It all started on a windblown Friday night in October. It was the night before Halloween, the night we always called Wreck Night or Devil’s Night back when we were kids and Halloween was second in our hearts only to Christmas.
At least the newspapers got that much right. The day, I mean. They pretty much screwed up the rest of the story.
I was there that night. Let me tell you what really happened…
In the chill autumn months after my first child was born, I spent many late-night hours driving the streets of my hometown. It became a routine. Two, three nights a week, around about midnight, I’d creep into the nursery one final time to check on the baby (a healthy boy named Joshua, after my father) and then I’d kiss my amused wife good night and off I’d go, driving the streets in random routes until my eyes went blurry and my spine sprouted kinks the size of quarters.
Driving and thinking. Thinking and driving. Some nights with the radio. Most nights in silence.
That was a little more than four years ago, but I still go out and drive some nights. Just not very often now—maybe once or twice a month, tops.
My wife, Janice, is wonderful (and wise) and she’s known me for more than half of my thirty-six years, so she innately understands the need for these trips of mine. We rarely talk about it, but she somehow knows that this town where we both grew up and still live today, this town—its streets and houses and storefronts and lawns and sidewalks and the very sky above—gives me a real sense of peace and understanding I could never hope to find elsewhere. I know how funny that sounds, how old-fashioned, but it’s the best and probably the only way I know how to describe my feelings for this place.
When little Josh was born, it was an event that thrilled me to new heights but also deeply troubled me. That’s actually a pretty big understatement, the part about it troubling me. You see…I worried about the baby. I worried about my wife. I worried a lot about myself. I worried a lot, period. There were just so many new and important questions, and more and more of them seemed to be born with each passing day.
Could I be a good father?
Could I provide for the family with just a teacher’s salary?
Could I protect the baby from a world so different from the one I grew up in?
Fact is, I never found the answers to most of the hard questions that arose during that period in my life—hell, most of them still exist today—but the answers that I did find usually came to me during those midnight drives. They got me through some rough times.
So, you see, that’s the reason I went out for a ride on that windy Friday evening. There were budget problems at school to be dealt with the following week and budget problems at home to be dealt with that very weekend, and I needed a dose of cool night air to help clear my head. We were just recently a family of four, having added a terribly fussy but nonetheless adorable baby girl to the mix. Josh and the baby were sound asleep and Janice was upstairs resting, a few hundred pages into one of those romance paperbacks she loves so much. The house was too damn quiet. It was seven minutes past nine o’clock when I steered a hard left out of our driveway.
I was sitting in my car smoking a cigarette when the madness began.
It was just a short time later—sometime before ten—and I was parked off to the side of the road, halfway up Carson’s Ridge, which overlooks the back of the old post office property. The place had been closed down for a number of years, but the town’s braintrust had yet to figure out what to do with the large plot of land. The matter was quickly becoming a front-page item in our little weekly newspaper. There were two schools of thought: tear it down and build a mini-mall or convert it to a clubhouse and surround it with a couple fancy swimming pools and an outdoor picnic area. Neither idea did much for me. We already had two shopping plazas, and why we needed a planned picnic area when we lived right smack in the middle of the North Carolina hills was a mystery to me. A better question, if you asked me (and no one ever did), was who the heck built a post office five miles out of town in the first place?
The ridge was one of my all-time favorite spots. I usually went there when I was feeling old and sappy and nostalgic. I’d park among the trees and think about the great Friday-night bonfires we used to have deep in the woods after the high school football games and all the sweaty nights that Janice had sent me home with a hard-on in my jeans, having let me touch her breasts but never quite reciprocating with her own fingers.
I hadn’t been a big sports star in high school—second string on the soccer team was the best I could muster—but my older brother, John, had lettered in three sports and made All-State in two, so I was automatically invited to most of the parties and was generally deemed okay to be seen talking to.
Those school years seemed so long ago now, and I looked back on them often (probably too often) and fondly (thanks, mainly, to Janice). And I remembered them as a time of such innocence. Compared to today, anyway. Sure, there had been some drugs—pot, mostly—and plenty of alcohol and more than a few drunken brawls. And, yes, there had even been a handful of sex scandals, like the time Tracy Anderson got caught sleeping with her boyfriend and Tammy Wright’s boyfriend both on the same weekend. But it was nothing like today. Nothing like the big cities. No crack cocaine, no guns, no fourteen-year-old mothers. Things had changed so much, so fast.
So there I was, smoking my cigarette and listening to The Doors on the radio, feeling every inch the crusty old high school English teacher, when the red Mustang glided into the back lot using only its parking lights. At first, I thought it was just a couple kids sneaking back there to neck or maybe planning to do a little something more. But then when the Phantom of the Opera staggered out of the car—and I didn’t care if it was almost Halloween—I knew something weird was going down.
Even from a distance, it wasn’t a pretty sight. As soon as the car jerked to a complete stop, the guy in the costume was out the door and down on his knees. Throwing up.
I shook my head and laughed. This guy was royally plastered.
