by Rick Hautala
"Hello down there? … Are you—are you all right?"
"... no ..." came the faint reply.
The single word reverberated in the stairwell like the long sound of tearing paper.
Pete stopped short on the landing, halfway down the stairs and turned around, not believing he had really heard a reply. His neck and forehead were slick with sweat; his breath came in hot, rapid gulps. He gripped the railing tightly and leaned forward, peering down into the swelling darkness below. The silence of the schoolhouse was suddenly a palpable, threatening presence, like a beast, long buried and now—after decades—finally stirring.
"Who ... Where are you?" Pete called out, his voice catching painfully in his throat.
"... down here ..."
"Wha—what are you doing down there?"
"... down here ... where he ... left me...."
A terrible, hot pressure tightened like hands around Pete's throat.
"Who are you?"
"... don't you … remember me ... Petey? ..."
Pete’s mouth dropped open, and he tried to say something, but his throat closed shut with an audible click.
Petey? he thought.
How do you know me? he wanted to ask.
He squinted as he gripped the sides of his head with both hands. No one except his mother and his aunts had ever called him Petey, not since he was a little kid.
And that voice!
He was vaguely aware that he recognized it, but … from where?
It had been years since he'd heard it, but after a heart-stopping moment, from deep in his memory, there came a flash of recognition.
It sounded like his old friend Ray Makki... his best friend—his best best friend until sixth grade, when Ray had …
Had what?
Pete frowned as he tried to recall. He hadn't thought about Ray Makki in years. Did Ray still live in Hilton? Or had he moved away?
Pete wasn't sure.
He thought for a moment longer, and then remembered.
No … Ray hadn't moved away!
Murky memories shifted heavily inside his mind, like tired beasts, rolling over in the darkness.
"Why … umm, why don't you come out so I can see you," Pete called out, surprised that he could speak at all.
"... I ... can't...."
Why not? Pete wanted to ask, but he didn't have the strength. There wasn't enough air in his lungs.
Instead, he took a few steps forward, propelled against his will toward the last flight of steps leading down into the dark basement.
Cool air thick with the smells of mold and rot washed up the stairwell into his face, raising goose bumps all over his neck and arms. A hot scratching sensation clawed like sickness at the back of his throat.
Why can't you come out where I can see you? he wanted desperately to ask, but he already knew the answer.
The darkness inside his mind shifted, assuming a solid, horrible shape.
The answer to his own question hissed in his mind like water splashed onto a hot stove.
Ray Makki can't come out … because he's dead !... He died back when we were in sixth grade!
The memory left a bitter sting in Pete's mind.
Still moving slowly down the stairs, Pete's feet scuffed like sandpaper on the worn steps. He shook his head from side to side, fighting hard against the disorienting sensation that this was all a dream. In fact, he found himself hoping— praying that it was, but that raised another, more terrifying question.
How long have I been dreaming?
At the bottom of the stairwell, Pete paused for a few seconds, trying to bolster his courage before turning left toward the boys' bathroom. The heavy green-painted door was shut tight, but he could see something outside the door ... something on the floor—an indistinct blur that glowed a sickly white.
As Pete stared at the shape, it shifted subtly toward him, making a faint scraping sound on the cold cement floor.
Pete took a halting step backwards as the figure gradually resolved out of the darkness like a slow-blending special effect in a movie. His breath shot out of him with a painful gasp when he recognized eleven-year-old Ray Makki's pale, white face, peering at him from the darkness of the basement.
This can't be real … This is impossible … He's dead … Ray Makki is dead!
"... I've ... been ... waiting ... for you ... Petey..."
The apparition's voice resonated with a low hissing that didn't quite sound like an eleven-year-old boy. More like a snake.
Pete's legs started to give out on him. His stomach did a slow, sour flip as he staggered backwards, his hands reaching out blindly for support.
Coiling like heavy smoke, the apparition shifted and began to rise from the floor, resolving all the more clearly until Pete could see the jagged splash of black that streaked the boy's thin neck like spilled ink.
