Curling & Cthulu

Following a good deal of convincing and cajoling, October’s dad eventually did let her attend The Plotzdam Conference’s most triumphant concert at the YMCA. Mr. Schwartz spoke to Mr. Whatshisname (Stacey’s dad) beforehand, and demanded that October be home before midnight. October was so thrilled about the concert she nearly forgot about her terrifying bat-and-possible-ghost encounter in the cemetery. Most of her evenings since had been spent with her headphones in her bedroom, listening to Oy Revolt! Not since Neil Diamond have a bunch of Jews rocked so hard. October kept the repeat button on her dad’s Discman locked, playing the CD over and over again. Rabbinical students probably didn’t study the Torah this much.

The concert itself, when the big night arrived, astounded October. The bands set up their amps and other equipment in one of the small YMCA gyms. The blue mats for gymnastics or Greco-Roman wrestling or whatever they were for were piled neatly in the back corner. The rest of the gym quickly filled with Sticksville kids, talking and laughing. October had never seen anything like it. Yumi and Stacey attempted to point out other kids they almost knew in the audience. They almost knew a lot of people.

Before The Plotzdam Conference took the stage, October and her friends were subjected to Phantom Moustache, comprised of three skinny dudes that October recognized from the halls of her high school. Their strategy was to compensate in volume for what they lacked in musical knowledge. Phantom Moustache were remarkably loud and screamy and not very musical at all, but the other kids seemed to love it. People danced and pogoed up and down. A few attempted to lift a scrawny friend into the air, but the gathering in the gym wasn’t large enough to support crowd surfing, so the group just shuffled around the floor with the friend held aloft, as if the captain of the world’s saddest football team had just scored the winning touchdown.

October, however, was not nearly as impressed by Phantom Moustache. She scrunched up her nose and whispered to Yumi, “These guys kind of suck.”

“Ha!” Yumi guffawed, delighted. “This is so exciting! You’re becoming a music snob!”

“Why is everyone so crazy about them?” October asked.

“Because they’re from Sticksville Central,” Stacey, who tended to eavesdrop, said. “It’s like our high school’s official band.”

Yumi nodded her head, either in agreement or in time to the music. Keeping a steady rhythm was not the drummer’s specialty.

Phantom Moustache ended their final song and on the other side of the gym, past all the sweat-stained and dishevelled high school students in uneven haircuts and leather jackets, was a person October recognized from the hallways of Sticksville Central. She gulped in not-inconsiderable horror when she realized this was no fellow math student or band kid, but her advance-aged French teacher, Mr. O’Shea.

Despite having a good several decades on the majority of the crowd, October’s teacher was not dissuaded from bobbing his head like a deranged rooster, his wispy white hair flopping back and forth. Yet as soon as October spotted him, he returned the favour, noticing her at the back of the room. And then it was too late. As if gasoline had been spread across the gym floor and Mr. O’Shea were an open flame, there was no escaping his inevitable arrival.

“Ms. Schwartz,” he said. “How pleasant to see you here. The kids had a little circle pit going there for a while. . . . What are you all doing back here?”

October and her two friends were positioned at the very back of the gym, lined up shoulder to shoulder, as if awaiting execution.

“Uh, saving our energy for The Plotzdam Conference,” said Yumi.

“Yeah,” October agreed. “And, no offense, Mr. O’Shea, but shouldn’t we be asking you what you’re doing here at all? Do you like this music?” The very idea somehow made The Plotzdam Conference several degrees less cool.

“I suppose this band is all right. It’s an interesting sound,” he mused. “To be honest, I’m just here to drive the boys and their equipment home.”

“You’re a roadie for The Plotzdam Conference?” Yumi said, both bewildered and impressed.

“The clarinet player is Mrs. Tischmann’s son, so I sometimes give him and a couple of the other boys a ride. My hatchback can fit much more sound tech than you’d think.”

October didn’t know what to say after that. Mr. O’Shea’s whole presence in the YMCA gym on a Friday night was just wrong. Like Clark Kent and Superman standing in the same room. Something was off.

“Come on,” her French teacher insisted, corralling the three closer to the band. “I’ve saved a good spot near the front.”

October thought she maybe didn’t want to stand so close to the front, but she also feared that disagreeing with Mr. O’Shea — the band’s roadie — was like disagreeing with the law of gravity. You could disagree with it all you wanted, doesn’t mean you won’t fall and break your legs when you jump off the roof of your house.