The Phantom stayed on his knees for record time, and each time he dipped his head and convulsed I felt a little sorrier for him. He looked like a dog that’d gotten into a bad bowl of chili. Still, I had to admit it was pretty damn funny: the Phantom of the Opera down there puking in the parking lot, mask still in place, black cape flapping wildly in the wind. It was a grand performance.
After a while he got to his feet and looked around self-consciously. He took a few wobbly steps, then stopped and stood very still. I figured the parking lot was probably doing cartwheels in front of him. Either that or the dead leaves swirling across the lot had suddenly taken on the appearance of a hungry swarm of giant brown rats. Depended on how much he drank, I supposed.
I started to feel a little guilty for spying on the poor guy, but he obviously didn’t see me parked snug against the tree line.
He obviously didn’t see me because of what he did next.
He took a quick swipe at his chin with his shirt sleeve and slowly walked to the back of the sports car and popped the trunk. The trunk lid sprung open, momentarily blocking my view, then quickly closed again.
When the Phantom walked back again into sight, he was carrying a woman.
A very dead woman.
“Jesus,” I whispered, pressing forward against the steering wheel, squinting for a clearer view. Suddenly my heartbeat was very loud in the car.
The Phantom headed for the tree line, the body cradled in his arms.
I was parked a good fifty yards away and it was pretty dark, what with only a handful of lights still working in the lot, but I had a bird’s-eye view and I knew right away that it was a body. Fairly petite. Long blond hair fanned out toward the ground. Slender white legs hanging limp from beneath some type of skirt or dress.
Suddenly the Phantom stopped walking. He leaned over to the side a little and shrugged, adjusting his grip the way a shopper might do to get a better hold of a particularly bulky bag of groceries. Seemingly content, he glanced over his shoulder once more, then continued toward the trees.
It was like watching television. Maybe it was the fact that I was staring through a windshield and the picture before me was perfectly framed. Or maybe it was because suddenly everything seemed to move in dreamlike slow motion. All I can tell you is that for those first few seconds after I saw that body, it didn’t seem real. Nothing seemed real. I might as well have been kicked back in my basement watching NYPD Blue with a bowl of pretzels in my lap.
Amid all of this, my fingers started burning and I remembered my cigarette. I stubbed out what was left of it in the ashtray and clicked off the radio. When I looked up again, the Phantom had disappeared into the woods.
And it hit me then. What I had seen.
I sat there feeling scared and numb and excited all at the same time, fully understanding for the first time what it was that I was witnessing. I sat there and didn’t move, didn’t breathe.
He surprised me by returning so quickly—five minutes at the most—a time when, for some strange reason, the idea of leaving the scene never once crossed my mind. At first there was only the night and the whipping wind. Then a subtle shifting of shadows at the wood’s edge. Finally, the Phantom appeared like a ghoul from a nightmare.
Empty-handed.
He hurried back inside the car, his stride more confident now. This time even the parking lights stayed off. And then he was gone, and there was only the wind and the darkness and the silver shine of moonlight.
I looked at the glowing red numbers on the dash. They read: 10:03.
I found her maybe a hundred yards in. Buried beneath a tangle of dead tree limbs and a lumpy pile of wet leaves.
The Phantom had done a crummy job. If I could find her in the middle of the night with only a flashlight, trust me, anyone could.
I lifted a couple of the larger branches off her and pushed them aside, careful not to make contact. And then I simply stood there in the darkness, staring. Just staring.
Dim flecks of moonlight filtered down through the trees, pleasing only the shadows. The wind lashed at the back of my neck, seeming to focus there, and the cold sting of the metal flashlight tickled my palm. It all seemed very real now.
No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t pull my eyes away from the body.
I’d been wrong earlier. She wasn’t a woman at all. She was just a teenager. A girl.
And I knew her.
A part of me wanted to gather her up into my arms, brush the dirt and leaves from her hair, take her far away from this place. But take her where? Another part of me wanted to flee as fast as my legs would carry me—back up the ridge to the car, straight home, and upstairs to my bed. Back to where my family waited, where it was safe and warm and the wind couldn’t find me.
I knew I was close to panic then—very, very close to losing whatever foolish courage still lingered within me. I could feel it building inside me like a scream. My mind, as if feeding the madness, turned traitor: I looked at the girl’s dress, filthy and torn, and thought how amazingly pretty it would look on Janice. How it would be just perfect for our Sunday-afternoon picnics at the creek. I looked at the girl’s face, at the dark, angry hole centered on her forehead. I found myself wondering if my tiny daughter might grow up to look anything like her, if she would wear her hair in a similar cut, if she would dress anything at all like the girl. And then I thought of Josh and wondered, if he’d been a dozen years older, if this girl would have been to his liking, if perhaps they would have even dated, maybe gone to homecoming or the prom.
These were the thoughts of a crazy man. I knew that. But I couldn’t stop them from rushing over me. For the first time in my life, I was surrounded by madness. Drowning in it.
A gust of wind rattled the dark trees high above me.
I felt the scream coming…
I dropped the flashlight and ran.
I drove across town with the windows wide open. It was chilly as hell, but I needed the fresh air to breathe. Besides, my stomach was still doing jumping jacks, and puking was definitely not yet out of the question.
