SCHOOL'S OUT
Bambridge High School was a High School like every other, or so it would seem at the first glance. One thing that would be noticed was that it had been modified, in fact the modifications were rather complex, they had to put in the wood shop and some of the other high school specialized classrooms, because it was originally a kindergarten to third grade school. It was shut down for ten years after there was a certain scandal between two third grade teachers who both committed suicide on school grounds. They remodeled it in '94 and re-opened it soon after as a high school.
Like any high school there were social cliques and popular, almost famous people. One of them was Jenny. Jenny was the object of the affections of a friend of mine, who was more obsessed than affectionate. He agonized over her, and frankly I always thought it was unhealthy, especially when I saw his reaction when she started dating the big-man-on-campus, a football player named Rick.
Besides being obsessive, my Friend Todd was a regular geek like me. We were a part of the geek movement, as I named it. I felt sorry for Todd, and he felt sorry for himself whenever he looked in a mirror. He was diagnosed at an early age with terminal acne, and frankly he probably weighed less than half of what I did; I would say you could see his ribs through his shirt, which complemented his huge ears and a nose that looked like it would mess up his balance. He had a high pitched nasal voice that made his precious Jenny's skin crawl, she usually snubbed him on sight. It was tragic really, he was a nice, smart guy and frankly that jock she was dating (whoever it might be at the time) made a block of wood look like a Nobel Laureate.
Todd was very interested in some of that H.P. Lovecraft stuff, frankly I didn't read it myself. I always preferred cyber punk science fiction. Todd was into black magic and crap like that, and frankly, he looked better in that than he did in the ill-fitting rented tux he wore to the junior prom. He looked like a cross between a drowned rat and a dead one when he boldly marched up to Jenny and asked her to dance. I don't know how he built up the confidence to do it, but he did, and he suffered for it. She made him go into the men's room and weep in a stall for several minutes, but no one but me noticed because frankly the smell in there struck terror into the hearts of men and animals. I joked that they should manufacture that smell and use it as a biological weapon. He was seated unceremoniously in a stall, rubbing the greasy coating of the toilet seat onto his rented pants. He struggled against a wave of tears and was redder than a beet on steroids. I took him out of the school. We went through a different exit, out to my car -I was born early in the year, so I had my license- an ancient Beetle with an Autostick. I was one of the rare students at the school who could drive a stickshifter. It was a long ride back to his house. I tried to engage him in conversation, but he wasn't in any kind of shape to talk.
Nothing much happened until the next year. Todd had backed off from Jenny quite a bit. He had the fortune, or perhaps she had the misfortune, of having his locker located across the hall from hers. I really expected him to make a move. Over the summer his ears had flattened out, and he had put on a little weight. He wasn't Mr. Universe, but he wasn't a string bean anymore, either. Still, he lit it all go by. Maybe he didn't want to be humiliated again. I'm not really sure.
The PE teacher, Mr. Echllestein, or "Echy" as everyon called him (but never to his face) really tormented Todd. He made him climb the rope. Everyone dreaded the rope, but Todd loathed it. He had a weak grip and frankly he hated heights. Besides that, the mats below the rope, which climbed fifty some feet in the air -the highest in the county, Echy boasted- weren't the huge, thick things that other schools used. They were thick, allright, but no one wanted to fall on them. They felt like they were stuffed with soft bricks. Only one person ever fell. Todd.
On the fifth day of classes Todd fell from the top. He was so proud he made it. Then he fell down and cracked a rib. He was back in school the next Monday, the eighth day of school. He was quiet and reserved, even more so than usual. Echy wouldn't make him climb the rope, but he did make him run the circuit. It must have hurt like hell. Before he left class, Todd did something odd. In the center of the room, he muttered something under his breath, speaking of the dead teachers by name. Nobody but me noticed.
The next day, the janitor found Echy hung from the rope, dead a few hours. The weird thing was that he was thirty feet off the ground. Nobody could figure how he got up there to do it, not unless he had a fifty-foot chair or five arms. There wasn't a ladder or anything. Something else strange happened that day too. All of the students were milling in the halls, and almost all of the lockers were closed. Then, two by two, with one locker on each side of the hall, the opened from one end of the hall to the other, flying open, and sounding like a machine gun. Nobody could explain it. Within seconds the lockers were closed again, but most people took out any valuables they had.
The school was calm for the rest of the day, but when we came back the next day, there was a horrible stench. The whole place stunk to holy hell. There were rats. Rats everywhere. They covered the floor. Todd laughed a little bit when he saw it. Nobody found the source of the smell.
