Night School

by Caroline B. Cooney

  If she let the SC’s name enter her mind, if she pictured his actual function, if she remembered him failing in front of a class, she felt sorry for him.

  But as SC, he was merely a set of initials.

  He wasn’t somebody. He didn’t matter.

  Andrew zoomed in close, enlarging the SC’s frightened features. Shadows moved around the SC like smoke in the wind. The eyes of the SC scrambled, looking for an answer, and yet wanting none.

  He thinks if he doesn’t really move, nothing will really be here, Andrew decided. Guess what, SC. We’re really here.

  A single ceiling light had been enough for Mr. Phillips to work by, but now it was too dim, broken by the shadows crossing beneath it. The Scare Choice shrank, hunching into his ill-fitting cardigan. He pressed his lips tightly together and forced himself to look left and right. But he saw nothing, because there was nothing to see.

  Andrew circled the victim. He had no idea what was going to happen to the SC, but he wanted to get it from the right angle. He had to improvise, and it brought out the best in him.

  The instructor turned a page in a book. It was a distinctive sound. Paper against paper. Only fingers leafing pages could have made that sound. But the SC was the only person there. The SC gasped a little and whirled to see who had turned that page.

  But of course nobody had. The library remained empty.

  Silence gathered. The SC twitched. He rubbed sweaty palms against his trousers. Once again he picked up his marking pencil.

  The instructor coughed.

  The SC leaped to his feet, stumbling twice in a circle, struggling to catch a glimpse of who was behind him, coughing. Of course, nobody was behind him. Nobody was in front of him, either. He braced trembling fingertips against the table rim and looked back and form so often and so quickly he must have gotten dizzy from it.

  The shadows swirled, but nobody existed to cast those shadows. The SC whimpered, “Who’s there?” His voice was strangled, though nothing had touched his throat.

  Yet.

  A chair scraped.

  “Who’s there?” said the SC desperately. His eyes flitted toward the only exit. He was terrified of standing still and terrified of moving. How thick the dark was between him and the way out.

  Andrew was riveted. If fear kept accelerating at this rate, it would be like filming the collapse of a building. It would be classic. He could hardly go on filming for thinking of what he had already captured on film.

  Mariah thought of the times she had been alone in the dark. Lying rigid in bed when her parents were out, listening to the creaks and groans of her own house as if there were goblins and monsters. Picturing rapists and burglars with knives when the wind scraped branches across the glass of her window. Seeing horror lurk where there was only a coat hanging from a hook.

  I’m that easy to scare, thought Mariah. What are we doing? Why are we doing it?

  This is night school, Autumn reminded herself. So even if it doesn’t seem right, it probably is. The instructor is in charge. He knows these things. Probably this is going to teach the SC that he shouldn’t have a teaching job. After this, he’ll work with computers in some fluorescent-lighted office. Or maybe it will make him strong and after this, he’ll be tough in the dark.

  But he was not getting tougher. He was getting weaker. And it was very quick, like a nature film of jackal versus newborn antelope. How easy it was to terrify an adult to whom absolutely nothing was happening.

  Autumn was slightly disappointed. Why wasn’t the SC putting up a fight? Wouldn’t it be more interesting to observe if he fought back, instead of dissolving like powder in water? She found herself getting irritated with the SC. If he was such a weakling, he deserved it.

  Ned yearned to help the SC. But nobody else was objecting, and after all, not a whole lot was really happening. It wasn’t as if they were putting a knife in him, or hanging him by his ankles in a shark tank. Ned decided that things were a matter of degree, and this was very little, and so he didn’t have to help.

  Mariah found she’d been holding her breath, and even though she was shadow and didn’t have lungs, she let out a long, fat huff of air. Since there was no body to do any breathing but the SC, he stared at Mariah’s shadow in utter horror.

  Andrew clicked his tongue in appreciation. The film of this was priceless; he would blow this one up; it would be the trailer for the movie he’d follow it with; it would chill the hearts of people who loved scary stuff.

