The Rift (an online supernatural thriller)

1: An Unfriendly Welcome to St. Lawrence Academy

2011-10-30T16:05:00.000-04:00

I’m not gonna pretend that I was the smartest kid in the world. But I wasn’t dumb. I knew a rat when I smelled one. When I was little, five or so, I remember sticking a knife in the electric socket. I knew what it was going to do. Everyone knows nothing good’s going to happen when you stick a knife in an electric socket. But that didn’t keep me from doing it. Sometimes I just wanted to find things out for myself. This was one of those times.

Call me Jason. Not Jase, or Jasey, or Jase-my-man. It’s Jason. Jason West. Maybe if things like people getting my name wrong didn’t piss the hell out of me, I wouldn’t have ended up at St. Lawrence Academy. I’ll admit to having a short temper. I’d tell you to ask Dax Leary about it, but the doctors say that he’s got another three months before he should be moving his jaw. Kinda sucks. But considering he was warned, I don’t think that I should have to feel all that guilty. Wish dad felt the same way. Don’t worry, I’m not gonna give you that crap about being from a broken home and psychobullshitting my life to help you get who I am. I don’t really give a shit if you get me.

Dax Leary was the asshole of St. Luke’s football team. St. Luke is a rat-hole Catholic school in Tennessee. By rat-hole, I mean where the rat lawyers and doctors shit out their kids, while them and their wives take trips to Boca Raton, Del Mar, and Akron for five week intervals. Dax was a big, beefy guy with those unnaturally edged muscles that you and me both know are the results of illegal steroid-usage. No 17-year-old is supposed to look like an Abercrombie model. But whatever. Bottom line: he was a tower of rock that looked like a Goliath next to me. But me having a slight inclination towards violence, and enough experience to compile a satisfactory CV, I knew that my temper could easily outperform the fluff-muscles he’d developed.

We never had any issues—mainly due to the fact that we didn’t hang in the same circles. But considering I never had a circle—or friends for that matter—that wasn’t very difficult to accomplish. I had made the mistake of bumping into him in the hallway, and being the polite and eloquent douche that he is, he gave me a “Watch it freak!” –Now this didn’t really bother me. He was caught off guard, and I could have seen me having a similar knee jerk reaction to being bumped into.

But of course, he had his goons on both sides, so he couldn’t just let me off. He had to be all butch and smart ass and whip out a “Looks like Jasey’s trying to feel me up!”

I halted—that kind of halt where it feels like you’re body’s being pulled back. “What’d you call me?” I asked in a guttural whisper.

“You got a problem?...Jasey?”

I turned around, slowly. It was like everything was in slow motion. With every inch that I continued to turn, Dax’s arched brow lowered slightly, as his confidence diminished.

Once I was fully facing him, stiff and unflinching, I said clearly, “You’ve been warned.”

“Oooo.”

“Pcht!”

Snickering.

His goons were amused by my dead-serious words. But as the edge of Dax’s lip curled up and quivered, I could tell that he knew the intention behind them. His game face was ruined, but with his buddies behind him and seeming to be awaiting retaliation, he evidently feared their disapproval over my reaction, as he opened his mouth again “What?....Jasey?”

And if you want to know the difference between the sound of a melon splattering against concrete and Dax’s head bashing into a brick wall: there isn’t one.

So here I was, four weeks later, having been forced to leave St. Luke’s, with my Dad using the influence of money and his high powered attorney to keep me in school and on ‘the right track’.

That’s where St. Lawrence Academy comes in. On the brochure, it looked miserable. A bunch of anime-eyed guys patting each other’s backs and two girls laughing their heads off. It looked more like a poster for a remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers than a brochure for a Catholic school. I don’t know any guys like that—the kind that pat each other’s backs and have those ridiculously big eyes, because I guess their trying to open them wide enough so that they can take in all the beauty of life—but I don’t think that I would want to know them. Claire didn’t like it when I talked about happy people like that—like there was something wrong with them. She said it meant that I could be borderline sociopathic or have suicidal tendencies, and there were like a million other things that she thought could be wrong with me because I didn’t want to be a fucking drone. What a bitch. Don’t worry, she wasn’t my girlfriend. Just a sluty guidance counselor that wore a two inch skirt and made us call her Claire rather than Ms Michaelson. I think it had more to do with her inability to accept that she was over 30, rather than an attempt to connect with us on a deep, meaningful level.

I sat in Father Daniels office. He was the principal of the academy, and I was supposed to report to him first thing when I arrived. We had an appointment and everything—boy did I ever feel special!

I pushed my foot against his desk so that two of the legs of the chair I was in were hanging. I did a nice soothing rock back and forth as I waited for Father Daniels to arrive.

His office was pretty standard—a lot like Father Russo’s at St. Luke’s. There were school awards and sports pix up all over the walls. Ribbons, trophies, certificates—all presumably won by some prodigy of the system. I’d never won anything like that. I hardly was ever interested in anything athletic or that involved any sort of skill.

What I did notice was that St. Lawrence’s pride was soccer, as evidenced by the row of framed pictures above the bookshelf behind the desk. These guys were smiling, like the guys in the brochure, but even they didn’t have those absurd anime-eyes. I wondered if the guy’s eyes in the brochure had been digitally altered.

I heard some muffled voices coming from the reception desk outside, followed by the click of the doorknob turn and the rattling blinds against the glass window on the door. Office noises always get me on edge. Everything so quiet and then that shaking and rattling and clicking.

“You must be Jason West,” a voice said behind me, which I presumed to be Father Daniels. I wasn’t going to turn around. I wasn’t going to go out of my way for anyone here. And I wanted this guy to know it.

I could tell by the slight pause behind me before he came around that he was testing me just as much as I was testing him. He wanted to know if I was going to be trouble, and he had his answer.

“Well, I’m Father Daniels,” he said, coming around to the side of his desk and gazing down at me. He was looking all prissy in his priest get-up. I wished for a minute that I’d been in less Catholic environments so that I could enjoy the humor of such a ridiculous costume.

He had a big round face and what looked like it used to be a very pronounced jaw-line, which had now become somewhat flabby. I did take notice of his amazingly dark hair—especially for someone who I guessed was in his late fifties. I imagined his heyday being like Dax Leary’s—a big shot at sports, and now he got to be the powerhouse over a school. I almost wanted to run back to Tennessee just to let Dax know that he’d have a future as either a principal or a prudie cloth-man. And if he was really lucky, he could be both!

Father Daniels stood very tall as he rested one hand against the edge of his desk. He looked down at me with a southern smile—broad, but completely and utterly insincere.

“I had a chance to review your file.”

My file. I loved the way they said that, like there was some mystical file that contains everything that anyone could ever need to know about me. In actuality, I knew all that he was saying was that he was aware of how many fights I’d gotten into, with a particular focus on my latest and greatest. Fortunately, I knew my Dad had slipped him a big wad of money that quieted his concern about any of my indiscretions and would be well worth it even if I did manage to get into some sort of trouble.

Father Daniels nodded certainly. “Yes, I’ve seen your file, seen all the trouble you like to make.” He walked around his desk to his chair as he continued. “But I understand. I used to be a bit of a rebel when I was your age. Guess it’s just sort of the natural inclination when you feel misunderstood.”

Oh, here we go, I thought. I must be wearing a sign that says: PLEASE ANALYZE ME!

He sat in his chair and leaned back slightly. “But you and I aren’t going to have any problems here—are we?”

I’m no linguist, but I was sure that there was no question in that.

He looked at me with dead-serious eyes. I hadn’t noticed till then, but I couldn’t tell if they were brown or black. I imagined that was what my eyes looked like the day Dax made the mistake of calling me Jasey. I sure didn’t show him a flinch, but I felt that lightening of my arm muscles, like I had suddenly been physically drained, and I took a gulp that felt like I was swallowing mashed potatoes.

“Yes…” he said, his voice trailing off. He sounded menacing, almost like he was already had something in mind for me. I knew it was the case, but I couldn’t imagine what it was. “You’ll be just fine here.”

An awkward moment passed where he just stared me in the eyes—not prodding, not analyzing, not even trying to intimidate me. He just stared.

I wanted to say something, but knew better. I just sat there, looking back at him.

He finally took a breath and leaned back in his chair. His demeanor completely shifted. Now he seemed much calmer and cool—more like the way he had been when he first walked in. The transition was unsettling for me.

He opened a drawer, rifled through for a minute, then pulled out a manila envelope. He opened it and looked through its contents for a moment before handing it off to me. “Your dorm number, the key to it, and your schedule is all in there. If you have any questions, feel free to drop by.”

With that odd introduction, I left Father Daniels’ office and trekked outside with my suitcase and backpack.

The building was much bigger than St. Luke’s. A stone construction with towers and arches. Stained glass windows of blues, purples, and greens were scattered here and there, while statues of angels and saints lined the walls. In between the statues were red rose bushes and patches of lavender. This looked more like a mini-castle than an academy. And not some magical Disney castle. More like something out of a horror movie. It was a beautiful building, but I told you: I can smell a rat. And even with the fragrance of roses and lavender in the air, this place reeked.

2: Roomies

2011-10-29T05:45:00.000-04:00

“Hey Stud.”

A juggernaut stood in the doorway, resting his arm on the frame. He was in nothing but a pair of faded red boxers and a necklace that dangled a circular, golden coin between his unnaturally large pecks.

Guess everyone and their mother can get their hands on steroids these days.

Though, looking at this guy, I could see the value in them. His pecks bulged at least four inches from his chest, and his arched biceps pushed out so that you could see a pronounced vein. All the edges and lines in his shoulders were sharp and jagged. He didn’t have a six pack, but two defined parts to his abs with a smooth line dividing them. The thick, roughness of his five o’clock shadow led me to believe that his bare chest and waist were the result of an hour shave every week or so, most likely to keep any hair from concealing the body that he had spent so much time perfecting.

I didn’t know him, but I hated him. His face was just as perfect as his body. He had baby blue eyes—the kind that probably helped him to get out of a lot of scrapes when he was little. They were sparkling in the fluorescent hall lights. He was sporting one of those annoying cocked grins as he revealed a row of perfect teeth. His dark-brown hair was just an inch longer than a crew cut. It laid flat, expect for the gelled front.

He stood in the doorway, looking me up and down. He must have heard me slip my key in, because the door had opened before I had a chance to turn the knob.

I was concerned about his charming “Hey Stud” comment. I wondered if I was going to be getting into a fight on my first day. How would Dad get me out of that one? Kicked out of one school after two months—kicked out of the next after a day.

The juggernaut looked back at me with a raised brow and a look that I knew was not meant as a threat, but an invitation. I stared at him blankly. He got the point.

“Hi, I’m Brad,” he said. He extended his hand and we shook. His bicep and tricep muscles did a little dance, while his peck bobbed up and down.

“Jason,” I said back, in my usual conversationalist fashion.

Brad flashed an arrogant smile. There was a shimmer in his eyes that concerned me. It was similar to the look that had been in Father Daniels’ eyes—that look like he had something planned for me. But with Brad, I felt like I had a better idea of what that was, and made me think that it might be best to sleep with one eye open. At least in the beginning.

“Welcome to Hell,” he said with a wink.

“Oh…it’s not that bad,” a voice said from behind him.

Brad stepped aside and turned to a guy sitting at a desk, typing away on his laptop. Black t-shirt, jeans, and much scrawnier than mega-Brad. Not that he was a little guy. He just looked so much smaller than Brad. But then again, so did I.
His hair was jet-black against his pasty flesh. Not a sickly pasty, but a rich, milk-white. Very sharp features, and a large nose that stuck out as long as Brad’s pecks. He had a smooth face, giving him a boyish look.

He didn’t look at me—just continued typing. The way that Brad was standing by the door, he looked like this guy’s bodyguard.

“So you’re our new roomie,” he said. “Right side, bottom bunk. Bottom drawer. Space in the closet is yours.”

Brad waved his hand to invite me in.

I stepped in, looking around uneasily. I’ll admit to being somewhat claustrophobic, and the size of dorm rooms always make me a bit uneasy—at least until I’m settled in.
It was the typical setup with two bunkbeds. At the back of the room was a large window, but the sunshine was blocked by the mass of oak leaves from a tree outside, making the room appear even more like a cave and speeding my pulse up that much more.

There seemed to be an imaginary dividing line between two halves of the room. On one side, the desk was being used as a laundry bin, books were shelved on the beds, and a few dumbbells lied on the floor for decoration. The other side was perfect. Everything at the pasty guy’s desk had a place. The pencils and pens were all bunched together in a tin, the printer was set on a stand right beside the desk, and the papers were placed in a little bin that read: Homework. The bed was made, and the only article of clothing that was in sight was a stray sock that lied under the bed. I assumed the sock was an oversight.

I reached the bunk and dropped my backpack on it, and leaned my suitcase against the frame of the bottom bed.

The guy at the computer started leaning further and further from the computer, and his typing became more frenzied. He started to turn his head to me, but continued to look at the screen. Then, as he hit his last key, he turned to me and took a breath.

“Hi. My name is Seth.” He spoke very articulately, like he was about to give a speech. His demeanor and movements were calm, seeming to have been prepared. At the same time, there was something creepy about him. I thought it was the fact that his skin hadn’t seen the sun since he was five and that he may have been the closest thing to an albino that I’d ever known.

“Jason,” I said.

“So where do you hail from?” he asked, as if trying to sound relaxed, but still calculating his question.

“Tennessee,” I replied.

Brad had already closed the door and was leaning on the bunkbeds on the other side, like he was posing. He continued gazing at me with those blue eyes. The more he looked at me, the more sinister the gleam in his eyes seemed to be.

Seth’s eyes wandered to the floor. He looked distracted. I pretended not to notice and started going through my backpack.
Seth leaped out of his chair and scurried to his knees.

Brad turned his head to the side and chuckled into his hand.

Seth hopped back up, holding the sock from under his bed in his hand. His eyes were red—nowhere near as calm as they had been. He rushed over to Brad, got in his face.

It was an odd sight seeing this guy trying to challenge someone as massive and seemingly confident as Brad.

Brad was all smiles as Seth waved the sock in his face.

“Is this you’re idea of a joke?” Seth asked. “Huh? Dude, what is wrong with you!”

“Oh come on, Seth. Seriously?” Brad was so amused, and though he was acting like it was innocent fun, it was evident that this was the reaction he had hoped for.

Seth threw the sock down on Brad’s side of the room and stomped back over to me.

He stood before me, his nostrils flared and his eyes bright red. “Feel free to kill him if he steps on our side.”

Brad gave me a look like “Yeah. Just try.” I knew that he wasn’t someone that I’d want to mess with or he’d pound my face in. But I was far less worried about Brad than I was this OCD guy that I was about to have to share a room with for the next six months.

Seth climbed up to the top bunk.

“Whatever,” Brad said. He turned and did the same on his side.

It was on odd interchange. It was like they were an old, stubborn married couple.

Brad hopped on top of his sheets. From the mess that was stacked on the bunk, a page from a newspaper slipped down. It hit the cement floor and slid right across to my feet.

Brad and Seth simultaneously leaned over the bunks, looking down at the paper anxiously. The room was dead silent as all our attention was on the newspaper.

What a bunch of weirdos, I thought. It was ridiculous to see two people all worked up over a stupid piece of crap. I decided I should settle their your side/my side issue and leaned over to pick up the stupid paper.

6th LAWRENCEVILLE SLASHER VICTIM FOUND

A slasher? Great work dad. Find me a school in a town of psychos. Hmm…maybe that’s why it was the only school that would take me.

At least there was more going on in this town than Knoxville.

“Hey, what’s this—”

The paper was snatched from my hands.

Brad stood before me, his face stern, jaw clenched, and brows narrowed. He looked like any second he might just start beating the crap out of me.

“BRAD!” Seth snapped.

That tone sent shivers up and down my spine. It reminded me of the way that I had heard my Dad snap at me after I’d been kicked out of St. Luke’s.

I turned to see an equally rigid look on Seth’s face.

They stared into each other’s eyes. It looked like they wanted to have a conversation, but I was in the way, so they kept silent.
“Um…” I began, just to break the silence.

Brad’s gaze returned to me. He shook his head, as if shaking off the bizarre mood he was in. “Sorry man,” he said. He crumpled the newspaper. “Just not the kinda thing you want to look at first thing when you move in.”

I told you I could smell a rat, and this was a rat, but I wasn’t going to make anything of it. I could tell that neither of them wanted to talk about it, so I let them have their secrets. Knowing secrets, it would come out sooner or later.

“Whatever,” I said nonchalantly.

Brad headed back to his bunk with that crumpled up page. I looked around the room, hoping to change the subject.

“Who’s our other roommate?” I asked.

“We don’t have one anymore,” came Seth’s voice from over me.

“Anymore?”

“He transferred.”

Another rat.

Seth leaned over the bunk so that his head was just over mine. “Don’t worry,” he insisted with a smile. “We’re not that weird.”

My eyes went right to a golden coin on a necklace that was hanging from his neck, jiggling midair. It was identical to the one Brad was wearing. Something was up with these guys, and with that newspaper. Something was up in St. Lawrence Academy. But at the time, I didn’t have a clue what it was.

3: The Strange Becomes Stranger

2011-10-28T03:26:00.000-04:00

“My mom says they’re lying.”

“Bullshit.”

A long-haired, big boobed brunette and a flat-chested redhead whispered by the bleachers during P.E.

It was my first day, and I had gone through the motions of talking to my teachers about what assignments would transfer and what ones I would make up. But that wasn’t nearly as interesting to me as the whispers and muffled voices that surrounded me all day long. From what I gathered, everyone knew about this Lawrenceville Slasher that I’d seen in the paper Brad had dropped. I assumed that no one was allowed to talk about it and that was why they all had to do it in such quiet voices. Perhaps that was why Brad and Seth had been so serious. Maybe they were afraid I might report them for finding the newspaper in our room.

I learned very quickly through eavesdropping that “the night”, “it”, and “the thing” were all codewords for the Lawrenceville Slasher. Contrary to my normal disinterest to the blah blah blah that the kids at school talked about, now I was really interested. I wanted to know what this was all about.

“No, it’s true. My cousin’s an officer downtown and says that it’s more like the eleventh or twelfth.”

This was one of the more clever conversations about the Slasher, cause they didn’t even need a codeword.

