Table of Contents
Why Write Reunion?
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The 20th Reunion
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About the Author
REUNION
A Supernatural Thriller
Jeff Bennington
Published by nexGate
www.nexgatepress.com
REUNION, Vol. 1 All Rights Reserved
Copyright © 2011 Jeff Bennington
Cover Photo by Natalie Godfrey
Cover art and design by Jeff Bennington
Back cover by Joleene Naylor
Edited by Jacqui Penn, Jodie Renner and Neal Hock.
Ebook creation by Dellaster Design
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not represent the opinions or thoughts of the publisher. The author has represented and warranted full ownership and/or legal right to publish all the materials in this book.
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in part by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Visit www.jeffbennington.com to learn more about Jeff’s books and what is coming next from this talented author. You can follow Jeff on Twitter (@TweetTheBook), on Facebook, or at his blog, The Writing Bomb. To purchase a signed copy, visit www.jeffbennington.com
For Amber
“You can’t change the past. You can only prevail and move forward.”
—Lance Kirklin, Columbine survivor
Why Write Reunion?
Have you ever wondered what becomes of the students who have been traumatized by a school shooting? Or have you puzzled over what might cause a child to intentionally murder his or her peers? Have you questioned what the long-term effects might be on the victims? How would their lives change? Who would make the most of their journey after the shooting? Who would lose their faith? Who might find it?
Over the years, I’ve wondered if the survivors would be able to return to the place where they watched their friends and classmates suffer, and die, at the hand of a crazed teen? How would they perceive those memories twenty years later?
These are the questions that have swirled through my mind every time I’d learn of yet another school shooting. I cringe when I hear that another young person has gone off the deep end and killed his classmates, leaving this world a darker and colder place with every bullet fired. The fact that it happens forces us to question what is wrong with our society—that this is even possible. The arguments are endless. But I didn’t write this storyto discuss politics.
This book does not make any declarations concerning the root cause; it only addresses my questions regarding the victims, their lives (post-shooting), and my imagined mental state of an adolescent shooter. Remember, REUNION is fiction, and I hope that it is judged as such.
This multi-genre fiction has, at times, supernatural elements, because after all, the supernatural is spiritual, and doesn’t a school shooting boil down to a spiritual issue? I have also taken the liberty, or creative license, to include elements of horror, because I could not otherwise tell the truth—school shootings are horrific. If you want to read a story that goes beyond the superficial, then you might appreciate the value of all the elements that make this book what it is: supernatural, horror, romance, suspense, and dark fiction.
• • •
In a list compiled from the Yahoo Contributor Network (Feb. 5, 2010), Jennifer Macon-Steel reminds us of the horror and devastation that occurs when our youth kill each other. The following is Jennifer’s list of ten of the worst school shootings in the history of the United States. There have been others around the world and inside U.S. borders, none of which are any less significant. This list, however, is a reminder and a tribute to all the victims, students, parents, teachers, and the communities that have suffered as a result of a school shooting.
To the innocent that have been tragically snuffed out before their time, I offer this work of fiction in their honor. To the survivors, may you find peace in this broken world.
• February 2, 1996; Moses Lake, Washington. A fourteen-year-old boy named Barry Loukaitis opens fire on his algebra class killing two students and one teacher.
• October 1, 1997; Pear, Mississippi. Luke Woodham, a sixteen-year-old student reported to be part of an outcast group, kills two students and his own mother.
• December 1, 1997; West Paducah, Kentucky. Fourteen-year-old Michael Carneal fires on students attending a prayer circle. He kills three students and wounds five.
• March 24, 1998; Jonesboro, Arkansas. Children aged eleven and thirteen pull a fire alarm and then shoot other students from nearby woods as the students leave the school building. They kill four girls and a teacher, and they wound ten other students.
• May 21, 1998; Springfield, Oregon. Kip Kinkel, a seventeen-year-old high school student, kills his parents and then turns his gun toward his fellow high school students. Kinkel kills two students and injures twenty.
• April 20, 1999; Littleton, Colorado. Columbine High School becomes forever famous as eighteen-year-old Eric Harris and seventeen-year-old Dylan Klebold kill twelve students and one teacher. They also wound twenty-three people before killing themselves.
• January 15, 2002; New York, New York. An eighteen-year-old student opens fire at Martin Luther King High School in Manhattan and seriously hurts two students.
• March 21, 2005; Red Lake Indian Reservation, Minnesota. A high school student kills nine other students and then himself. Seven people are injured.
• August 30, 2006; Hillsborough, North Carolina. A high school student kills his father and then injures two students when he opens fire at his high school. Guns and bombs are found in his car. It is later discovered that the student had e-mailed Columbine High School’s principal telling him that it was time for the world to remember what happened at Columbine.
