Estimated reading time — 46 minutes

Would it make a good cereal bowl? It may be too shallow for a cereal bowl. An ashtray, or a cat bowl would be better.

“Johnson, you copy?” The voice came muffled from the other side of the door.

“Copy, Bradley.” Johnson’s static voice came prelude by the trill of a walkie-talkie.

“I’ve got a crisp fifty saying this is nothing.” The officer on the other side of the door said.

“Did you find the freezer?”

“Yeah it’s right here.”

“I’m not betting shit, you probably opened it already.”

“You think I’d do that? I got my ass out of bed for this, I want to at least make it interesting.” Officer Bradley said.

“The guy seemed pretty worried when he called in… Alright, screw it. Fifty if it’s anything. Anything at all.”

“Alright, I’m getting a good breakfast! Opening in three, two… one” the seal of the freezer door peeled from the door frame. Officer Bradley was a silhouette behind the blinding beam of his flashlight. I couldn’t make out the details of his face, but I could imagine.

“What’s it gonna be?” Johnson asked over the radio. Bradley said nothing. His light started to shake.

“C’mon who’s getting rich?… Bradley?” Johnson’s concern quivered through his joke. Bradley didn’t answer the question, but he replied in a quiet voice.

“I… I think they’re alive.”

August, 2015

Golden sweetcorn rained onto my tray with a salty butter shine. Green beans dipped into their shallow pool of chicken broth, garlic, diced onion, and bacon. The beans made their presence known with a mouthwatering steam. A mound of potatoes plopped onto the tray and was pressed into a caldera with the back end of the cook’s spoon. The divot was filled till it overflowed with a heavenly brown gravy. Last came the pork. A pork with the tenderness of a pudding and the taste of Hawaiian basted honey. Each cut of meat was so fresh it caused rumors that the meat was butchered in the kitchen. I believed them too. Lunch was the best part of St. Jude Catholic School. Unfortunately, it was followed by the worst.

Once our bellies were stuffed to the brim we were banished to the school yard for recess. Fresh cut grass poisoned the air. Summer still burned at the beginning of the school year and the sun blasted a bright sting to the back of my eyes. The day wasn’t made for me. My days were when it rained and we could go to the library to enjoy the silence while the talking boys released their energy into the gym. But days like this were ruled by the talking boys. They squealed and screeched as kick balls and whiffle balls torpedoed through the air. The other girls that weren’t interested in joining the boys usually huddled by the school building telling jokes and updating each other on the latest gossip. I would listen with my back to them. Whenever I heard something especially juicy I would sign my response close to my chest so they didn’t see. I wished I could turn and share all of the gossip I overheard, the benefits of not being noticed. I knew Darren found his dad’s booze and planned to bring a bottle to school that week. I knew Bianca got into it with her mom the night before because she was failing math. I imagined they would get a kick out of that. Maybe they’d even be my friend if they understood me but they wouldn’t, no one would.

The school yard became unusually quiet. A group of boys huddled at the fence that separated us from the woods. What they saw captured their attention and sewed their mouths shut, at least until they scurried away to giggle in small groups. Not all of them were so amused with the subject beyond the fence. Most looked confused but some even looked concerned. Piece by piece the huddle of children broke back into their daily play until I could get a peek at what it was they were so interested in. On the other side of the fence, crouched beneath the shadows of the woods, was a boy.

He looked each boy in the eye when he asked them to play. It felt like a plea, a desperate attempt to find a friend. The boys didn’t care though, how could they? The boy in the woods spoke in a tongue they didn’t understand. Like me, he spoke with no tongue at all. It was a lonely way to speak in this school. Alone was a hard place to be in eighth grade. After seeing him I felt we could be there together.

When the last boy peeled away I walked to the fence. With each step I felt more emboldened, more hopeful to finally have a friend.

‘I can’t talk to you, I need normal friends.’

The words echoed from moments I had the same urge in the past. But this time had to be different. He was like me, he would understand me.

‘Aren’t you contagious, Holly?’

I shook my head and tried to keep the past away like a swarm of bees, but they kept stinging.

‘What are you doing with your hands, weirdo?’

‘Go away, people will think I’m weird too if you’re next to me.’

‘Did God make you broken on purpose?’

I was stuck half way to the fence. All the sounds of the school yard vanished behind the words. This was a stupid idea. No one wanted to be my friend. Why did I even walk this far? What a waste. I turned around to go back and pretend I was like the other girls. I wanted to smile when they smiled and laughed when they laughed without the embarrassment of having them see me, but my mom’s voice cut through the swarm.

‘She’s just shy.’

I knew she wasn’t our supervisor that day. The girls wouldn’t have talked quite as loud and the boys wouldn’t have played quite as hard if she was. Chipper, as the other kids called her in whispers, held the reputation of a drill sergeant when she wore the habit. The type of nun to crack a ruler across your knuckles if you misbehaved during her prime years. Though, the main reason she earned the brand ‘Chipper’ was the small chip missing from her front tooth.

‘She’s just shy.’ Her voice replayed in my head.

Her catchphrase when anyone asked about me. Why doesn’t she talk? She’s just shy. What happened to her? She’s just shy. It was a simpler explanation than the truth. A less shameful statement than the truth, I was born like this. But I’m not shy, or at least I refuse to be. I closed my eyes and took a first step towards the boy. The yard got a little quieter as the other kids vacated the area around the boy in the woods. When I felt the beating sun disappear behind the shade of the trees I stopped and waited for a moment.

‘I’m not shy.’ I thought to myself but before I had the courage to open my eyes, the fence rattled.

The clatter of the chain-linked fence stopped with the stomp of feet meeting the ground. Step by step he came closer until I heard his heavy, phlegm-rattled breath just in front of me. With one final reassurance I opened my eyes. Immediately, I knew why the other kids avoided him.

He was big. Much bigger than the other boys in our grade. Most of the boys were just sprouting the first seedlings of hair on their forearm while his forearms were already coated. A leather canteen dangled from his belt. His chest and shoulders stood at my eye level and were noticeably broad even under his tattered gray jacket. Hair even started to sprout on his neck just below his white mask, a detail I hadn’t noticed across the yard. An elephant mask made cheap and pressed to his face with a single elastic string that ran in an eroded divot around his head before it vanished into the cave of his gray jacket’s hood. In the center where the trunk should be was only a hole. The jagged edges of the plastic hole encircled a void too deep to see any detail of his face through. My breath stuttered. This person could hurt me, or take me, or do anything else he wanted and I would be helpless. I could scream at the top of my lungs for help but only a strained whine from my over tightened vocal chords would escape. No one would hear that. Hell, I wasn’t even sure he would hear it. I knew my only option was to run but when I took a glance behind me to plan my escape he raised his hand.

He exposed the dry, callused skin of his palm to me. It stayed suspended in the air for a moment before he slowly brought the tips of his fingers towards me. Gently, they landed on my throat. Each of his five fingerprints carefully scraped up and down. I wanted to say something but I couldn’t get my hands to move. I tried to get something to escape my mouth, but I only felt my throat strain under his touch. Finally he removed his hand and signed a single word. A word that I hadn’t heard anyone say to me. A word that turned off all the alarms blaring in my head.

“Beautiful.” He signed.

October, 2023

The pond was no wider than twelve feet and smelled like frankincense and sweet licorice. Grass around the pond grew high, and hid something on the other side of the water. Between tufts of grass, a smokey gray shape laid still on the ground. I thought it was a discarded fur coat until I noticed its two beady eyes fixated on me from its white, cone-shaped head.