“The Lawrenceville Post said it’s only the sixth,” the redhead insisted, in an equally quiet whisper.

“My cousin says that the mayor is trying to keep everyone from panicking, so he’s telling the papers less so it won’t look so bad.”

The redhead eyed the brunette suspiciously, as if she didn’t want to give her the benefit of the doubt.

The brunette’s eyes flashed to me. She must have felt my gaze burning against her. She gave me a furrowed brow to let me know that I wasn’t invited into their little conversation or anything else for that matter.

Bitch.

“Alright everyone! Huddle up!” Coach Williams came onto the field, carrying a soccer ball. He was a beefy, round man with a face of stubble and a naked scalp. He looked like he was in his late 30s, but a few Twinkis and a pack of Camel had made him age in dog-years. He wasn’t all that different than Coach Michaels at St. Luke’s.

Why do they always make the fat ones P.E. instructors? I wondered.

We gathered in a circle around him. Seth and Brad, who happened to be in my P.E. class, were standing on the other side of the circle, slightly outside of it. They had been easy to get along with as roommates, cause they were rarely ever around. I don’t know what they were off doing, but I didn’t really care. I liked the privacy, and I was glad to have roommates who didn’t want to be in the same room with me.

They stood next to a small, mousy-looking blond. She had a tiny nose and tiny hands and was about two feet shorter than Brad, making Seth look like he wasn’t all that small. Other than her size, it was interesting seeing her standing next to Brad and Seth, who seemed confident and sure, while she was looking around uneasily—like she felt uncomfortable about being out around people. I guess if I were a mouse, I would too. No one likes to be stepped on.

Coach Williams divided the circle in equal halves for teams. Seth, Brad, and the mousy girl were put on the opposite team as me.

I wasn’t a big sports guy, and I wasn’t really interested in playing a game. Even for a grade. I was just gonna do what I’d always done in P.E.—go with the crowd and pretend to give a shit.
Coach Williams reffed the game as we went back and forth for a few minutes.

Sweat poured down Brad’s brow, and his grey shirt had large, circular pit stains that grew larger and larger every second as he raced across the field with his buddy Seth. They had intense gleams in their eyes. Other than them, everyone else on the teams were like me: pathetic. They didn’t give a shit and wanted to get this class over with so they could go home.

Seth and Brad plowed through our team, scoring on us three or four times, regardless of who had the ball to begin with. Seth had the speed. He’d catch up with the ball and swipe it from whoever had it, or just use his quick and (I’ll admit) impressive footplay to keep it. Brad acted as the brick wall that anyone who wanted to get to Seth had to get through. So that never happened.

Midway through the hour, Brad and Seth were looking even fiercer than when we had started. Our teams stood on opposite sides of the field. Brad kicked off to our team, and the brunette backed up to get it. She was the only one on our team that really cared. By the way she played, I figured that she played sports too. She nabbed the ball and headed down the field. Brad was heading straight for her. She headed straight for him, not seeming to be intimidated by his brick muscles. It looked like a game of chicken, to see who was going to let up. The rage that filled Brad’s eyes made it clear that it wasn’t going to be him, and unless she had been misled about the laws of physics, I was pretty confident that it was going to be her. Her boobs and Brad’s pecks jiggled simultaneously as their bodies’ jet down the field.

The brunette kicked the ball through Brad’s legs and ran around him. He didn’t have the reflexes to turn around and get it, and the brunette must have known that. What she didn’t anticipate, which I knew she should have, was that Seth was right behind him. He kicked the ball right passed her and it flew back towards us. The ball was just a few feet from me. I went for it.

I’ll admit that I was trying to steal some of Seth and Brad’s thunder. After all, what gave them the right to act like they were all high and mighty in a P.E. class. This wasn’t a real game. This was a way of passing the time. I wanted to show them up, or at least give it a shot.

Me and Brad raced to the ball simultaneously. His muscles bobbed up and down under his shirt and the veins in his neck popped forward. I kicked the ball just passed Brad and slipped around him. He was still turning his mega-body around when I caught back up with the ball.

Seth was right there, as I knew he would be, to swipe the ball, but I gave it a quick kick to the other side and chased after it, racing down the field.

Seth was right on my heels, so I was running as fast as I could—and maybe even a little faster. I knew I wouldn’t have much chance if I didn’t get this in. We weren’t going to win. That was evident. But I wanted to make it clear that if I wanted to, I could play on the caliber that my two overachieving roommates were playing at.

I neared the goal where the mousy girl was goalie. Her green eyes were big, making me think of the anime eyes from the brochure of the kids from St. Lawrence’s. Of course, she didn’t look nearly as enthusiastic as those kids did. She started to cower as I rapidly approached. I laid into the ball.

POW!

I felt a blow to my ankle, like I’d just kicked a brick.

“SHIT!” I cried out, dropping to my knees.

Seth had come up from the side and kicked my foot, then made off with the ball.

“Goddammit!” I snapped, feeling the sore spot on my ankle.

I turned to see if Coach Williams had noticed Seth’s asshole move. Coach Williams was turned away from the game.

Go figure, I thought.

The mousy girl looked at me worriedly. I wasn’t sure if she was worried about my foot or me kicking her friend’s ass, but either way she needed to be concerned.

Seth made down the field with lightning speed and scored on us. I stood back up, still feeling the sting in my foot and knowing I wasn’t going to be able to walk easily. I ground my teeth and hobbled to the middle of the field, where everyone was huddling.

Brad and Seth high fived. Brad had that cocked grin like when I’d first seen him. It was even more annoying when it was at my expense. Seeing him like that made him seem even more like Dax.

But I had another goal in mind. Seth. I went right for him. I was going to trample his ass, and then let Brad trample mine. I must have had some kinda look on my face, cause as I was passing through the others to get to Seth, I caught a glimpse of the brunette and the redhead, who were staring at me in horror. Yeah, well they should have, because someone was going to get hurt…real bad.

Seth turned to me and smiled an arrogant smile, his brow raising victoriously. I thought I might start barking like a dog I was so mad. I was just a few feet from him, my eyes fixed and my fists clenched. Brad knew where I was heading and stepped in front of his friend. It was a good day to die.

“Okay kids! Next game!”

Coach Williams slipped right between me and Brad. I froze in place. His massive round body broke my concentration. It was clear by those dumb eyes of his that he was oblivious of what was going down and just wanted to get the next round started.

I could feel my breathing. It was fast and unsteady, a combination of rage and the intense play. My face felt hot. My muscles relaxed and my adrenaline dipped. It was good that Coach Williams had stepped in when he had. Not that I didn’t want to kick Seth’s ass. I’d just realized that rather than committing suicide by having him and Brad beat the shit out of me, I could get him the same way he had gotten me—in the game.

As our teams split onto our respectful sides, I gave Seth a vengeful look—a warning to let him know that I was coming for him. He stared back at me blankly. It wasn’t that he wasn’t concerned—it was that he wasn’t going to show me that he was.

Everyone on my side of the field stood in their regular positions, expect for the brunette who had stepped off to the back. She knew that I was taking the front for this one. Everyone but Coach Williams knew.

Seth and Brad stood side by side on the other end of the field. Seth watched me with his dead-serious eyes.

There was a moment where I thought there should be some humor in all this. After all, it was ridiculous that I wanted to kill this guy over a P.E. soccer game.

Brad kicked off the ball. It soared across the field, went right over my head, and landed by the goal. The brunette came in beside it and whipped her leg around, kicking it straight passed me. I followed behind till I caught up and maneuvered it down the field. Seth was speeding right at me. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to make it passed him, as I was still slightly crippled from the blow to my ankle. But I was going to find a way to get him.

We were moving closer and closer. I figured we looked something like the brunette and Brad when they were charging each other with their jiggling body parts.

Soon he was right in front of me with his attack-dog eyes. He lunged at the ball, and I did a quick move that to slide passed him. He kicked between my legs so that I lost control of the ball.
We raced toward it. I turned to see where he was and caught a glimpse of Brad racing at me. He was coming full force, without any chance for stopping. He was just going to take me down.

I made it to the ball first and kicked it into Brad’s path. Seth leaned to the side to kick it just as Brad rammed into him with everything he had.

CRUNCH CRUNCH!

“FUUUUUUUUUUCKKKKKKKKK!!!!”

Seth’s cry echoed across the field as his Brad’s body drove Seth’s heel into the ground. I wasn’t sure what had made that awful crunching sound until I saw the back of Seth’s knee slam into the ground. His shin swung like it was on a hinge so that his tennis shoe almost smacked him in the face. Seth’s eyes winced and his face was red as Brad fell into him. The crunching sound continued like firecrackers till Brad’s body covered Seth’s.

I stared in horror as I could only imagine the condition Seth’s body was now in. What I had thought was going to be an uncomfortable tackle had turned into dismemberment.

I was frozen in place, shivers rushing up and down my spine. Everyone else was the same. They stared motionlessly at Brad and Seth. Even Coach Williams, who I know had to have seen enough accidents in his time as a coach to not be surprised by much was standing with his mouth hung open.

As Brad rolled off of Seth. Seth’s jeans were drenched in blood. A sharp something, that I could only assume was bone, looked like a giant pencil poking out from under the jeans.

The mousy girl raced from the goal toward us. Her eyes were still wide, but now for an entirely different reason.

Coach Williams called an ambulance, and class was dismissed. Brad went with Seth to the hospital. I went straight back to the dorm. I couldn’t even imagine what Seth had gone through. Sure, I wanted to kick his ass, but I’m not a maniac. I wouldn’t have wished something like that on him.

I lied in my bunk, breathing heavily as that haunting CRUNCH rung in my ears. I was there for hours in the pitch black, wondering what Seth was going to do. Was he going to have to be in a wheelchair? Was he ever going to be able to walk again? Would he blame this all on me? Would dad blame this all on me? My chest was tightening and tightening, like a hand was clawing at it, when I heard a click at the door.

My face went white. It was probably Brad, returning from the hospital. Was he going to be mad as hell? Or was he going to want to kick my face in? Either way, it was going to be awful.

The door opened, revealing a dark silhouette. I knew it wasn’t Brad. It was too small, but there was no way it was Seth.

The silhouette flicked the lights on. It was Seth. Standing in the doorway. He looked completely serene. Like nothing had happened. But there was still that huge stain on his jeans where the blood had been. I lied, propped up in bed, staring at him with my mouth hanging open, just like Coach Williams’ had been on the field.

Seth stared back. “Hey Jason,” he said calmly. He walked into the room.

I felt the color in my face drain even more. I hopped out of bed. It was like seeing a ghost.

“Wha—what?” was all I could say.

At some point, Brad had stepped in from the hall, but I hadn’t noticed because I had been so overwhelmed by the sight of Seth.

They stood there, in the doorway, just looking at me.

“Wh—wh—” I stammered.

“You okay, man?” Seth asked, acting concerned. It was evident to me that he was just toying with me, but I was too bewildered to be bothered by it. “You look kinda sick.”

He stepped toward me, slowly, effortlessly.

Brad closed the door and locked it. He looked at me, shaking his head with scorn.

A nagging feeling in my stomach made me think I’d just found another rat. But this time, I was sure that I wasn’t going to have a chance to find another.

4: They Don't Fight Fair

2011-10-27T00:02:00.000-04:00

“Oh, Jason, Jason, Jason.” Seth made a clicking sound with his tongue as he continued moving toward me.

He looked like a ghost, and it wasn’t my imagination. It was that goddamn pasty skin of his.

Brad walked up from behind him, towering over me seemingly more than usual. They backed me against the window.

“NO! NO!” I insisted. I had to be having a nightmare, because what was happening was impossible. “Your leg?!”

Seth smiled. “What’s wrong with it?”

“I saw it! It ripped off and—”

“You really think I’d be here if my leg had ripped off?”

It felt like my head was going to explode. “No, but you can’t—”

“Look at him,” Brad interrupted, setting his hand on the window and leaning into me so that his nose was two inches from my face. I could feel his hot breath on my lips as he whispered, “He’s really cute when he’s scared.”

My heart raced. Not from the whole douchie Brad in my face thing. More from the whole Seth should still be in ER getting his leg set thing.

Seth got just as close as Brad so that we were all huddled against the window. My breath quickened and my heart sped up as claustrophobia started to kick in.

I glanced at Seth’s jeans. A huge bloodstain with streaks extended down to his shoes, which were covered in a mix of mud and blood. It was the only proof I had to convince myself that I hadn’t made the whole swinging leg bit up.

“Just let me play with him for a while,” Brad said.

His nose brushed across my ear. My head snapped up. He clenched his necklace and stared at me with his eager blue eyes. He bit his lip. It was evident that he wanted to do more than just rough me up.

“I think he’d like that,” Seth replied with a giddy smile, as if he wouldn’t mind a little show.

My fear was replaced with rage, but I kept it under control so that we didn’t have another P.E. experience.

“If you’re gonna to do something,” I said through clenched teeth. “Just do it.”

Seth’s lips tightened. He gave me a stern glare. He obviously wasn’t a fan of people challenging his authority.

“No, Jason,” he insisted. “You wouldn’t like that.”

We stared each other down.

He made a fist and took a quick step at me. My back arched, chest tensed, and fists clenched as my body went into defense mode.

Seth chuckled. He shook his head. False alarm.

“You’re not worth my shit,” he said. He whipped around and headed for the door.

My testosterone kicked in, and I went at him fists-first.

He turned back, holding his necklace. He stared into my eyes. He didn’t look even a little concerned about my attack. I was sure it was because he thought Brad was going to bail him out, but at the speed I was going, there was no way even Brad was going to be able to pull me off before I got a few good face shots in.

Seth’s brow was cocked, like he was challenging me to take my best shot.

I swung. It was going to be nice to knock him and that stupid brow to the floor.

Just as my fist was about to make contact with his pasty flesh, a powerful force pulled me from behind and threw me back. Not just a little throw. My body flew into the air and my back slammed into the window so hard that I was surprised I didn’t hear it crack. Not the window—my back.

Damn Brad’s quick, I thought.

But Brad was standing beside me, his arms folded, a snarky grin on his face.

Seth stood a few feet from me, like he was still waiting for me to make a move.

I looked around, trying to figure out how I’d ended up against the window. An odd realization hit me. I was taller than Brad and much taller than Seth. I looked to my feet. I was literally hovering over the half-dressers between our bunks.

I tried to take a step forward. My foot didn’t budge. It was like it was glued to the window.

My arms were stretched out, my wrists pressed against the glass just like my feet. I struggled to get one of my arms free. I pushed and pushed, but it was like I had a 700 pound weight tied to my wrist. I inched my hand forward till my muscles gave, and it flew back against the glass.

What the hell was going on?

I turned back to Seth, who had a knowing glare in his eyes.

Shit.

My entire sense of reality crumbled. I was right. Seth’s leg had fallen apart. I didn’t know how or why, but Seth had some sort of power. Maybe it was witchcraft, or superpowers, or tele-whatever, but he had something out of this world, and at that moment, he was using it against me.

Seth didn’t move, just watched me struggle.

A breeze wisped passed my face and pushed my head against the window. I could feel the back of my skull swelling. A force wrapped around my throat and tightened. I’d seen a special on the Discovery Channel where a boa constrictor wrapped around a bird’s neck and strangled it to death. It felt like I had a giant boa constrictor around my neck. My pulse pushed into my jaw. I tried to force a breath, but only managed to make a hissing sound.

“I know you’re new here,” Seth said patronizingly. “But I’m sure you’re a fast learner.”

I tried to look at him, but the boa-constrictor force was pushing my face up toward the ceiling.

“We own this school. And we don’t take crap from anyone. So if you mess with me or Brad, you’re dead. Got it?”

I was starting to see those little green and grey blobs—the ones that I used to see when I was little and held my breath with my friends to see who could do it the longest. My face felt like it was on fire. I wondered if it was all due to lack of oxygen, or if part of it was from sheer rage. Either way, I needed air. I needed it bad.

“I’m sorry,” Seth said. “I asked you a question. Do you understand?”

Here I was, powerless and desperate for air, and he was just rubbing it in. He loved watching me squirm. And that made me hate him.

“Brad, did you hear an answer in there?”

“Nope.”

Tears filled my eyes. It felt like my head was going to pop off, or my brain was going to squirt out my ear. I continued trying to breathe, but the closest I could get was a limp wheezing sound.

“You know, Jason, you really shouldn’t let your pride—”

KNOCK! KNOCK!

Seth and Brad turned to the door.

In an instant, all the force and power that I had been struggling so hard against dissolved and my body dropped. My knee and ankle hit the dresser, and I went rolling onto the floor.

I coughed a loud, obnoxious, dry cough. Not the kind of cough you do when you need to clear your throat. The kind you do when you’re lungs don’t know what the hell’s going on.

I took my first good breath of air. A wonderful sense of ease rippled through my body.

Seth stood by the door, his body tense. “Who is it?”

“Me,” came a little voice from the other side.

Seth relaxed. He opened the door.

As I forced more air into my confused lungs, the mousy girl from P.E. entered. She looked back and forth between Seth and Brad uneasily.

“What do you want?” Seth asked like the asshole he was.

“I—ah—I—” She struggled, like she’d forgotten what she’d come there for. “I just wanted to check in to make sure you were okay.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” He was being a real dick.

The mousy girl looked to the floor. In all the time that she’d stood there, she hadn’t looked at me once, despite the fact that I was making such a big, overdramatic scene with my breathing and feeling my knee and ankle to make sure they were okay. Rats, rats, rats. That’s all this school seemed to have were rats.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wanted to make sure.”

Seth took a breath and gave her a hug. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s just been a long day.”

She nodded. “Sorry,” she iterated. “I was just worried.”

Seth brushed his face through her hair. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” he said. It was like watching a Dad giving his little girl a hug after her first boo boo.

He pulled back, looked her in the eyes. “Thank you,” he said. It was the most sincere thing I’d heard come out of his mouth since I’d known him. Had everything else that had happened not left my stomach feeling unsettled, that would have made me want to gag.

She smiled one of those uncomfortable “I’m not really okay, but I know you want me to be, so I’ll just go with it” smiles. She still hadn’t looked over at me.

Seth gave her another hug and kissed her on the forehead. “You okay?”

She nodded, but it was clear in her eyes that she wasn’t, and the suspicious look in Seth’s eyes made me think that he wasn’t buying her nods and smiles either.