"... he ... left me ... here ... but you ... saw him...."
"No! I never did!" Pete stammered. The darkness was pressing in all around him. "I ... I don't know what you're talking about! I didn't see you or anyone! I didn't see anything.1"
"... oh, yes … you did, Petey ... and you … you didn't tell them ... you didn't tell... anyone … what the janitor ... what Mr. Clain ... did ... to me …”
"No, I wasn't—I didn't see—This isn't real!" Pete’s voice threatened to break on every syllable. Tears filled his eyes, making his vision swim as he raised his clenched fists and pounded them against the sides of his head, but it didn't make the voice or the vision go away.
"I didn't see anything! I don't remember anything! Please, dear God! Let me wake up! Let this be a dream!"
"... no ... it's not …a dream … Petey … I'm right here ... I've been ... waiting here ... all this time ... just waiting .. . for you ... to come back … I knew … you would ... eventually ... I've been waiting ... a long time ... a very long time ..."
Pete took another step back, but his heel hit the bottom step, and he started to fall. He reached out to catch himself on the handrail, but instead his hand curled around something he immediately knew wasn't wood. Looking down, he saw that he was holding onto the bony wrist of an arm that was reaching up out of the darkness for him.
"... you should have ... told them … about what... you saw ... about the ... things ... the terrible things … he did ... to me ... to you and me ... before he ... killed me …"
"No! Nothing happened!" Pete blubbered through his tears as he started backing up the stairs. "I don't remember seeing anything.”
"... yes … you do ... and you ... got away...."
Something snagged Pete's shirt sleeve and pulled at him. Without looking at it, Pete knew that it was a hand … the bone-white hand of his long-dead friend.
Please let this be a dream! Pete pleaded desperately inside his mind. Please let me wake up now!
But every sensation, every feeling was much too vivid to be a dream.
Pete pulled back and heard the soft hiss of tearing cloth as his shirt sleeve ripped. Nearly blind with panic, he turned and ran up the stairs, taking them three at a time in long, awkward leaps. He waved his arms around wildly, trying to keep his balance, but he slammed into the wall on the landing, the impact knocking the wind out of him.
But he kept going.
Once he reached the top of the stairs, he gripped the handrail—sure that it was real wood, now, not dead bone—and pivoted himself around. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a rapid shifting of motion in the hall in front of him and lurched to a stop so fast his legs collapsed underneath him. Pure, blinding terror gripped him when he saw Mrs. Doyle standing there with her hands planted on her hips as she stared at him and scowled.
"... You'd better hurry up, Mister Garvey … you'll be late for class ... as usual...."
Mrs. Doyle folded her arms across her massive bosom, squirting the pale flab of her underarms out from the tight-fitting short sleeves of her faded dress. Her face was expressionless except for her eyes, which blazed like red, a
ngry coals. Her thin, colorless lips looked like an ancient bloodless wound that hadn't healed.
Pete was transfixed by her fiery stare until he sensed a rush of motion behind him. Cold air washed over him like the murky sweep of water. He knew that Ray Makki or whoever or whatever was down there in the basement was gathering its strength to come up the stairs after him. He came close to fainting, but then a small portion of his brain told him that, if this wasn't a dream, then the apparition at the top of the stairs was just that—
An apparition.
It couldn't stop him.
"I'm comin' right now, Mrs. Doyle," he shouted in a high-pitched, trembling voice.
Clinging to the wall and shying away from her, he moved away from the second-floor landing. He looked down to the far end of the hallway and could see the door to the outside. It glowed with a bright, surreal blaze of afternoon sunlight. The sunlit, living greens of the maple leaves and their shadows vibrated with impossible intensity. He started walking toward it, slowly at first, no matter how much he wanted to break into a run.
Something was weighing him down, pulling him back and slowing his steps to a sludgy, dragging crawl.
He was halfway down the corridor when all of the doors leading into classrooms on both sides of him suddenly opened wide.
From inside each room there came the harsh scraping of chairs and the soft scuff of shoes on old floorboards. Papers and books rustled as desktops creaked open and slammed shut with dull, hollow reverberations.