  Of course the tongue click scared the SC even more. Andrew was laughing into the camcorder. Imagine being scared of so little!

  Following the age-old need of people to turn the lights on, the SC summoned his courage and headed for the far wall on which the bank of switches lay.

  He did not make it.

  A shadow reached it first, extinguishing the only existing light.

  Autumn’s shadow.

  Autumn had turned into a cat, perhaps, teasing the mouse she would eventually strike down. She knew how badly the SC needed light, so she took it away. There wasn’t enough going on for Autumn; she wanted to up the ante.

  Now not even the shadows could see the shadows.

  And the Choice—he could see nothing. He barged into a tall stack of books, which gave Andrew an idea, and Andrew pushed a book off a shelf. The heavy book fell flat with a thud like a fist hitting a jaw.

  The SC banged into a wall. They could hear his fingernails scrabbling against painted surfaces. “Please!” he cried, admitting that the dark was in control, and he was not.

  A single light came back on and the SC was revealed, cowering, hair and cardigan askew, back pressed up against a wall.

  The single light came from Andrew’s camcorder: a camera suspended in midair, filming without human hands and without robotic fingers.

  The SC’s long wavering scream started at the top and broke like glass at the bottom. Abandoning his papers, the SC fought his way to the exit, battling shadows, his fingers leaping like little separate people.

  Finally he was out, sobbing in the hall, trying to reach the exit from that dark place, too. He would only find more dark. But at least, different dark. Not trapped, indoor dark. Wide, unknown, outside dark.

  Andrew lowered the camcorder. The minute his eye was removed from the camera, he returned to reality—such as it was.

  Papers were scattered across two tables. Clearly, quizzes for a social studies class, the kind with long answers that take forever to grade.

  My class! thought Andrew, startled, seeing his own paper in the stack. And that was no SC. That was Mr. Phillips.

  I didn’t do it, he thought quickly, as if answering a judge. I was just the cameraman. I just videotaped what the others did. You can’t count it against me. All I did was bump into a book and click my tongue. Nothing. Doesn’t count.

  The class members had returned to normal. They had flesh and bone and blood once more, and were clothed, their feet encased in shoes.

  Andrew had almost lifted the camera again when he decided not to film the class. He would edit them out. Pretend they hadn’t been part of the story. He rested the camcorder on his shoulder. It gave him something to do, made him official, removed him from responsibility. Reporters didn’t have to worry about what happened, they just had to record it.

  “Well done!” said the instructor. Voice was back. Sound and volume and texture had returned.

  Autumn still could not really see the instructor. She rubbed her eyes, to see if it was her. How blurry the instructor was; how distant, even though he was right there.

  I wanted more to happen, thought Autumn Ivers. I wasn’t satisfied. I was a predator and I wanted the kill, not just the trembling. “What happens now?” she said quickly. I’m not coming back to this class, she thought. I don’t care if it is school, and I don’t care if I will get control of the night, and I don’t care if I do want to be friends with Mariah and Andrew and Ned, I’m not coming here to, well—watch—

  “To watch yoursel
f,” said the instructor pleasantly. “The Scare Choice awakens interesting appetites, don’t you think, Autumn? It leaves a taste for more, Autumn. Tell me, Autumn, what was the best part?”

  Autumn put her hand over her mouth to stop her answer from coming out. She wanted the rest to like her.

  “The best part was turning out the single light, wasn’t it, Autumn, and knowing that your move started his scream. It was an excellent scream, wasn’t it?” He showed his smile, a cold bluish white like the thinnest sliver of disappearing moon.

  “I didn’t know what I was doing,” she said quickly, “and I’m not coming back. There was no reason for this, and I’m not the type of person who—”

  “But you are, Autumn,” said the instructor. “You are that type of person. And this is just the beginning. You will be an excellent student. One of my best, I am sure.”

  “I’m dropping out,” she said.

  “There is no possibility of dropping out.”

  As shadows had filled the library earlier, now cold—true wintry cold—cold the California coast rarely knew—filled the room and their veins.

