Sludge covered the windshield, thick and slimy. Was it blood or some other unidentifiable liquid? He couldn’t spare any time to think about their anatomy.
He hit a dozen more, knocking all of them to the ground and eviscerating a few in the process. None, even those that lost limbs or heads, seemed hurt in the least.
From the side of the car came more, too many to count. They grabbed onto the doors and actually slowed the vehicle down. The more that held on, the more their speed decreased until they were jolted to a full stop too suddenly.
Justin bashed his head along the driver’s side window. A gash opened along his forehead and his sweat mixed with blood, stinging his eyes even more.
Alyssa’s nose collided with the dashboard despite her seatbelt locking, resulting in a sickening crunch and stream of blood leaking down her lips and chin. Seeing her in pain made him want scream in anger, but the scream died in the back of his throat as he surveyed the scene outside.
They were surrounded. Vamps stood on all sides, shaking the car back and forth as if preparing to flip it. The back windshield finally let go. A shower of shards exploded forward. He felt cuts open along his arms and neck. Alyssa ducked down and covered her face.
The crowd out front parted and a figure stepped forth, his face so deformed Justin had a hard time remembering what his human features had looked like. Busty Brown’s nose had turned pig-like. His chin was a sharp point and his lips curled into a smile that reminded Justin of Satan himself.
Busty waved at Alyssa. “Darling, we’ve only just broken up. The pain is too fresh. We really shouldn’t be seeing each other like this.”
“Fuck you, you limp-dicked prick. Bring me my dad.”
Busty tsk-tsked. “I guess it’s a good thing we broke up.” He turned to Justin. “I’m not sure how you made so long with her.” He rubbed his hands together in delight. “Regardless, you two look dressed for the occasion. Let’s have some fun, shall we?”
He signaled the crowd and they all kneeled down, grabbing onto the car. The world spun around Justin. He saw the school, then the sky, then the cement, as the vehicle’s roof met the ground.
Chapter Thirty
Frank prayed this was not death. He’d never been an overly religious man, had never spent much time sitting in church pews, but he did believe in God, believed that someday he’d be reunited with Jeremy. That had to be the truth. All the pain and horror he’d experienced couldn’t be for nothing.
This, though, was not how he’d dreamed death would be. There was blackness everywhere, shadows that seemed to sway and drift like dark storm clouds. In the distance he heard sounds, muffled voices. None of them sounded like his son. There wasn’t any happiness in their tone. Such an emotion didn’t exist wherever he was.
It must be hell, he thought.
The ground felt cold and moist beneath him. He laid face down, his cheek pressed against a hard surface. He managed to lift his head and winced at the pins and needles in his jaw and the cramped feeling in his neck. He ran a hand along the knot, amazed he could move to begin with.
It took his mind a long time to catch up, but as the memories came rushing back, the vamps and Alyssa and Mona and the thing that had entwined his limbs, it made him want to scream. That compulsion grew infinitely stronger when he stood up and saw the thing before him.
It was perhaps twenty yards in the distance. Frank wasn’t sure where he was but it looked to be a long tunnel. He could hear water running somewhere, as if he were deep beneath the ground.
The access tunnel, he thought.
He’d grown to be friends with some of the custodians during his time at the old high school. Teaching, he’d learned, was just like every other job. There were good and bad coworkers, people who lived for gossip and those that just wanted to do their jobs and go home, and shoot the breeze every once in a while.
One of the janitors, a retired veteran named Paul Faherty, had told Frank of an access tunnel that ran beneath the school for miles, ending at city hall and running dangerously parallel to the boulevard. There were even rumors that one of its chambers wound up at the cemetery across town, the one where Jeremy had been buried.
“Town built the thing after World War II. The mayor was a doomsday nut, thought every nation had their finger on the trigger, just waiting to melt our faces. The Cuban missile crisis didn’t help matters much. Hell, that thing runs so far and so deep, you could live down there without anyone ever knowing.”