“What is that, Holly?” Abigail asked.

I loved the sound of her voice. The way it stumbled from one note to the next without guidance. She only used it when we were alone so I knew her brother already ventured beyond earshot. Still, it was conflicting. While I loved our secret it was too wonderful to not be shared, something she stiffly refused to do.

“I think it is an opossum.” I signed.

“Geez. Do you think it’s sick? Should we help it?” Abigail asked. Her hands anxiously scratched at her jeans.

“Maybe it is just playing dead?” I signed. As if on cue a crow landed just behind the opossum’s head and disappeared behind the grass. When the crows head resurfaced, it did with a string of red, slick entrails. It clapped its beak around the guts until it cut a bite out and let the rest flop back to the ground. Abigail’s lip turned in a shocked disgust.

“Method.” I signed. Abigail gave me a jab from her elbow and a laugh, the most wonderful secret of all.

“Holly! You two are supposed to stay close! Get Abigail and follow the sound!” Abigail’s older brother Lucas called before a metallic rattle screeched through the air. He was about twenty three, two years older than Abigail and I. He wouldn’t get any older if he kept up the racket. Abigail watched the annoyance on my face and waited for me to relay the message.

“Your brother is being an idiot.” I signed to her before I held her hand. We rushed through the woods to Lucas. As we ran I kept thinking about the opossum. Even after the crow ripped at its entrails, I swore it blinked.

When we emerged from the woods, Lucas had the chain link fence clutched in both of his fists and was shaking it rapidly. He only stopped when I hit him with a swift slap to the shoulder.

“Hey, what the hell!” He said.

“You know this is illegal right? Are you trying to get caught?” I signed. He glanced at Abigail briefly who was focused on our lips.

“By who? No one is here. Are the birds going to rat us out? Or maybe the squirrels.” He said and signed.

For the first time in years I looked beyond the chain linked fence. Across the overgrown schoolyard was the husk that was once called St. Jude Catholic School. As a kid I always thought the school was shaped like a stale, square bagel. A barren courtyard of a hole was encircled by the depressing corridors and classrooms. It was divided into four sections, each with their own special landmarks. The south side had the main entrance. The east side has the cafeteria and library. The west side had the pool and gymnasium and the north, the side we were facing, had the theater. A tiny access door peaked over the edge of the theater’s roof like a timid child.

After the incident, the school tried to reassure the parents by hefty investments in security. All glass was reinforced and every window was fortified with steel bars, but it was too little too late. The parents and their precious tuition money already migrated with their kids to the rival Catholic school upstate. St. Jude was left to succumb to the vines and weather. The corpse looked more like an abandoned prison than a school

“Or maybe the rats will.” Lucas whispered. The thought made my spine wriggle.

“I hope whatever you’re looking for is worth it.” Lucas said as he stomped a path for us through the waist high grass.

It was.

We walked around the school building to get to the entrance at the south side. At the entrance was a figure. It sat against the front door cloaked in a gray jacket. I felt every muscle in my body constrict at once. Abigail turned to ask what was wrong and all I could do was gesture towards the figure. She immediately tapped Lucas on the shoulder to point his attention towards the mysterious man. The figure eased itself to its feet when it saw us. It waved. A wild wave with arms flapping like the tube men at car dealerships. Then he dropped his hood. To my relief, there was no mask. Only a face, a boyish face. A face I had never seen before and judging by the look on Abigail’s she hadn’t either. Lucas turned to us with an eye roll and motioned us to the boy.

He couldn’t have been older than sixteen. His brunette hair waved chaotically at the top of his bean-pole body. His skin was still plagued with the red specs of puberty, and atop his lip was his most prized possession. A crown of ten scraggly hairs.

“Lucas!…Ladies.” He said with all the charm a boy drowning in supermarket cologne could muster. Abigail took the hearing aids from her ears and stowed them away in her pocket. ‘They don’t even help that much’ she would say if I asked why, but I knew that wasn’t true. I stopped asking and just assured her with a touch on the back.

“Stevie, where’s your brother?” Lucas shot at the kid.

“He got called into work tonight but don’t worry. I’ll get us through safe, I’m like the Outdoor Boys of buildings.” Stevie said.

“I don’t see the gear. Your brother was supposed to bring the gear.” Lucas asked.

“Eh, who needs it anyway. It can’t be that hard.” Stevie proclaimed. Lucas pinched the exhaustion from his brow.

“You have your license?” Lucas asked.

“I got it a couple months ago, thank you for asking.”

“Then drive home.” Lucas said. He put a shoulder to the door.

“I can’t-”

Lucas heaved the metal door open with a creek followed by the clatter of aluminum cans on the concrete stoop.

“I’ve been drinking.” Stevie finished.

The smell of stagnant, musty water filled the building. Puddles spotted the tile floor and grew with a rhythmic drip. The entryway ran perpendicular to the south section hallway. At their intersection was a trophy case with only smashed glass to show.

The last couple of weeks before the school closed were a blur. Teachers at first tried to maintain the illusion of safety but as the halls grew more and more empty, they gave up the act. Everyone was scared except for me. I just went through the motions, a passenger in my own body. As I reentered the remains of the school I could only wonder if it really was worth it. Where had I even had it last? Maybe my locker? It was as good a place to check first as any. I just wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. I wasn’t a passenger anymore, I felt the fear.

“What are you thinking?” Abigail signed to me as we walked down the hallway. She always seemed to know the answer, she read plain as day on my face. Still, she wanted to know what I would say.

“It is just like I remember.” I signed to her with a smile. As we passed locker after locker I noticed that each one had a dent. A softball size dent near the latch that left them ajar by the thinnest crack. The further we went the more I noticed a splotch or a smear of brown stained blood in the dents. When we turned the corner to the East side when I heard a rattle come from behind us. I snapped my head around to see nothing besides the damp floor tiles and busted lockers we’d passed since we turned the corner.

“-right ladies?” Stevie shouted before he spun around to look at us while he walked backwards. To that moment, I almost forgot he and Lucas were blubbering to each other ahead of us. He waited for a response while the alcohol that sloshed around in his pinky-thin body made him forget his land legs. Had they heard the rattle too?

“Did he say something?” Abigail signed to me. Stevie was zapped into a panic. He blocked his mouth from our sight.

“Dude, you can’t bring deaf people. They’re gonna get hurt. What the hell is wrong with you?” He said to Lucas who jabbed him in the ribs with his elbow.

“Holly’s mute you dipshit, she can hear you.”

Stevie gathered his wind in a breath before giving a silent, bewildered chuckle to himself. He lagged behind Lucas to get out of his sight. He then raised his hand and mimed like he held something pointed directly at me. Then he popped his thumb down like he pressed the mute button on a TV remote. He winked and turned to catch up to Lucas.

‘She’s just shy.’ My mother’s voice echoed again. After the incident, I learned not to argue with it.

Abigail tugged on my shirt sleeve and pointed to the locker beside us.

“It ends.” She signed.

Like the others before it, it was dented and stained in blood but each locker beyond it was strangely left untouched. Even stranger, this locker was mine. I opened it.

“Did you find what you’re looking for?” Lucas asked, but all that was in my locker were chilling words smeared in blood on the back wall that read ‘YOU PROMISSED’.

I sprinted as fast as I could back the way we came. I cut around the corner, flew through the lobby and smashed my weight against the push-bar on the door but it didn’t budge. The doors were locked. A metal chain knotted around the door, sealed shut with a padlock.