Muffled voices and faint laughter drifted like heavy currents in the hot air. As Pete moved slowly past the classroom doors, looking in amazement left and right, he saw pale, transparent figures of children, some of whom he recognized, some he didn’t, shifting against the deep amber shadows that filled all of the rooms.
"... you should have … told someone, Petey … you shouldn't have ... left me ... all alone ... to die ... all … alone …"
Ray's voice surrounded Pete, echoing with a soft rustle that never quite stopped. It filled Pete's head like a rapid, muffled heartbeat that sounded almost like ...
—Running feet-—
"Jesus Christ, Ray! Honest to God, I didn't see anything!"
". .. yes ... you .. . did ... I... saw ... you … there.... before I died …"
The floorboards creaked beneath Pete's feet as he kept moving toward the distant front door, but the corridor seemed to telescope outward, shifting away from him no matter how fast he tried to move toward it. All around him, the schoolhouse was alive with gauzy, fluttering figures and choruses of disembodied voices and echoing laughter and screams.
Then, suddenly, a figure appeared between him and the front door.
The shape blocked the light and was backlit by the harsh glare of sunshine. Pete couldn't make out the features, but there was something terrifyingly familiar about the silhouette. Slouch-shouldered and crouching, the figure looming as it raised its arms like a football player about to tackle his opponent.
"... come here, Petey … you know, I've been waiting for you ... waiting a long time …. for you ... to come back to me ..."
Pete stumbled to a halt, suddenly aware that the voices in the classrooms had suddenly ceased. He stared, dumbfounded at the figure between him and the front door. A cold dash of chills ran up his back when he recognized the school janitor, Mr. Clain.
"... you should have …. been next... to die …” the figure said. "... I had you both … but you, you little bastard, you got away … from me ... and I had to ... I had to kill myself … I hanged myself ... down there ... in my room … before they caught me ... because of … what I'd done ... to your friend ... to your ... best friend ..."
"Jesus, no!" Pete whispered hoarsely. "You aren't real! None of you are real! You can’t be real!"
"... but I am ... and it's still … not too late!... I can still. . . get you …"
"Like hell you can!" Pete shouted.
His voice burst like a gunshot from his chest. Tensing every muscle in his body, he lowered his head and started running, charging for the front door. Wind whistled in his ears and, below that sound, just at the edge of hearing, was Ray Makki’s wailing voice.
"... please ... don't leave me here ... Petey ... don't ... leave ... me ... here ... alone ... again! ..."
—Running feet—
Pete pumped his arms furiously. His sneakers slapped the floor hard as he ran. The dark figure blocking the doorway grew impossibly large in front of him, swelling and expanding until it blocked out the sunlight entirely. Pete thrust his hands out in front of him, prepared either to wrestle with the apparition or else reach through it and slam the door open. His long, agonized scream was abruptly cut short when he smashed full-force into the wall of wire-reinforced glass.
Cindy was standing on the other side of the door, bending forward as she peered into the school. She let out a high, piercing screech and threw herself backwards when she saw Pete running down the hallway directly toward her.
In a blinding instant, she heard a sickening, wet thud as Pete slammed into the door. This was followed by a shattering explosion as broken glass, glittering in the sunlight, sprayed like a fountain of diamonds into the air. A few needle-sharp fragments showered the walkway, but most of them were held back by the wire mesh embedded inside the glass. They sliced into Pete's body like hundreds of tiny knife blades. A bright scarlet spray of blood shot out through the shattered glass.
Ryan was playing behind the maple tree. The loud crash drew his attention, but Cindy wheeled around quickly and scooped him into her arms, shielding him with her body so he wouldn't see as his father pushed the door open and staggered out into the afternoon sunshine. Over Ryan’s shoulder, Cindy watched in horror as Pete took a few staggering steps forward and then spun around in a lazy half-circle and then dropped dead on the sidewalk.
…..