According to Paul, the entrance was in the ROTC storage room, in the basement of the school. Frank had done some investigating years ago, had found the steel framed door behind a shelving unit that housed old uniforms and folded flags. He’d shivered at the sight of the thing, wondered if there’d ever be a need to use such a hiding spot.
Now, standing beyond that door, he thought this was worse than a nuclear holocaust. At least that would make sense. The concept of war, of annihilation, was concrete. It existed in the everyday world.
The thing down the hall did not.
It had existed in notebooks and on chalkboards and in a sick boy’s nightmares, but now it stood before Frank, flesh and blood and teeth. So many teeth.
It was the thing from Melvin’s drawings, the beast he’d seen so many times, it was almost an afterthought. Its tendrils and mouths and slimy crevices matched the etchings perfectly. Had this been a movie, the special effects would’ve been talked about for decades but, unfortunately for Frank, the thing was real. In a sense, he’d been right earlier.
This was Hell.
He backed away and turned in the opposite direction, hoping the blast door was not far off.
“Don’t bother,” Melvin’s voice said. It seemed to come from all around and inside him. Most of all, it seemed to emanate from the creature. “There is no escaping now. This is the end.”
“You can’t be real,” Frank said, close to weeping.
“There is a fine line between real and unreal. Sometimes the two become confused. Do you like my new outfit, Frank? Looks familiar, doesn’t it?”
Frank continued to back away. The light in the tunnel was dim. If he’d been in a calmer frame of mind, he would’ve wondered where the light source came from, but right now his mind was taken up with other things. “Why me? Out of all the people in this town, why choose me to torment?”
“It’s not just you. Every teacher met a similar fate tonight. You may have seen a couple examples out front. Plenty of students paid with their blood as well. But you, Frank, have the distinct honor of being the last. You saw me that day, saw me take the gun out. You could’ve stopped it all.”
“There was only a moment before you pulled the trigger.”
“Yes but you weren’t far away. You could’ve run, could’ve sprinted to save that poor boy—to save me—but you didn’t and now you’re here.”
Frank wasn’t sure how deep they were, or if he was even heading in the right direction, but he did not want to be anywhere near the thing that Melvin had become.
Listen to yourself. You sound batshit crazy. Melvin is dead and this is just a fucking drawing.
Maybe he was batshit crazy but that didn’t negate the fact of what lay before him. He needed to get out and find Alyssa and—
“I will admit that we lied to you, Frank.” Melvin slid closer, slithering down the hall and leaving behind trails of thick slime. “We didn’t kill Alyssa. She’s still alive. I wanted you to think she was dead before you died but as it turns out, she’s closer than you think.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Children,” Melvin said. “Would you bring her over?”
The vamps—the children—stood in a group, blocking the tunnel’s entrance, though that wasn’t what made Frank want to scream until he lost consciousness.
That distinction went to the blonde-haired, blue-eyed girl held up by several vamps, her head hanging limp, her eyes opening every few moments only to shut again. Even with the blood on her face, she looked
like a younger replica of Mona.
“Now, Frank, you can watch Alyssa die before we finish you off.”
●●●
When Justin opened his eyes, he saw the world had turned a dark shade of red. Everything connected to his body pulsed with pain. Through the ruined windshield he saw the school. Its roof was in the wrong location, as was the sky.
That’s because you’re hanging upside down and if the blood rushes any further to your head, it’s going to pop like the mother of all pimples.
He reached for the seatbelt and winced. Heat exploded within his chest and he was almost certain he’d broken a rib, possibly two. He couldn’t get the correct angle with his right hand and almost screamed when he saw why.
His arm had been broken at the elbow, the bone jutting out from beneath. The pain from this wound was horrid but it seemed distant, like the nerves were fleeting, like that injury belonged to someone else.