May, 2016

Shelly was behind by the length of a grass blade and the finish line twig was only a couple inches away. It was still anyone’s race. Rain washed the school yard that morning.The smell of potting soil leaked from the bags stacked between the garden shed and the school yard fence.A colony of snails slid on the bags, ready to be drafted into the snail race. Mine was always named Shelly,as it always was. I thought of it like the lead in a broadway play, though they’re each their own actress, they all wanted to be Shelly. Trunkless didn’t give names to his snails. He never gave me his name either. So in my mind he became Trunkless for the hole in his elephant mask. It was fitting enough. Trunkless never gave his snails a name either. Instead, he gave them a crack. When he found a snail he liked for the day he popped a slit into the shell with his thumbnail. It was as casual to him as shaking a hand. The ease with which he split their shells made me nauseous. When we first started racing snails I asked him why he did it, but the answer was simple. Like the hole in his elephant mask and splits in his knuckles he just liked them better broken, like us.

After many snail races we developed a system. We took turns clapping for our snails, usually in two. I would clap twice. He would clap twice. It was a brilliant idea in concept. Chaparones would only hear the continuous claps of one kid, but we never got the timing right in practice. The awkward pause between our claps was hilariously obvious even after a full year of trying. We stopped trying to make it convincing and it became only a silly tradition while we watched the snails run their foot long marathon, I often got more consumed in the rhythm than the race itself

“Look.” He signed.

I came up with the idea of picking a juicy tomato slice off of my lunch sandwich and stowing it in my pocket to use as motivation beyond the finish line twig. As disappointing as it was to devolve my BLT into a BL, it was proving worth it. Not only were both snails participating, but it was a nail biter. Shelly surged into the lead with only an inch to go. I clapped and waved her forward frantically. He did the same for his snail that started to slip behind, but it was too late. Shelly slipped over the twig to take gold by the thinnest of margins. I jumped up and applauded for the whole yard to hear at the peak athleticism on display. I bent down to get a look at the little olympian as she climbed onto her delicious, red prize.

SQUELCH.

In an instant, Shelly and the tomato were beneath the stubby heel of a black leather shoe. My mother’s shoe. I looked up her habit to see her face, I was shocked to see she didn’t seem angry in the slightest. Her cheeks were flushed with fear. She snatched me by the arm in a vice grip. Her finger tips dug into my skin deep enough to bruise but still I tried to fight it. I knew we would be forbidden from going behind the garden shed. With no other place to hide in the open school yard, I didn’t think I’d ever see him again. That meant no more snail races, no more picking honeysuckles from the bush that grew through the fence, no more friends. I would be back to being an outcast. The quiet kid that no one understood. The broken girl. So I kept fighting which only made my mom’s grip tighter. She blew the whistle around her neck.

“Everyone get inside now! Get inside!” She screamed. I fought until I was pulled back into the school building and the door slammed shut behind us. The only person that brought me any joy was sealed behind it.

The school felt like it was on lockdown for the rest of the day. Nuns monitored the halls between classes and no one was allowed to use the restroom without an adult escort. When the day came to an end I laid on the bleachers by the pool. It was an indoor pool attached to the gymnasium by a single set of double doors. The stinging stench of chlorine cleansed my soul after a particularly taxing day. After school events were canceled that afternoon so there was no splashing from the swim team or shrill tennis shoe chirps from the gym. It was just me and the soothing hum of the pool jets. I spent most of the time looking up through the sunroof. Clouds, birds, and airplanes eased in and out of the glass frame. If I wasn’t looking at the sky I admired the abomination on the wall. A mural, painted with the artistic vision of a blind ape, stained the pearlescent white paint. I assumed it was supposed to be a collage of professional swimmers, but I only thought that because the center-most figure had a vague resemblance to a picture of Michael Phelps I saw once.

“What are you still doing here?” a creaky voice called from the doorway to the gymnasium. A janitor with a spindly gray beard and age-spotted scalp hunched over his trach bin on wheels like a walker. He wasn’t any of the regular janitors I saw throughout the school day. He must have been part of the evening crew.

“What time is it?” I signed, but he kept glaring at me. Of course he didn’t understand. I could practically hear the accusations banging around in his head. I threw my hands up and walked past him. I heard the squeak of his trash bin trailing behind me through my walk of shame to the main entrance.

“I know your face, little girl!” He spat as I swung the door open.

The front of the school was empty. Aside from the occasional bird song it was silent. It was a sticky heat with the smell of rain starting to roll in. stepped out and walked around the building to the parking lot. The lot was empty aside from one car. My mothers. Was she waiting on me? The thought of making her wait this long made me dread getting in the car to receive my scolding. As I stepped into the parking lot I caught a glimpse of a figure standing in the schoolyard. It was Trunkless with his canteen at his hip. He waved me to come towards him.

“I have to show you something.” He signed. I was ecstatic. All day I thought I may never get to see my friend again. Without hesitation I hopped the fence and went to him.

“Where is it?” I signed.

“Just behind the garden shed, but you have to promise me something.”

“Anything.” I signed with a smile.

“You can not tell anyone about this.” I hesitated, but promised with a smile. He nodded and popped the cap off of his canteen. Then he led me behind the shed.

October, 2023

“What the fuck, dude? You all got to stop fucking with me man this isn’t funny!” Stevie whined. I was in disbelief. We were just there, we opened the door only a few minutes ago and in that small amount of time, we were chained in. I held the padlock against my palm. It was warm. Someone locked us in. He locked us in. The thought made my head spin as it wrapped around the danger we were in. Abigail’s touched my shoulder.

“Is there another way out of here?” She signed. I swallowed the sick feeling when I saw her and kept it down long enough to think. Each of the three other sections had at least one exit. The cafeteria and library on the east side each had one. The theater in the north section had one, and the pool and gymnasium in the west section had one each. I stood and turned to the group. Lucas racked his brain for some kind of plan. Stevie paced and swore to God that he’d quit drinking if he got out of there in one piece. I signed to Abigail and Lucas about the other exits. Stevie was desperate to know but Lucas only told him to follow. We crept back down the hall. Lucas led the pack with Abigail and I behind him. Each of us kept a careful eye on each door we passed. Stevie stayed behind us as he was told and kept his mind occupied by tight-rope walking a strip of blue tile on the floor. It wasn’t a helpful task but anything to keep his mouth shut was useful to me.

Lucas peeked through the slim glass window on the first classroom door beyond my locker and winced away from it.

He looked back at Abigail and I and shook his head. I couldn’t resist though. I cupped my hands over my eyes and looked in. The rat’s paw scratched at the tile floor. Not a desperate scratch, but an unfolding and refolding of its paws to a steady rhythm. The tile just seemed to get in the way of its claws. Blood stained the corners of the rat’s mouth. Its ear flicked away the hoard of flies convinced of its death, and they should have been right. The rat was severed in half. The open wound spilled the animal’s entrails into a hole behind it. All that jutted from the hole was a bear trap’s exposed metal teeth in a crimson-stained grin. Despite the grizzly sight and the unmistakable scent of death oozing from beneath the door, I couldn’t look away from rat’s paw. Its distress signal. I wanted to put it out of its misery immediately. The suffering was the worst part. I mustered the courage to bury my nose and do it but just before I turned the doorknob.

SNAP.

A piercing scream came from behind me. Stevie’s foot was gone. It broke through a brittle, blue tile on the floor and sunk its teeth into the boy’s shin so deep it could taste the marrow. The iron scent of blood erupted from the hole. Stevie gripped his calf with white knuckles and screamed hard enough to slice his vocal chords to ribbons, but even over the screams I could hear something. The sound echoed from the school’s entrance and ricocheted to me from around the corner. Thick, deliberate footsteps.