I figured—better safe than sorry.
I drove slowly, with no clear direction, but somewhere in the back of my head I knew where I would eventually end up. It was just a matter of time.
As I passed through the neighborhood, I noticed that most every house on most every street had some type of Halloween display or decoration.
Glowing pumpkins rested on porch railings, smiling their jagged jack-o’-lantern smiles, slanted orange eyes winking at me in the wind. Mummies and ghosts and witches and zombies guarded shadow-webbed front yards, daring me to stop the car and trespass. Corpse-shaped mounds of leaves protruded from in front of countless homemade tombstones, silent remembrances of the dead and buried.
I thought of my own narrow strip of front yard—adorned with a glow-in-the-dark graveyard and a Grim Reaper suspended from a fishing line—and I grimaced. Josh and I had a blast setting the whole thing up two weeks ago, but it didn’t seem very funny anymore. In fact, none of the houses looked like very much fun at all.
In less than twenty-four hours, Sparta—and towns just like it all over the country—would be celebrating Halloween. There’d be trick-or-treaters and costume parties, candy apples and haunted houses…
But that was tomorrow.
Tonight was Devil’s Night.
A night for mischief, as my father used to say. Yes siree, he’d whisper, his eyebrows dancing, Halloween may be a night for make-believe ghosts and goblins, but you’d better be sure to turn on all the lights and lock your doors on Devil’s Night. Because that’s when the real monsters lurk…
And then my mother would hush my father with a swat of her hand and all us kids would giggle and we’d finish our dinners with smiles on our faces and nervous, thumping hearts in our chests.
A night for mischief…
Her name was Amanda Hathaway. The girl in the woods.
She was sixteen years old and a student of mine. One of my favorites. Not just from this year’s class but one of my all-time favorites.
She worked part-time over at the ice-cream shop in the mall, and whenever Janice or I came in with Josh, she would always sneak him an extra scoop of chocolate and make him feel like a co-conspirator with a sshing finger to her lips and a wink of her eye. Josh loved it.
Amanda was in my last period English class. This was her first year at Sparta High, and the semester was barely two months old, but she’d already proved herself a model student. Not straight A’s across the board, mind you, but certainly honor roll with more A’s than B’s.
But it wasn’t her grades that made her my favorite. There were several other classmates, in fact, who regularly earned higher marks.
No, it was more than that—Amanda Hathaway was simply special. In a time when many teenage girls were openly disrespectful or arrogant or flirtatious, she was a teacher’s dream. Extremely well mannered and on the quiet side, she was much more serious-minded than most of the other students. I sensed it the very first week of classes: She gave you her full attention because she wanted to learn, not because she had to.
Yet at the same time, Amanda was popular with her classmates. She was quiet but not invisible. Polite and smart but not a geek. Pretty and well liked but not a snob. It was a precarious balance for a sixteen-year-old, but she carried it off in spades.
I guess that’s what I liked the most about Amanda Hathaway: Here was a very decent and beautiful young girl who could have moved among the school’s elite but instead she chose her own path. She traveled in a circle of one.
It was a rare thing to see nowadays, and I admired the hell out of her for it.
We often talked after class, usually after the other students had gone, and she would tell me in that quiet, little excited voice of hers about a particular book she was reading or a short story or poem she was working on. Sometimes she would even let me read one.
That was another thing I liked about Amanda—she really trusted me. Besides her parents, I was the only one who knew about her “little secret” (as she often called it): More than anything else, Amanda Hathaway wanted to one day be a writer…
When I pulled into the high school parking lot, I discovered that I was still gripping a quarter in my sweat-slicked hand. I stared at it for a moment and tossed it back into the ashtray.
Before tonight I had never dialed 911, so I hadn’t known that it was a toll-free call. Of course, I should’ve guessed it—who had the time to make change during an emergency?—but I wasn’t thinking straight at the time.
Looking back, I guess I never was thinking straight. If I was, I never would have gone looking for the body in the first place. I never would have hung up the telephone as soon as the emergency operator answered. And I sure as hell never would’ve gotten back into my car and zigzagged my way across town to a high school Halloween dance.
No, I wasn’t thinking straight at all.
I found the red Mustang in the side parking lot. I placed both my hands palm-down on the hood. Still warm. I cupped my hands together and took a quick look inside. Nothing much. A balled-up sweater or sweatshirt on the front seat. A Diet Coke can on the floor. Some CDs.
I walked around to the back of the car and studied the trunk. No blood. No ripped clothing. Nothing.
I took a deep breath. Let it out slowly. And headed for the school…
It had dawned on me just a split second before the 911 operator had answered—I had seen the car before. The red Mustang. I couldn’t remember where, I couldn’t remember when, but I had seen it. I was suddenly sure of it.
So I’d hung up the telephone and walked quickly across the Safeway parking lot and started driving. A few miles later I was pretty sure of one more thing: The Mustang belonged to a student. Present student or former student, I wasn’t sure. I’d tried to picture the Phantom in my mind—could he have been just a boy? Again, I couldn’t be sure.
