like a zoo balloon on a stick. Shadows slanting down from the roof overhang moved up and down her face, and her smile came up in flashes and glare. It was a circus creature’s grin with lips bloodied and swollen, broken nose pushed to the side with a tooth rammed straight through the nostril. Georgie was doing his best to mimic her, but the way her head dangled and flopped on its stalk was impossible to duplicate.
Frustrated, hands still pinned to the glass beneath hers, Georgie started shaking his skull back and forth, so violently it seemed he was going to hurt himself. Dr. Summers burst through the room in shuffles and hitches. He reached out and screamed, but was too late.
Georgie slid open the door. It took everything he had, but the little guy was just tall enough to flip the lock, reach the handle, and pull the apparatus across.
Madeline Murdock had v
anished.
The haunt of her frost and her snow swept through the archway, enveloping Georgie Summers and making whirlwinds around him. Dr. Summers grabbed his son by the shoulders, trying not to scream when he turned him and the head bobbed unnaturally, the boy’s eyes rolling in dim recognition, lips bruised and bloody, front right incisor rammed straight though his nostril.
The man paged through it all one last time in helplessness or disgust, it was difficult to tell which. There were pieces of copy paper filled with slanted scribble and scratchings, a stack of sheets written on in haste and then ripped from a spiral-bound notebook, leaving the confetti-frills on the side, Post-It notes both yellow and rainbow colored, a few napkins, a piece of toilet paper.
“Mr. Summers,” he said.
“Mike, please.”
“As you wish.” He gave a half-hearted attempt at rearranging the strange medley and removed his reading glasses.
“I just don’t know what you expect me to do with all this.”
“I want you to help him, father.”
“I’m not a priest. I’m a therapist.”
“And you can do nothing for my boy?”
The man made his way over from the desk, sat in the chair, and carefully rested the points of his elbows on the cushy armrests. Slowly, he sat back, simultaneously crossing his legs and linking his smooth fingers in a little bridge before his chest. “I’m not his therapist, Michael, I’m yours, and I believe this is to be our last session.”
“But . . .”
“Michael. You’re tired. You’re sleep-deprived. You have not eaten a square meal in three and a half years, and if you think it is at all positive that I play into this delusion it just represents a setback too extreme for the tools I have available here.”
“He’s possessed, can’t you see?”
“Michael . . .”