I dropped to my knees at the hole and tried to pry the trap open. Once I saw a gap in the trap’s jaws, my hands slipped in Stevie’s blood and it snapped shut on the wound sending another scream through his throat. Still, the footsteps got closer, until a figure turned the corner. The white elephant mask with a missing trunk was still strapped to his face. He stood as tall as the door frames. His chest was as broad as a truck grill. With the force of a buffalo he charged directly at us. The same leather canteen swung violently at his hip. I yanked the trap again and again. I didn’t care if I had to work the trap’s jaws until it chewed Stevie’s foot off. He had to get free, we had to get out of there.

Abigail tugged at my shirt and screamed with terrified tears streaking down her cheeks. The monster of a man was only a few feet from us when Lucas grabbed my shirt and slung me away from Stevie’s leg. By the time I got to my feet, Trunkless was standing right behind the boy. The black eye slits in the mask aimed right at me. He raised his hand in the air and waved a subtle hello. I was frozen. Everyone, even Stevie, was still for an instant. Trunkless was the first to move. He gently wrapped his hand around the side of Stevie’s head and gouged space for his middle finger into his eyesocket. Stevie squealed for him to stop but all the begging did was give him an opening to stuff the mouth of the canteen in. He dumped the liquid down Stevie’s throat then jerked it back out. As Stevie coughed and stuttered the man wrapped his fingers around Stevie’s bottom teeth and strained as he pulled on the mandible.

“We have to go” Lucas yanked me out of my paralysis and we sprinted down the hallway through the muffled pleading of Stevie and dipped into the first doorway that didn’t seem like a classroom, but before we could close the door the shrill screams were abruptly quieted by a pop.

I laid sprawled on the floor and ran my hands over the itchy carpet. The scratchy texture was enough to remind me that I could feel, that I was breathing. The ceiling above me was tiled. Some had protruding bellies of water. Most were splotched brown like coffee stains. I counted the stains on beat to the thunderous metronome behind my ribs. One two three, four, five, six. Seven. Eight. Nine… ten…

Lucas already gathered himself enough to survey the room. His footsteps and the rattle of chained exit doors were the only sounds. I pinched my eyes shut and took a deep breath before I sat up to look around. Computers were spaced out on two long tables in the far corner of the room. Just expensive dust collectors without power. A cluster of organized tables and chairs stood close by. The rest of the room was books. Isles and isles of sturdy wooden bookshelf each stuffed with the bane of the school’s former attendees. All of which had acquired the pleasing smell of aged paper. There was an indention in the carpet at the end of the nearest isle. The distinct print of a bookshelf where there wasn’t one to be found. Lucas chuckled like he’d figured out the punchline to an unfunny prank.

“He waved at you.” He said. I didn’t have to look at him. I could feel his burning eyes on me.

“Fist your locker and now he waves at you.”

“I didn’t know.” I signed. I tried to suck the tears back but they already started to pool.

“Who is he? I’m sure you know that, don’t you?” He snarled. I could only glance at him. His anger burned, but his quivering lip showed that the fire was fueled by fear. I couldn’t say anything. Of course I had no idea he would be here but if I told them who he was, would they leave me? The only other friend I ever had was stalking the halls covered in a kid’s blood. I would be alone again. Such an awful place.

“You convinced us to come here. You wanted to get something and you sure as shit got it didn’t you? What did we do to deserve this, Holly?” I shook my head violently to dodge his accusation. The pools in my eyes overflowed before Abigail saw what was happening and jumped between us.

“Lucas. We are stuck here. All three of us and if we want to get out, we can’t be an asshole. We need some trust. Okay?” Abigail signed to him. Lucas swallowed some of his hatred and thought. His sister was always his soft spot.

“Okay, but she needs to give me a reason to.” He looked past Abigail and back at me.

“Why are we here?” He asked. The truth sounded so absurd now. I’m supposed to tell them I got us locked in with a murderer and got a boy killed over a dumb class project from over a decade ago? I couldn’t make my hands say anything.

‘She’s just shy.’ My mother’s words echoed in my head. The only words I remember her saying. Lucas scoffed and walked away from us. Abigail sat next to me and rested her shoulder and head against mine.

“I’m sorry about him. You don’t really know that monster do you?” She signed. I wanted to tell her everything. I always wanted to tell her everything, but I couldn’t shake the knot of dread that formed in my stomach at the thought of doing so. Alone, such an awful place.

“I didn’t know. I didn’t know.” was all I could sign.

“I’m here.” She repeated to me in a calming whisper.

“Holly. Get Abigail and come here.” Lucas demanded. I composed myself the best I could and brought Abigail over. Lucas was standing at an open door. What was on the other side of the door was too dark to be an exit. Far too dark. Just enough moonlight came through the windows of the library to see stairs leading down. The concrete stairs ended abruptly at a waterline so calm it could’ve been mistaken as frozen.

We were concerned at first but realized whatever microscopic horrors swam around in the flooded basement were nothing compared to the one lurking in the halls. Abigail went down first. She kept her hearing aids in a tight fist above her head and used her other hand to grab Lucas’. He then offered his free hand to me. I hesitated.

“Trust.” He said. The word made me nauseous, but I took his hand and covered our tracks by closing the door behind us.

The water swallowed us from feet to naval. Darkness was all around us. All of my existence was a frigid chill soaked up through my spine, the sloshing of legs, and Lucas’ grip around my wrist. All I could do was follow his pull. I fluttered my free hand through the air to find some clue as to where we were until it collided with a massive tank. It rang a hollow twang after my knuckle blindly hit it. Lucas gave my arm a stern jerk and at the same time, something coiled around my foot and tripped. I thrashed my arms beneath the water to keep my head from submerging beneath the disease festered water. Once I regained my balance I kicked the thing that tripped me into my hand. With the all-consuming darkness taking my vision, I ran my fingers over it to learn what it was. The unmoving serpentine shape ended in an open mouth with rivets for lips. A hose, I realized. I also realized that I wasn’t being pulled anymore. There were no fingers wrapped around my wrist. Lucas let go.

Hinges squealed from further inside the room and ended with a door closed. My first instinct was to splash. To shoot my audio flare for rescue but just as I raised my arms I heard something else. Two claps. I knew it wasn’t them, the sound was too thick, too expecting. Trunkless waited for me to fill in my part. I stayed silent. My feet were anchored to the floor and I hoped that Abigail and Lucas did the same, wherever they were. Something stepped into the water and I pinched every muscle in my face to keep a yelp from escaping. The water stilled after a moment.

Clap… clap…

My nerves prodded every muscle in my body to flee. My resolve was failing but before it completely caved, I escaped in thought. I thought of Abigail and I finding a way out of this school. I thought of leaving this place in a cloud of dust behind our tires and going to a concert. Abigail loved concerts. The crowd pounded the beat into the ground, the speakers blasted the music until it rattled in her chest. The sound was all-encompassing, to the point that even without ears, she could hear it. I imagined dancing with her in the crowd. It was one of the places we felt included. Like the world was made to fit us in. Like I wasn’t alone.

CLAP, CLAP.

The sound snapped me out of thought with a boom to my eardrum. I shrieked and tried to run but his hands quickly crushed my upper arm. He dragged me behind him through the water. I struggled to get my mouth above the water for air. Drowning became my biggest worry until I heard the thud of his boot hit a stair through the splashes. He hoisted me out of the water like I weighed nothing. The hinges squealed again and just before he threw me into the unknown I caught a glimpse of Lucas as he pulled Abigail back into the moonlit library.