Then I had remembered the Halloween dance—the costume dance—and I made my way toward the high school, not really expecting to find anything and not knowing what I’d do if I did find something.
And all the while this was happening, the sane half of my brain—the part that balanced checkbooks and went grocery shopping and taught English class and changed diapers—screamed out at me in a shrill, panic-stricken voice: What the hell are you doing? What are you thinking? Why haven’t you called the police?
But there had been no answers.
Only silence…
I checked my watch. It was almost eleven and the dance was in full swing.
The high school lobby and cafeteria (where the actual dancing was taking place) were decorated in traditional October fashion: Bright orange and black streamers draped the walls and ceilings. Dozens of cardboard Halloween displays—black cats and pumpkins, mostly—covered walls and glass windows and display cases. And, of course, several menacing-looking scarecrows had been placed at various spots throughout the rooms. It was all very innocent and fun.
As I walked in, I smiled and nodded at Mindy Gallagher, a science teacher (and our faculty gossip), who was selling tickets just inside the door. She smiled back—a sleepy little grin that told me she’d already had her usual couple sips back in the teacher’s lounge—and I was grateful that she didn’t stop me to chat.
But then, halfway across the lobby, Dan Sellard cut me off. He was a freshman-year English teacher and one of my Thursday-night poker buddies. I had no choice but to stop.
“Hey, thought you weren’t going to make it tonight?” he said.
I shrugged. “I, uh…was out for a bite and thought I’d drop in.”
He laughed and arched his eyebrows disapprovingly. “Let me guess—large cheesesteak and fries from Frank’s?”
“Right on both accounts,” I said, faking a smile. “Anything going on here?”
“Nah,” he said, shaking his head. “Same old thing. But hey, you hear about Thompkins leaving after this semester?”
Jeremy Thompkins was Sparta High’s vice-principal. Like myself, he’d lived in Sparta his entire life. “Leaving where?” I asked. At the moment, I didn’t really care what the answer was, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to get out of the conversation.
And then, thankfully, I didn’t need to.
Before Dan could answer, a chorus of loud voices rang out behind us. A shoving match had erupted in front of the girls’ bathroom. A boy with a gorilla neck and a letterman’s jacket had a smaller kid by the shirt collar. And he was starting to twist.
Dan shook his head and turned away. Over his shoulder he said, “Talk to you later, McKay. Duty calls.”
And, just like that, I was free.
I walked into the cafeteria and stood off to the side. Waited for my eyes to adjust to the darkness. There were maybe twenty or thirty kids dancing in the shadows. Others standing around or sitting in groups of various sizes. A handful stood all alone, trying their hardest not to look miserable and embarrassed. One guy looked like he wanted to cry, and I wondered why the heck he’d come to the dance in the first place.
The DJ—a bald guy with the worst mustache I’d ever seen—was set up against the near wall. By sheer coincidence, he was also one of the skinniest men I’d ever seen, and every time he bobbed his head to the music, I feared for his life. His neck appeared no thicker than my forearm.
I caught myself staring at the guy in silent wonder and quickly looked away. And then I saw him.
The Phantom.
Standing across the room, on the other side of the dance floor, talking to three other boys. None of the others were dressed in costumes. I didn’t know their names, but I recognized them as younger students.
I stood and watched them for a long moment…
Then I started across the dance floor.
What in the hell are you doing? the voice screamed.
There was no response.
Twenty feet away.
Louder this time: Have you lost your mind?
Ten feet now.
You could get in big trouble for—
All four boys looked up at me. Stopped talking.
And the Phantom took off his mask.
“Hey, Mr. McKay. Cool dance, huh?”
My heart stopped.
The Phantom was Teddy Bogan. The Teddy Bogan. One of the most recognizable kids in school. Teddy, Sparta’s best known special education student…who could barely catch a ball thrown to him from ten feet away, much less operate a car. Teddy, whose left hand was shriveled beyond repair, the result of a childhood accident. Teddy, who struggled mightily to keep up with even the special ed. curriculum.
“You okay, Mr. McKay?” It was one of the other boys talking now. They all looked up at me with uneasy smiles.
I nodded. “Yes, I’m fine. Just checking to see…if you’re enjoying yourselves.”
I didn’t wait for their response. Instead, I turned around a little too quickly, feeling the embarrassed heat rushing into my face.
“Okay,” I whispered to myself, taking a calming breath. And then inside my head: Enough is enough. Who did you think you were, anyway? Sherlock Holmes? Barney Fife’s more like it. It’s time to call the police and tell them everything. Tell them you were scared and panicked. Tell them—
I blinked my eyes.
Swallowed.
Blinked some more.
The Phantom was right in front of me.
Slow-dancing with Kerri Johnson, gliding past me now. If my arms had been working, I could’ve reached right out and touched his flowing cape. Grabbed him.