The dull brown wash of afternoon sunlight pouring through the windows took forever to shift across the floor as Petey drifted down the empty hallway. The floorboards slid like slick oil beneath his feet. He tensed as he waited to hear the harsh clang of the school bell, signaling that—as always—he was late for class.
Glancing over his shoulder, he smiled at his best friend, Ray Makki, who was tagging along a few paces behind him. In a slow, sludgy voice whose echo never seemed to stop, Petey said, "Come on, Ray! We've gotta hurry up, or Old Lady Doyle will nail our butts."
Ray chuckled softly.
"Heck, Petey, she'll nail our butts no matter what we do."
Ray's dark, dead-looking eyes were like windows that were no longer able to reflect light. His gaze shifted over to Mr. Clain, the janitor, who was standing by one of the open classroom doors. Mr. Clain gripped his mop and scowled deeply as the boys approached. From behind, Ray grabbed Petey's shirt sleeve and gave it a quick tug.
"Hey, come on! Wait up! Don't leave me behind."
Petey drew to a halt, glancing over his shoulder at his best friend. The corridor glowed with an eerie golden iridescence that made it look like it stretched out forever in both directions.
"Don't worry," Petey said with a soft laugh that echoed hollowly in the hallway. "You know I'll always wait up for you."
"That's 'cause we're best friends, right?"
Petey nodded, his head moving slowly up and down as though on a spring.
Then they started walking down the hallway again, side by side.
They glided past the motionless janitor and continued on down the hallway to where Mrs. Doyle stood waiting for them in front of her open classroom door. Her flabby arms were folded across her chest, and her pale face was set in a deep scowl as she watched them coldly, shifting her eyes without blinking or moving her head.
Petey stared at her and wondered if he and Ray would ever make it to her classroom on time, but he didn't care now that he and Ray had made it past Mr. Clain. He cringed inside, feeling the cold glare of the janitor's gaze drilling into the back of his head; but when he turned around and looked, t
he janitor was no longer there.
"Yeah," Petey said, his voice no more than a hollow whisper that rustled like dust in the amber-lit, empty hall.
"We're best friends ... forever...."
Every Mother’s Son
I was there at the beginning—or at least the beginning of the small part of it that happened at the hospital where I work. What happened there was happening—is still happening—all around the country and the world, for all I know. There have even been reports of several instances in China but, naturally, these have been officially denied. The first physical hint of it that we got here in the United States was when that baby was born in a hospital in Oklahoma City. The baby—a boy—entered the world with everything just the way it was supposed to be except for one small detail.
He didn’t have any fingerprints or footprints.
When did it really begin? Who can say? If you listen to the pop-philosophers on the television talk show circuit, it started the day ... the cosmic instant the scales shifted.
Shifted from what to what?
Well, just hang on a bit, and I’ll tell you. First, I want to tell you a bit about myself. Not that it really matters, but ... well, if something does happen, I want all of this to be on record.
My name is Judy Morrow, and I’m a nurse at Southern Maine Osteo., in Portland, Maine. I got my nursing degree from B.U. Medical School some years ago. Wanting to get away from big city pressures prompted me to move to Maine. The simple ... or, at least, the simpler life was going to be the key to my future happiness. And it was ... for a while.
The only opening I found was working the swing shift in the ob. at Osteo. Even some of the staff call it Osteopathetic, but it’s a nice hospital. Since I always liked babies and thought I’d never have one of my own, I didn’t mind ushering the little cuties into the world. Of course, most parents-to-be have innumerable fears, both rational and irrational, but the vast majority of cases are absolutely normal, and so are the results of anywhere from two to twenty-four or more hours of intensive labor.
Mostly ...
I suppose it’s time to mention Doctor Thomas Jacobs. “Tom” He was one of the residents—the resident, actually, who set most of the nurses’ hearts a’flutter whenever he was around. “A’flutter!” What a stupid phrase, but that’s the best I can come up with. The night I met him, after I’d been on duty only three nights, my heart literally skipped a couple of beats, and I was as tongue-tied as a junior high school girl with a mad crush on the high school quarterback.