Trunkless tossed me to the floor and my eyes stayed locked on him. I was certain his cheap elephant mask would be the last thing I ever saw. He turned away from me and walked to the window sill above the industrial sized sink. His hulking frame nearly eclipsed the window light entirely. When he turned back to me his hands were tightly wrapped bricks at his sides. With each methodical stomp towards me his fists tapped the leather canteen at his hip. I pleaded with him not to do this. I wanted to sign how sorry I was for telling his secret, but all I could sign through my desperate tears was ‘Please don’t hurt me.’ He stood over my damp, cowering body for a moment while I begged for mercy. Slowly, he reached his fists out towards me and opened them. In each of his palms was a snail.

He told me to pick one with a decisive nod of his head towards the snails. I cautiously plucked a snail from his hand. He cracked a slit into the other’s shell and placed it on the ground. I laid my snail next to his at the starting line, a small sliver between two tiles. At that point I decided he wasn’t planning on killing me, at least not immediately, so I took a look around. A large fridge and oven were slotted into the cabinets lining the perimeter of the room, all of which would be a glistening chrome if not for the caked-on dust. Opposite the window sill was a wide, rectangular opening. I remembered vividly how each day I slid my tray along the other side of the opening and let the cooks lay my meals onto it. Through it I could see the exit doors chained shut. Just beside the door to the basement was a silver door sealed shut by a long, red handle. A freezer.

I was afraid I let my eyes wander for too long so I snapped them back to the snails. I started to shiver in my soaked clothes. Trunkless noticed and unzipped his jacket to reveal a crudely crafted necklace with a single off-white jewel dangling from it. It was almost like a shark tooth necklace but it wasn’t. It was my mother’s chipped tooth. I recoiled at the sight of it and he jerked the sipper back up to his throat.

“I’m sorry your mom died… I understand it better now though.” He signed but once his hands dropped I looked back at the snails. I willed mine to whatever finish line he had in mind. I thought he may let me go if mine won.

“Before I needed the mask my mom used to have those sticky ribbon traps that hang from the ceiling. I used to like flies. Now I’m a little too close to them but I used to really like them. The main thing I found so pretty was their eyes.” He stared in my eyes through the darkness behind his elephant mask before he continued.

“Whenever a new one got stuck I went into my parents bathroom and found the tweezers. A leg here, a wing there. I plucked away until it was perfect… But when I was done, even though the body was trapped, the soul had escaped. It was gone from its eyes… Where’s the beauty in that?” He took the canteen off of his hip and swished the water inside. He popped the cap off and poured some over my snail. The smell of frankincense and licorice wafted from the snail’s pool. He waited a moment before he stood. His boot tip rolled over the end of the snail. Its little shell suffered a long agonizing crunch. Like a tube of toothpaste, the poor creature’s internals squeezed up through its mouth.

The cruelty brought me back to the promise I made to him. To what he showed me behind the garden shed. My mother reduced to a heaving pin cushion of flesh and bone. I only looked at her for a moment before I ran to the nearest house. He ran for the woods. My mom only lived for another hour after the ambulance arrived. An hour of suffering, and he wanted to do the same to me.

“I found what I needed. A ribbon trap for the soul.” He signed. The snail moved again. It forced its poor broken body through the puddle of its own entrails. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

“As long as it has a soul and a brain to see the world through… It can be made beautiful.” He signed before he sat back down and slid the canteen to me.

“Do you want to make the world understand what it means to be beautiful?” He signed. I was stunned silent. I shook my head no until I forced my hands to say something. I told him there are people out there that understand. I made a couple of friends and he can too. He doesn’t have to do this to people. I told him we can all leave this school together. He just shook his head in disappointment and stood.

“You are more like them than I thought.” He walked to the freezer and popped the seal with a turn of the red handle and stepped inside. I nearly threw up when he disappeared around the corner of the doorway and revealed what was inside. A cloud of rats scurried to the shadowy corners of the freezer. All they left behind were teethmarks on a single foot that dangled a couple of inches above the ground. Only a protruding bone was at the end of Stevie’s other leg. The boy’s thigh meat was splayed open to show carvings on his femur deep enough to show the marrow. His ribs were spread like wings and a rusted hook jammed through his back and pierced his lung. Stevie’s jaw hung limply at his throat that overflowed with blood. His eyes panicked from a never-ending sense of drowning.

Trunkless stepped back into the doorway. In his hand he gripped an ax head by the nape. The wooden handle was broken off long ago and in his mind it was made better for it. Without thought I threw myself over the opening to the cafeteria and into the hallway. I didn’t care about traps in the floor, I just ran as fast as I could until someone stepped out into the hall, grabbed me, and pulled me into another room.

Lucas slammed the door shut behind us. Abigail hugged me. Her arms warmed me against her body but I was so cold. Stevie’s mangled body kept flashing in my mind. Poor, poor Stevie.

Abigail let go and signed how she was certain she’d never see me again, and how that thought turned her stomach sick.

“I knew you would come back.” Lucas said, which sounded more like an accusation than relief. He left me alone in the dark. Served me up on a patter as a sacrifice to Trunkless, all for his theory that I wanted this to happen. Or did his hand just slip? The question was enough to keep my disdain at bay.

Aside from a few towers of copy-paste chairs in the corner, the room was empty. Red foam tiles dressed the concrete walls in a deliberate pattern. The only wall the foam tiles kept bare was the one opposite the hallway door. A mural of a man and woman howling on their saxophone and trombone, in the foreground of a city crafted by their smooth blues. In the mural’s prime, it would have been a sight to see, but when we were there you could smell the damp paint chips that peeled from the wall. Even still, it was far better than the mural by the pool. Above the mural was a thin window that stretched the length of the wall and shone its moonlight through the bars and onto a shelf of dust-covered trophies.

Abigail ventured through the room while Lucas kept watch by the door. She swung open a closet door and wheeled out a marimba. Its plethora of missing or split down the middle keys left it with little value and meant it was destined to rot with the school. Abigail was delighted to see it. She told me she remembered playing one in a music class she had in middle school and thought it was just the pick-me-up we needed. With the foam walls and sweeping front door the room was designed to suffocate the sound of a marching band before it escaped. I assumed one marimba wouldn’t be a problem for it. I also didn’t want to ruin her smile.

I stood on one side of the mangled instrument and Abigail stood on the other with her back to Lucas. She coiled her middle finger into a pointed second knuckle and struck a note. Lucas glared at us and demanded we keep it down.

“Too loud?” Abigail signed to me with a remorseful smirk. I nodded a playful blame to Lucas and laid my forearm over the notes to dampen them. She slipped her hearing aids back in before she played. Each clop of her knuckle on a note sent a wave through my arm. She suggested we switch and immediately laid her forearm over the notes. I coiled both of my hands and struck the keys in my best attempt at “Mary Had a Little Lamb”, give or take a few sour notes. Abigail laughed so I pounded two notes as fast as I could and sent the calamity through her arm.

“You’re so stupid.” She joked through her laugh. She said it out loud. Lucas, who was still guarding the door, looked at the back of her head like he’d found a treasure buried by time.

Eventually we wore out our fun and reentered grim reality. Lucas made sure the hallway was clear before we stepped out. Abigail walked ahead and kept her eyes glued to the floor for any sign of traps. Lucas stayed behind me. We made our way to the North Section of the school. We came across the theater. The double door was flanked on either side by windows. Abigail pushed the door open and stepped in first. Once my foot crossed the threshold I was shoved in the back and sent careening to the theater ground. A violent crash came from behind me that quaked the whole auditorium. The door was gone. Hidden behind the sturdy wooden bookshelf missing from the library. It would have crushed me had it not been for Lucas, who was trapped on the other side.