• October 2, 2006; Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania. A man goes into an Amish schoolhouse and shoots the female students inside. He kills five and seriously injures six before killing himself.
REUNION
1st
Crescent Falls, Idaho 7:30 a.m.
David Ray stood in front of his mirror, dressed to kill. I look good, he thought, like the real deal, like a real killer. He narrowed his eyes, grit his teeth and unfolded his checklist. Sharp blades of black hair dangled in front of his face, covering the brownish rings that encircled his eyes. He peered at his scribbled writing and read the list as he felt his insides tense with hatred.
This is it, he thought. No room for mistakes.
David had learned over time that life needed to be carefully navigated to avoid pain. He had come to the conclusion that the only way to control his life was by controlling the lives around him. The list helped him stay on track. He paced back and forth
, quietly going over the details of his plans as his adrenalin increased.
He slouched down at his desk, clenched his hair as it draped over his eyes and pondered how the neglect and abuse he’d suffered had snuffed the music from his soul. David longed for old, familiar melodies to bring him comfort and laughter, but found only the clamoring sound of an off-tempo dirge. Although he tried to arrange the chords and time signatures in a way that was intelligible to his ear, he stepped out of time, his notes were flat, and those around him cringed and laughed. He was humiliated and he hated them for it.
He glanced at a picture on the desk of his mother holding his hand as a young child. It stood in a bright red clay frame; a misshapen art project from the fourth grade. Neither of them looked happy, and a lot had happened over the past eight years. Smiles were a rare commodity in their household. He turned the picture face down and stood up.
David walked to his small window. He pushed the roll-up blind to the side, peeked through the glass and watched the fog sinking into the sage-covered valley to the east. He observed the sun stretch its arms over the rocky hilltops to wake the ponderosa pines and heard the mountain bluebirds singing in the distance. For the last time, he witnessed the river in the valley, flowing downward in search of rapids and lower ground. He stared into the gorge with cold and unfeeling eyes. The sight reminded him of the time when Bill, his stepfather, had taken him down there and let him shoot his shotgun just for fun. David knew the activity was meant to keep him silent, a form of hush money.
Peering through the dirty glass, he thought about his plan to finally get even with everyone who’d taunted and bullied him. Today was the day they’d finally get what they had coming to them. Today the world would sit up and take notice of David Ray. Those kids and their families would be sorry. Now they’d know some of his misery. They could kiss goodbye their happy days of Mom’s cookies, home-cooked meals, and playing ball with Dad.
A sliver of sunlight struck his eyes. David squinted and released the window blind. He preferred the darkness.
• • •
At 7:41 a.m., Tanner Khan climbed onto the yellow school bus, walked down the aisle greeting kids around him, and then took his usual seat by the window. As the bus continued to fill up, the tranquility of the early morning hours escalated to the clamoring roar of cracking voices. Tanner pressed his face to the window and breathed, creating a foggy circle that came and went with each breath. He drew a smile with his index finger.
The bus stopped, and Tanner’s best friend Kenny climbed on and waved at Tanner. Kenny traipsed down the aisle, lugging a large duffle bag filled with books. He was skinny and stood six feet tall. Tanner was six inches shorter and far less developed. Both were seniors. Tanner had a baby face with blonde hair. Kenny had brown curly hair with a square jaw line and strong green eyes. As always, Tanner took note of Kenny’s cool look of confidence.
“Hey, Tan. What’s going on?” said Kenny. He sat down and plopped his bag into his lap.
“Not much. Did you finish the physics assignment?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too.” Tanner looked back outside.
“You okay?” asked Kenny.
Tanner shrugged his shoulders. “I guess. I just have a weird feeling.”
“A weird feeling? What’s that mean?”
Tanner felt Kenny shift his weight and turn in his direction.
“Not sure. I mean, I’m having a bad hair day as usual and my jeans are too short, but that’s not it.”
“So what is it then?”
Tanner wiped the damp smiley face off the window and said, “I don’t know.”
• • •
At 7:52 a.m. Steve Gardner, the high school English teacher, grabbed his leather satchel and jumped out of his sporty Geo Metro. His first period class started at 8:10 a.m. He had just enough time to pick up a cup of coffee from the faculty lounge and unlock the door by 8:00 a.m., if he hurried.
As he dashed into the school, he thought about David Ray. Steve was worried about him. The day before, David had been acting very strange, worse than usual. He had watched David walk from class to class, head down and mumbling to himself. When he approached David, the young man had looked up, squinted his eyes and let out what he swore was a low-pitched growl. It really frightened him.