A couple days later, the smell and the rats were gone, but most of the students were staying home until they could be transferred to another school- some even dropped out. Todd made his big play for Jenny, and it just so happened that her blockheaded boyfriend happened to be nearby. He pushed Todd and poked him in the shoulder with his finger. Todd backed down appreciatively and retreated. The boyfriend, forever known as Brick, was a large fellow, perfectly capable of scrunching Todd into tiny pieces and mixing them into shake n' bake.
Todd passed right by me on his way back to his locker, and I distinctly remember him mumbling "Tak-akan'alluthallkareth da Sothis blechet kleem Brick." It didn't make any sense to me, either, or at least, not then.
The school quieted down, to tell you the truth, it almost seemed to be fun to go to school. Meanwhile, Todd gained more weight- he seemed to get stronger all the time, but he always had a note for gym and I never saw him exercise. He mumbled in some weird language all the time, but other than that, he seemed fine, Better than fine. That is, until Rick aka Brick stopped coming to school. Nobody noticed he was gone. I overheard ( I wasn't spying. Really. Well, okay, I was, but it was for a good cause, or so I thought) Jenny mention that she hadn't heard anything from him. A rumor started that his parents had called the police, also known as the fuzz, the man, and those guys in the uniforms. They got the janitor to open Brick's locker, and then they all tossed their proverbial cookies. A pile of bloody bones fell out, stinking like holy hell, I'll tell you. I saw it myself, and I deposited my used mystery meat in the nearest receptacle. I doubt they recycled it. That was it. They closed the school for six months before they closed the case- they just didn't have any evidence. To be safe, they posted a guard at the door during school hours.
One day came along, melting slowly like molasses. (Does molasses melt?) School was out, but we couldn't leave- all the doors had been melted shut. By melted I mean the metal and glass had fused together, and the locks were jammed. Of course, there was another problem- the rent-a-cop was slumped in front of the main entrance, his guts in piles on the floor and a message spelled out in block letters, written in blood:
SOTHIS RISES HERE. TUATHAN BEREK NEIMOS SKARAK SOTHIS SHUB SEIBACH CARION LET THE SEVENTH SEAL BE BROKEN
Of course, total pandemonium broke out. The girls shrieked, and most of the boys did, too. The staff hurriedly rushed all of us into the gym and tired to use the teacher's phone to call the cops. The line was dead. The barred the doors with a pile of the aforementioned soft brick mats and battered the outside door with metal chairs, folding tables, and dodgeballs, to no avail. They were tying to keep whoever it was who killed the guard out.
But it was already in.
Todd laughed. I remember him laughing. Then all of a sudden this guy appeared out of nowhere. Either that or no one noticed him before. He was wearing a long black trench coat over a black suit with a black shirt and black tie; despite the summer heat, abundant in the gymnasium, he had on a ski mask that covered his mouth and dark sunglasses over his eyes. I don't know how a person could have such a loud voice, but this one rattled the windows. "The evil contained shall not be set free!."
The door busted open at that moment and we all ran like crazy, into the parking lot. People jumped into any car that was open- fortunately I made it to my Bug. Even more fortunately, the girl of my dreams, who was more open to my advances than Jenny was to Todd's, hopped in the car with me. Needless to say, I started it up and got into the highest gear I could as fast as I could, and got as far from that school as I could.
I went back to that place last year. The whole town was abandoned, as near as I could tell. By then I had earned a menial job that paid non menial wages in Washington D.C., working with the government. Most of the buildings in town had burned, and there were even scorches on the roads. The school was nothing but a skeleton of steel and charred, barely structurally sound wood, and memories of the past. I distinctly remember seeing certain marks on the road, like footprints, burned into the asphalt. Very, very carefully, defying the "no trespassing" signs, went through the rusty chain link fence with wire cutters, and made my way to the gym. I found the tattered, torn remnants of a trench coat, and a rusted sword, of all things. I found a human skeleton there, alternately stained red and charred. Among the remains was a yellowed, burned picture of Jenny.
I found something else among the remains, too. It was a metal disk, about the size of a dinner plate, and had weird etching on it. One side was a picture of something I can't really describe, and the other was a big spider. What they were I don't know. I left it there, or so I thought. I took the picture with me. I figured I would send it to Jenny's family, or maybe even Jenny herself, if I could find her. Frankly, I don't know what happened to her- even if she made it out of the school.
When I got home, the metal disk was in the trunk of my car.
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