14  

Aaron and Reggie dropped their bikes behind the football field bleachers and walked the two hundred yards to the school. The sun had gone down, and mosquitoes swarmed them in search of moist skin and fresh blood. Both walked wide circles around the pale pools of light cast by the humming floodlights that illuminated pockets of brick along the building. The school looked like a prison in the night, harsh and secretive.

Aaron spotted the broken window first.

‘There. Principal’s office. Figures.’

He scuttled across the sprinkler-soaked grass in an awkward crouch. Reggie followed.

‘No alarms?’

‘No. But after tonight?’ Aaron pulled two sets of latex gloves from his backpack and handed a pair to Reggie. Then he took a flashlight out and used it to brush away the glass teeth that protruded from the side and bottom edges of the pane. ‘This will be the Kassners’ last break-in, I think. Don’t cut yourself, Reg.’

Aaron slipped in through the window, stepped onto the air-conditioning unit that lined the back wall of the room, and hopped to the floor. He offered up a hand to guide Reggie down into the office. Even in the relative dark, she sensed the carnage first. She could smell it.

Formaldehyde.

She snatched the flashlight from Aaron and scanned the room with the ghostly beam of light. Lab animals had been strewn across the floor, some of them torn into pulpy pieces. Two headless rat bodies littered Principal Padian’s oak desk, and blood had been smeared across the family pictures that adorned each corner. In the pen cup, the decapitated heads of the rodents were punctured atop the tips of fine custom pens. A dissected frog was pierced into the back of the leather chair with yellow and blue pushpins. There was nothing ritualistic or sacrificial about any of the butchery, nothing to suggest that the bloody mess had any purpose. It was simple and brutal cruelty.

‘Keech.’ The scene reminded Reggie too much of what Henry’s Vour had done to his pet hamster.

Aaron observed the dead creatures with a cool distance but said nothing. The killer or killers had taken their time. They had enjoyed themselves.

‘Let’s go, Reggie. And don’t touch anything. Nothing we can do here.’

Reggie walked ahead down the dark hall. It was a mine of destruction: every glass case shattered, every art piece thrown to the tile floor and smashed. When the Vour inside Henry terrorized her last winter, the film of fear had blunted her anger. But now with each step down the trashed school hall, her blood pumped harder and hotter at this recklessness.

First, the monster had violated her home, her family. And now it spilled its malice across the rest of her life in Cutter’s Wedge, and its evil wreckage marked the deterioration of her own fear and empathy. She stalked into the dark cafeteria toward the double doors that lead into the kitchen.

‘Yo.’

A hulking figure stepped out from the shadows and stood right in front of the doors.

‘I wondered if you’d show.’

Reggie stopped and thrust the flashlight beam into the large boy’s face. He’d been beaten. His bottom lip bled freely; his right eye was swollen. He smiled to reveal blood-caked teeth.

‘Where is he, Mitch?’ Aaron asked. ‘Where’s Keech?’

‘Where I said he’d be. Kicked my ass a little, but I got him.’ The boy wiped his lip and rubbed the blood between his thumb and forefinger. ‘Don’t know how much longer he’ll last.’

‘Hopefully longer than those little animals,’ Reggie spat at him. ‘You did it too. It wasn’t just that monster.’

‘I had to play along. I always have to play along.’

Aaron pulled Reggie away.

‘Reggie, forget about the damn rats. He captured Keech. Let’s get to work.’

Reggie tried to push past the Kassner twin but he blocked her path into the kitchen.

‘You need to tell me how you do it. Before you go in there and try to kill that thing, you need to tell me. I have to know.’

Aaron stepped in front of Reggie. He looked like a child next to a tree.

‘She doesn’t have to tell you anything, Mitch. She’s here to do a job. And if you stay out of our way, maybe she’ll bring back what’s left of your brother.’

‘Will I know him? Will he know me? How are you so sure you won’t fail?’

Reggie took the key and stared up at him.

‘I won’t fail. Now get out of my way.’