Kerri, dressed as a dark and exotic gypsy, giggled and tossed her long black hair. It was a move that had doubtlessly given dozens of Sparta’s young men endless nights of wet dreams. She laid her head back on the Phantom’s shoulder and they held each other close, spinning ever so slowly. They melted into the center of the crowd.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The Phantom was here…
In my school…
Dancing with Kerri Johnson…
But…
Only one person ever danced with Kerri Johnson…
And it couldn’t be…
A month-old memory slammed me in the face—hard and swift and crystal clear.
Last week of September. An hour or so after the final bell. I’d turned the corner and stumbled upon a red-faced and flustered Amanda Hathaway standing outside the assembly hall. The boy standing next to her, as polite and cool as ever. I’d said a quick hello and left them alone, sensing that I had interrupted something intense and private, but at the same time, thinking that it made no sense. Just my imagination was all. Hell, even all the teachers knew that he was going out with Kerri Johnson. Everyone knew that.
I stood in the shadows and watched them dance, forgetting all about that afternoon back in September. Even in a dark and crowded room, they stood out. They really did. If circumstances had been different, it would’ve made for a pretty picture indeed: two beautiful young people with the world at their fingertips; the Phantom dashing and mysterious in his mask and cape; the gypsy girl innocent yet alluring in her silk and beads. I watched them dance until the song ended and prayed that I was wrong.
A long and winding hallway connects the back corner of the cafeteria with the Sparta High gymnasium. (When the new school year began, the administration asked us teachers to start referring to this area as the Physical Education Department, but it’s really just a drafty old gym, two ancient locker rooms, and a couple glassed-in offices, so despite the request, most everyone still calls it by its most practical name: the gym.)
During the day, this hallway is one of the busiest places in the school—there’s an almost round-the-clock flow of students rushing in to dress before gym class or hurrying out to shower after gym class.
Or just hanging around.
You see, this hallway is also one of the few “cool” places in the school—along with the courtyard out back and the front lobby—so there’s usually a pack of students clustered around each corner and outside each doorway. Standing, talking, waiting to be seen.
But that’s during the school day.
After classes—day or night, it doesn’t matter—this hallway is dark and quiet and deserted. It’s a pretty scary place to be.
Unless you want to be alone, that is…
After the slow song ended, I watched Kerri Johnson walk right past me out into the lobby, probably on her way to the bathroom or the snack bar.
And then I watched as the Phantom slipped from the back corner of the cafeteria and into the dark hallway.
I followed him.
Quietly.
Carefully.
After what felt like a very long time, I rounded the last corner and found him bent over, drinking from one of the two water fountains outside the boys’ locker room. He must’ve heard my footsteps because when I was still a fair distance away, he looked up.
“Oh, hey, Mr. McKay. How’s it going?”
He straightened up and wiped a dribble of water from his chin. His voice echoed in the empty hallway, and the familiar sound of it brought about an immediate transformation. Despite the mask and cape, he was no longer the Phantom. Now he was just plain old Bobby Wilcox. Eighteen-year-old Bobby Wilcox. Hometown boy with the dashing good looks of a movie star. The scholarship offers—in two different sports, mind you—all lined up and waiting.
Bobby Wilcox—smart, popular, handsome…a killer?
Maybe you’re wrong about this? the voice inside my head whispered. You can’t be sure—
When I reached his side, I got right to it. “I think we need to talk, Bobby…I think maybe you’re in some trouble.”
I spoke softly, for I didn’t want my words to carry, and for a long moment I was sure he hadn’t heard me. But then:
“I know, I know,” he said, looking at the floor. “You’d think I would’ve learned after last time. I just…I just…I guess I was just being stupid again.”
I paused for a moment, genuinely confused. “Exactly what does that mean?” I asked.
“You don’t remember? Sophomore year, I got caught drinking at the Christmas dance. Got suspended from the basketball team for five games. Got detention, embarrassed my folks…”
I smelled it then. On his breath. Hard liquor—whiskey, most likely.
I flashed back to him throwing up in the parking lot. Jesus, he thinks I’m nailing him for drinking.
My head started shaking back and forth. “No, no, no,” I said. “I don’t care about your drinking. That’s not it.”
The expression on his face told me that he didn’t understand.
I sucked in a long breath of air. Blew it out. Thought about it for a second, then said very carefully: “Tell me about Amanda.”
It was as if I’d pressed some invisible button: The color drained from his face. His entire body sagged. And he started shaking.
I placed a hand on his shoulder, finding it hard to believe that I was actually touching him. “Bobby, calm down. Take some slow and easy breaths and talk to me. Tell me—”
“You know about Amanda?” he said, shrugging off my hand. He looked like he wanted to run away.
I nodded.
“How?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But how could you—”
“I told you it doesn’t matter. Now, Bobby, you need to tell me what happened and then we need to go to the office and call the police. Just you and me. No one else needs to know—”
“But everyone will know, won’t they? Everyone will know what I did.”
He started crying then. Not the sniffle type of crying and not the whimper type of crying. This was full-fledged, tears-streaming-down-the-cheeks, sobs-racking-the-body crying. It sounded very loud in the deserted hallway. I checked over my shoulder. The last thing I wanted right now was an audience.
“You wouldn’t understand,” Bobby cried. “I had to take her there. I had to do it. I had to…”
His voice dropped off.