He tried his left arm, hoping it, too, wasn’t broken, and was relieved to find he could move his hand. He pressed the seatbelt’s latch and fell downward. Every cut and bruise protested and his body lit up with pain.
He noticed his window had somehow remained intact, not shattered to pieces like Alyssa’s.
Alyssa!
Where the hell was she? The passenger seat was empty. If she’d gone off to save her dad, she’d forgotten all of her cameras, which didn’t add up to anything good. The vamps had taken her. They’d lied to Frank, had used her for bait, and she’d ended up here anyway. If that was part of their plan, it had unfortunately worked to perfection.
Justin crawled along the ceiling, which had become the floor, and kicked aside scattered shards of glass. He felt weak, lightheaded. He wasn’t sure how much blood he’d lost but it was enough to make him want to take a nice, long nap.
Not yet. You don’t get to give up until you find Frank and Alyssa and get the hell out of here.
And what if they’re already dead? said a nagging voice inside his head.
He ignored the question. Instead he crawled out of the window feet first and rolled onto the ground, happy he could finally breathe. A cool breeze blew through the parking lot, drying some of the sticky blood along his skin. He rolled over, brought his good hand to his chest, and silenced a scream in his throat. It took every ounce of strength to stand up and lean against the ruined car. The Corolla had been passed down from his father, another thing that tied Justin to him, ruined now.
He kneeled back down, certain he would pass out, and began grabbing all of the cameras and tossing them outside. When he’d finished, including his father’s professional model, there were six in all.
He hung them around his neck. The added weight did no favors for his ribs. He wondered how the hell he was going to make it inside, let alone dodge being eaten.
He expected to see the crowd of vamps again, blocking his entry, but the lot was eerily quiet. Somehow that was worse, like all of them were observing him, watching from the shadows and the mist and waiting for the right moment to strike. His death was just a game to them.
He held his father’s camera out like a gun with his good hand, his finger ready to pull the trigger. At the front door, he noticed for the first time two bodies that did not belong to the vamps. Mr. McNeil’s severed head stared upward in a silent scream and Principal Fisher had been nailed above the door. For a moment, Fisher’s face became feminine, his age reverted, and he turned into Alyssa, hanging lifeless, dripping drops of blood onto the ground.
Justin shook his head and saw it was the principal again, the man who’d likely been dodging sleep since this whole ordeal began. Now he finally had his fill.
Justin tried not to look as he climbed the steps and made his way inside. He’d never entered this place, not even on a dare, of which there’d been plenty throughout his childhood. There were enough rumors to last a lifetime, ghosts and witches and serial killers. In some sick way, they were all true.
After a disorienting trek through a stairwell that seemed to defy logic, he entered the foyer. The shadows danced in his periphery, played tricks with his fear. One moment he would see vamps, stepping out of their hiding place and hissing like feral cats, and the next there would only be dust particles floating through the air. Between his nerves and his arm, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could keep going.
Something caught his eyes to his left. It was a glass display case, the kind you found in most high schools. Normally, there were things like newspaper clippings and trophies, awards and past victories remembered for all to see. This display was not in the same vein. There were newspaper clippings but they didn’t reminisce about football games or homecoming dances. Instead, the headlines spoke of darker things.
Several cats found nailed to front doors.
Bizarre teenage cult in small New England town.
What’s wrong with the Lynnwood kids?
The worst snip-it, the headline that made Justin’s entire body come alive with gooseflesh, was a crumpled piece of paper that had yellowed with age.
Local high school student kills himself in Lynnwood cafeteria.
Below the headline, resting on an intricate stand, was a book of some sort. Justin wasn’t sure why but his pulse came alive with a warning. He was both terrified and intrigued as he reached out, took the book into his hands, and opened the cover. It was a journal of some sort, a cheap thing you found in your Christmas stocking and tossed into the trash when your parents weren’t looking. Only this journal didn’t have any personal musings or stories. Not of the normal variety at least.