In reality, standing closer to the band was not quite as dangerous as jumping from the roof of a house. To the contrary, October had a great deal of fun. Clarinets and accordions were wielded like double-necked guitars (which, in full disclosure, were also wielded). The concert ended with a rave-up version of their minor hit “Keepin’ Kosher,” moments before Stacey’s dad arrived in his beige Pontiac Sunfire. At just ten minutes before midnight, the Sunfire rolled into October’s driveway and deposited her on the front step where her worried dad waited impatiently.

In spite of the possible presence of Mr. O’Shea at any concert, October decided she was definitely going to have to do that again. Little translucent girls running through cemeteries were, frankly, the last thing on her mind.

October Schwartz was no slouch when it came to school work. She studied, did her homework assiduously, and, in due time, became bored in some of her classes. Music remained interesting, as they usually played songs during class. Even though the trombone parts in high school music classes are not among the most complex of musical compositions, performing kept her mind busy. And math class was never dull, as Mr. Santuzzi vigilantly scanned his classroom for any signs of students goofing off. Consequences for doing so were often dire and creative. The legends of his military service seemed more and more valid as he began threatening students with push-ups and saying things like, “If this were the Armed Forces, Mr. Rooney, I’d have put you in the hole by now!” October didn’t know what “the hole” was and had no intention of finding out. So in math class, October’s eyes were pinned to the blackboard. She feared the potential consequences of daydreaming.

It was, however, surprisingly easily to think about other things during both French and history. After about a week, October began bringing her writing notebook to class, so she could surreptitiously write notes, ideas, and lines of dialogue for her book — “I’m here to study demonology; this is the dissection lab!” She had already daydreamed a couple of great scenes, and hadn’t committed them to paper so she’d completely forgotten what they were about by the time she arrived home. She wasn’t about to let that happen again.

October sat toward the rear of Mr. O’Shea’s French class. This Monday morning, Mr. O’Shea was reviewing conjugation for the modal verbs, but October had already reviewed them a few times at home. She quietly opened the notebook with “Two Knives, One Thousand Demons” stencilled on the front and started writing about how her heroine (she had recently been christened Olivia de Kellerman) encountered a quartet of demons in an abandoned Italian restaurant’s kitchen while the rest of her class reviewed how to say “may not have visited” en français.

Olivia de Kellerman was just stabbing one of the demons (Margaret Thatcher III) in the throat with a lemon zester when, as if from a faraway tunnel, October heard Mr. O’Shea calling on her.

“Ms. Schwartz?”

October raised her head (which, to the rest of the class, had been nothing more than a mound of shiny black hair for the past ten minutes) and saw Mr. O’Shea staring back at her.

“Ms. Schwartz,” he smiled, though not unkindly. “If I didn’t know better, I would imagine that you’re not paying attention in my class. But then I would have to have a rather wild imagination, wouldn’t I?” His eyes goggled behind his thick glasses. The class began to descend into hushed comments. Big Laugh lived up to her nickname as she belted out a few at October’s embarrassment.

“Attention, étudiants!” interjected Mr. O’Shea, quieting the room. “Ms. Schwartz, see me at the end of class, s’il vous plaît.”

For the remainder of class, October, ashamed and visibly reddened, faithfully conjugated French verbs and thought no more of demon-slaying. She had always thought Mr. O’Shea was a relatively nice teacher, but she dreaded what sort of punishment he might dole out in their after-class meeting. After all, Ashlie Salmons and her crew feared him. And he was tight with a rock band.

The bell rang and the other étudiants picked up their books and filed out the door. October, in no rush to learn her cruel fate, slowly gathered her belongings and dragged her heels while approaching Mr. O’Shea’s desk. He just grinned and adjusted his spectacles. He had a young man’s face, though October guessed he must have qualified for senior citizen’s discounts at buffets throughout Sticksville. Maybe the band kept him young. His hair was a very bright snow white and there was not much remaining to judge the colour by.

He eased himself onto the front corner of his desk.

“I’m sorry to have embarrassed you in front of your peers, but I would appreciate you paying attention to my lessons, no matter how excellent your French may be.”

“It’s okay,” October said, not looking directly at him. “I should have been paying attention in class.”

“What was it that you were so tirelessly toiling upon?” Mr. O’Shea inquired. “At first, I just assumed you were working on French, but you were writing too much . . . and having too much fun.” He laughed a little at the thought of his class possibly inducing fun. “Were you working on other homework?”

“No!” October almost shouted. His insinuation she was goofing off by doing other schoolwork offended her deeply.