My eyes widened as I noticed a shiny gold-coin hanging from a necklace she was wearing. It was identical to the ones Brad and Seth wore!

“Okay,” Seth said. “Now, hurry back to the girl’s dorms. You don’t want to get caught sneaking around over here and tarnish your perfect angel record, now do you?”

Brad snickered, and Seth smiled broadly. It was like they had a little inside joke about it. I didn’t understand, but from P.E. to now, nothing had made any sense.

“ ‘Night,” she said. “ ‘Night, Brad.”

“Later.”

She turned back to the hall, flashing me a quick glance. Her green eyes shimmered in the fluorescent lights. She looked back to the hall and hurried off. Seth shut the door and locked it.

I was on my knees, looking up to see if they were going to continue abusing me with whatever power they had. I didn’t think I could take much more.

Seth sighed. He looked to Brad. “Well I’m beat.” He passed me by the bunk and climbed up to his bed.

Brad smiled at me. He stepped forward and bent down till his face was right in mine, just like it had been at the window. “So which eye you gonna keep open?” he asked, flashing his perfect teeth. He gave a little wink and patted me on the head.

A rush of heat spiraled up my spine to my face, but I didn’t dare make a move. I wasn’t going to be an idiot and get myself killed. Instead, I was determined to get to the bottom of all this, and when some of it even started to remotely make sense to me, Seth and Brad were going to pay.

Brad turned out the light. I crawled into bed. I didn’t sleep that night, but it was clear by Brad’s obnoxious snoring that it didn’t matter which eye I kept open.

My rational mind and my memory of being pressed up against that window warred throughout the night. I wanted there to be a logical explanation. There was no physical way that was possible. I tried to pretend that I’d just imagined the whole thing, but I knew better. Brad and Seth had some sort of power that had A) made Seth’s leg perfectly fine after Brad had crushed it under his weight, B) thrown me to the wall, and C) nearly choked me to death. Then there was the one other thought. The mousy girl. Who was she and what did she have to do with all this?

I was too rattled to sort through any of it for answers. One thing I knew. I was going to get these bastards, but it was going to take some time.

5: A Good Swim

2011-10-26T23:55:00.000-04:00

I wasn’t an idiot. I knew what was going to happen if I stuck a knife into an electric socket. But that wasn’t going to keep me from doing it.

“Have you heard about Seth?” I asked the brunette from P.E.

Evidently she was in my American Lit class too. I’d seen her as I’d walked into the class, sitting with one of her girlfriends in the back corner. They were dressed in those goddamn black uniform blazers that cover up girl’s chests. They made the brunette’s girlfriend, with a bowl cut and bizarrely large nostrils, look even more flat-chested than she probably already was. The brunette’s boobs were fine, even with the constraint. They pushed her blazer forward, making a nice curve. I’d been fortunate enough to have seen her in gym clothes the day before, strutting her girls, so I knew what they were capable of. But it was a shame that uniforms had to ruin perfectly wonderful breasts. And boobs weren’t the only thing uniforms ruined. I had to keep doing an awkward crotch pull-down whenever my slacks decided to ride up on me.

As I’d approached the brunette, I’d heard her giving her flat-chested girlfriend the scoop about what had gone down in P.E. the day before. I had wisely cut in. With all the gossipy circles the brunette must have been a part of, I was sure she knew Seth was okay, but she was the kind of girl that was open to any new perspectives on the latest, most exciting topic. Her on and on voice had come to a quick halt, and she’d turned right to me. Even under that blazer, I could tell her boobs were doing a nice little jiggle.

“No. What?!” she sped-asked, her big, brown eyes lit up with a false concern and a very real excitement.

She’d taken my bait.

Sucker.

“He’s fine. Evidently he’s double jointed or somethin’. Came back to the dorm last night.”

Her eyes dulled. She was incredibly disappointed by my lack of intel.

“But hey,” I said in my least cunning of ways. “You don’t happen to know that girl who was the goalie for Brad and Seth’s team, do ya?”

Her eyes lit up again. I’d seen that look before. It’s that look girls get when they think they have dirt on you. Claire, the counselor at St. Luke, used to get it all the time after every sentence I said.

“Why?” she asked in an eager, melodic voice. Something about the way she said it and that awkward gleam in her eyes made it clear that she thought I was trying to hook up with that girl. And that was fine by me. It was better for her to think that than know the truth.

I felt my pants riding up, but bit my lip. Now was not the time for an adjustment. “I dunno,” I played, acting like she’d caught me in my interest for the mousy goalie girl. “Just curious.”

She grinned. “Her name is Carrie Morgan. I could totally talk to her for you, if you wanted.” She was a pro at this game. She must have been trying for Class Matchmaker.

“No, no, no,” I insisted. If that got back to Brad and Seth, I was a dead man.

She was caught off guard by my insistence. By the look she gave me, I figured I might as well have reached down and made my adjustment.

“I mean…I would rather do this myself,” I said, covering up my motive.

She bought it. She straightened her neck. Her head and boobs gave nods of approval, as if they were pleased to see a guy who was willing to be bold.

“My name’s Megan, by the way.”

“Jason,” I replied, not really in the mood for introductions. I just wanted to get to my desk and wiggle my pants down.

She smiled. It was a radical transformation from the stone-cold glare she’d given me the day before when she’d caught me eavesdropping on her gossip about the Lawrenceville Slasher.

“Nice to meet you, Jason.”

So…the mousy girl’s name was Carrie Morgan. Why was this so important? Because I had a plan. I was going to get to the bottom of this whole Seth and Brad having superpowers thing, but I couldn’t just snoop around right after they’d kicked my butt. They’d know something was up. So I made the mousy girl my target. She knew what was going on, and maybe she could lead me to answers. What I was going to do with those answers was another subject altogether. At the least, I was going to find a way to keep Seth and Brad from being douches to me for the rest of the school year. At the most, I was going to kick their asses and make them pay. But I wasn’t going to be stupid about it.

Clearly by this point, my rational mind had lost the battle about what had happened the night before. I’d been up all night, tossing and turning, and trying to make sense of it. But I’d given up trying to pretend it was all some illusion or a figment of my imagination. I was crazy, but not like that.

****

The whispers about the Lawrenceville Slasher had died down, and St. Lawrence was starting to seem just like any other school. Everyone was trying to figure out who liked who, make it to class before the bell, and get an A in Trig (except those guys who’d settle for a C). I would have preferred if things had just stayed weird. At least then I knew there was a reason why Seth and Brad were freaks. Now it was starting to seem like they were the anomaly.

That afternoon, after P.E., I followed Carrie to her locker. I stalked the fountain across the hall. A few guys passed like they were about to get some water, but then noticed me, got very concerned looks on their faces, and moved right along. They must have thought it was odd how peculiarly close I was to the fountain without any interest in taking a drink. I was going to have to be less obvious.

Carrie wasn’t that much to look at. She was pretty plain. Her long hair covered the sides of her face, and her oversized blazer amplified her tiny figure. She organized her books in her backpack, and then headed off.

I tailed her to the school clinic. She went in and didn’t come out for a while. I figured she either had a debilitating disease, was doing an afterschool program, or had figured out I was following her and had gone there for safety. Although, I didn’t really think it was the last one. If I had, I woulda been outta there.

After about ten minutes, I realized I couldn’t just mosey around the hall till she came out. First off, she would recognize me and tell Seth and Brad. Second off, if a teacher saw me, they’d think I was up to no good (which was pretty much the truth). About two halls down was a door that led out to the main courtyard. Hoping it would be the one she would use when she left, I went out, found a corner that was concealed by two overgrown Leyland cypresses. Behind the cypresses, a flat bench made of concrete rested against the stone wall. I sat and pretended to do homework, while staying out of anyone’s view. All the work I was doing to avoid being caught made me feel like a detective.

It was two hours before Carrie came out. She looked over some papers as she made her way through the courtyard.

Damn! I thought.

She was a lot cuter than she’d been before she’d gone in. She’d tied her dirty blond hair in a ponytail, so now I could see her face. Her big green eyes were placed perfectly apart on either side of her mousy little nose. And her lips were longer than I’d noticed. She’d taken off her uniform and was wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt and jeans, both which accentuated her curves. She didn’t have much of a rack, but with hips like hers, she didn’t need it.

Uniforms are the devil!

I followed her to the girl’s dormitory, now that she looked so good, I felt less like a detective and more like a stalker.

I found another concealed bench in the much smaller courtyard outside the girl’s dormitory. I figured St. Lawrence must have a pretty high rape stat considering the multitude of hiding places and the lack of security.

Another two hours passed. And then another hour before I realized she probably wasn’t coming outta there. I went back to my room. Brad and Seth were off doing whatever, and I was asleep before they came back.

The weekend came and went, and then the next week I continued following Carrie. She went to the clinic every day. I found out from Megan that she volunteered there. Evidently Megan was going to be a lot more useful than I’d given her credit.

By the third day of stalking Carrie to the clinic and then to the girl’s dormitory, I realized that it just wasn’t working. Her two locales of interest were not going to help me figure out what she, Seth, and Brad were up to. And at that point, it wasn’t such a big deal. Even Brad and Seth were starting to normalize. They were too preoccupied with their own lives to have time to bother me, except Brad’s occasionally harassing me in P.E or saying something snarky when he first came into our room. I guess they figured I wasn’t going to mess with them after they’d shown me they were the boss. We didn’t talk, kept to ourselves, and stayed the hell away from our room as much as possible. We were just like normal roomies.

It was dark out by the time I’d decided to call it a night. I’d hidden behind some bushes after sunset. I knew if I got caught, I was going to look like some kinda rapist, but no one was out.

I pulled my phone out of my bag. It was 9:30—the latest I’d staked out to date and well passed curfew. Carrie wasn’t going anywhere this late. No one was. There weren’t even night watchmen or curfew-Nazi faculty members snooping around for rule breakers. That suddenly reawakened the oddness of St. Lawrence. Even at St. Luke’s, which was a step down from the prissiness of St. Lawrence, had high security when it came to keeping curfew. Why was no one checking to make sure everyone was staying in? And if no one really was checking, why the hell were the girls and guys not just walking back and forth between the dorms?

I wondered if it had something to do with the Lawrenceville Slasher. Maybe no one was dumb enough to go outside. No one but me, of course.

There was a chill in the air. Fortunately, I had my uniform blazer to keep me warm. I looked around to make sure no one would see, then hopped up from behind the bushes.

CLICK!

I ducked back down, peered through the bushes’ leaves.

A high lamp on the other side of the courtyard revealed the silhouette of a girl climbing out a window on the first floor. She jumped down onto the ground. Even with just her shadowy figure, I recognized that adorable little ponytail.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

She looked around uneasily, clinging to her necklace. She mumbled to herself.

A noise startled me from behind, made my heart race. My head instinctively jolted to it.

Holy shit.

A chipmunk scurried through a patch of ivy. What a letdown. I held my hand to my chest as I tried to regulate my heart rate back to normal.

I turned as quickly as I could back to Carrie. But she was already gone. My mouth hung open.
That was fast.

I rushed out from the bushes, looking every way. No sign of Carrie. But where could she have run off to that quickly?

It was weird, but it didn’t help me. I headed back to the boy’s dormitory and found the ‘secret entrance’. In case you’re wondering, it exists at every private school. It’s the common area that everyone uses to sneak in and out through. For the boy’s dormitory, it was a broken lock on a window to a storage room on the first floor. I’d been a little worried on account that I hadn’t seen anyone else sneaking around. But fortunately, some things never change.

****

Coach Williams blew the whistle, and a game of indoor volleyball began.

I had accidentally been on the wrong half of the huddle when Coach Williams had made the teams, so I’d ended up on Brad and Seth’s side of the net. Brad thought it’d be real funny to be an ass. He knocked into me and jammed his elbow into my shoulder every chance he got. The further I got from him, the more out of his way he went to slam into me. He was wearing his pit stain shirt and what looked like a pair of daisy duke sweat shorts. They probably would have looked normal sized on me, but for Brad they were tiny by no accident. He was strutting those cleverly sculpted, massive thigh muscles of his. God, I wanted to kick his ass.

Most of the other guys and girls were in shorts too. Me and Seth were the only ones wearing jeans. I didn’t know Seth’s logic, but I just liked wearing pants that weren’t those crotch hugging regulation slacks.

Megan was on the other team. Her assets gave me a little show while she jumped around the court. Every once in a while, she’d look over and smile at me like I was her new bff.

Carrie moved around a bit, trying to at least act like she cared. Other than Megan’s boobs, Carrie’s legs were the only other good part of the game. I thought it was funny that I had gone from not really giving a shit about her to steadily becoming more and more interested. Claire wouldn’t have liked it. She would have said it had something to do with following her. That I was making her more of an object than a person, or some psycho-bullshit like that. On second thought, when did I become such a creep?

While Brad harassed me and played a good game, he managed to send a few smiles and a not-so-subtle wink to this guy on the other team—Max, or Matt, or Mark. I didn’t really remember, but he was in a few of my other classes. He had short dark-brown hair and was athletic looking, but not as much as Brad. Max or whatever couldn’t help but smile back. I shivered. The thought that someone could actually like that douche was unbelievable.

As the game ensued, I not-so-cleverly evaded wherever I thought the ball was going to be, which kept Brad away, because he wanted to be in the middle of the game.

Megan got a good shot and hit the ball right over the net. It came at me. I was ready to give it a pop back over, and I figured I could get it pretty fast. Just as I was about to, I caught a glimpse of Brad’s massive body out of the corner of my eye. Next thing I knew, my nose felt like it was going to explode, and I fell on my back.

That asshole had elbowed me. My hands instinctively rushed to my face’s aid. Blood poured down my fingers.

Dammit.

I could feel the blood spewing out my nostrils.

The game stopped. Everyone surrounded me. By the look on Megan’s face, you woulda thought what had happened to Seth a few days earlier had just happened to me. Seth stood next to her, his lips curling upward, like he was holding back a very pleased grin. I wanted to give him a bloody nose.

Coach Williams hobbled over, his hands on his gorged waist, his eyes wincing.

Brad stepped before me, breathing hard. A thick mess of sweat rushed down his face. “Dude, are you okay? I’m sorry,” he mocked with a wink very different from the one he’d given Matt or whoever.

“It’s alright,” Coach Williams insisted. “These things happen.”

Yeah, I thought, Whenever Brad’s around.

“West, come on. Bradley! Watch the hell where you’re going!”

Coach Williams took me to his office. He left me there and went back to the gym to finish up class. It took at least thirty minutes and two boxes of tissues before the bleeding started to slow down. When Coach Williams came back, he looked at me through his still winced eyes. I wondered if his eyes had ended up that way from being in the sun so much and having to wince to see what was happening on the field. If so, I was going to start wearing sunglasses more often.

“Yep, you and Seth need to watch out for the big kids like Bradley,” he said in a gruff, bark-of-a-voice.

For so many other reasons than you know.

“Now, I’m gonna go ahead and get to soccer practice. You get showered up and head outta here when you’re done.”

Class had been over for a while, so I was the only one in the showers, or the gym for that matter. Two fluorescent lights were out, and one was starting to flicker. My solitary stream of water clapped against the tile floor. I’d never noticed how eerily quiet and dark the showers were till then.

I’d been in the shower for about three minutes, and the water was still cold. Normally I woulda been pissed that it wasn’t warming up. Not today. The chill rush across my back and down my legs was nice. I moved my head in circles, letting the water massage each part of my face.

From my nose out to my cheeks, I felt sore.

Asshole, I thought.

As if having awesome powers wasn’t enough, Brad and Seth had to be regular bullies too. I fantasized about how nice it was going to be to get back at them, but I knew that was all it was…a fantasy. Stalking Carrie around school wasn’t getting me anything except maybe a little crush. It would be easier to get Dad to transfer me to another school. But that was a joke. There was no way he was going to transfer me just cause I didn’t like it here, or even because I wasn’t getting along with some of the guys. And there wasn’t a chance in hell I was going to tell him what was really going on. Yeah, then I’d be transferred. Straight to the asylum in Milledgeville.

CLICK!

A distinct noise came from the locker room. It startled me, but I figured the guy in charge of the lights and the guy in charge of maintenance were one and the same, so there were probably a lot of creaks in the building.

Disregarding it, I rubbed some soap on my face, scrubbing it in good to make sure to get off all the blood. A quick pain tore into my eye, like a wasp sting right in the corner.

“Fuck!”

I dropped the soap and pressed the back of my hand against my eyelid. It burned like hell. I put my eye in the path of the water, trying to rinse the soap out, but I must’ve gotten a lot in, cause the burning was too intense for me to open it.

SLAM!

I jumped out of the shower, turned to the door.

It sounded like someone had slammed a locker shut. But wasn’t I the only one there?

The janitor, I thought. Or maybe Coach Williams had come back for something. Of course, my real worry was that it was Brad wanting another round. I couldn’t continue my shower without a quick investigation.

With my eye sealed shut, a nagging stinging sensation covering my face and now also in my eye, I threw on my jeans, and headed out the door, into the locker room.

The lingering cold water from my chill shower amplified the already freezing air.

Who the hell turned the air down?

My hairs stood on end. The cement floor was like ice. It was weird how cold it was, but I was more concerned about someone being in there with me, especially if that someone was Seth or Brad. I looked around. No one.

Out of the peripheral of my working eye, I caught a shadow. I turned, hoping to catch whoever or whatever it was. Nothing but a closed door that led to the restroom.

I walked through the locker room, my teeth chattering. I went in the restroom and checked the stalls to see if anyone was hiding in them. They were empty. By that time, I figured it was nothing. I was about to head back to the showers, but gave myself a quick check in the mirror.

Water dripped from my wet, black hair. My hair was normally dark-brown, but it always looked black when it was wet. I brushed my hand through it. One of those vain moves that I do whenever I pass a mirror, just to get it moving to the direction I like.

The dripping water moved down my forehead, through my bushy eyebrows, which were just as dark as my hair. It scattered down my round, baby-face. I envied guys like Brad who had nice, sharp edges. They looked so intense, where I still looked like a kid.