Abigail and I tried desperately to pull the bookshelf and Lucas heaved from the other side but it wouldn’t budge. I ran to the window and tried to put a kick through it but the reinforced glass threw me to the ground. I kicked again and again and Abigail joined until Lucas stepped in front of the window. He glanced down the hall. Terror flashed onto his face but he repressed it before looking at Abigail.

“Take out your hearing aides.” He signed. Abigail shook her head rapidly but Lucas’s pleading look forced her hand.

“Get her out of here, Holly. Please, promise me.” He said to me, I nodded and tried to keep the tears from swelling. Lucas took another glance down the hall and back at Abigail. Her lip quivered like she wanted to tell him something, but the words grew too heavy through the years she’d kept them hidden. She clawed at her denim jeans. She dug for the words but in a second Lucas darted away from the window. I grabbed each side of Abigail’s head to keep her eyes on me. A shadow swooped past the window but we wouldn’t dare look. We knew who it was. He only screamed at first. Guttural screams for mercy were followed by the slicing of meat. The break of bones. The heaving of water, then breaking again. Rivulets of tears overflowed on Abigail’s face. She tried to bring her hearing aides back to her ears but I cupped my hands over them. I held them in her lap until she no longer had the fight to pull them up. She collapsed into me and I held her until the halls were quiet again.

Silence never felt so heavy. Abigail’s knees were tucked into a tight hug at her chest. Her chin was held up by her knees. She repeatedly clawed at her jeans in agonizing strokes. Her sight was aimed at the stage but her focus was miles beyond the walls of the school. Tears pooled in her eyes but the shock she wore on her face made me wonder if she even noticed. Minutes felt like hours as we felt trapped in the sludge of our own despair. A prison within a prison.

“I was thinking as soon as we get out of here we go straight to a concert. Any concert. We don’t even stop…” I signed, she saw me but she didn’t reply. She was silent for a long time before she spoke.

“When we were kids we played emergency rescue. Whenever there was a storm coming we’d scatter the balls from our garage into the yard and pretend like we had to save them… One time I remember running back to the garage and I tripped right into a puddle of mud, face first.”

She forced a chuckle that barely had the strength to be audible. She continued.

“For years when we were alone he called me mud pie. Only when we were alone though… I don’t know why that comes to mind now.”

His words repeated in my head.

‘Get her out of here, Holly. Please, promise me.’
‘Please, promise me’
‘Promise me.’
‘Promise me.’
‘Promise me.’

Past the herd of scattered, pine scented pews was a stout set of stairs that led to the stage. Next to it was the exit door, shackled in a chain and pinched together by a padlock. For a moment I thought there was no way out of the theater until I looked up. There was a drop ceiling. I climbed up the massive bookshelf in hopes of finding some way out, but it was still too high to see. I stretched on my tip-toes and still nothing. I jumped on the slanted edge of the bookshelf and pushed the tile away to get a glimpse into the ceiling.

“Get down, you’re going to hurt yourself!” Abigail scolded, but I was determined to keep my promise.

I jumped again, I thought I saw enough space to squeeze through beside the duct work, but I wasn’t sure. I jumped again and saw nothing. My head didn’t get through the open hole. I jumped one more time before I realized I was sinking. The bookshelf crashed to the ground and I plummeted with it and landed on the edge of a shelf.

“Jesus, are you okay?” Abigail said as she rushed to me. I shot her a thumbs up as I desperately wheezed to catch my breath. She put her hearing aids back in to listen.

With the bookshelf lying flat on the carpet we tried to push it again. It was like pushing a car in neutral up a hill but eventually we got it away from the door. The crash was sure to draw his attention so we swiftly threw the doors open.

Blood. A trail started from a puddle to our right and streaked down the hallway like a road bending out of sight, but I knew where it led. The freezer. Abigail retched and pinched her eyes shut. I took her by the hand and led her carefully to the West Section.

We entered the gymnasium first. The polished wood flooring was warped by water damage but if I closed my eyes it smelled like the same, dreaded gymnasium. The dangling basketball hoops were draped with webbing. The only light came from a street light outside and slid through the slit of glass in the exit doors. The chain locked exit doors. Still, we pushed on them. We raddled the chains in hopes that a link would break. That they would loosen enough to get a sliver of an opening, but the doors didn’t budge. The pool had the only exit door left. I swallowed the lump of dread in my throat and led Abigail to our last chance.

There was nothing to see through the sunroof. The moon and the stars were covered by clouds. Feathery tip-tips of rain played the first notes of a brewing storm. The mural was still pristine. Smudgy Michael Phelps still raised his stubby arms in celebration at the center of the collage, but it seemed beautiful this time. I peaked over the rim of the drained pool and was smacked with the stench of rot. A puddle of black soup lingered at the deep end. A polo shirt, certainly embroidered with the St. Jude crest, was scrunched to a ball at its coastline like a makeshift pillow. After I regained my balance from the vicious scent I looked past the pool. The exit was completely glass, and naked. Not a chain to be seen. I sprinted to it with Abigail following close behind. I shoved the handlebar and it clicked. It only clicked. I couldn’t believe it. Abigail and I pressed harder and harder at the bar but our combined force was no match for the deadbolt, locked in place by a lost key.

“Fucking deadbolt.” Abigail said. I laughed and threw myself against the door over and over and over. Fucking deadbolt. Fucking deadbolt. Fucking dead. Eventually, I stopped fighting the door. My laughter died quietly as I succumbed to hopelessness for a moment before I thought of the freezer. We weren’t going to die that night. The fate of the freezer was far worse. I took a few steps back and charged the glass. I kicked my heel into it with all of my force and it threw me backwards to the ground. I got up and kicked again, and again, and again.

“Holly.” Abigail said.

I kicked it again. I kicked and kicked and not even a crack formed on the glass, so I kicked some more. Not the freezer, for the love of god not the freezer.

“Holly!” Abigail pleaded. Her face contorted to the purest fear, her eyes were fixated behind us. Standing at the other side of the pool room, was Trunkless.

His sickly white elephant mask was like a flimsy granite tombstone planted at the apex of a six and a half foot tall mountain. Blood seeped into his gray jacket from the wrist cuffs and a puddle on his shoulder. At one hip he held the disembodied head of his crimson stained axe and at the other, had his leather canteen. His chilling leather canteen. I tried to beg him to stop. To let us go, but he took each step with a booming malice. Just as he got around the empty pool a ceramic tile flew by his head and shattered against the wall behind him. Abigail found some tiles loose at the precipice of the exit. She bent over and hurled another. I joined her. Tile after tile flew through the air and the more that flew, the less he flinched. He walked slower with each step.

“Did you promise him?” He signed to me. I bent down to grab another tile but there were none left loose enough to dislodge.

“You were always bad at keeping promises.” He signed, then he lurched towards us. Abigail and I sprinted towards the gymnasium but out of the corner of my eye I saw her go to the ground. He leaped at her feet and caught her ankle. She screamed for my help at the top of her lungs. Her nails scraped at the floor in an attempt to claw herself to freedom. I didn’t hesitate, I kicked one more time straight to his mask. The white elephant mask split down the middle and each half dangled by the string around his neck.