“Well, would you care to educate me?”

October didn’t see why she had to tell Mr. O’Shea anything, but then she considered that she might avoid punishment by telling him the truth — writing a book is a pretty harmless activity, after all.

“It’s nothing. I was working on my book,” October said, then hastily looked out the window, her feet nervously tapping on the floor.

“A book?” Mr. O’Shea seemed surprised. “Really? Could I . . . may I see?”

October slid the notebook from the top of her little pile and handed it to her French teacher.

“Two Knives, One Thousand Demons?” he read. “Intriguing title. . . .”

“It’s a horror story,” October explained, as though Mr. O’Shea was going to mistake it for a self-help book.

O’Shea flipped slowly through the pages, trying to decipher October’s chicken-scratch handwriting (officially worse than a medical doctor’s) for words he recognized. “I like a good horror story,” he said.

Mr. O’Shea didn’t seem like the kind of guy who enjoyed a good horror story to October. He seemed like the kind of guy who enjoyed a good story about incredible cats.

“So what happens in it?” Mr. O’Shea asked. “It is Lovecraftian?”

“Lovecraft . . .” October repeated, puzzled. “No, sir. There’s no romance at all. Straight horror and action.”

“No,” he chuckled. “I was referring to H.P. Lovecraft. He wrote a number of classic horror stories. Before your time. Actually, before my time!”

While October almost cracked a smile, Mr. O’Shea rifled through the bookcase behind his desk. From the top shelf, he produced a yellowed paperback, its tattered cover featured a strange illustration of a giant octopus-type thing.

“The Outsider and Others by Howard Phillips Lovecraft,” he announced. “Here, you should borrow it. Let me know if you like it.”

“Yeah? What is it about?”

“Well, it’s a collection of horror stories,” he explained. “The title story is about a lonely man who lives in an ancient castle and who hasn’t seen another human being in years. Eventually, he leaves his castle and goes wandering the countryside. Soon, he finds a new castle, and there’s a party going on inside. He barges in on the party, but all the guests run away in horror. When he turns down the next hallway, he realizes what they were running from — there’s a horrible, rotting ghoul, with chunks of its skin falling off, roaming through the castle . . . but then he notices it’s not a hallway at all — it’s a mirror!”

“Gross! That’s so awesome!”

“Sorry,” Mr. O’Shea said. “I guess I gave away the ending, but there are plenty other stories in the book. They’re all pretty good.”

October took the ancient book and piled it on top of her binder, textbook, notebook, and pencil case.

“Thanks, Mr. O’Shea,” October said, slowly understanding that she had, in all likelihood, avoided any and all punishment. “And I’m sorry about today in class.”

“Tell you what,” Mr. O’Shea said as he took back October’s notebook. “You let me take this down to the staff photocopier so I can take your book home for a quick read-through, and I’ll pretend your indiscretion in today’s class never happened. You and I both know you’re ahead of the rest of the class, so I don’t expect you to pay attention all the time. Your French is actually quite impressive given you’ve skipped a grade. But let’s try to keep the authorship to a minimum during class, okay?”

October nodded.

“Alright then. You’re free to go, Ms. Schwartz. I have to go check on my car. Confidentially, I think I might need to have my head examined. I had a brake problem, so I brought it to the school auto shop. That may have been a mistake,” said Mr. O’Shea.

“My dad teaches auto shop.”

“Well, let’s hope he’s better than the last instructor. I’ll see you in class tomorrow.”

“Thank you, Mr. O’Shea,” said October.

“En français,” he scolded.

“Merci.”

October left O’Shea’s class feeling very satisfied with herself, and a little eager to read this Lovecraft book she now had in her possession. That satisfaction rapidly fizzled when she realized their little chat had made her late for Santuzzi’s math class.

“He told you what?!” Yumi shouted in disbelief.

“Um . . . he said that the class was a unit . . . and that I was letting down the unit,” October recalled. “Then he said that if we were in a wartime situation, I would be the first to get fragged.”

October sat at her usual cafeteria table, recounting the grim scene that had unfolded when she arrived almost fifteen minutes late to Mr. Santuzzi’s class. In addition to the military-themed lecture, she was also to endure an after-school detention.

“Fragged? That’s hilarious!” Yumi doubled over in laughter. “What does that even mean?”

“It’s when soldiers shoot their commanding officer in the back,” said Stacey. “Happened a lot in Vietnam.”

Yumi exploded into another bout of laughter, and nobody could be sure if she was laughing because Santuzzi had said it, or because Stacey No-last-name, secretly a Vietnam vet, knew what it meant.