Standing in just my jeans, all wet and shiny, I felt sorta like one of those jean models that you see on posters. Well, not a real one obviously. I was no muscle-bound Brad, but I liked my body. Contrary to my face, my pecks were squared off with sharp edges. My biceps were arched with clear lines dividing them from my triceps and the rest of my arm. I guess I was naturally muscular, cause I sure as hell didn’t do anything to get them. Unless opening doors and getting dressed counted as exercise.

I had a flat stomach with smooth lines indicating where my abs were. I figured if I had done some sit-ups, I would have had a six pack easy, but that wasn’t going to happen. A spread of black hair covered my chest and stomach. Wasn’t much. And it added to the whole me feeling like a kid thing, cause it made me look like I was still going through puberty.

My nipples were hard from the chill air. As I breathed, my square pecks pushed out and my flat stomach pulled in. The top of my jeans were soaked from having collected all the water that was dripping down my body.

I started to head back into the showers, but stopped.

A faint jingling sound had caught my attention. Like rattling metal. I looked around uneasily. It was softer than the sounds before, and as I tried to trace where it was coming from, it stopped.

I’d checked everywhere else, so the pool was the only other option. I went to the door leading out of the restrooms, swung it open slightly, and peered down the angled hall. Outside the hall, daylight shone through large windows under the ceiling, lighting up the pool. There was something very reassuring about the sunlight.

“Coach Williams?!” I called out.

I waited. No answer.

As I took a breath, I saw the misty air leaving my mouth. I’d known it was cold, but not that cold.

I walked out to the pool, cautiously scanning the scene. I could just imagine Seth and Brad popping out from around the corner and kicking my ass.

No one was around the pool, but an uneasiness lingered in my chest.

I’m getting the hell out of here, I thought.I turned to make a quick run back to the showers for my clothes.

A black mass came at me and slammed into my face. I dropped to the floor.

By the intensity of the blow, I knew it had to be Brad. He must have been hiding in the locker rooms. Before I had a chance to get a look at him, my legs were pulled into the air and something gripped around my ankle.

Next, I was being dragged across the floor. I felt the cement tear into my back as I was forced across it.

“FUCK!” I screamed.

I grabbed around for something to hold onto when—

SPLASH!I was pulled right into the pool. It wasn’t that cold, considering how freezing my shower and the locker room had been. But it was still a hell of a shock.

Fuckin’ asshole!

I was going to kill Brad for this.

As I was being forced through the water, I paddled hard to keep my head from going under.

The grip on my leg loosened, and my body came to a halt. I whipped my head around.

My attacker was at the edge of the pool, in a black cloak with a hood—the classic Death look that all the killers in the movies do. I figured it was a lame-ass costume, but one of the only ones someone as big as Brad could fit into.

He knelt by one of the ladders on the side of the pool. A long chain was coiled around his shoulder. The end of it hung down into the water. My eyes flashed to my ankle, which I realized was wrapped in the same chain.

“Shit,” I said. This was a lot more serious than bullying. Brad was crazy!

He hopped to his feet and yanked the chain with a force that ripped me underwater. I went flying to the edge of the pool. I’d gone fishing a few times when I was little, and for the first time I knew what it felt like to be the fish being torn to shore.

My shoulder slammed against the ladder.

I hopped into action, grabbing onto the ladder rings and racing up. As my head came above the water, I took a deep breath of air. My eyes struggled to adjust. One was still burning from soap, and the other was now filled with pool chemicals.

I felt the curve of the top of the ladder and had a moment of relief, when a hand grabbed me by the hair.

Brad pushed me back down, slamming my forehead into a ring on the way under. I could feel my head starting to swell instantly. I was sure my entire face was going to be in severe pain by the end of the day.

He held me underwater. I struggled uselessly as hundreds of bubbles shot out my nose. A dark shadow flashed by, then the chain went passed my face and behind my ear. The chain slipped down and tightened around my throat. Brad’s hand pulled my hair till my head was back against the side of the ladder. I could feel the chain tightening.

Brad was tying my neck to the ladder!

I’m gonna drown!

My mind raced nearly as fast as my heart. I wondered what it was going to be like for Dad to be told that I’d been murdered at the school he’d shipped me off to. I hoped he’d feel like shit and wished that he’d spent more time with me. I hoped that he’d give a damn, but I doubted it. Then I wondered why Brad was trying to kill me. Didn’t take me long to figure that one out. They must have known that I was following Carrie around afterschool. Fuck me and my awful snooping. That bitch had probably seen me and told them. That’s why they’d been such asses in P.E. Damn her for telling them. And damn Brad for killing me!

After having this moment of reflection, all the while flailing about desperately, I stopped struggling. My chest tightened as my body demanded air. I felt like my head was being inflated. I didn’t have much time before I went unconscious. I rest my head against the ladder. Was this really going to be how I was going to die?

6: I'll Kill You

2011-10-25T23:59:00.000-04:00

The taut, rusty chain pressed my neck against the side of the ladder. I needed air, but that wasn’t in my foreseeable future. I could feel blood rushing to my head. I thought if it didn’t stop, the back of my skull was going to blow off.

The chain ran from around the ladder, up through the surface of the water, to a blurred image of the black cloaked Brad. He stood on the deck. From what I could make out, he had the chain wrapped around his forearm, tugging to keep it tight around my neck.

It was one of those thick chains that you see Rottweilers and Doberman pinchers tied up with, so breaking it wasn’t an option. I had an idea, but the odds of it working against someone Brad’s size seemed slim.

The tight chain hung just over my head. I braced my legs against the wall, grabbed onto the chain with both hands, and yanked at it with everything I had (which by this point, wasn’t much). The black cloaked asshole held strong. My neck was still locked against the side of the ladder, but the yank had given me a little slack.

I pulled even harder. My biceps tensed, pulsated. I dug my legs into the wall. My thighs tightened. Every muscle in my body was either stiff or twitching. It reminded me of a few weeks in P.E. back at St. Luke when we’d done weight training. Everyone had to lift a certain amount and do X number of reps for their weight class, and then we were graded for it. It had been three weeks of moaning and making odd grunting sounds as we struggled to contort our muscles to get those barbells just a little higher. I remembered how tense and stiff my muscles had been mid-lifting, and it felt the same now. Though the real familiarity was my throbbing skull and clenched jaw. The only difference was that, in P.E. if I couldn’t lift the weight, I got a C. If I couldn’t this time, I was dead.

I inched Brad closer and closer to the edge of the pool. It was a tug-o-war for my life, and I wasn’t going to lose. I felt the chain around my neck loosen, but I kept pulling at it and pressing my legs harder into the wall, knowing that I may only have one shot.

The chain loosened some more. I kept one hand firmly on the chain and used the other to try and maneuver the chain up my neck and head. It was a tight squeeze. The rusty links scraped across my cheeks and tore at my ears and scalp, but I was in so much pain by this point that the sting didn’t feel nearly as bad as I thought it should. I pulled the last bit over my head.

I was free!

I kicked off the wall and went shooting out of the water, taking an enormous, well-deserved breath. It still felt like the chain was around my neck, restricting my breathing. But I had enough air to keep me from passing out.

I reveled in my victory. It was amazing to be above water again—something that for a little while I thought might never happen again.

A tug on my ankle reminded me that the other part of the chain was still tied to it. Back under I went. I was ripped back to the edge of the pool. I wasn’t worried anymore, though. Just mad as hell. Brad had had the upper hand before because he had caught me off guard. Now it was his rage vs. mine. And I knew that mine was going to win.

He reached his hand down to grab me by the hair. I caught hold of his arm and kicked off the wall. He fell in.

While he flailed about, I swam to the edge of the pool and pulled myself out. I scrambled on my belly across the cement and took some quick, frenzied breaths. My body was doing its best to compensate for the lost oxygen. My muscles and nerves were either stinging or throbbing or both, but I was so happy to be outta that pool that I didn’t care.

I was facing the wall. Loud splashing sounds were the only thing letting me know that Brad was still struggling in the water. Heat rushed to my face. Not the loss-of-oxygen heat that I was dealing with before. More like uninhibited rage coming over me.

I’m gonna kill him.

I was about to get up and prepare for the fight of my life, when a loud, roaring—

“ROW! ROW!”

—filled the air. It sounded like an animal. Not something like a rabbit or a squirrel. More like a lion. On second thought, it was probably more like a t-rex.

I turned back to the pool.

A mangled, skeleton-thin hand reached out of the water. It was covered in wrinkled, grey flesh and had yellow fingernails nearly the size of the finger. And on the flesh—if that’s what you could call it—were these brown and green blisters that made the hand look like it was covered in colored golf balls.

What the hell?

The hand sprung forward, grabbed hold of my jeans, and pulled. My eyes widened in horror as I realized this wasn’t Brad—it wasn’t even human.

It pulled at my jeans again. The strength of the pull was so strong it yanked me back towards the pool.

Oh no. Not again!

I kicked the contorted hand off my foot. Goosebumps crawled up my back. It was like that feeling I got walking into spiderwebs—like I had to rub my hands all over my body to make sure I got it all off.

I scooted back till I was against the wall. My hands tried to keep sliding back.

In the pool, the black cloak floated to the surface of the water. Another hand, just as disgusting as the first, reached out and grabbed onto the side of the pool. My mind went berserks. First Brad and Seth had superpowers, and now there was this…this monster. A part of my mind told me this was impossible. It was the same part of my mind that had tried to convince me that the idea of Seth and Brad having superpowers was ridiculous. Another part of my mind told me to get the hell out of there. I knew which one I was going to listen to.

I hopped to my feet and raced to the gym doors. As I pushed them open, I turned back and saw the black cloaked creature halfway out of the pool, clawing at the cement floor as it pulled the rest of its body out.

I was outta there.

My mind raced in a million directions, but there was only one thing I could think to do. I didn’t know what this creature wanted, or what it was capable of. But whatever it was, it had something to do with Brad and Seth. And Carrie Morgan was going to help me whether she liked it or not.

I hid behind the Leyland cypresses in the courtyard, waiting for Carrie to leave the clinic. I’d had a hard time getting there. I was still in nothing but jeans, which was practically nude at a uniform-regulated private school. I’d crept through halls, hid in stairways, restrooms, corners, and empty classrooms till I made it. The school was pretty dead, but it was early enough that there was still the occasional teacher or student running an errand. I blushed at the idea of someone finding me. That’d give me a great rep. Though, to be honest, the only thing that really worried me at this point was that that black cloaked creature would come back after me…and next time, it’d be real pissed.

I’d thought about going back to the boy’s dormitory for clothes, but that was a joke. First off, this time of day, it was going to be packed with guys going in and out, and as much as I wanted to be humiliated by every guy in my class, I decided to pass. Second off, if Seth and Brad had been responsible for that creature attacking me (which I was sure they were), then I wasn’t just going to walk into our room armed with nothing more than a wink and “Howdy.”

My teeth chattered. It was just as cold out there as it had been in the locker room, and being drenched in pool water didn’t help. It made me mad, cause every other day I’d followed Carrie had been fine.

This sucks, I thought for so many reasons other than the chill.

Three guys headed through the courtyard, laughing their asses off and giving each other knuckle-knocks and high-fives. They were oblivious to the fact that there was an 8ft monster recovering in the gym, probably still hungry since it hadn’t managed to feed on me.

I waited in the cold for thirty minutes. The only thing I could think about was that monster—how sure I’d been that it’d been Brad, its hideous wrinkled hands, and that deep, roar-of-a-sound.

The door swung open and out walked Carrie with her hair in that cute little ponytail. She was taking small, relaxed steps as she went about her normal routine. I was sure that she knew what Brad and Seth had done to me, so it pissed me off watching her be all la-dee-da.

She wasn’t looking over papers like usual. Instead, she was looking straight ahead, without a care in the world. She was as oblivious of me as I had been to the creature in the locker room.

I gave a quick check to make sure no one was coming, then sprang from my hiding place. I hadn’t realized how far away she was, but it felt like I was running toward her for a while before I got to her. I went up behind her, wrapped my arm around, and covered her mouth with my hand. I used my other arm to restrain her. She tried to scream, but didn’t manage much more than a muffled whimper out of that mousy mouth of hers. She struggled as much as she could, but it was like fighting an eight-year-old. I picked her up and carted her over to my little corner, checking around frantically to make sure no one had caught me in the act. Not a soul in sight.

Damn, is it this easy to be a rapist? I wondered.

I sat on the cement bench behind the cypresses and forced her down beside me. I pressed my mouth against her ear and whispered in my most guttural voice “Okay, bitch. You better tell me what the fuck is going on.”

Her hand reached up for her gold coin necklace. I don’t know why, but my instincts kicked in, and I ripped it right off. I threw it in the bushes. She tried to scream through her nose, but it was just as mousy as the first one she’d attempted.

“Shut up!” My tone was severe, but my voice was low. I couldn’t have someone hear my anger and come running to Carrie’s aid.

She whimpered and made a whiny sound. By the way she was fussing, you would have thought I was actually going to rape her. Then again, she didn’t know any better.

I had her, but I didn’t know what the hell I was going to do now. I needed to get her to tell me what the fuck was going on, but it wasn’t like I could just release her mouth and let her scream to the whole school. There wasn’t anyone in sight, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t some overworked faculty member moseying around, hunting for trouble. That woulda been real good. I wondered how much time you did for assault and attempted rape.

She breathed uneasily through her mousy nose. I hadn’t figured what I was going to do when I actually got her. I had to get her somewhere we could talk. A quick solution sprang to mind.

“Hey!” I said, commanding her attention. “Is there anyone in the clinic right now?”She tilted her head back to see me. Her big green eyes were red and teary. It made me feel bad for a moment, but I tried to shut out my emotions just as I had shut out my logic.

She shook her head “no”.

“Do you have keys?”

She hesitated, like she was running through her women’s self defense class to figure out what she was supposed to say. She was a shitty liar because she hadn’t given an answer, but I knew she had them.

Sweat dripped from my nose onto her forehead. I hadn’t realized, but keeping her still was a little bit of a workout. Either that, or I was just really overworked.

“Okay,” I whispered. “You are going to fucking take me in there right now. And if you do anything to get anyone’s attention, or to get away, I swear to fucking God I’ll kill you. I swear to God. Understand?”

She didn’t think this time, just nodded. A tear ran down her cheek. Though it might have been another drop of my sweat. I couldn’t tell and wasn’t paying that much attention.

“Where are the keys?”

She bobbed her head back. I hadn’t noticed till then, but her backpack was crammed against my stomach.

I clutched her face tight against my chest while I used my other hand to ransack the side and front pockets. I found a keychain with about seven or eight keys. Dangling off the end of it was a little metal square with a sticker of cartoon kittens on it. It made me feel a little bad about how aggressive I was being. But I didn’t have time to be nice.

I peered through the cypresses. The courtyard was empty.

I forced Carrie back on her feet and through the cypresses. She wasn’t struggling anymore. I figured she’d given up, and that was a smart move. I wasn’t kidding about killing her. If she got me in trouble, I was going to snap that mousy neck of hers in a second.

The school door was locked, but it wasn’t a problem. Evidently Carrie had a key to it too. I made her show me which one it was, and we went in. Carrie’s luck must have been worse than mine, because there was no one around to protect her from me, and we were inside the clinic in no time.

I flipped a switch and the fluorescent lights popped on. They were bright, and flooded every corner of the peroxide scented room.

I closed and locked the door. Carrie panted under my hand.

There was a desk covered with paperwork. I grabbed a pen out of a cup filled with them. I clenched it like a knife and put the end against her neck.

“I’m gonna take my hand off your mouth,” I said, talking a little louder now that we were in a more private place. “If you make a sound—I am not shitting you—I’ll stab this pen into your throat. Got it?”
She nodded.

I lowered my hand slowly, giving her a big enough gap that she could scream if she wanted, but keeping my hand close enough that I could easily put it back over if I needed to. She didn’t utter a sound.

I pushed her against the wall, flipped her over so that she was facing me, and pressed the pen against her throat. I pushed it in close. I wanted her to know that if she did anything, I wasn’t afraid to cut her open.

She took my not making a sound rule seriously, because she was even breathing quietly.

Her face was pale white, expect for a big, severely red hand-mark that stretched across her mouth. I felt kinda bad about it. She looked into my eyes, like she was trying to figure out what I was going to do to her. It wasn’t the same as the look Claire used to give me in sessions. Claire always had that look like she was trying to dissect what I was thinking. I didn’t like it. But there was something very frightened in Carrie’s eyes. I never saw that in Claire’s. Carrie was fragile. She was so small, and she looked so scared. I couldn’t help but pull the pen back a bit.

I took a few breaths to calm myself. “Carrie,” I said. “You ready to tell me what the fuck is going on around here?”

7: The League

2011-10-24T23:59:00.000-04:00

Carrie's green eyes were locked on mine. The combination of the fluorescent lights and me being right in her face revealed a shimmer of blue in them. They reminded me of marbles. I was pissed at her for looking so damn cute. She hadn’t said a word, but I felt like she was trying to use her adorable ponytail and form-fitting green tee to make me let my guard down.

The intensity of the hand mark on her face against her usual milk-white flesh made me realize how rough I’d been with her. Her chest pushed in and out as she took quick, uneasy breaths through her long lips. She didn’t move, didn’t speak. I figured she was still in shock from me kidnapping her and forcing her into the clinic. But as much as I wanted to find some compassion for her, I couldn't forget the fact that she had something to do with why that monster had attacked me at the pool.

I pressed the end of the pen back against her neck. If she had powers like Seth, she might take the opportunity to pin my ass against the wall, and I wanted her to know the moment she tried something, I'd tear into her. As cute and innocent as she looked, that wasn't going to keep me from ripping her in two. That whole not beating up girls rule goes to shit when you start getting attacked by monsters.

"Listen bitch," I hissed through clenched teeth.

She gulped.

"I don't know what you guys' game is, but I was just attacked by a fucking skeleton Grim Reaper with a chain fetish, so you'd better talk. Cause if you don't, I'll make you!"

Fear flashed in her eyes. They grew as wide as they'd been when I'd come at her with the soccer ball the week before. "The slasher," she whispered so softly I almost missed it.

I hadn't made the connection till then, but once she said that, I realized that the monster was the Lawrenceville Slasher everyone had been talking about since I’d arrived at St. Lawrence. What I had assumed was just another psycho serial killer was actually that…whatever. And these crazies were sicking it on anyone who bothered them.

"You assholes tried to kill me!" I exclaimed.