A hole the size of a softball engulfed the left half of his face. Flies exploded from his face after the impact and sprinkled the smell of death through their trails. A complete chasm lined with decayed black skin and the writhing white specs of munching maggots. His left eye, his nose and half of his mouth were either gone, or scattered back into the festering wound. Abigail scurried behind me and I tried to fight back the vomit that crawled up my throat. I avoided the void of rotted flesh and only focused on his remaining eye. In that eye I saw something. I saw a boy like the one on the other side of the school yard fence. A boy who only wanted someone to play with. Someone who would accept him. That was an opening, an escape.

“Are you okay?” I signed to him. He paused. His eye looked stunned at the question but he thought about it for a moment before he swallowed. I waited for his hands to move but they didn’t. He used the remaining half of his mouth to speak.

“My dad hunted for years, so he couldn’t believe he left the shotgun loaded… When I got my little hands on it, the doctors couldn’t help me much, my parents knew that when they brought me in, but they remember what I told them, about the flies. How there was water that kept them alive… My dad had me draw a map to the water and when they found it they snuck me out of the hospital and into the pond… They thought it would heal me, but when it didn’t… They started to resent me… I’d enter the room with them and they’d cover their noses. They couldn’t bear to look at me, to look at what they’d done…I felt so hideous but they, they were hideous! They just needed to understand that! Don’t they all need to understand that!?”

I was petrified at his yelling but I managed to nod in agreement. I felt like he was a mad dog waiting for the slightest scent of fear to pounce. I kept nodding and his eye showed a little comfort. He waited for me to say something.

“You’re right.” I signed, but he kept waiting for something. The nerves stabbed in my gut. Abigail’s tense grip pinched my shoulder. She tugged at it slightly, but desperately towards the gym. She knew as well as I that there was no way out, but when she looked at the person in front of us, she only saw a monster. She thought I saw the same. The knot of dread formed in my gut, just as it did in the library when I couldn’t tell her the truth. A part of me wondered if this worked, if I got us out of here would she speak to me again? Alone, such an awful place. But I made a promise to get her out. A promise I intended to keep, no matter what.

“Do you remember the old garden shed?” I signed to him. He nodded. Abigail’s hand fell away from my shoulders, but I continued.

“What if we go see it again? We can race snails like we did in the kitchen? Like we used to. I miss those days.” I signed.

He paused for a moment and contemplated the thought. I begged him to take the bait a thousand times in my head during the short pause. If he led us back out the front door we could sprint for the road. Someone had to be out there that could help us. Just get us through the door. He looked at the floor, I couldn’t read the expression in his eye anymore. He tucked his axe head into the waistband of his pants.

“That’s a nice thought… You’ve always had such a beautiful mind.” He signed. I forced the toothiest grin I could muster, but he didn’t even look up.

“I can’t wait to see it.” He unsheathed his axe head and Abigail turned and sprinted around the pool, I turned and trailed behind. We rushed through the gymnasium and out to the hallway with Trunkless stomping at our heels. Each pound was closer than the last. My legs were numb with adrenaline. The hairs on my neck stood tall as locker after locker, classroom after classroom whizzed by us. He’s going to get me. The thought pounded in my head as fast as my thumping heart. He’s going to get me. He’s going to get me. He’s going to get me.

SNAP

A pain-stricken scream called from behind us and a thud shook the ground. I glanced over my shoulder at him. A bear trap was shut on the ground but he was on the floor next to it. The trap bit cleanly through his boot and the nubs of his toes oozed blood onto the floor. I heard him stagger back to his feet before we turned the corner and snuck into a classroom in the South Section. Right back where we started.

The earthy smell of chalk dust coated the room. The haze stuck to the windows which were taking a brutal assault from the bombs of rain falling from the sky. The only sound louder was our heaving, burning lungs. I kept my eyes closed. I took deep breaths to steady myself. Eventually, my lungs cooled to the point I could use my nose again.

“You did know him.” Abigail said. It was as though she’d been stabbed, and the words rode on her final breath. I opened my eyes and saw hers damp with confusion, with disgust, with betrayal.

“Please, let me explain I-” I signed but she cut me off with a sharply raised hand. She didn’t fill the silence so I desperately continued.

“He was my friend at one point. He’s why the school shut down. Then he killed my mom, Abigail please. I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you in the library.” She slumped down to the ground and thought for a moment before she spoke again.

“We never should have come here with you… Lucas should still be alive.” She said,

“He is.” I signed. I couldn’t hold another secret from her, but my hands moved before my mind. With what I saw of Stevie in that freezer he may as well be dead. It would certainly be better.

“What?” She perked up and got to her feet.

“Abigail I-”

“Where.” She demanded.

“Please he’s not-”

“Do you know where he is or not!” The lump of dread burst inside me.

“The freezer… In the cafeteria.” I signed.

She immediately turned and bolted for the door but I sprung up and grabbed her by the arm and got her to stop for a second. I told her he was beyond saving. I told her there’s nothing we could do for him. I told her that she would end up just like him if she’s caught. I signed anything I could think of to get her to stay but she didn’t let me finish.

“Fuck you, Holly.” She spat, then she disappeared down the hall. The classroom door shut behind her, and I was alone.

I crumpled to the cold floor. It was a kind of cold that seeped through my pants. The kind that could freeze you in place. Hatred and pity entwined into an ever-growing tumor in my chest. I wanted to cry, but nothing came out. All I could do was stare without thought at the milk white tiles between my feet. The white tiles were everything. I wished it was snow. Snow so deep that I could sink within and turn the white everything into an eternal black. I put my palms on the tiles and waited for the cold to engulf me. It never did. Only the hairs on my arms tightened into stiff needles and the tumorous blend of self-hatred and pity grew more unbearable. Tears started to prick behind my eyes. I threw my head back with a sniff to catch them but bounced my head against the concrete wall. With an ailing rub to the back of my head and shot to my feet. The hatred overcame the pity in a swell of anger aimed at the wall. That damn wall. I loaded a kick aimed for the concrete but stopped. On the wall was a chalkboard. A lesson on Moses covered the dusty green board, but the meaning didn’t matter to me. It was how they were written.

I knew that handwriting from many class lectures, but also from birthday cards and names on Christmas presents. My mother’s handwriting. My mother’s classroom. I went to her desk. Her hand drawn pictures from her kindergarten teacher days were gone along with her mesmerizing newton’s cradle and her solid spruce name plate with golden lettering. All that was left was a layer of chalk. I opened a drawer. A stack of completed quizzes left unblemished by her harsh red pen. I opened another. Contraban such as packs of bubble gum, a blue Nintendo 3DS, and even a collapsible pocket knife jostled in the drawer. I opened another and another and another until I found it.

Crosses made of cheap plastic were haphazardly tossed in the drawer. I took out a handful and dropped them on the desk. Each one had a button at the base of the cross on a bright green plastic bump that was surely supposed to be a hill. Underneath the hills, were an array of holes to allow for sound to come through the speaker. I pressed the button on the first cross.

“Hi future Riley! So we finally graduated! I-” I pressed the button again to end the static recording. I put it in a separate pile and grabbed the next one.

“Uh, I hope you’re out of this shit town by now-” I ended it, and tried again.

“Do you still want to be a dolphin trainer? I hope you’re-” Ended. I kept trying crosses and each one was like the last. Each one had another kid’s voice rattle through the plastic, but still I kept pressing button after button until eventually I found it.

“Hi Holly, it’s your mom. I can’t believe when you hear this you’ll be graduating. I don’t want to think about how old I’ll be then.” She laughed and paused for a moment.

“I uh… I just want to say that I’m really proud of you. I know how hard school is for you, Or was… I know it’s hard fitting in but I still see you try to reach out to people all the time. I know kids can be mean when they don’t understand but don’t let that stop you… Keep giving them a chance… I love you sweetie, happy graduation.”