“So, I’m at school until, like, five today because of the detention,” lamented October, and she dropped her face into her hands.

“What? Oh no!” Yumi said. “But I was going to ask you to join the curling team with me! Sign-up and the first practice both happen today after school.”

“Curling?” Stacey asked, thoroughly amused.

“Yeah, so?” deflected Yumi. Then she hurled her pitch to October. “It’s really fun. Trust me, Schwartz. All the girls worth talking to go out for the curling team. Please join with me, please, please!”

Yumi Takeshi, while not as intimidating a lecturer as Mr. Santuzzi, was nearly as persuasive. She compensated for her lack of menace with persistence and annoyance.

“I don’t know,” October said. “This sounds like it might be a lot of work . . . and exercise.”

“It’s only two practices a week. Plus one game a week, once the season starts.”

“That sounds like a lot of time I could spend — oh, sleeping, watching TV, reorganizing the canned vegetables in the kitchen cupboard.”

“You’ll meet new people! You get a broom! Mr. O’Shea is the coach!” Yumi was throwing out anything that could possibly be viewed as a bonus to curling. A broom? Plus, Mr. O’Shea was coaching? Was that guy everywhere?

“Okay,” October relented. “I can’t go today because of detention, but you can sign me up!”

“Yes!” exclaimed Yumi, pumping her fists in victory. “This is going to be so wicked. Curling is the best sport ever!”

For the uninitiated, curling is a winter sport played on an ice surface that combines the fast-paced action of shuffleboard with the innate thrill of cleaning your house. That said, curling can occasionally be a very exciting and competitive game to play, but spectators of curling should keep in mind that the appearance of the Zamboni machine should be regarded as the absolute height of excitement in any game.

Ashlie Salmons and her roving pack of fashionable she-wolves happened to pass by during all this curling banter, and leapt on it like a predator on an immobile gemsbok.

“Playing with brooms, girls?” Ashlie said. “Training for future careers in the custodial arts?”

“At least they have future careers!” said Stacey, which wasn’t nearly as clever a comeback as it seemed to him at the time.

“The curling team’s just perfect for Zombie Tramps like you,” Ashlie continued. “It’s where all the degenerate wastes of skin pass the time. Have fun.”

With a flick of her perfectly brushed hair, she and her goon squad exited the cafeteria, giggling as they went.

“I can never come up with a decent comeback!” Yumi said.

“Want me to mess her up?” asked Stacey, but everyone knew (himself included) that he was only joking. Ashlie Salmons could merely stun October and Yumi into silence; for a male social outcast like Stacey (who already had a stupid name), it might involve his total social banishment for the rest of high school.

“She’s on the volleyball team,” said Yumi. “Like that’s any less moronic.”

“Oh, barf,” said October.

“What?”

“My dad’s coaching volleyball.”

Detention with Santuzzi was not quite as bad as October had anticipated. He had her write a five-page essay on how math class is not unlike a military squadron. Though how he expected her to know what a military squadron was like was beyond her. October could only assume extra credit would be awarded for references to exit wounds, napalm, and/or Charlie Foxtrots.

While October tried to develop a military metaphor for pop quizzes — an ambush? Too obvious — she considered Mr. Santuzzi, seated behind his desk in his tight grey vest and pants. His clothing always appeared two sizes too small for a man his build, and ever since Yumi had mentioned a hairpiece, his hair looked more and more like a muskrat that some mischievous sorcerer had enchanted to lie still on his scalp. Santuzzi was concentrating on his desk, aligning all the papers, books, and writing utensils to perfect 90-degree angles with the desk edges.

October wondered what could have driven this former serviceman into teaching. He certainly didn’t seem to like teenagers. In fact, he seemed to despise them, a blight upon his otherwise satisfactory days. From what little her dad had told her about Mr. Santuzzi, he wasn’t too fond of his fellow teachers, either. If she were to believe Yumi and Stacey’s rumours, Santuzzi had been forced out of the Canadian military because he was “too thorough in his methodology.” Yumi claimed her cousin hacked into the Canadian military’s soldier database, where she read that cryptic dismissal statement. The information seemed suspect to October; was there even such a thing as a soldier database?