"No, no," Carrie insisted. Her normal voice was nearly as quiet as her whisper.

"What...the hell...is going on?" I forced out. I was nauseous with confusion, and she still wasn’t giving me answers. What was wrong with this fucked up school? Why the hell did Brad and Seth have powers? Why was there a big monster in the pool? When did I start living in a world where things like that happened? And when was Carrie going to tell me something that made some sense? My mind raced in every direction. The confusion fueled my rage.

Carrie's eyes wandered. Not like she was trying to avoid looking at me. More like she was trying to make sense of something. "We...I..." she stammered, struggling for words. "It was an accident."

An accident my ass!

"Don't bullshit me! Brad made my nose bleed. He knew that I'd have to stay late. He knew I'd be in the showers. He and Seth set me up so that they could get that thing to go after me."

"No. They can't," she insisted.

"If you have a better explanation, I'd love to hear it." My words were filled with the kinda sarcasm that woulda made me want to punch someone's lights out if they used it on me.

"It's not us. I mean, it is, but..." She seemed confused. I didn't know if it was real or an act, but if she actually was, I knew that she was nowhere near as confused as I was. "...it's not something we can control, we just...we—" She stopped, looked me directly in the eyes. "I'll explain. Please just let me sit down."

To say I was reluctant is an understatement. Was she trying to get away? And if she succeeded, would she go back and get Seth and that creature and bring them back here to get me?

"Sorry," I said with no sincerity. "Not happening."

Her confusion morphed into irritation. She took a breath and pouted through her mouse-nose. Her long lips tightened. "Listen," she said, straining to make her voice louder than usual. "I'm not against you. I just need to think."

"You're not against me?" Her words were convincing, but the facts didn't add up. "Are you saying you aren't in on this with Seth?"

She rolled her eyes. Her roll was just as mousy as her nose, her hands, and her voice. "You're asking the wrong questions."

I was pretty straightforward, and now was not the time for her to be telling me that I was wrong about anything. If she'd seen what I'd done to Dax back at St. Luke, it would have been easier for her to understand why she should be a little more careful with her words.

"I don't give a fuck about the right questions. You know what I want to know, so talk!"

She eyed me with contempt. Since I'd been following her and seen her in classes, I'd never seen her make an expression like that. Usually she was focused on a task, like when she read papers, or uneasy, like when she was goalie in soccer or avoiding the ball in volleyball. Then of course, there was fear and terror I'd seen when I'd first captured her. This anger was new to me. I didn't like it. I kinda wished I could knock some of that fear back into her so she'd get on with it.

She took a breath, as if to calm herself. She looked to the floor and shook her head. "Seth couldn't have sent it after you."

I stared her down impatiently, awaiting some other explanation.

She locked eyes with me again. "We're not as strong as you think we are."

"Who you kidding? I saw what happened to Seth. His leg was mangled. And then he came back to the dorms and lifted me right off the floor and threw me against the wall. And then he had something—or I don't know—he strangled me."

"Seth didn't fix his leg."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "Then what happened?"

"I did."

She did have powers!

By then, I’d backed the pen off from her neck a bit. I hurriedly pressed it back against her skin, my arm muscles stiff and ready to lunge forward.

My quick spring to action took Carrie off guard. She jumped back against the wall. Her body tensed up, and her hands shook at her side. She held her breath as she watched me with terror-filled eyes. She was just waiting for me to make the first cut.

I watched her carefully. She couldn’t tell, but I was just as scared that she was going to pull some of her powers-shit out and have me crawling across the ceiling. We stared into each other’s eyes, each of us waiting for the other to make a move.

As she realized I wasn’t going to cut her open, she started to breathe again, but slowly, as if she was trying to keep from making any movements that might provoke me. And that was very smart.

“I’m…not…going to do anything,” she drew out, in an extra soft voice.

“I’ve seen what you guys can do.”

"What Seth did back at the dorms was a show to scare you. He and Brad started working on it at the hospital. It took them hours to do a trick that probably lasted two minutes. If they had the kind of power you're talking about, you woulda been in a lot more trouble. It was a lot worse in your head than—"

"Worse in my head? I was floating, for Christ's sakes!"

She tensed up even more, fearing that in my outburst I'd accidentally cut her.

“I promise…” she said, almost like she was pleading. “…I can’t do anything right now.”

“Why should I believe you?”

She looked at me with sincere eyes. A part of me knew that was answer enough, but I didn’t know if it was a part I could trust. “You don’t have to,” she said. “But it’s not like you think." There was a certain confidence in her voice. She was starting to get used to having that pen at her throat. "What we do isn’t much. And none of it has to do with the Slasher."

"None of it?" Pardon me for being a skeptic.

She tapped her front teeth together. "Okay, it has something to do with it, but not the way you think."

“So…what’s…the…deal?” I said, emphasizing each word so that it was clear that now was her chance to clear things up.

I pulled the pen back just far enough to give her some room, but close enough that to get a good attack in if I needed to. I woulda thought she’d relax after I let up, but she didn’t. She anxiously stroked her hand against her arm and gazed at the floor. It reminded me of an expression I'd made when I'd drawn a picture of a shark on my desk in the fourth grade. My teacher at the time, Ms. Greene, had been pissed. She'd badgered me till I explained why I'd done it. Like me in the fourth grade, Carrie didn't want to talk about it, but I was the belligerent teacher who wasn't going to back down till she spilled the beans. Hopefully, her answer would be a little better than, "cause I like sharks."

"We call ourselves the League…" she began.

8: Carrie Spills Her Guts

2011-10-23T23:59:00.000-04:00

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"We didn't make it up," she insisted, like she wasn't a fan of the name. "There were people before us."

My anger relaxed. A calm reassurance swept over me. I was finally going to find out what some of these rats were about. As reassuring as that was, it couldn’t ease the throbbing in my head, the sting across my back, the swelling of my nose, and the pain that seemed to be....well, everywhere.

I waited for her to continue, but she hesitated, looked me over. I followed her gaze to see what she was so distracted by.

Goddammit!

I still wasn't wearing a shirt.

I blushed, stepped back. I didn't feel just shirtless. I felt naked. There I was, more confused than I'd ever been in my life, still shaking from having been attacked by a giant monster in the pool, practically begging her to help me, and I didn’t even have a goddamn shirt on. I must have looked so stupid. I had that primal urge to run, but I wasn't going to let Carrie know how self conscious I felt. I sucked it up. That's what Dad woulda told me to do. Bastard.

I swallowed a thick lump of saliva. It felt like a golf ball trying to force its way down.

Carrie's cheeks were nearly as red as the hand mark around her mouth. At least I wasn't alone.

She pulled her gaze away from my chest, back to my face.

"They—um—" she began.

We exchanged awkward looks—the ones where you try to act like your fine even though you’re wildly uncomfortable. I gave her a fake "I don't give a shit" look. But if mine was as bad as her "I was just looking around and didn't notice anything" look, then she knew exactly how uncomfortable I felt.

"The League..." she said, struggling to remember what she'd been talking about. "...discovered a hole between our world and another one." Her eyes wandered above my neck. It was clear that she was still affected. And I’ll admit that there was a small moment where I wondered whether or not she’d liked what she’d seen.

"This hole tears right through Lawrenceville,” she continued. “They called it the Rift. The League discovered this very potent, tangible energy that seeped out of it. And they found a way to control it.”

“It’s like it spits out electricity?”

It’d never been very easy for me to follow abstract ideas. I needed to relate it to something that made some sense to me. And electricity was the closest thing I’d been able to come up with.

“It’s not electricity,” she insisted.

“Yeah, I get that.”

How stupid does this girl think I am?

“Just go with me on this,” I said. “So this…rift…spits out a sort of electricity, and you guys plug into it?”

Carrie’s tiny nose was all cringed up as she struggled through my analogy. “Sort of…” she said, as if it made some sense to her, but she didn’t want to go with it.

“And that’s where your powers come from?”

“Yes.”

“So you guys are like toasters.”

Carrie’s face was even more contorted, like she’d smelled something awful. She must’ve thought I was way out in left field.

“In order to use your powers,” I explained, “you have to plug into this Rift thing. So it’s like a socket, and you guys have to plug into it in order to work. Like a toaster.”

“No,” she said. “A toaster just plugs in and you can use it whenever you want. We can’t just plug in whenever. Like with what Seth and Brad did with you. They had to work on that for hours to build up their strength. We’re more like…like batteries. We have to recharge.”

“Okay, okay,” I said. We were on a roll. “So what does that have to do with that..." Images of skeleton-thin hands covered in wrinkles and blisters jumbled in my head so that I couldn’t find words to describe it.

"The Rift fluctuates.”

Fluctuates? What is this, the news?

“Sometimes it expands quickly, and something big can get through. That's what happened with the Slasher.”

I tried to make it fit into my electricity example. It kinda fell apart there.

“So what is it?” I asked.

“An animal from that other world, but it just does what it wants. We can’t control it,” she said, defending my initial accusation that Seth had somehow sicked it on me.

“A horse can be trained,” I insisted. It was too coincidental. I eyed her suspiciously. "So you’re saying you guys have nothing to do with it?"

She looked to the floor, stroked her arm again. Guilty!

Her lips did a freaky little jiggle, like she was calculating her next sentence.

CLICK! CLICK!

A cold rush crawled up my spine, and I wasn’t positive, but I was pretty sure my heart had stopped. I turned my head so quick I thought it was gonna do a 180.

The silver handle on the door shook.

Oh…shit!

Scenes involving that black cloak, the wrinkled hands, and blood spewing from every part of my body filled my head. I was lucky to have gotten away from it the first time. Now I was cornered in this little room, with nowhere to go.

The handle turned. I don’t know what the hell I was thinking, but I jumped in front of Carrie. It was bullshit of me to think I’d be able to protect her from that monster.

The door burst open.

A tiny, chubby woman with ear-length brownish-reddish hair and freckles stood in the doorway. Thick, wrinkled flesh drooped off her jaw and jiggled as she did a double take. She looked at me with wide-eyes—bigger than Carrie’s had been in soccer, but just a little smaller than those kids with the anime-eyes on the St. Lawrence brochure.

I’m sure I had the same look of shock on my face. Minus the nasty double chin.

Her head did a little dance side to side, the chin dancing a little more than the rest of her face. Her eyes shifted from me. I didn’t think it was possible, but they widened even more. Now they looked like the kids from the brochure!

“Carrie?!” she exclaimed.

Carrie stepped up beside me. She moved her mouth, as if to start speaking, but nothing came out. I figured that was a version of stuttering for someone with such a little voice.

She looked to me, then back at the woman in the doorway. She was gonna have to think real quick to explain the shirtless guy next to her.

The woman’s bewilderment transformed to strong disapproval. She set her hand on her hip and glanced back and forth between me and Carrie, giving us the kinda look nuns give you when you look at someone of the opposite sex—like they know what you’re thinking and are gonna get you for it.

“Ms. Ryder,” Carrie said, shaking herself. “You scared me. Could you help us here?”

Just as quickly as this Ms. Ryder person’s expression had gone from bewilderment to disapproval, it flashed from disapproval to concern. “What is it?” she asked in a thick, twangy accent. “He okay? What’s wrong?”

“He fell on his back in the courtyard,” Carrie said. “Luckily, I was heading back to the dorms just after it happened.”

Clever.

Carrie must’ve seen the cuts on my back from when the Slasher had dragged me across the cement floor by the pool and decided to use it to her advantage.

Ms. Ryder hurried over to me. The door closed behind her.

“Good thing I forgot my medicine. Come on, boy. Turn aroun’. Lemme see,” she insisted. By the way she said it, you woulda thought I was trying to hide it from her.

I turned around.

“I’ll get some rubbing alcohol for it,” Carrie said. She rushed passed me. I felt Ms. Ryder’s warm hands on my shoulders.

There goes my personal space.

She felt around my back. I guessed to see how deep the cuts were. Either that or she was a perv.

Carrie went to a beige wall cabinet on the other side of the room, beside a bathroom. It squeaked as she opened it.

“You got this from fallin’?” Ms. Ryder asked, confused.

“Yeah,” I said. “I kinda—”

“He said he fell against a wall,” Carrie hastily, but brilliantly chimed in as she rifled through a box in the cabinet. “It scraped his back pretty good.”

It concerned me how good she was at lying to Ms. Ryder. I wondered if she had done the same thing with me. Though with me, I already knew something was up, whereas Ms. Ryder was oblivious.

“Ouch. That musta hurt ya somethin’,” Ms. Ryder observed.

“You have no idea,” I said.

“I’ll tell ya,” she continued. “There was a kid in here last year. He done scraped up his whole front and back when he’d fallen down somma those stairs outside. You know ‘em concrete ones?” While she’d been talking, she’d gone over to a row of chairs that lined the wall by the door and pulled one over beside me. “Now don’t just stand there. Sit down,” she insisted. She put her hand on my shoulder and practically pushed me into the chair.

“There’ya go,” she said. “Carrie, where ya at?”

Carrie was heading back towards us, carrying a skim-milk white plastic bottle and a roll of paper towels. She set the bottle on the table and ripped a paper towel off the roll, started folding it.

Ms. Ryder was still behind me, studying my back. “Blood’s awfully dry,” she said. “When’d it happened?”

Carrie poured some of the contents from the bottle onto the paper towel. I could tell by the way she was staring at the towel that she was becoming a little more worried about lying—like she wasn’t going to be able to cover all her bases. “About thirty minutes ago,” she said. “It was on the other side of school. I had to get something out of my locker.”

“It took you thirty minutes to get here from the other side of school?” Ms. Ryder asked, not so much suspiciously—more genuinely confused.

Carrie gulped one of those golf ball sized gulps that I’d done earlier. “Could you turn around?” she said softly to me.

As I turned, Ms. Ryder came around to help Carrie. I couldn’t help but watch these big rolls she had hanging off her stomach as she passed. Her chest to waist ratio was like the inverse of Megan’s.

“He thought he might have sprained his ankle,” Carrie lied. “So I had to help him over.”

By now I’d recovered from the near heart attack I’d had when Ms. Ryder had first walked in and was just annoyed that me and Carrie had been interrupted from our discussion. This woman needed to go, because I still had questions that needed to be answered.

“Sprained ankle?” Ms. Ryder asked. “It hurtin’?”

“FUCK!”

A sharp sting on my back made me cringe. That bitch Carrie was putting the rubbing alcohol on. Fuck her!

“Yeah, it’s gonna sting,” Ms. Ryder explained.

No shit!

“Your ankle hurt?” she repeated.

“Um…not really,” I said apathetically. I had bigger things to worry about than this woman not believing I had a sprained ankle. Like a giant monster in a black cloak and Carrie putting more of that shit on my back.

“Lemme take a look,” she said, coming back around. “You can’t be too sure. Few years ago, a kid came in here, thought he’d sprained his ankle. Turned out he had to go to the emergency room cause he’d done fractured it.” While she’d shared an anecdote from her life and adventures as a school nurse, she’d pulled a chair from the wall, put it beside mine, and sat. Her rolls had appeared to double in size. “Come on,” she insisted. “Take off your shoe.”

I bit my lip while Carrie kept at my back with the rubbing alcohol. Maybe I shoulda just let the Slasher finish me off.

I kicked my shoe off with my other foot. Ms. Ryder knelt down and whipped my sock off. She pulled my foot up and rested it in her lap. It was odd how she just did what she wanted and didn’t ask for permission. She felt around my ankle, did little circles with the tips of her fingers. Her face was intense like the look most kids got during math tests.

“Yeah, it looks fine,” she said. She set my foot down, looked up at me. I couldn’t take my eyes off the wrinkles and lines in her gizzard. “Good God, what happened to your face? And your neck?”

I hadn’t had a chance to look in a mirror, but between Brad smacking me in the nose, my head hitting the ladder ring of the pool, and having that chain wrapped around my neck, I assumed I looked like shit.

“It was a bad fall,” I replied.

“Okay son—”

The word son was like knives driving into my ears.

“—I’m gonna take my pills and then we're gonna bandage ya up.”

She leaned over to the desk, opened a drawer beside me. Her rolls were right in my face. The way they moved almost made them look like they were waving at me. Ms. Ryder pulled out an orange prescription pill bottle and closed the drawer. “You need to be more careful. You’re lucky you didn’t break anythin’.”

Ha. If anything, lucky was not how I felt.

She got up and headed to the bathroom on the other side of the room. “You know I always do it. I need to just put some of these pills in a bag at home, so I don’t have to worry about leavin’ em. You’d think I woulda done it already.” By now, she was at a sink in the bathroom, pouring some water into a paper cup that she’d pulled out of a dispenser by the mirror. She threw a pill in her mouth and downed the water.

It was a little bathroom with a white sink and toilet. The light in it was dark orange—very different from the bright fluorescents lighting the rest of the clinic. The light made Ms. Ryder’s hair look even redder. And the way it was casting shadows off her saggy jaw and rolls was incredibly unflattering.

Ms. Ryder tossed the paper cup in a trashcan between the sink and the toilet.

“I can’t not take em,” she said. “You know, my Mammaw. She was seventy-three and she was in a parking lot and just done fell over, and—Goddammit! I forgot to refill the soap.”

She bustled back out, headed across the room, passed the cabinet, to a box beside it. She knelt down and started going through it.

“These do look bad,” Carrie whispered to me. She pressed the towel with rubbing alcohol against my back again.

I closed one eye tight and growled like a dog.

“You baby!”

“Can we just get out of here?” I whispered through ground teeth. We had far more important things than to listen to Ms. Ryder’s ramblings.

“I mean this is a woman who’d been healthy—not a problem—for seventy-three years. You know what they say…healthy as a horse…”

How did Carrie work with this woman every damn day?

While Ms. Ryder blah blah blahed, she pulled a bag of pink gunk out of the box and headed back to the bathroom.

“We’ll be done soon,” Carrie whispered into my ear. “Relax.”

Relax? That was easy for her to say. Her back wasn’t on fire.

“…oh she was in the hospital for two, maybe near three months…” Ms. Ryder popped the lid off a soap container beside the mirror, poured the pink guck into it. “…and the doctors tell her, take the medicine. And God knows we tried to get her to take it…”

“She’s really nice,” Carrie reassured me.