His mouth opened wide and, for a moment, he looked like he’d just swallowed a large insect. Then he started making loud wheezing sounds and his eyes fluttered open and closed, open and closed.
I moved quickly. Took off his mask.
“Easy, now, Bobby,” I said. “Easy now. Just start breathing nice and slow.”
I reached over and grabbed him by the elbow. Guided him toward the wall. “You just need some air is all. Why don’t we sit down for a minute? Why don’t we just sit down and—”
But that’s as far as I got.
Because that’s when I felt something hard pressed into the center of my back and heard the voice say: “We’re gonna walk out the side door and we’re gonna do it quietly. Listen to me and no one will get hurt.”
I listened.
“Damn it, I wish you would stop all that blubbering! You’re nothing but a goddamn baby…”
“I knew I shouldn’t have trusted you. You always were such a wimp…”
It was like that all the way across the parking lot. White-hot anger, dripping with disgust.
And Bobby never said a word. Not one word…
We were sitting inside the red Mustang. The three of us.
Bobby in the backseat—curled up on his side, still crying, still lost in his own little world.
Me in the driver’s seat—looking straight ahead, hands on the steering wheel, knuckles squeezed bone-white, heart pounding so hard I was afraid it was going to stop altogether.
Kerri Johnson in the passenger seat—turned sideways with her back against the window, facing me, a shiny black pistol in her hand.
She was still wearing her costume, but she no longer looked exotic and alluring. Now she looked dangerous. She leaned over and inserted the key into the ignition and I smelled her perfume. It was sweet and airy and reminded me of summer afternoons and suntan lotion.
“Drive,” she said.
“Where?”
She nudged me in the ribs with the barrel of the gun. “Just drive. I’ll tell you where to go.”
I started the car, turned on the headlights, and eased onto Route 9. The high school disappeared behind us. Thick treeline crept up close on both sides of the road, blocking out the moon. It got very dark and—except for Bobby’s sobbing—it got very quiet. Moments later, as we neared the turnoff into town, she said, “Take a left here.”
I turned and kept my eyes on the road. I took this as a good sign—we were heading into town and not away from it. A million jumbled thoughts were ricocheting inside my head, but nothing was making any sense. More than ever, I just wanted to go home. Back to Janice and the kids. The baby would be waking up soon. She’d be hungry and cranky and—
“Too bad you had to get mixed up in all this, Mr. McKay,” she said.
I said nothing.
She looked over the headrest into the backseat and said, “Jesus, Bobby, can’t you shut the hell up? Enough is enough. This is all your damn fault, anyway. You and that goddamn Amanda—”
Bobby surprised her (and me) by responding quickly and loudly. I jumped in my seat. “You can just go to hell, Kerri Johnson! Straight to hell where you belong! Don’t you ever say—”
She hit him in the face. Hard. With the gun.
There was a wet smacking sound and Bobby stopped yelling.
I couldn’t stop myself from taking a quick peek at the rearview mirror. Bobby was sitting up, holding the side of his head, his face red and puffy and glistening with tears and saliva. His eyes were wide and panicked; they looked more scared than angry.
Kerri laughed, and it was a hideous sound.
“Keep your eyes on the goddamn road,” she said, poking me in the shoulder with the gun.
I nodded. Kept my mouth shut.
We rode in silence for several minutes. Except, of course, for the sniffling sounds coming from the backseat. I was actually thankful for the quiet. I used the time to think, to run everything through my head. The whole thing was beginning to make sense to me now. The pieces were slowly falling into place, and they were forming a very ugly picture.
We turned left onto Longley Road.
Then right onto Baker.
A few blocks later, I broke the silence. “Why are you doing this, Kerri?”
She looked over at me. Sneered. Her upper lip practically did a dance. “Why don’t you ask Loverboy back there? He’ll tell you all about it, won’t you, Loverboy?” She paused for effect, then said, “No? What’s the matter? Not in the mood to talk right now?”
“How long has he been cheating on you?” I asked. I skipped a beat for my own effect, then added, “With Amanda, I mean.”
She didn’t answer for a long time.
“Ever since school started,” she said quietly. “Ever since the first week of classes.”
“That’s not true,” Bobby said from the backseat.
“SHUT UP!” she screamed. She whirled around and pointed the gun directly at him. Her hand was shaking wildly. “No more lies, Loverboy, no more of your fucking lies.”
“Stop calling me Loverboy,” he wailed. “Please, please stop all of this.”
And just like that, her hand stopped shaking. Her finger caressed the trigger. Her lips pulled back into a snarl. “You’re nothing but a lying, cheating bastard—”
“Easy, Kerri,” I said, slowing the car and hoping she didn’t notice.
“You shut the hell up, too. None of this is your goddamn business, anyway. You just poked your nose in the wrong place at the wrong time, and now you’re gonna pay for it.”
“Kerri, listen to me—”
“No, you listen to me! I said shut up and drive. Not one more word.” She stabbed the gun in my direction and cold steel kissed my cheek.
I looked at her and shuddered. I couldn’t help it. There was madness burning in her eyes. She was afire with it.