Yumi also imparted to October a long-standing school rumour that Santuzzi had once been kidnapped by three senior students who disagreed with his grading system. They caught him off guard, bound him with rope to his wheelie-chair and rolled him across town to one of the boys’ garages. They demanded he change their marks or they would never set him free. While they were busy threatening him, Santuzzi had secretly freed himself from the ropes using a broken glass shard from his wristwatch. He then handily subdued the student kidnappers, beating one within an inch — no, a centimetre — of his life with a metre stick. Because he was a victim of abduction, Yumi sagely reasoned, he was never charged with aggravated assault — it was self-defence. He still used that metre stick to this very day, student blood dried into its fibres; or so the rumour went.

“Yeah. That sounds entirely probable,” Stacey scoffed.

“That’s probably the phoniest story I’ve ever heard in my life,” October said. “Why would they let him teach after that?”

“I dunno,” Yumi had said. “Teachers’ unions are pretty strong. Or maybe,” she raised her hand, as if painting a picture with her open palm, “all that happened in some other town, and he changed his identity to start a new life in Sticksville.”

“What are you looking at?” Mr. Santuzzi barked, aware that October had been studying him and his possibly checkered past. “Eyes down. You have five pages to write before five, remember? Five by five. Unless you want another assignment: How is October Schwartz like a failing student?”

After that, October powered through the essay. The Santuzzi story still sounded like a hoax, but she was reluctant to discard any rumours she heard about her math teacher. He was certainly bad news; the only question was how bad.

Through the orange, black, and brown shadows of her backyard, October crept to the cemetery. She held a silver flashlight in one hand to illuminate her path. In the other hand, she had a copy of Lovecraft’s The Outsider and Others that Mr. O’Shea had lent her. As a horror book, she figured it was probably best read in the dark. Yes, she’d recently had a rough experience in the cemetery, but that wasn’t about to stand in the way of an unbeatable reading experience. And yes, her dad wasn’t keen on her sneaking into the cemetery at night, but he’d retired to his room about an hour ago, which was pretty well an open invitation for October to sneak out.

Pushing past the gate that separated her yard from the Sticksville Cemetery, October guided her flashlight beam back and forth, looking for a comfortable spot to sit. She captured a large tree stump in the disc of light and established her makeshift seat. Her back turned to Cyril Cooper’s headstone, she propped open the paperback and held the flashlight above the pages. Her dad had warned her against reading by flashlight; it would make her eyes bleed or shrivel up or something. But sometimes, just sometimes, you’ve got to risk blindness to read a scary book in the pitch-black night.

Sixteen pages into the book, October couldn’t really see what the fuss was about. The first story featured a lot of cargo ships and decaying fish (which was gross) and despair, but not much that could be labelled “scary.” There may have been a sea monster involved, but it was so vague, she couldn’t even tell. As October became frustrated, reading and re-reading the same sentences by accident, she began to hear distant whispers.

Immediately, October was reminded of the half-invisible girl she’d seen on her birthday — right before that bat got up close and personal with her face. What a mistake it was, heading back into the cemetery in the middle of the night when there were weird girls running around and summoning bats! What if the whispering voice was that girl’s? Why would a girl be skulking around the cemetery at night? A girl besides October, that is; her presence there was completely normal. There was no way that girl was a ghost, was there? Because that would just be stupid.

October didn’t know how she felt about ghosts, but it was too late, she had already made the logical leap that turned this vision of a girl into a possible phantom. She didn’t totally believe in ghosts, but she had read too many horror stories to be certain they didn’t exist. This paradox was exactly why October was so frightened; even more so when she heard other whispers. While she couldn’t hear what was being said, she was nearly positive they were not just voices in her head.

She dropped the book into the cold grass and waved her flashlight around maniacally, trying to determine who was whispering, and where. She searched the area closest to her backyard, the row of aboveground tombs, the grove of trees — and then she saw her.

A girl about twelve with a constellation of freckles and her blondish hair in a bun peeked out from behind a large willow. Her skin was whitish blue and paper-thin. October could nearly see through her. The flashlight panned down to the section of the girl’s tattered skirt that was unhidden by the massive tree. The young girl must have noticed the movement of light, because her eyes widened, her mouth opened in a silent gasp, and in an instant she disappeared completely. Winked out of existence.

October froze in place on the tree stump. Not physically, mind you. Though the evening was slightly chilly, it wasn’t nearly cold enough for that. October was instead frozen by the enormity of what she believed she had just seen. Forget belief; she was sure she had seen something. A spectre of a girl, spying on her from behind a tree. A girl who magically disappeared.

The cemetery behind October Schwartz’s house was home to a ghost. Suddenly, it didn’t seem like such a fantastic place to read anymore.