Ms. Ryder pressed the lid back on the soap container, tossed the empty bag into the trashcan. “There we go!” she exclaimed proudly. She turned the faucet on and rinsed her hands. “And we knowed she shoulda taken it, and Grandpa, done with her forty three years, woke up and finds her stone dead. And I mean, she didn’t have no symptoms. We’re talkin’ outta…”

“Kill me now,” I groaned.

CRASH!

It sounded like a hundred glasses shattering at once. Inside the bathroom, the mirror exploded into razor-sharp fragments that flew at Ms. Ryder.

I tripped out of my chair, crawled back against the wall like I’d done at the pool.

Ms. Ryder fell back, unleashing a loud, twangy shrill.

Fuck, fuck, fuck!

It was coming back for me!

Ms. Ryder’s body halted midair, then lunged forward. I figured the Slasher must’ve grabbed her. Her face slammed into the wall where the mirror had been. She flailed about, her scream continuing, but sounding more like a gargle. I feared that she was choking on her own blood.

She pressed her hands on either side of the mirror and pushed. She might as well have been trying to lift a thousand pounds, cause she didn’t get an inch.

“Oh my God!” Carrie gasped, her hand to her mouth as she watched the scene in terror. “Oh my God! Oh my God!”

Pieces of mirror hit the tile floor. They jingled like bells. I hopped up and ran to the bathroom. I sure as hell didn’t want to deal with the Slasher, but I wasn’t going to sit around and let it kill this woman.

As I reached the doorway, what had to have been a huge piece of mirror ripped through the back of Ms. Ryder’s shirt. I could see the indention of her spine between her shoulder blades. The piece of mirror had cut right through it and was covered in a thick, red mess. A chunk of purple slid down its sides.

Ms. Ryder’s arms dropped down. She was still.

I stood in the doorway, my heart racing. It took me a moment, but the more I looked at the thing sticking out of her back, the less it looked like a piece of mirror. It was awfully long and had a sharp, knife-like curve.

It sucked back into Ms. Ryder’s spine.

She didn’t move, just lied against the wall. Her waist rolls inched lower and lower. They dragged the rest of her body toward the floor. Her shoulder hit the sink and the weight of her rolls was so heavy that they flipped her over. She dropped.

I closed my eyes, heard a loud crack that I was sure was her back slamming into the tile floor. I opened my eyes. Ms. Ryder lied on her side under the sink. Her face was like a red pin-cushion covered in shards of glass. Her mouth hung open like it had when she’d first walked in, but now a stream of thick, crimson blood oozed out of it, making a small, round puddle on the tiles just under her mouth. I couldn’t see her eyes. There was too much blood filling the sockets.

“Oh my God!” Carrie played like a broken record and breathed like she was having an asthma attack.

Where the mirror had been, was now a hole that led to darkness. The darkness seemed to move, and from it, crawled these long, yellow things that looked like oversized spider-legs. They grew longer and longer and curled around the sides of the hole. They were fingernails.

9: Run!

2011-10-22T23:59:00.000-04:00

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It looked like two spiders crawling out of the sides of the hole. They scurried across the wall, revealing wrinkly, blistered flesh, doused in what had to have been Ms. Ryder’s blood. Though, I didn’t really know. The Slasher could have gotten a few more kills in before finding me again.

Where’d that knife go? I wondered.

The hood of the black cloak slid out from between the spider-like hands. It pulled back into the hole. The fingers tightened against the wall. In an instant, the hood shot back out like a bullet.

An urgent rush compelled me forward. I grabbed the bathroom door handle. My muscles, having already been overexerted during my chain tug-o-war at the pool, were extra-sensitive. My bicep burned as bad as the rubbing alcohol on my back as I forced the door shut.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!” I exclaimed, my words feeling as useless as Carrie’s declarations to a higher power just moments earlier.

A loud clunk came from the other side of the door. It sounded like—and I hoped that—the Slasher had slammed into it.

I swung around, dashed for the door to the hall.

Carrie stood by the desk, on the other side of the clinic, staring at the bathroom door. Her mouth hung open. She was probably thinking about how poor Ms. Ryder didn’t deserve to die like that. I was in survival mode and too preoccupied with trying to keep us alive to worry about the already-deceased.

“Carrie!” I snapped like a rude-ass who’d confused her for a dog.

She shook her head. Without changing expressions, she darted toward me and the door.

I threw it open, hopped into the hall. It was like when I’d raced other guys as a kid—that adrenaline kick right before I’d passed the finish line, followed by the reassurance that I’d made it, but that nagging feeling that I needed to keep going. Only this time, I really did need to keep going.

I stopped, turned back to make sure Carrie was close behind. She ran out so fast I thought she was gonna plow into the wall on the other side of the hall. But instead, she made a quick turn and raced along the wall.

If we’d been Lot’s wife, we wouldn’t have turned to salt, cause neither of us looked back. We were too scared it’d slow us down and give the Slasher the opportunity it needed to slice off our heads. In no time, I was tearing through the courtyard. The air rushed across my body, heat built in my chest, and I could feel a fresh layer of sweat dampening my forehead.

It was still light out, oddly enough. I always thought shit like this happened in the middle of the night. Evidently in Lawrenceville, they happened in broad daylight. Although, judging by the orangey hue in the sky, I was pretty sure we didn’t have more than an hour of light left.

“Wait...Wait!” Carrie stopped in the middle of the courtyard. I tried to stop too, but my momentum pushed me a few feet ahead of her.

She ran to the corner I’d been hiding in earlier.

Is she crazy?

There was a moment where I considered ditching her, but something in me couldn’t just let her be an idiot and become the Slasher’s next victim. I chased after her. As she came to the Leyland cypresses I’d hid behind, she dropped on her knees and buried her face in the foliage. The branches caught strands of her light hair and pulled them loose from her ponytail.

I thought she was reverting back to some primal hiding instinct, like an Ostrich burying its head in the sand. It was a good thing I was there to rescue her from her insanity. I swooped down, grabbed her by the arm, pulled her to her feet. “What the hell’s wrong with you?!” I exclaimed, trying to snap her back to reality. “We have to get the fuck out of here?”

Her face tensed, and she flashed her teeth at me. I’d seen dogs make similar faces when I’d gotten in the way of their food. “I have to get my necklace!” she hissed. This was the fiercest I’d ever seen her.

What the fuck?

She ripped her arm away with a strength she hadn’t used even after I’d nabbed her in the courtyard. She dove back into the foliage.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure the monster wasn’t coming. Fortunately for both of us, it wasn’t. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to pop up any second now. I grabbed Carrie’s forearms and dragged her back to her feet. She scratched and tried to pull away, but now that I was ready for her struggle, she couldn’t get loose.

“Jason!” she snapped. “I need that necklace!”

God, them and their stupid necklaces! Couldn’t she deal with that shit when we weren’t being hunted down by a monster from another dimension?

“We need to get the hell outta here!”

If she didn’t sane-up quick, I was going to ditch her psychotic ass.

“We’re batteries, right? Well those necklaces are like the chargers we use to access our power! Without it, I’m powerless. I can’t help us, and it’ll kill you!”

That changed the story. In an instant, we were both on our knees, scrambling through the cypresses. The branches poked at my face, and my back started to itch wherever the foliage scraped across.

I wished I'd known about the necklaces before. I woulda taken Seth and Brad's in a heartbeat and kicked their faces into their shit.

This better be worth it, I thought. Maybe it could help us, but if that thing caught up to us before we found it, it wouldn’t really matter what it could do.

The black soil on the ground was covered in bits of branches and brown foliage. I dug into the soil without any luck.

I glanced around, trying to figure out which direction I might have thrown it. In a patch of bushes lining the wall beside the cypresses, a light shimmered. I rushed over, snatched at it, and pulled it out of the bushes. It was the necklace.

“Got it!”

I jumped up victoriously, then turned back around to make sure the Slasher wasn’t there. It woulda been an awfully pathetic if it had just cut off my head right then. Nothing was behind me, though. And I couldn’t see any sign of it in the courtyard. It had plenty of time to catch up with us, but it hadn’t. I had a hunch it wasn't coming after me just yet. Like it was plotting its next attack. Of course, I could’ve been totally wrong, and it could’ve been lurking just around the corner, waiting for us. Regardless, we needed to get the hell outta there.

Carrie hurried to me, looking less ferocious than she had moments earlier and far more like the panicked girl from the clinic. “We have to get to the old church,” she said.

The old church? That didn’t sound like a place to go for safety. It sounded like a place to be murdered.

***

"When we first started working with our powers, we weren't very strong,” Carrie said.

We’d run as fast as we’d been able to. We’d gone around the school, into the woods, and had about a fifteen minute hike before we’d come to what Carrie had told me was the old church, which was exactly as the name suggested. It was hidden in the woods, next to an equally old cemetery. A basic construction. It had a single, overcompensating tower and a few broken stain-glass windows with the usual saint this and Virgin Mary that. The boards on it were cracking. Bits of dust and nails squeezed out here and there. It was one of those buildings that made me wonder what kept it standing.

Tall, yellow grass overran the churchyard. Carrie navigated us through on a trail of grass that had been walked through enough that it was now bent to the ground.

“Seth and Brad could barely lift a pencil without seven hours of practice. Let alone, you,” she continued. She paused to take a few breaths. We were both still recovering from the fifteen minutes of nonstop running.

The path took us around to the side of the church.

“It was like a science project,” she said. “It was interesting and fun, but it didn't really help us.”

There was a small window, just above the ground, covered in a layer of dirt and dust. Carrie sat on the ground and kicked it open with her heel. It was clear by how casual she was about it that this was routine for her. She slid right through.

It didn’t seem like a good idea for me to follow because A) you shouldn’t go hanging in basements of old, near-collapsed buildings and B) the whole claustrophobia thing. But my curiosity outweighed my apprehension, and I crawled in behind her.

The basement we ended up in was pretty wide, but the ceiling was low enough to aggravate my nerves. My breathing was quick and unsteady. The sweat on my forehead wasn’t going anywhere fast. And the room looked like it was starting to sway. As long as I didn’t vomit, we’d be good.

It was pretty dark, except for what little light came in through the window. Thick, wooden support beams were scattered all around—most of them with gaping holes and huge cracks split right through them. It was just more proof as to why it was an awful idea to hang in basements of old, near-collapsed buildings. A few shelves with wooden crates, boxes, stacks of papers, and miscellaneous items lined the walls. Other than that, the floor was clean and bare, except for a small white circle drawn in the middle of the room, and a blue milk crate that was set beside it.

Carrie knelt down by the blue crate. She rifled through it, pulled out a candle in a holder and a lighter. She lit the candle.

“Like I was saying.” She walked over, handed me the candle. Her expressions were so much more calm and relaxed. She even looked more peaceful than she did on normal schooldays. It was like she felt at home in this place. Her ease made my pulse let up a bit. The room didn’t seem to sway as much.

“Our powers were cool, but pretty useless. Then we found out that if we opened the Rift wider, on purpose, we could summon more power into our necklaces. We could go from being double As to being car batteries.” She flashed me a clever, teasing look. It was cute. “So we did a...incantation or spell or whatever you want to call it to open the Rift. And it worked. But after a while, it wore off and we were just double As again. So we opened it again. We kept doing it. The last time we did it was a little over two months ago.”

I struggled to see where this story was leading. I trusted it had something to do with all this, but considering all the questions I had, I wasn’t sure which one it was answering.

“Then…just a little while later…we started seeing the stories about the Slasher, and we realized that something besides our powers had come through.”

There it was!

In an instant, my ease was replaced with fury. “So this is all your fault!”

Carrie had a guilty look in her eyes. She knew my accusation wasn’t unwarranted.

“We didn’t know,” she insisted.

“Well that doesn’t really help me now, does it?”

“But I might be able to protect you…if you’ll just calm down.”

“Calm down! I’m sorry, but in case you didn’t get the memo, I’m being hunted by a monster because you and your shitty friends wanted to play Criss Angel for a while! So excuse me if I don’t want to calm down!”

Carrie took a breath, turned and walked away. I wanted so bad to shout “Get back here bitch! I’m not done yelling at you!” but even with things as crazy as they were, I still had enough sense to keep from being a complete douche.

Carrie dumped the blue milk crate out beside her. Matches, lighters, candleholders, papers, and pens piled on top of each other. A few candles rolled across the termite-raped floor. “We don’t have time to argue,” she said. “We have to get started.”

10: Leslie

2011-10-21T23:59:00.000-04:00

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Carrie got on her knees and quickly picked through the pile for candles and holders.

“Get what started?” I asked irritably. Sweat dripped off my chin. My chest felt like someone was pushing against it. The room was starting to sway even more than before. All in all, I wasn’t feeling too hot.

Carrie’s speed slowed. She half-turned to me. I could only see one of her eyes, but it had that same look it’d had when I’d ordered her to tell me about Seth and Brad’s powers.

She put the holders and candles together and set them around the white circle.

“I used to have seizures,” she said.

Okee dokee, I thought. Not relevant at all. Either she thought we were both going to die, and she was trying to confess for her last rites, or she was actually going to take this somewhere.

“When I was eight, I was diagnosed with epilepsy.” She continued setting the candles up around the circle, avoiding eye contact with me. Maybe she thought it was easier to tell me whatever she was trying to tell me if she couldn’t see my reactions.

“I usually had two or three seizures a year. When we found out about the Rift and started experimenting with it, we didn’t know much. We had the manuscripts that the original League had left behind, and they’d helped us make the necklaces and do little things, but we’d reached a point where that was it.”

By now, she’d set up five candles around the circle. She fixed their positions and mentally measured their distance from each other. She still had the lighter she’d used to light my candle with and used it to light the others. The entire room brightened with an orange glow.

I hadn’t noticed till then, but there wasn’t any light coming from the window behind me. I checked over my shoulder. Outside, a dark blue hue lit pine trees and grass that were several yards away. Seeing that it was almost dark intensified my angst. Every moment that passed was a moment the Slasher was using to hunt me down. Carrie needed to hurry before it ripped through another mirror, or a wall, or a window and tore my head off.

“Based on the kind of power the League talked about, we knew there had to be more,” she continued, “but there were so many manuscripts—nearly a hundred. We didn’t know how to sort through it all. Some of it didn’t even make sense.”

She searched back through the pile of crap that she’d dumped out of the blue milk crate and pulled out a clear bag filled with what looked like sugar or salt. She got up, walked around the room and poured the substance over the chalk circle she’d made earlier.

“After we’d discovered how to use the Rift, me and Seth spent weeks in here, reading some of the manuscripts. It didn’t get us anywhere. But we were sure that there was a way to access more power, and those manuscripts were all we had.”

Even as she passed by me with the bag of whatever she was pouring, she kept her eyes on the floor, avoiding me completely.

“Then I had a seizure. I mean, it felt like I was having a seizure. There was this throbbing headache. It was so intense I thought I was going to pass out. My muscles stiffened. I was shaking. My head jerked back and forth. I’d had enough seizures to know the symptoms for it, and I was ready.”

As she completed the large circle, she headed back to the small one in the middle of the room.

“But then there was this…this rush through my body. Like everything was lighter. My feet, my hands, my face felt like they were so light I thought they might float. And then these goosebumps rushed from my toes to my head.”

She stepped through the candles, sat in the middle of the white circle, and folded her legs together.

“I vaguely remember thumping my hand on the floor, but it didn't feel like me. It was like something was making me do it. Seth handed me a pen and a piece of paper. I—”

She stopped, looked up at me. It was the first time she’d looked at me since she’d started her tale. Before, she didn’t want to know how I was reacting. Now, for some reason, she did. It was like she was trying to see if I was ready for the next part. Her lips did a little flutter, like a part of her was trying to keep her words in. Fortunately, another part, made them come out.

“I still thought I was going to have a seizure, but I started writing out letters. Like in kindergarten, where you write A, then B, then C really big. The handwriting was awful. It wasn’t mine.

"It felt quick to me, but Seth said it went on for about an hour, till I wrote out in all caps…”

She stopped again, very briefly, before she forced out:

“…‘WE ARE LESLIE. WE ARE HERE TO ASSIST YOU.’”

“Seth spent another two hours asking me questions, and I wrote out these answers on a piece of paper—about things that I didn’t know the answers to. Things about the Rift, about our powers. Leslie explained that they are a group of spirits that live between our world and the other—the one the Rift connects to. They understand the power that comes from it, and they told us they could help us use it. We came here every night for several weeks. I would just close my eyes and ask them to come forward, and they would start writing. Seth would ask them questions, and I continued to write out the answers. They were the ones who showed us how to open the Rift wider.”

I’d been sure up to this point that nothing else coulda weirded me out. After Seth and Brad’s display in the dorm, and having been attacked by a monster in the pool, I was pretty open to anything. And yet, this reawakened the rational part of my brain. Evidently it knew how skeptical I was about something like this and took its opportunity to reassure me that this was utterly illogical. Carrie was talking to spirits? I wanted to say “Bullshit!”, but I could tell Carrie wasn’t finished, and I was at least gonna give her a chance to explain.

In the orange glow of the candles, Carrie’s cheeks looked bright red. To her, this was like reading something out of her diary. It was very personal.

“I never had another seizure,” she said. “Leslie has helped us learn to use our powers, and they have helped us learn more about the Rift. If anyone can help us stop the Slasher from coming after you, they can.”

Carrie leaned outside the white circle. She grabbed a stack of paper and a pen from the messy pile, pulled them in, and set them before her. She rested her hands on her knees, closed her eyes, and took a deep breath.

“Okay,” she said. “I need you to ask them two questions.”

What the fuck? It was one thing for her to be talking to spirits, but now she was dragging me into it.

“Woah! Why don’t you just—”

She opened her eyes back up. “Please, just do it,” she insisted in a forceful tone. It brought to mind that moment back in the courtyard when she had flashed her teeth at me. There was a very severe part of her that she didn't usually show, but when she did, I knew she meant business.

“Okay,” I said reluctantly. Whether I liked it or not, I was just gonna have to go with this.

She closed her eyes again. “Ask them: why is the Slasher after you? And how can we stop it?”

She reopened her eyes, gave me a glance like she didn’t want me there. She pressed her lips together. She knew she was gonna have to suck it up. She closed her eyes yet again. She picked the pen up off the floor, positioned it in her hand like she was about to write.

"It'll only be a few seconds before they're here,” she said.

She took another breath and whispered to herself. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. It was very soft and incoherent. Every so often, I thought I heard a word that made sense, but then it turned into gibberish.