Instead there were drawings. Hundreds upon hundreds of drawings of things Justin thought were better fit for nightmares. He’d seen them in reality these last few weeks, scattered along the school chalkboards, spray-painted on lockers and sidewalks, carved into the wall of one of the third-floor bathrooms.
Creatures. Hideous creatures that had too many teeth and too many snake-like protrusions.
Justin swore they moved on their own accord, like the pages were windows into some other place instead of static images. He blinked, opened his eyes again. Had they slithered a bit closer to the bottom of the page? A bit closer to him?
What little writing there was seemed cryptic, like frantic notes scribbled in between drawing the monsters. He looked at one line in particular, and his eyes widened.
We are your friends, Melvin.
This was Melvin Brown’s personal journal, one of many if the stories were to be believed. He’d heard the boy had been obsessed with his notebooks, carried them everywhere and drew pictures of beasts obsessively. Justin had figured it was just a tall tale, the cherry on top of an already horrific story. He hadn’t made the connection when the images started showing up around school but now everything lined up in perfect order.
“Beautiful, aren’t they?”
Justin tensed and dropped the journal. It landed so that the pages faced upward, so that a large mass of eyes and tongues watched. He spun and winced at the sight of Tom Parkins and Vickie Bronson, both of which looked badly burned from their run-in at the photo shop. The right side of Tom’s face was charred like fresh barbecue and Vickie’s lips looked as though they’d spent days in direct sunlight.
Vickie nodded at the fallen book. “Melvin drew thousands of them. He wanted to be an artist but his mother said there wasn’t any money in it. Besides, her son already acted strange enough. He didn’t need to feed into this ‘phase’ by drawing those horrible things. But that’s where she was wrong.” Vickie walked toward Justin. “Melvin was just the messenger. Those things—those wonderful creations—found him. They came to him in his dreams. They saw the real Melvin. They didn’t give up on him like everyone else. They made him what he is today.”
Justin’s lip trembled. “And what’s that?”
“Funny you should ask,” Tom said. “Because you’re going to meet him face to face. He’s been expecting you.”
Justin tried his best to sound tough, to mask the pain and fear
that traveled his synapses. “Yeah and where is he now? Let me guess. The cafeteria.”
“Not even close,” Vickie said. Her eyes were plastered to the book on the floor, like a volunteer in a hypnotist’s act. “He’s below our feet. In the darkness. That’s where he—we—belong.”
Justin held up his right hand and nearly screamed in agony, forgetting for a moment how the elbow stood at a crooked and broken angle. “Look,” he said through bared teeth. “I just want Alyssa and Mr. Tanner and I’ll be on my way. I don’t care about your club or cult or whatever the hell it is. I’m not interested in monsters or vampires. Just bring them to me and no one else has to get hurt tonight.”
You sound like a hostage negotiator.
In a way, he thought, that’s exactly what he was.
“Listen to yourself,” Tom said. “You sound so weak, so scared. Your father would be pissed that his son was being such a pussy.”
“Don’t talk about him.”
“Sounds like we struck a nerve.” Vickie nuzzled up to Tom, kissed his neck with her ruined lips.
“I remember your dad,” Tom said. “Used to own that joke shop. My old man told me to stay away from that place. He said Bruce Wright liked to diddle kids and offer them candy in exchange for silence. I never saw anything like that myself but there was something off about him, you know? I mean, what kind of guy opens up a store like that? I bet he thought about kids when he was fucking your mom. Did he ever touch you?”
“You’re sick. All of you.”
“It’s a good thing the cancer got him in the end,” Tom said, so close now that Justin could smell his rancid breath, a combination of rotten meat and week-old garbage. He wondered what Tom had last eaten but decided that was a mental path he didn’t want to travel. “I bet he looked like a skeleton when he died. I bet he was skinnier than you before you decided to play with your weights. Did he keep his jokes and gags around the house? Did he sit on a whoopee cushion and let out one last fart before he died?”
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