Steve had tried to reach out to David numerous times before, but David hid deep within himself. Steve hoped that he’d be able to help David before graduation, which was only a week away, but he was afraid that David was too far gone.
Over the years, Steve Gardner noticed the students who cried out for help. Some were frustrated over their awkward adaptation to high school or their uncaring parents. Sometimes their bodies or spirits had been damaged and they were afraid to tell anyone what had happened. Steve wanted to make a difference in their lives. He hated watching the lost ones waste away, while the system rushed them into adulthood. His heart broke for David, for all of the lost ones. Sometimes his efforts to help paid off. Sometimes they didn’t.
• • •
By 7:55 a.m. David had gathered up all his gear as planned. He knew that timing meant everything, as he had studied others who had gone before him with similar plans. If he wanted to make an impression, his work had to be perfect. He packed the fifteen-round magazines and polished the cold steel firearms. After he’d loaded the guns, he opened a duffle bag at the foot of his bed and placed the guns in the order of their forthcoming appearance. He had a Smith & Wesson 9mm, a Jennings 9mm semiautomatic, his stepfather’s Remington 870 sawed-off shotgun and lots of ammunition.
David had traded his Ibanez electric guitar for the Jennings 9mm when the local pot dealer wanted to start a band. The gun was stolen and the serial number had been ground off. By then, David had already decided that music wasn’t for him. He pawned more items to buy the ammo. The other guns belonged to his stepfather, Bill, who kept them tucked away in the back of his closet. David had sneaked into his room the previous night, stole the guns, and then hid them under his bed. Along with the guns, he kept a cluster of homemade maps and timetables under his mattress.
David looked around his dingy room. A fluorescent black light hung from the ceiling and emitted a continuous low-pitched buzz that resonated in his ears. The purple glow illuminated white papers and poster texts scattered across his room. Drawings of stick figures with knives and blood and piled-up bodies expressed his thought life, revealing the inner workings of his heart. His dark clothing and black hair concealed him from the light. He roamed about like a ghost in the tight quarters where he hid his hatred and black intentions.
He attached two paddle holsters to his black leather belt and shoved the pistols into their new homes. The smell of leather filled his nostrils and gave him a newfound sense of power. Until that moment, he had felt weak and defenseless. In his mind, he had always been a victim. Now, the smell and look of his collection of weapons bolstered his confidence and filled him with a sense of strength.
Fantasies of cinematic heroism rushed through his mind. Thoughts of fixing his world with the click of a trigger gave David an increased sense of freedom. To him, pulling the trigger would be a bold and valiant statement on behalf of all the lost ones like himself. He put both hands on the holster snaps and pushed down until they popped into place. He followed through by throwing his hands up to his mouth, with both thumbs and index fingers pointing in the form of a gun, and then blew on them as if his fleshy pistols were smoking.
With the guns firmly packed in place, David thought back to the day he told his mother, Sheila, that Bill had given him marijuana. He was only nine years old. It started when he told Bill that he thought he had been carried out of his room by a group of men in the night, but he wasn’t sure if it was a dream. Bill responded by handing him a pipe stuffed with weed.
“Here ya go, Davey,” said Bill. “Suck some of this in and you’ll forget all about it.”
David inhaled as commanded and, just like Bill said, he forgot all about it. W
hen he told his mother, she screamed at Bill, shouting all sorts of profanities. Bill turned red with rage and yanked him outside by his ear and clobbered him for telling.
He remembered similar episodes, memories that made him feel weak and afraid. Yet that morning, he stood in his room pretending to be something he was not: confident and strong. His remembrances were intentional. He wanted to become angry. He wanted to stir up the demons. He wanted to give them reason to sin.
David left his thoughts and picked up the shotgun. He breathed deep, held it close to his chest and said, “Ahhh. Come to Papa.” The seventeen-year-old lovingly stroked the barrel of his gun because he had special plans for it. Since he had never experienced love, he had become fixated on death. He stood next to his bed, adorned with superhero bed sheets, and imagined the carnage the heavy firearm would bring. He gripped the gun and pointed it at the musical demigods plastered across the walls of his small bedroom. “Boom! Boom! Boom!” he aggressively whispered so as not to awaken his lethargic and unemployed stepfather sleeping in the next room. The guns took away his insecurity and made him feel complete and in control.
David carefully arranged the ammunition and shotgun into the duffle bag and zipped it closed. When he lifted his head, he caught a glimpse of himself in a small mirror above his desk, and for a brief moment, saw the boy deep inside who was afraid. He quickly pushed him back into the depths of his subconscious where he belonged.
Reunion (A Psychological Suspense with Murder, Mystery and the Paranormal) Page 1