What was worse than not knowing what she was saying, was not knowing what was about to happen. Was something going to come into her? Was she going to start acting weird? Was the Slasher gonna come in any second and slit my throat?

Carrie stopped whispering. She sat still, her face expressionless. Her eyelids popped open. In the candlelight, her pupils looked almost black. She stared straight ahead. There was something about her that made her look almost like a different person. She still had the same mousy nose, the same ponytail, the same chest. But there was something in her eyes that was unnatural for the insecure girl I was used to. It wasn't even like that fierce girl I'd seen in the courtyard. She seemed completely disconnected from the world around her.

She pressed the tip of her pen to the stack of paper before her and started writing. She didn’t write with that casual flow and rhythm that most people write with. Her arm made very sharp, contorted moves. It was like her hand was struggling to make the pen do what it wanted. I wondered if I was going to be able to read it.

Her hand stopped, the tip of the pen still on the paper.

Carrie continued her creepy straight-ahead stare. A part of me thought she was pulling my leg, trying to scare me. I think that was just the part that wanted to believe that something this weird wasn’t really happening.

I stepped toward her, cautiously. In my head, a scene of her snapping back to life and stabbing me in the neck with her pen kept replaying.

I walked around her. I peered over her shoulder, holding my candle out so that I could read the paper. In large, contorted letters, was printed:

We are Leslie. We are here to assist you. You have a question about the Rift. We have answers.

It could have been weirder, but there was still this nagging uneasiness in my chest.

“Um…” I began. “Yeah…what’s up?”

Carrie’s hand started back into action. She scribbled on the page, then stopped. I read.

We are pleased that you have come, Jason.

Carrie’s hand went on again and stopped just as it had before.

Ask before it is too late.
Goosebumps rushed up my arms.

Question…question… That’s right. Carrie had told me what to ask.

“Why is the Slasher after me?”

Almost before I was finished the question, Carrie’s hand pushed the page on top of the stack aside. She started writing on the next one. I read as she wrote. The Slasher…we do not call it this…but we know what you ask about...is a creature similar to that which we are. It is physical in nature, but unlike you, it is very sensitive to energy, like us. The creature hunts, not to feed off flesh, as many creatures from your dimension do, but rather to feed off your fears. Your fears fuel it, so it finds the most fearful members of your society here in Lawrenceville and tortures them so that it can fulfill that hunger.
I felt like this Leslie-thing was calling me some kinda pussy. I didn’t feel like I was the most fearful person in this town.

Carrie pushed the page aside and started on the next one. I continued reading.
You, however, it needs for a very different reason. We can feel your energy. It is very strong, very potent. And though we do not have a physical existence, as this creature does, we understand the relationship that it has with energy. It can feel you, as we do, and it understands, as we do, your potential for great power.
“I have great power?” I blurted out, intending just to think it.

Carrie wrote on.
The creature still pulls a large amount of energy from the Rift. Without it, it cannot live. Your power gives you the potential to close the Rift, which in turn would destroy the creature. And the creature, like any predator, will fight for its survival. It knows that it must kill you in order to survive.
“But I don’t know anything about this stuff,” I insisted. “How did it know I could do that?”
As we wrote, it can feel you as we do and knows your potential to be a threat to it.

This was awfully unfair.

“Why hasn’t it gone after these guys who are actually using the Rift?”

Given time, it would. Their necklaces hide them from the creature temporarily.

“So if I just get one of those necklaces, I’ll be safe?”

The creature has already picked up your scent. The necklace alone cannot protect you now.

This led us right back to the second question Carrie had told me to ask. “How do I stop it?”

The creature is a beast, like those in your world. You may kill it as you would any creature.

Close, but no go. I wasn’t about to get in a fight with that thing again. Why? Cause there was about a 100% chance I'd lose.

“No,” I said. “How can I stop it from coming after me?”

Impossible. It will come for you. Now that it has your scent and understands the threat you are, it will not stop until you are dead.

“Threat?!” I exclaimed. “What threat?! I don’t have a clue about any of this shit.”
We can feel the energy that is within you. It feels—

“Yeah, yeah, I got it already. I have some energy. Whatever. How can I protect myself from it?” The circle of protection, like the one Carrie has done in this room, will help keep it away temporarily. If you knew how to use the Rift, and had training, then you would have the power to keep it away with such. However, your lack of understanding of the Rift and your abilities, renders you powerless in that regard.

Useless bitch!
You do have an advantage, though. You know the creature will come back after you. We recommend you set a trap and destroy it when it does. It is the only way you will be able to stay alive.

“What kind of trap?” Follow these instructions exactly…

11: To Trap a Monster

2011-10-20T23:59:00.000-04:00

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CLUNK! CLANK!

An empty kerosene drum toppled down a pile of even more kerosene drums. It rolled across the dust-covered floor.

I’d been working my ass off for about an hour in an old storage room behind the church chancel. It’d been filled with boxes, boards, bricks, paint cans, broken furniture, and crap galore. I’d taken most of the bulky things out of the room and thrown them into the church pews. The rest of the shit, I’d just pushed against the walls.

I wore a flannel button-up that Carrie’d found in a box. It was covered in little animal hairs, and I jumped every time one of them rubbed against my back, thinking it was a spider. On top of that, the shirt was starting to itch like poison ivy. It made me wonder if I’d gotten some while me and Carrie'd been running through the woods.

I tied the end of a long rope around the leg of a chair that was wedged between a shelf and the wall.

Almost finished, almost finished, I thought in a rush.

This room was even smaller than the basement, so my claustrophobia had kicked into hyper-drive. My hands shook uncontrollably. I was sweating so much I had to keep wiping my face just so that it wouldn’t get in my eyes. It made working nearly impossible. But every time I got a little hopeless, I just said to myself “Quit being such a pussy, Jason!” and got on with it. I’m sure Dad woulda been proud.

As I’d worked, my mind had flashed through the events of the past few days-from the accident at soccer, to Brad and Seth pinning me to the wall, to being attacked in the pool, to watching Ms. Ryder get brutally murdered in the clinic bathroom. They didn’t feel like memories. Memories felt like anger or sadness or frustration. These had some of that in them. But mostly, they felt ridiculous. Even now, after all that had happened, there was still this huge part of me that couldn’t accept them. This must have been what Claire had meant when she'd talked about denial. Of course, it was easier to think it wasn’t real now that there wasn’t any pressing danger. But that didn’t keep me from being scared as fuck that the Slasher was gonna creep in and stab me in the back with the knife it'd used on Ms. Ryder.

I pulled a ladder out from the middle of the room and pushed it against the wall. I gazed up at my construction.

I’d taken the head off a pitchfork and tied it to the head of a three-pronged cultivator, so that the pitchfork part was sticking down. On the back of the cultivator, I’d bundled about twenty or thirty pounds of bricks and concrete blocks with rope and some duct tape. The end of the cultivator pole was tied just above the door, to a revealed ceiling board. The pitchfork end was suspended to another ceiling board that I’d had to rip through the ceiling to find. The same rope that suspended the pitchfork end to the ceiling was connected to the rope that I’d tied to the leg of the chair that was wedged between the shelf and the wall. The plan was the Slasher would chase me in there, and I'd kick the chair loose. My half-cultivator/half-pitchfork device would drop down and be quite a surprise for my Slasher friend.

That’ll get you, you stupid fuck.

I’d done just what Leslie had said, with a few modifications here and there. I was pretty proud of myself. For having been thrown together in thirty minutes, in the dim light of two near-dead candles, my contraption wasn’t bad. Unfortunately, even though I’d managed to get some tests in, after I’d tied the bricks and the concrete blocks to the head of the cultivator, there was really no way of making sure it worked. I could only hope.

While I’d been working on all this, Carrie’d been outside with the bag of salt, creating circles of protection. I hadn’t liked the idea of her being out there on her own, but she’d reassured me that her necklace would protect her.

I checked over my work once more, made sure everything was in place, and then went out a side door Carrie had shown me to get out of the church.

The half moon in the sky covered the tall grass and pines in a soft, blue glow. I was glad to have some natural light cause I’d blown out both my candles, knowing it was highly unlikely they would’ve made it out the door.

Now that I wasn’t cooped up in a basement or a storage room, my shaking was starting to subside, and I could breathe again. A loud chorus of frogs played not so far from the church. It sounded like hundreds of them. There had to have been a creek or a pond nearby.

I walked around to the side of the church Carrie’d taken me to when we’d first gotten there. She walked along the church wall, her ponytail bobbing behind her little head. She whispered to herself the same way she had in the basement and when I'd seen her sneaking out of the dorms. In one hand, she held the bag of now-less-than-an-inch of salt. In the other, she held a pool of wax that was practically watering the grass.

“Almost done?” I asked, approaching her.

“Another few yards,” she said, her eyes fixed on the ground as she sprinkled salt beside her.

“Hey, listen,” I said, stepping into her path.

As she reached me, she stopped, shook the focused gleam out of her eyes. She looked at me blankly. The soft light from dying candle made her normally green pupils look as dark as they had in the basement.

“Thanks,” I said, blushing a little. Fortunately, it was too dark for her to notice.

"For what?" she asked, her eyes wandered toward the woods. “Being the reason this thing is after you?”

“No,” I said. “For helping me.” I’d been wrong about her. She wasn’t anything like Seth or Brad. She was a good person.

She gazed into my eyes, like she was looking for something. I couldn’t tell if it was to see how sincere I was about what I’d said, or if she was looking for something deeper. I felt this urge to turn away, but I didn’t, just let her peer as deep as she could. I wanted to hug her or hold her or something. Claire used to say it was natural for people to bond in times of crises. I figured I had a little bit of that going on, so I wisely kept that inclination to myself.

“Oh my God, Jason!” she exclaimed. Her eyes grew wide with concern. “You’re shaking all over!” She grabbed my hand.

“I’m fine,” I snapped, snatching it back.

She pulled away, startled, looked at me with worried eyes, like the ones she'd had when I'd first pinned her to the wall in the clinic.

“It’s cold out here,” I insisted, not wanting her to catch on to my claustrophobia. I looked to the ground, avoiding eye contact. I didn't want her looking at me again with those searching eyes. I think a part of me was worried that she had some sort of psychic power she hadn’t told me about. If she did, I didn’t want her to know about that.

“Jason,” she said.

“Yeah?” I asked, still looking at the ground.

She didn’t respond. My eyes flashed back up.

Her arms were frozen in place, and her eyes stared forward nearly as steadily as they had when she had done the creepy Leslie-thing.

“I think…I just heard…something in the woods,” she said through her teeth, trying not to make any big movements.

The hairs on my back stood on end. I took a cue from Carrie. I slowed my breathing, stood just as still as her, listened for what she’d heard.

The sound of the bizarrely loud frogs and a few crickets filled the air.

I felt so stupid for having wasted Carrie's time. She wasn't even done with her circles of protection. If I woulda just waited five minutes. But no! Now I was going to get cut up by that alternate dimensional freakshow.

I was still waiting for something to pounce at me from behind. Still just the sounds of creatures and the occasional wisp of wind.

Carrie bit her lip. She made a little smile. I gathered she was starting to think she'd just imagined it.

I took a normal breath.

“Sorry,” she whispered. “I thought I heard something.”

I chuckled, put my hand to my chest. “You…scared…the shit out of me.”

“I’m sorry. Better to be safe than—”

A rush of air came from behind me and blew the flame right off Carrie's soupy candle. Something grabbed my wrist tight and ripped so hard I fell on my side. Next thing I knew, I could feel the tall grass slapping at my cheek as I was dragged across the ground.

“JASON!” I heard Carrie shriek.

By the sound of her voice, I could tell that she was already yards away.

Fuck.

New 12: I'm Not Gonna Die Here

2011-10-19T23:57:00.000-04:00

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“Fuck! Fuck!”

Rocks, briars, and fallen branches poked and scratched through my flannel shirt.

The silhouettes of trees and bushes rushed by as quickly as if I was driving passed them in a car. With my free hand, I grabbed at saplings and vines, but they either ripped out of the ground or snapped in two. I dug my bare heels into the leaves and dirt in vain.

Well this sucks, I thought.

The Slasher’s tight grip numbed my wrist. As it dragged me through the woods, a sharp burning sensation pulled my bicep apart.

Why doesn’t it just kill me and get it over with?

When Leslie had devised her brilliant plan to trap the monster, there’d been one huge flaw. In order for it to work, it needed to rely on someone other than the unluckiest person in the world. Clearly, since my arrival at the horror-filled St. Lawrence, that’s exactly what I was.

My arm continued to stretch. I figured it was gonna snap off pretty soon, but then, the Slasher released its grip. I dropped. My face smacked against the ground, which felt just as hard as the cement floor at the pool. As if I needed anymore bruising after all the trauma my body had sustained over the past day.

I hopped to my feet, my head bobbing about as I searched for the Slasher.

I couldn’t find it.

When the fuck did it get this fast?

It’d dropped me in a small clearing. Bare trees, back-lit by the soft blue of the moon, looked like shadows. It was nearly impossible to distinguish a 7-foot-tall black mass from anything else. As I turned every way, dry leaves rustled under my feet. The ribbets of the frogs I’d heard loud and clear by the church were much softer now.

Come on…where’d ya go?

The Slasher’d had me in its misshapen clutches and could have torn my throat off right then. Why’d it gone to all the trouble to drag me this far into the woods and then disappear?

Leslie had said the Slasher fed off people’s fears. Shit! It was trying to freak me out. It was probably getting some sick pleasure outta making me squirm—making me wonder when or where it was gonna pop out.

“Come on you dumb fuck!” I called out. “I’m not afraid of you! If you’re gonna kill me, just do it!” My words were far more confident than I felt. I was really wigging out as much as I’m sure it wanted me to. And if it could feel my energy or whatever, as Leslie had said it could, then my antagonizing it wasn’t going to make any difference.

RATTLE! RATTLE!

“Fuck!” I spun around, stumbled backwards. Nothing was there, but I could’ve sworn the sound had come from right behind me.

RATTLE! RATTLE!

It was behind me again. I twisted my body back around, fists ready—as if swinging at it a few times was going to help.

Either my vision was getting worse or the shadows of the trees and bushes were starting to blur together.

RATTLE RATTLE...RATTLE RATTLE...RATTLE RATTLE…

Now I couldn’t tell where it was coming from. My head shot to one side, then the other, then whipped around to check behind me.

Nothing.

I had two choices. I could stay where I was and let the Slasher scare me till it was ready to attack. Or I could run like hell, going God-knows-where and let it hunt me down and freak me out that way. Standing there wasn’t really an option for me, so I dashed through the woods, heading towards where I thought I heard the frogs coming from.

The rattling continued behind me. A rush of adrenaline shot from my stomach to my chest, and my speed double in half a second. I hopped over stumps and fallen trees. Occasionally, I wouldn’t see one and stumbled forward till I caught my balance and continued speeding along. I ducked under large branches. The little ones I ran right through, letting them slap me in the face, chest, and legs. I was starting to get used to this new fast-breathing, heart-pounding, muscles-throbbing routine.

I didn’t know how far I’d run, but eventually the rattling stopped. I didn’t like it. At least when it was there, I knew that the Slasher was still toying with me. Now, I figured it was ready for the kill.

I kept on running for what felt like an hour, but honestly was probably five minutes, before I saw headstones and miniature statues through the trees.

The cemetery. I must’ve been close to the church! I was starting to feel hopeful again. If Carrie’d finished her circles of protection, then our trap would be ready, and I still had a chance of stopping the Slasher.

As I hurried into the cemetery, excited about possibly getting to live a little longer, my heart sank.

It was a huge ass cemetery!

Where the hell’d all this come from?

It stretched about a forth of a mile up a hill. And there was no sign of the church. This must have been an extension of the other cemetery, or a separate one altogether. Either way, it made perfect sense, because surely it would have been too convenient for me to have been back at the church already. It would have meant my life was getting easier. But no! It was still going to be a pain in the ass.

This was a much nicer cemetery than the one by the church. It had human-sized statues of Mary, saints, and weeping angels. There were mausoleums decorated with stain-glass windows, mini-statues, and stone crosses. But like the cemetery by the church, grass and ivy crawled up everything, and succeeded in hiding many of the regular sized headstones.

It was kinda sad seeing an abandoned cemetery in the middle of the woods. Did no one care about any of these people?

RATTLE RATTLE!

The sound reminded me that I didn’t have time to mourn over forgotten souls. I had my own to think about.

I jet through the cemetery, didn’t even bother looking back.

Not even knowing where the church was, I ran to the closest mausoleum, just hoping for a place to hide. It had two stone lion statues on either side of an iron door with those round door knockers. Over the door, a stain-glass window that looked dark blue in the moonlight had a jagged hole in it where someone had obviously broken in.

A rusty chain was wrapped around the door handles, so the window was my only option. I put my foot in one of the knockers, my other in a lion’s mouth, and grabbed onto the stone frame above the door.

A rustling sound came from behind me. I forced myself to turn around.

The cloaked creature ran out of the woods, hauling ass toward me.

My foot slipped out of the lion’s mouth. I fell on my back.

Goddammit!

I leapt back up, shoved my foot back in the lion’s mouth, put the other in the knocker, and pulled myself up to the window. I glanced back quickly. The Slasher was already halfway to the mausoleum.

I scurried through the window, cutting myself on bits of glass that were poking up from the bottom of the frame. I hopped onto the floor.

Shit!

I’d been able to get by in the church basement and the storage room, but the mausoleum was just a little bigger than a closet, and a massive coffin that was set in the middle made it appear even smaller.

My muscles stiffened. My hands shook like I was pushing a walk-behind mower. I dropped to my knees, my stomach churning and a crawling sensation rushing up my esophagus. I was having a panic attack.

You stupid pussy! I fussed at myself. I don’t have time for this!

This was a mistake, but crawling back out wasn’t an option. I could hardly force air into my lungs, let alone stand.

Whatever I thought. I am not going to die here.

I tried to make myself to stand, but only managed to crawl about a foot in front of me so that my head hit the stone-hard coffin.

I heard a sound behind me. I was able to turn my head just enough to see the doors cracked open, and shaking wildly about. It was trying to get in. And fortunately for me, that rusty chain around the handles still had some strength left in it.