With a pop, her voice was gone.

I felt at peace for the first time since we were locked in the old school. I pressed the button on the cross again. While my mother talked I thought back to the school yard. Lucas, Abigail and I stood an overgrown field away from the school that would become our demise. I cursed it. It’s unbreakable glass. It’s unbendable bars. Its inescapable chains. If the building could feel anything I wanted it to feel my hatred, my desperation. My mother’s recording ended. I pressed the button again. I got up and looked out the classroom window for the moon. Only the moon and my mothers voice would get me to accept my fate. The moon wasn’t visible from the window. Rain pelted the glass and the sky was entirely blanketed by clouds. I spit another curse on the building. If we had just stayed on the other side of the school yard I could’ve seen it before the storm rolled in. It would hang in the sky and peek over the edge of the roof like a timid child the same as… the roof access door above the theater.

“Keep giving them a chance… I love you sweetie, happy graduation.”

I sprinted through the halls straight to the cafeteria. With each stride I prayed that he didn’t get Abigail. I made it through the east side and to the cafeteria door with no sign of either of them. I tossed the door of the cafeteria open and saw her through the opening to the kitchen. She was at the freezer but the metallic door was shut in front of her. She was in one piece. I ran to her and jumped over the opening to the kitchen. I took her by the shoulder and turned her to face me. I started to tell her that I had a way out until I saw her face. It was sick with grief. My heart anchored at the thought of her seeing her brother the way I saw Stevie, but in an instant I noticed that she didn’t see him. She didn’t have to. From the other side of the door came inhuman, guttural wheezing. I could hear the air coming into his lungs and out of his body in ways other than just his throat. The sound was painful to hear.

“Why isn’t he dead?” Abigail asked. I couldn’t answer her. I just took her hand and led her towards the exit, but she pulled her hand away.

“We can bring back help for him. I’m sorry but please trust me.” I signed. She was a husk of herself, but she nodded. I took her hand again and led her into the hallway.

He was there. Tuskless limped around the corner from the south section. When he saw us, he went into a full sprint without any mind to the blood that spurted from the end of his foot with each step. His bloodied axe head sliced through the air with each pump of his arms.

I yanked on Abigail’s arm and we rushed to the theater in the north section. Even with his sliced foot, we couldn’t lose him. When we got to the theater we flung the door open on its hinges and slammed it behind us. The book shelf still rested on its back. We slid the mammoth heap of wood in front of the door just in time to absorb a booming thud on the other side. The hall went quiet for a moment before he smashed into the door again. One full forced charge after another sent shockwaves through the theater. Abigail and I ran down the aisle and hoisted ourselves onto the theater stage. Before we ducked behind the curtains I glanced back at the beaten door. A sliver of light from the hallway seeped in, and he kept smashing into it.

Ropes ran the height of the side wall to anchor the curtains. Beside them was a door. We ran in to find a hallway. Abigail and I split up to check behind each one. One led to a closet with a mop soaked in pine scented wood cleaner, a broken limbed christmas tree, a manger filled with straw and other miscellaneous props. Another door led to a chillingly empty dressing room. All that was in the black box of a room was four tables equipped with large mirrors in a frame of lightbulbs. The next door in the hallway led to another door at the top of an ascending staircase. I knocked on the wall to get Abigail’s attention. Thankfully she heard it over the continual bangs that echoed from the auditorium. She followed me up the stairs and when we got to the top and I turned the knob, it opened.

The rain fell in a roaring applause. It immediately soaked through our clothes but it felt like relief and smelled like sweet freedom. We took each other by the hand and ran over the roof top until we were over the main entrance. On the road, headlights waved through the torrential rain. The rickety truck they were attached to was stopped at a stop sign, the driver’s face was lit by a phone screen. Salvation. We clapped as loud as we could and frantically swung our hands above our heads but he was too consumed by his phone to see us. Our claps weren’t distinct enough from the rain tapping his truck.

“You need to yell, we have a concert to go to.” I signed to Abigail. She chuckled but it melted quickly. She kept her voice hidden from everyone other than me for years. She couldn’t even get a word out in her brother’s final moments. Her hands scratched at her jeans. It was a hard thing to ask, but it was our only hope.

“I’m here. I’m here.” I signed before I rubbed her shoulders. She nodded. Her hands rested at her sides. She was determined. She was ready. I turned and watched the truck. The engine rumbled over the rain even in park. My focus didn’t leave it. With every fiber of my being I willed the truck to stay parked, but it roared. A puff of black smoke burped from the exhaust and it rolled forward.

Abigail screamed, but the truck kept rolling. Her scream was too meager to call attention. It was even too breathy. It was wrong. I turned to check on her. The edge of the axe blade was submerged in her throat. Before I even processed what was happening he split a gash down to her clavicle and shoved the mouth of his canteen inside. I wanted to cry but instead, I jumped. Just as I hurdled the roof ledge, his paw swiped my shoe and threw my balance. I careened through the air until I met the concrete below with my head, and everything went dark.

After an unknown amount of time, I came to. It was still dark out and the rain hadn’t let up. I stumbled to my feet. A gash in the crown of my head leaked blood onto my face but worse was the pain inside. My head felt like it was going to burst from the pressure. I was sure blood filled my skull. It clotted into a snake that constricted my brain. The corners of my vision were going black, but I saw something. A car was stopped where the truck once was. I took a step towards it and nearly collapsed. The sudden movement I needed to catch my balance sloshed my brain in a seething pain. I took another cautious step, and another. He saw me. He got out of his car and looked around for anyone else.

“Oh my god. What happened?” He yelled over the rain.

The darkness creeped further into my vision. The blood suffocated my brian and all I could think was this guy won’t understand me. I tried to take another step but I couldn’t. I fell to my knees. He started to run to me but stopped.

“Jesus.” He yelled, but in the small circle of my vision that remained I could tell he wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at someone behind me. It was over. My vision was completely dark. Just as my mother’s voice came throughout my life, it came again. This time with different words. Keep giving them a chance.

“We are in the freezer.” I signed before I collapsed. In my final moment of consciousness I couldn’t feel the pain. I couldn’t hear the rain or see the undoubtedly scarred man drive away in terror. I could only taste sweet licorice and frankincense.

__________

“I… I think they’re alive.” Officer Bradley said in a quiet voice. I didn’t tune out the footsteps anymore. I counted them. One, two, three, four. Officer Bradly didn’t hear them; he was too shocked. When he took the job in this town I’m sure the worst he expected to see was an elderly person who passed peacefully in their sleep, not us. Five, six, seven. The pain was constant. Every little piece of my body was snapped or removed. I couldn’t see this happen to someone else. I didn’t look at Officer Bradly’s silhouette outside the freezer door frame. I kept my head down.

“Johnson call the fucking county I need backup down here now! Get an ambulance, shit get four of them right now!” Officer Bradley kept his finger on the button as he pleaded on and on. It would be years of physical therapy before our bodies had some kind of use again. Days of surgeries would come first and before any of that, twenty-seven minutes before officer Bradley’s backup arrived. Eight, nine… The footsteps faded down the hallway. Trunkless was gone. The relief let tears roll down my cheeks. I wanted to celebrate but my broken body didn’t even have the energy to lift my head, so I passed twenty-seven minutes in thought.

A cereal bowl? An ashtray? A cat bowl? I tried to come up with any other use but ultimately the bone bowl that rested on a doily of my black hair would be best used to block the chilling breeze that dried my brain.

Credit: Kevin Jones

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