  “As for what will happen now,” said the instructor, “that is out of our control, isn’t it? I will dispose of these tests. The SC will have no explanation. He can hardly say he was too scared to finish correcting. I wonder what he will say to the regular teacher. I wonder if they will hire him here again. Perhaps this is his only job, and he will no longer have it. Perhaps his life will be ruined. You can never tell where small things will end up. They snowball. You, an excellent class, true achievers, you have started the snowball.”

  Mariah was shocked. “Could that much happen?”

  The smile was back. It had no teeth and no lips; it was just a curve like the blade of an alien knife. “It doesn’t take much. People are so very afraid of what they can’t see or understand. He was an excellent Scare Choice, Mariah. Thank you.”

  Mariah did not want to be thanked. She did not want to feel any responsibility in this at all. “I didn’t do a thing,” she said quickly.

  “My dear, you offered up the name. If there is any responsibility here, it is undoubtedly yours.”

  “That isn’t true,” said Mariah. She did not want to be called “my dear.”

  The instructor darkened, but not like shadow. Like the dank smoke of arson. “I do not advise that any of you contradict me. There are consequences. Come. Sit where your Scare Choice sat.”

  And so the four teenagers were forced to sit at the long library table where Mr. Phillips had tried to correct papers. He had left fear behind like a scent, and they choked on it.

  Ned stared at the floor. Mr. Phillips wasn’t actually hurt, so it doesn’t count, he told himself. He probably got to his car. He’ll be fine. He’ll drive home and calm down and he can think up a good excuse for losing the tests.

  The instructor was no longer shadow, but thick, sucking mud that held them by the ankles. They tried not to breathe, lest they catch whatever he was. But they were already caught, of course. “Andrew, the video, please. Such a nice touch, and so thoughtful of you.”

  Andrew did not want to show it, not now. He no longer knew what had seemed so brilliant, so cinematic. Now that the subject was no longer an SC, but pathetic terrified Mr. Phillips, Andrew wanted the film not to exist. Only minutes ago he had thought watching was a useful profession. Now he wanted to be rid of the evidence.

  “Why, Andrew, you were so proud of your work. And I’m sure it is excellent work. You are always brilliant, are you not? You always excel, do you not? Show the film.”

  It was not the dark that was under control, but the class.

  Andrew felt obedient, and he was unaccustomed to this. His parents did not give orders; they had family conferences and came to decisions. But here, orders were proper, and following orders was more proper. Andrew showed the film.

  It was brilliant. How vividly it displayed cringing and creeping and crying out—the change from man to animal.

  “At the end of the semester,” said the instructor, “we will have a party. We will invite our Scare Choices. It is amusing to preserve this sort of thing on tape. People are ashamed to see how they behaved under stress. We will laugh at them. There is nothing quite so destructive as being laughed at.”

  Ned knew the truth of that. He’d spent years being laughed at. People remembered you that way, too. They remembered your shame and helplessness and failure, and they remembered the pleasure they felt laughing, proving that you were crumby and they were worthy.

  He looked at Andrew’s camcorder; the power of that horrible little machine. What kind of party did they have in mind? What other Scare Choices were they going to make? What if they chose Ned himself, who had been a Choice, a butt to be scorned, for so many years?

  Andrew could capture Ned forever on film. Ned would be laughed at year in, year out, by each successive class.

  “Stand up, Class,” said the instructor. His blue smile was so cold, so thin, so luminous.

  How quickly and completely they obeyed.

  “Was this good entertainment?” asked the instructor.

  It was a club. Autumn had been correct. And this was the initiation. Admitting that the Scare Choice had been good entertainment.

  Nobody wanted to say that. Nobody did.

  “Look at Mariah,” the instructor said to the other three. How quickly they obeyed, looking seriously and carefully at Mariah.

  Mariah didn’t look back. Her heart was pounding hideously; she was going to have a heart attack. She knew why she had been chosen. She had the most to lose. Bevin and her secrets.