The boy took a deep breath and moved aside. Reggie walked into the cafeteria and saw the weak yellow light spilling out from the small square near the top of the walk-in freezer door. Ice lined the edges of the window and wisps of smoke circled inside. A padlock dangled from the bar lowered across the door.

She approached and stared into the softly lit freezer.

The body inside looked like a barely animated corpse. He had been stripped down to his underwear, and his skin was a frozen white. He’d been beaten much more severely than his brother, with dark bruises marking his face and torso. Blood had dripped and frozen into crimson crystals beneath his flattened, broken nose. His mouth had been gagged with a bloody strip of shirt. But the monstrous black veins that covered his entire body revealed the thing as an inhuman monster.

She twisted the key inside the lock and popped it open.

‘Reggie,’ Aaron said softly behind her. ‘Please be careful. If what you find inside –’

‘I’ll be okay.’

Reggie pulled the lock from the bar and lifted the cold handle. The freezer door swung open.

‘Get him back, Halloway.’ The Kassner twin opened the freezer door wide.

Reggie handed Aaron the flashlight and stepped inside. As she walked toward the shivering creature, the thing lifted its eyes and looked at her with a tired and pained panic. It glanced at her and then at Aaron behind her. Its eyes twitched and it shook its head from side to side.

‘I’m coming to get you.’ Reggie was grim and determined.

Aaron looked on, assessing the brute. Those big, burly hands that used to beat on him now hung limply at the Vour’s sides, cuts and scars circling his wrists.

Cuts on his wrists.

A jolt of fear burned through Aaron. They were the cuts from the duct tape he had used in the alley. This wasn’t Keech – this was Mitch.

The Vour had them trapped.

‘Get in,’ it urged behind Aaron. ‘I think I hear someone coming.’

Aaron stood still for a second, and his frosted breath wafted up in front of him. Then with a yell he whipped around and slammed the flashlight into the side of Keech’s head. The surprised Vour dropped hard to the ground. Aaron set upon him like a wild animal, the anger boiling up in him giving him a freakish strength. He beat Keech over and over with the flashlight, kicking him in the ribs as he squirmed on the ground and tried to crawl away.

‘Nice try, you piece of shit!’ Aaron rammed the front of his foot into Keech’s face.

‘Aaron! What the hell are you doing?’ Reggie raced over and grabbed Aaron’s arm, but he threw her off.

‘You think I give a damn if it was you or the monster you? It makes no difference to me!’

‘Aaron! Stop it!’

‘It’s Keech, Reggie!’ He leaned over the Vour, panting and red in the face. ‘This one is Keech.’

‘Aren’t you clever, Cole.’ Keech coughed up blood and tried to stand, but Aaron crashed the flashlight down on his head one final time, and with a last crack Keech lost consciousness.

‘Yeah. I’m clever. And you’re done, you prick.’

Reggie ran back into the freezer and ripped the gag from Mitch’s mouth. Up close she could see that the marks had been crudely drawn onto his frozen skin with a black marker.

‘Help…’

‘We’ll get you out of here, Mitch. You’ll be all right.’

‘Not me.’

The beaten, freezing boy looked into Reggie’s face. Crystal tears lined the bottom of his bruised eyes. Then his gaze shifted past her to the twin left bleeding and unconscious on the floor just outside the freezer.

‘Help him.’

Aaron dragged Keech’s unconscious body into the freezer by his ankle. He dropped the leg unceremoniously. Reggie untied Mitch’s hands and used the frosty rope to secure Keech’s wrists behind him. Then she helped Mitch stand.

‘Take him, Aaron. Find him some clothes or a blanket.’

‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t die,’ Aaron answered.

His voice was flat. Reggie caught his hand as he guided Mitch out of the freezer.

‘That was some display back there. And you saved me. Now let it go.’

He offered her a slight smile and nodded.

‘Good hunting,’ he said. ‘And be careful.’ Then he shut the freezer door, and Reggie was alone with the Vour.