Once, back in college, I’d watched a film about predatory jungle cats. Nothing special, but there’d been several minutes of footage showing a pack of adult male cats in a blood-soaked feeding frenzy. At that moment, driving across the darkened streets of Sparta, that’s precisely what Kerri Johnson’s eyes reminded me of: pure bestial hunger and rage. Uncontrollable and without conscience. There was nothing human left inside those eyes. Nothing at all.
I shut my mouth and followed her directions.
A left, then two more rights.
It was seventeen minutes before midnight when we pulled into the parking lot behind the old post office.
“Jesus, no wonder you found the body,” she said.
The wind had died down considerably and the woods were ominously still and silent. Nothing seemed to move. Overhead, the cloud cover had mostly blown away and now thick shafts of moonlight fell from between the treetops. Amanda’s body lay in clear view.
“Send a boy to do a man’s job and this is what you get,” Kerri said and snickered.
Bobby gestured at me and said, “He already told you that he found her and uncovered her. I swear I did a better job than this. I buried her real good.”
“Oh, shut up and stop whining,” she said. “I’m so sick of all your goddamn whining.”
Kerri stood on one side of Amanda’s body. Bobby and I stood on the opposite side. She held the gun in front of her. I could tell she wasn’t sure what to do next.
I didn’t look at the body. Not once. Instead, I searched for a way out. I considered making a run for it, just sprinting off into darkness, but quickly decided against it. I’ve never been the most coordinated man, and call me a coward if you wish, but it was pure and simple fear that stopped me. The fear that I would stumble and fall before I got even ten or twenty or thirty yards away; the fear that I would roll over onto my back and have to watch as she stood above me and smiled and slowly pulled the trigger…
No, it would have to be something else…
“Tell me, Bobby.” Her voice was sweet and mocking. “Exactly what was it about dear little Amanda that made you want to leave me? What…could…it…be? She do your homework for you? Rub your back after practice? Was she good in bed, Bobby?”
“Shut up.”
“No, tell me. I really want to know. She had everyone else fooled, but I bet she was a real slut in bed, wasn’t she? Was that it?” She was enjoying this. Getting louder. “Did she suck your cock the way I used to, Bobby? Did she fuck you the way I used to? Come on, don’t be shy. Tell us.”
“Stop it. Just stop it. The only thing we ever did was kiss. And talk. It wasn’t the way you said it was. I swear it.”
“You were going to leave me,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.
“I loved her, Kerri. Damn it, I didn’t mean for it to happen, but I fell in love with her. Can’t you understand—”
“Love!” she spat. “What the hell do you know about love? You fell in love with me after only a month. Remember that, Loverboy? Calling me day and night. Writing me all those letters. You remember that?”
Bobby hung his head. Said nothing.
“Hell, I should have killed you right along with her,” she hissed.
There was a long stretch of silence then, maybe three or four minutes. Bobby stared at the ground; Kerri stared at Bobby; I stared at Kerri. No one spoke. No one moved. And then:
“You know, it was a lot easier than I thought it would be,” she said. “Killing her, I mean.”
“Stop it,” Bobby said.
“No, really. It was a snap.”
“Stop it!”
“I mean, all I did was push her down and squeeze the trigger. Didn’t even aim. Just pointed and shot her right in the goddamn head.”
“STOP IT!”
“And the blood. Jesus, it was—”
Bobby lost it then.
He let out a scream that wasn’t quite human and dove over Amanda’s corpse. He crashed onto Kerri’s chest and then fell hard to the ground and rolled into the shadows. There was the unmistakable sound of flesh striking flesh, but I couldn’t tell who was hitting whom. Then I saw it—a glint of metal in the moonlight. The gun. Lying in the dirt. I dove toward it. And then we were all fighting for it. Rolling. Scratching. Kicking. Punching.
A finger gouged my eye.
Kerri screamed in my ear.
Someone pulled my hair.
I felt a hand grab me between the legs and squeeze.
A wave of nausea hit and my vision went spotty…
A gunshot roared in the night.
Then another.
Two sharp cracks.
I rolled free, onto my back, and felt something hot and sticky running down my arm.
High above us, a barn owl screeched and took flight from the treetops, and I watched as it flew across the face of the moon…
I was the only survivor. I suppose I should tell you that right up front. This story doesn’t have a happy ending. At least, not in the traditional sense.
They took me to Parkton General Hospital with a bullet wound to the shoulder. A clean wound, the doctor called it. No muscle or nerve damage. He said I was very lucky. Nonetheless, Janice cried so hard I thought they were going to have to admit her into the next bed. That afternoon, her mother drove down to stay with the kids, and Janice and I spent Halloween night watching The Twilight Zone reruns on the hospital television. After three days, the doctors sent me home.
In deference to the families, Sheriff Cain tried to keep the story out of the press, but he should have known better. It was the biggest news story in the history of Sparta, and it even made the newspapers as far north as Boston. There was a rumor floating around town for a couple weeks that one of those tabloid television programs was coming down to do a story. But they never did show up, and I (and a whole bunch of other folks) was grateful for that.