  “Mariah, was this good entertainment?” His smile lengthened beyond the edges of his face, extending out into the room to cut her. He was no hologram. He was a demon, and a demon wins by possession. He had her secrets. She could not let him possess Bevin.

  It’s only a sentence, Mariah told herself. Just because I say it doesn’t mean I agree with it. It’s okay to say something if you’re in danger, or your brother is in danger. “It was good entertainment.”

  “Thank you, Mariah.” The instructor exhaled like car exhaust. Mariah was breathing in poison; she might as well have been hooking her lungs to the exhaust pipe of a ruined car. “Tell us again, Mariah.”

  Exhaust poison you could see only in certain weather, at certain temperatures. And the temperature here was more terrible than anything Mariah had ever known. But she had to breathe it in anyway, or expose her brother and open her secrets.

  “It was good entertainment,” said Mariah. It was easier to say this time. After she had said it five times, she hardly even knew what it meant.

  Then it was Autumn’s turn.

  Then Ned’s.

  Finally Andrew’s.

  They were exhausted from saying it, as if they had just come from gym. Perhaps they had. Night Class was truly a workout.

  “Your homework,” said the instructor, his smile expanding to a half moon, hideously blue, “is to choose an ETS.”

  They knew now how class worked. They did not argue. They did not say, But we don’t want to do this again; it was mean and it was pointless. Instead, they said, “What is an ETS?”

  “An Easy To Scare. Remember that you are beginners. You want to find somebody who is already fearful, whose life is already difficult, for whom the dark is already a threat.”

  Four teenagers tried to keep out the images of victims: pitiful people. Any school has its share. The ones nobody cares about, the ones chosen by the pack to rip and tear.

  Now the smile was the whole moon: fat, bloated, backlit with pale evil. “We will meet again next Wednesday.” They were escorted out of the library, moved down the hall, brought to the outside door. “Do not forget your homework. If you fail to bring a good ETS, I will pick one myself. How unfortunate it would be if I were to decide upon one of you. Ask yourself if you wish to choose the next SC … or be chosen.”

  Chapter 6

  IT WAS LIKE LEAVING a movie.


  Plot and actors stayed inside the theater, flat on the screen.

  Moviegoers emerged into the warmish, coolish air that was California in winter, surprised to find that everything outside was normal. Cars were parked, traffic was moving, restaurants were open, red lights blinked.

  There was that moment of standing on the sidewalk while the movie evaporated, pulling themselves out of the pretend and into the real. Night Class was nothing but a movie they had watched, or read the script for.

  They said pointless things: It’s nice out, where are you parked? watch the step. Autumn felt as if she should have had popcorn. And just the way she felt when leaving a gripping horror movie, where heads were wrenched off living bodies and sharp blades slashed from behind shimmering curtains, Autumn was swept with relief that it didn’t count. That was the neat thing about scary movies; you could go in there and be absolutely terrified, and maybe even scream a little bit between handfuls of popcorn and sips of Coke, but then you walked outside and it was nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Well, that was weird!” said Autumn, in a larger voice than usual, to fill up the space.

  “I think we got hypnotized or something,” said Ned, laughing loudly. “Who was that teacher anyway?”

  “She never said,” Autumn remembered.

  “Did you think it was a she?” asked Ned. “I thought it was an it.”

  “I think it was all three,” said Autumn. “I think it was she, he, and it.” Autumn stretched, her whole long slim body a yawn, and embraced the easy soft California night, fingertips thrust to the sky.

  “You look like a rain dancer,” teased Ned.

  Autumn giggled. She giggled well. It was always possible to join in on Autumn’s giggles. Even for boys like Ned who did not know how to giggle. “We just walked out of a building where the teacher is gender free and face free,” Autumn pointed out. “I’m spooked. So I’m despooking myself.”

  Andrew stayed spooked. He’d had years of training to be photogenic. His mouth and cheeks and eyes were always in the position he required of them.

  Unlike Mr. Phillips.