Predictably, the out-of-town newspapers and television people went hot and heavy on the love-triangle aspect. The headlines ranged from sex-crazed cheerleader goes on rampage to teenage lust leads to betrayal and murder. They used yearbook photos and maps of Sparta, and one channel even used videotapes that had turned up missing two weeks earlier from the high school.
For a couple weeks—right up until around Thanksgiving—it was a real mess. Reporters all over the place, asking questions, badgering folks for comments. Curious strangers running loose around the town. People calling the house at all hours. Knocking on the front door. Taking pictures. They even had to block the entrance to the parking lot behind the old post office. And when that didn’t keep the reporters and the sightseers out, they had to string up a barbwire fence, for God’s sake. Seems like a waste of money to me, though. I heard they’re planning to start construction in a month or two on the brand-new shopping plaza. I also heard Walmart is moving in, so at least that’s something.
Just for the record, in case you’ve been on the moon and haven’t heard, here’s the story exactly as they reported it (some were racier than others, but all the reports essentially said the same thing): A seventeen-year-old cheerleader from a small town in North Carolina kills her classmate in a jealous rage and convinces her unfaithful boyfriend to dispose of the body. Then, after overhearing the drunken and remorseful boyfriend confess to a teacher at a high school dance, the girl kidnaps them both at gunpoint and forces them to drive to the woods where the body is hidden. Once there, she shoots the boyfriend to death, wounds the teacher, and finally is killed herself in a struggle for the gun. The shaken English instructor is the only witness and he’s not talking to the press. His only statement, issued through the local Sheriff’s Department: “A tragedy. Plan and simple. A dark night for this town. A night best forgotten…”
And that’s pretty much it, the story I told the police after they rushed me to the hospital—all summed up, nice and neat.
They called it self-defense. A clear-cut case.
The police and the lawyers agreed. Without question.
Even Kerri Johnson’s mother and father took the time to send over a card to the house. They scribbled inside that they’d heard at the church that I was having problems coming to grips with what had happened. Reassured me that I was not to blame for their daughter’s death. That it had been “self-defense,” and that she had brought it upon herself through “unholy actions.” The bottom had been signed love, rich & terry. Like a Christmas card.
You know, self-defense is a nifty little concept when you really stop and think about it. It can mean an awful lot of things to an awful lot of people.
Truth is, if I do just that, if I stop and think about it long enough, I can almost bring myself to believe in it. Just like all the others.
But then the dreams come.
And I see only truth…
My shoulder is bleeding pretty badly, but strangely enough, it doesn’t hurt. Not even a twinge of discomfort. I’m standing in the shadows with the gun in my hand. I’m not sure how the gun got there, only that at some point during the struggle I’d rolled onto my back and there it was.
Bobby is behind me, facedown in the brush, dead or dying from a point-blank shot to the back of his head. And there, lying at my feet, is Kerri. Smiling up at me.
I stand there for a long time, staring down at her. At her smirk. At her eyes.
And, once again, I think of Janice and my children. I think of this town I call my home. I think of my school and the kids I have taught there. Finally, I think of Amanda Hathaway and, from the corner of my eye, I glimpse her body.
I look back to Kerri—in one night, this girl has taken away so much from me.
And still she lies there smiling. Unhurt. Unremorseful.
I take a step forward and raise the gun. Her smirk turns into a sneer.
One step closer.
And I pull the trigger.
Kerri jerks once on the ground and immediately starts groaning.
It’s an ugly sound and I want it to stop.
I kneel down next to her and look into her eyes…and see nothing. Nothing worth saving.
So I pull the trigger once more…
It’s summer now and Sparta is a magical place once again. The grass is thick and green. The hills are alive and sparkling with nature’s touch. Every day the sun seems to shine a little brighter.
Just yesterday, the four of us went on a late-morning picnic down to Hanson’s Creek. There was no one else there and, for a time, it felt like we were the only ones living and breathing in the entire world. Josh caught three catfish and a sunnie before he got tired and took a nap on a stretched-out blanket in the shade. We took off the baby’s shoes and dipped her tiny feet in the cool, bubbling water and marveled at the smiles it brought about. After lunch, Janice picked a bouquet of fresh flowers, and they now decorate our dining room table.
For the longest time, I sat in the sunshine and watched my family. And thanked God for blessing me with so much.
Janice smiles more often now and she says I do the same. She thinks I’m finally leaving the bad memories behind, and I have to agree with her.
Still, sometimes my sleep is troubled and I find myself dreaming of that terrible night back in October.
And in these dreams, I see their faces.
Amanda Hathaway, eyes closed forever.
Bobby Wilcox, weeping and afraid.
And Kerri Johnson…smiling at me with the eyes of a monster.
I don’t dream as often now, and I’m thankful for that. One day I hope to stop completely. One day I hope to forget.
But in the meantime, I’m still father and husband and teacher. I’ve also become a celebrity of sorts around here—albeit a reluctant one. And I still go out and drive some nights. Just not very often now: maybe once or twice a month. Janice still understands, but she worries about me.
I worry about her, too.
I worry about a lot of things.