I shaped my hands into claws and scratched at the coffin, trying to use it to pull myself back on my feet.

My head twitched side to side, and my hyperventilating sped up. The room was spinning so much that I had to close my eyes.

The image of Dad standing over me, yelling, “Get the hell up! Get the hell up!” raced through my mind.

I’m not gonna die here. I’m not gonna die here, I repeated to myself, knowing I totally was.

New 13: Lucky Me

2011-10-18T23:59:00.000-04:00

I'm not gonna die here. I'm not gonna die here, I continued to think amidst my panic attack.

Cracks in the stone walls, cobwebs, dust, the coffin, and the doors blurred together and swirled around in a nauseous-making kaleidoscope effect. I wanted to throw up, but I could tell it wasn't gonna happen.

CLANG! CLANG!

The Slasher struggled with the mausoleum door. That old chain around the handles may have just been my saving grace.

CLANG! CRUSH!

But of course, I wasn’t that fortunate.

The doors flew open, and a black shadow that I knew was the Slasher rushed in. It went for the coffin—or at least that’s what it looked like. My swirling vision wasn’t very reliable, and I didn’t stick around to find out. I crawled to the door, feeling my fingers along the floor so that I had an extra-sensor to verify where I was going. I dragged my body across a stone platform just outside and fell onto the grass and dirt just beyond it.

Still in hyperventilation mode, I struggled for air that my lungs refused to let in. It would have been helpful if my reflexes and mobility had returned faster, but most of my body was still paralyzed. Fortunately, my limbs permitted a little movement. I pushed my palms against the ground, but I was shaking so much that as I got about halfway up, my wrist gave and I fell on my side.

It was an odd thing. Here I was with all this adrenaline rushing through me, sweat pouring down my face, a desire to run, and a perfectly good body to run in, but my body wasn’t gonna do it.

Gimme a break!

But as much as I wanted to spring to my feet and get the hell outta there, my body didn’t let me do more than slightly flip onto my back.

The Slasher came out of the mausoleum, its black cloak blowing in a breeze that I was numb to. It grabbed my ankles and dragged me back into the mausoleum.

Well, that was fucking useless.

Jumbled images cluttered before me, and I dropped. It wasn’t a big drop, but I could tell by the hard stone on either side of me that the Slasher had put me in something. I wiggled around a bit before my vision settled enough for me to realize where I was. I was inside the coffin!

My eyes shuffled back in forth, to one side of the coffin, then the other. The interior was stone as well, which I thought was very unusual. Most coffins I’d seen had soft bedding inside them. Inside this one, the walls were slick like marble, and glowed in the moonlight. I figured it had to just be someone's perverse idea of a decoration.

My neck jerked back and forth like my chin was trying to write a message in the air. My claustrophobia had completely immobilized me. Even my seizure-like shaking had settled. I wasn’t hyperventilating anymore-just making soft wheezing sounds. I felt like I had when I was drowning in the pool.

Who the fuck needed a giant coffin in the middle of a mausoleum anyway? This is bullshit!

I wished that I could have said that this was the worst my claustrophobia had ever been, but unfortunately, that wasn’t true.

The moonlight that entered through the stain-glass windows gave me just enough light to see the Slasher hovering over me. Out of the contorted images that raced before me, I saw the shadow of what I knew was the Slasher’s morbidly blistered, skeleton-thin hand. It reached into the cloak, pulled out a dark object, which I couldn't identify till a gleam of moonlight reflected off its side. It was a blade—probably the same one it’d used to kill Ms. Ryder back at the clinic.

The Slasher knelt down so that its hood was just above me. Warm air that I figured was the creature’s breath rushed against my face. The monster pressed the end of the blade against my throat, massaging it around. It was trying to freak me out. I didn’t see why. It had me right where it needed, and I didn’t think that I could be any more helpless than I was in that moment. I was going to die, and I was ready for it. Well, as ready as I could have been.

The Slasher pulled back, raised the knife high over its hood. I gulped as my chest kicked forward a few times—either a result of my panic attack, or my subconscious’ last attempt at keeping me alive.

It drove the knife down with a force that I knew was going to rip right through my chest.

“Enough!” a soft voice echoed off the mausoleum walls.

Dust or specks of something sparkled in the moonlight as they rushed in front of the Slasher, filling the inside of its hood. The creature flew back, like something had pulled it away. Its silhouette slammed against the wall and dropped to the floor.

I figured this was my cue to hop out of the coffin and run, but lying there, continuing to shake, was the best I could do.

A pasty face floated into view. The mousy features were moving back and forth so that I couldn’t distinguish the details of the face, but I knew it was Carrie. As appreciative as I was that she’d come to my rescue, the embarrassment of her seeing me like this was so intense, I wished the thing woulda just killed me.

“Come on!” she exclaimed, looking down at me with wide-eyes that seemed to be bobbing around her mini-nose.

She obviously didn’t understand the extent of my condition. I didn’t attempt to explain cause by the time I was able to get words out of my mouth, she would’ve already figured it out.

“Oh my God,” she said. “Are you going into shock?”

My head jerked a nod. It wasn’t a reply.

After quickly realizing I wasn’t moving anytime soon, she pulled me out of the coffin and dragged me out into the cemetery. She dropped me in the grass and dirt in the same spot I’d managed to get to on my own earlier. I imagined it was as far as her strength could get me.

She knelt by chest, checked for injuries, and took my pulse.

I still couldn’t breathe, and I was starting to see those same spots I’d seen when Brad and Seth had me pinned to the dorm wall, suffocating me with their powers. I figured I had a few moments of consciousness left. Carrie needed to just get outta there while she could and leave me to die.

Her face tensed. She shook my shoulders. “Come on, Jason! We don’t have time for this!” she insisted.

Oh, I’m sorry, I thought. Is this inconveniencing you? Hold up. I’ll just stop. I don’t know why I didn’t think of that before.

“Jason!” she cried.

She took a frustrated breath, then closed her eyes. She clenched one hand around her necklace and rested the other on my chest. She muttered to herself, just as she had done in the old church basement.

The spots grew larger and larger before my eyes sealed shut.

Here I go…

New 14: Can We Trick It?

2011-10-17T23:59:00.000-04:00

Air rushed into my lungs. I hopped off my back, sat up.

Carrie was kneeling beside me. I didn't know how much time had passed since I'd lost consciousness, but any amount wasn't good. Carrie looked at me with urgent, wide eyes. "Jason," she said in a calm voice with an anxious hum. "We gotta go. Now!"

My mind was scattered, trying to process what had happened in the woods, the cemetery, the mausoleum. I was still in severe pain and couldn't breathe as well as I needed to.

Carrie grabbed my arm and pulled me up with her. She didn’t care whether or not I was ready. She knew we had to get outta there.

"Wh--what just--?"

"I healed you," Carrie explained. "Just had time to do a little, so you probably still feel like shit."

She was right about that.

I stumbled passed tombstones and mausoleums alongside her. She kept glancing behind us—I supposed to see if the Slasher was coming. "Ok," she said. "I think its trying to figure out its next move. It'll try to sneak up on you again, but if we can make it back to the old church before it gets to us, we're good."

"Where are we?" I asked, remembering that we weren't even in the cemetery next to the church.

"The original church used to be at the top of this hill." That was where we were now heading. "It burnt down in the 1800s. They built the new one further in the woods. They considered it bad luck to continue using this cemetery, so they made a new one next to the old church."

I'd never heard of a church doing that before, but I'd also never heard of a place where monsters chased teenagers through the woods. At least, not a real place.

Carrie handed me a bag of something. It was more salt, like she'd been using to make her circles of protection. That must have been what I'd seen fly in the Slasher's face back in the mausoleum. Though, why had it made the Slasher leap back and fall to the ground?

"It'll protect you," Carrie insisted. "Leslie helped me make it. She said it would immobilize the Slasher."

"When was this?"

"When the Slasher got you, I went back to the basement and asked her to tell me how I could stop it from killing you."

“Oh…how thoughtful.” I was trying to be cute. Kinda my attempt at lightening the mood. The heavy silence that followed let me know it hadn’t helped. "Wait. How did you find me?"

"Leslie used my finger to point to where you and the Slasher were heading."

"She can do that?"

"They can. And it wasn't as easy as it sounds."

"Well if they know where it is, why can't they just stop it?"

"Leslie can't assert their power on anything. It has to be invited through us."

As much help as Leslie’d been, I resented the fact that she or they or whatever didn't just step in and deal with this monster themsleves. After all, weren't magical things just supposed to fight each other and leave normal people alone? Of course, I guess it was Seth and Carrie and Brad's prodding into all this that had brought the Slasher out, so in some odd way it made sense that a person would have to put it back in or kill it or whatever they were going to have to do to stop it. I just wished that person didn't have to be me.

"What did it do to you back there?" Carrie asked.

"What?"

"You were in this catatonic state. Does it have some special ability that we don't know about? Can it telepathically attack? Does it drain people of life-force before it kills them?"

As much as I wanted to lie and tell her that yes, the Slasher had some supernatural power that had immobilized me, I didn't want to mislead her scientifically oriented mind.

"No. It doesn't," I said plainly, wanting to make it clear that I didn't want to go any further.

I watched to see her reaction. Her eyebrows scrunched together, just as I figured they were going to.

"What was it then?"

Heat rushed to my face. I'm sure my cheeks were bright red. I was glad it was so dark out. "I don't want to talk about it," I said with my jaw clenched.

I knew that wasn't a satisfying enough answer for Carrie, but she was gonna have to deal with it, because I wasn't saying shit.

She gave me a quick glance, like she understood that sometimes we all have reasons not to share things, then looked back at where we were going.

"It's gotten faster, and stronger," I said, trying to change the subject and also trying to get some answers. "Why?"

"I don't know."

By now, we were over halfway up the hill, with no sign of the Grim Reaper coming after us. As much of a relief as it to have a little time to recuperate, I was still on edge. The Slasher was trying to keep me scared while it planned its next attack. It knew I was going to have to check over my shoulder no matter where I was. It could pop out from anywhere. Surprise me from any angle. And that kept me in a perpetual fear that I was sure the creature was reveling in. What an ass.

Well, I'm not dead yet, I thought. That had to count for something.

We reached the top of the hill. It dipped down into the woods, which we hurried into. We were going as fast as we could, which wasn't all that fast, especially considering how fast I knew the Slasher was now. For all I knew, it could very well, have already been waiting for us back at the old church.

Carrie suddenly grabbed me by my shirt collar. She practically threw me to the ground as she ducked down.

"Stop!" she exclaimed in as much of a whisper as she could. "I saw something."

"It's almost pitch black, and we're in the middle of the woods," I snarkily reminded her, in as soft a voice as she was using.

Even in the dark, I could recognize the subtleties in her not-so-amused scowl. She shook it off, grabbed her necklace, ripped it off her neck, and handed it to me.

"Take it," she said.

"What? No. I don't know how to use that."

"It knows where you are because it senses your energy. And there's no way we're going to make it back to the church before it comes after you again. I can create a field around you so that it won't be able to sense you, at least for a while. It'll probably give you just enough time to get back to the church."

"What about you? I'm not just gonna leave you out here with nothing!"

Carrie bit her lip. She obviously hadn't considered herself, which made sense. I was the only person it'd gone after so far. But I figured if it couldn't find me, it wasn't going to have any problem tearing into her, as it had done with Ms. Riley.

"No, I got a better idea," I said. "You say you can make me invisible?"

"Yeah. That's why it didn't sense me coming to the mausoleum."

My mind flashed back to that night when I'd been outside the girl's dormitory and seen her sneak out the window and disappear. She'd been holding her necklace and muttering to herself. That must have been what she'd done then too.

I nodded. "Okay. We can do this."

***

Every plan has its faults, as evidenced by Leslie's initial plan back at the old church. This new plan was no different, but it was better than running through the woods, waiting for the Slasher to get us.

I'd climbed up a tree near where we'd stopped. Not far up, just so that I was definitely out of the 7ft tall Slasher's reach. It reminded me of playing hide and seek when I was little. I was always good at climbing, so I'd just climb whenever I was about to get caught. Most of the other kids couldn't climb, so it was always a good getaway.

I had the bag of salt Carrie'd used on the Slasher in one hand and the necklace clenched in my other.

Carrie knelt on the ground, muttering to herself, as she I'd seen her do several times when she'd been doing incantations.

We'd been in these positions for about ten minutes, without the Slasher showing any sign of attacking. I was starting to worry that it was waiting for me to become visible again before it made its move. A quick shuffling sound coming from outside the clearing Carrie was in shook that fear right out of me, and replaced it with a whole new fear.

I watched Carrie carefully. I remembered how fast it’d been when it'd grabbed me. We hadn’t even had time to react. We were going to have to be just as fast as it. Otherwise, we were dead.

RATTLE RATTLE!

Its game had begun, but so had ours.

Part 15: Plan C

2011-10-16T22:44:00.000-04:00

A black mass flashed through the trees, rushed at Carrie. The Slasher was coming for the kill.

Carrie was ready. As the Slasher came up on her, she whipped around and threw a handful of salt at its hood.

Thata girl, I thought.

The Slasher bowed its hood so that the salt slammed into the cloth of the hood rather than into the creature’s surely deranged face.

Shit!

In creating my ingenious plan, I hadn’t considered the Slasher wising up to Carrie’s salt. Figured. Our first plan, as orchestrated by Leslie, had blown. So why not this one too?

What was this plan of mine? Simple. Carrie would make me invisible to the Slasher by doing her invisibility-thing with the necklace. Now, not being able to be detected by the Slasher, I would climb into a nearby tree, while Carrie, the one who the Slasher could still detect, would wait in the clearing for the Slasher to pounce, with a handful of salt to take it down when it did. When it was down, I would leap from the tree and shove the rest of the bag in its face, rendering it helpless long enough so that Carrie and I could make it back to the old church, to finish the real trap.

Let’s be honest—a little too simple.

Unfortunately, now that the Slasher had found a way to deflect Carrie’s attack, I was going to have to do this on my own. I leapt from the tree, hopped on the Slasher's back, wrapped my arm around it, and shoved the bag of salt in its face.

The Slasher ducked its hood, evading my attack as well. Most of the salt fell on the ground.

“RUN, CARRIE!” I shouted in an order.

While I struggled with the Slasher, Carrie bolted into the woods.

The Slasher hit my arm so that the bag of salt went flying into the woods, then it threw me off its back.

As I hit the ground, I rolled on my side-just wanting to stay in motion, cause the more I moved, the more work the Slasher was going to have to do to get to me. I scraped some dirt and salt into my hand and as the silhouette of the creature came at me, I shoved my hand up, into its hood, and pressed what I'd grabbed into it.

The Slasher leapt back, as it had done in the mausoleum, and unleashed a shrill, much like the one I'd heard when it was struggling at the pool.

While it was in pain, I ran into the woods, dodging stumps, fallen branches, and saplings. I didn’t see or hear Carrie anywhere around. I was going to have to get back to the old church on my own. And that wasn’t going to be too easy.

Part 16: Back at the Old Church

2011-10-15T23:59:00.000-04:00

I clung to the top of the chair, ready to pull it back and let the pitchfork do its work. I was trigger-happy, ready to pull now, but had to control the urge. I only had one shot at this.

The shuffling stopped. I leaned toward the wall, listening. Nothing. Waited some more. Still nothing.

Me and Carrie exchanged a look—one of those “what the hell is this thing doing?” looks.

My nerves were so on edge I thought if human spontaneous combustion was possible, I was going to explode right there.

“Where…is…it?” Carrie whispered through her teeth.

“I…don’t…know,” I whispered through mine.

I couldn’t wait any longer.

“I’m gonna look,” I said, getting up and heading for the door.

Carrie grabbed my arm, easily stopping me—as I wasn’t all that eager to step into my death.

“Just pull the chair when it comes in. K?”

Carrie nodded.

That door. That awful door seemed to mock me—challenge me. It questioned my manhood. Was I really going to be bold enough to approach it, when I feared that the Slasher was just around the corner, waiting. It took a lot of effort to take those few steps to get less than three feet further, and even when my feet moved toward it, I leaned my head back.

I held my breath, forced myself forward so quickly that I nearly tripped forward.

No sign of the Slasher. Just the empty hall.

I turned back to Carrie, shrugged to let her know that it was a no show. It was kind of a shame too. I was looking forward to pulverizing its ass.

A hand reached down, grabbed me by the collar of the flannel shirt I was wearing, and pulled me into the air.

SPRING! RIP!

“FUUUUUUUUCCCCKKKKK!”

I made the same scream that I’d heard Seth make just days earlier during the accident in soccer. I don’t think I’d ever screamed so loud in all my life, but the pain in my back hurt like shit.

“Oh my God!” I heard Carrie panic.

Her nerves must have been on edge as mine had been, cause the moment she saw movement, she’d pulled the trigger, and now I could feel the sharp prongs of the pitchfork stinging in my shoulder. It felt like my chest was turning into stone. My mind was scattered, and all I could see was the black hood of the Slasher’s cloak in my face.

What the fuck? I thought as I tried to rationalize how it had just appeared in the doorway that fast. That’s when I realized. It was actually on the ceiling. Literally holding itself up with its leg and arm equivalents. I hadn’t even thought of it being able to climb like that. Another realization came fast. That’s what it must have done in the woods. That’s why I hadn’t ever able to see it until it was too late.

Well, it was too late for me now. It pulled me towards its hood. Two long sticklike things came out of the front of the hood—like little pincers. If I hadn’t been in so much pain, I would have been disgusted by the idea that the Slasher was some giant bug, but the pain gave me some distance from reality. Though, to be perfectly honest, the enormity of the pain in my shoulder was so intense that it blocked out all the other pain I’d been experiencing in so many other places. There was something nice about that. But at the same time, I still had a pitchfork in my back. And it did hurt like fuck.

The Slasher threw me back. The pitchfork rig swung me back and then brought me forward again before my weight forced the pole holding the pitchfork to snap. I toppled to the floor, landing on the pitchfork, which dug even deeper into my back.

“Shit!” Carrie cried as she vicariously experienced my pain.

The Slasher dropped from the ceiling. The creak the floorboards made sounded like they were struggling to bend.

I sat up. The pitchfork, still jammed into my back, rose with me. There was this odd rush of energy surging through me. It was so intense that I was shaking.

Carrie was hyperventilating nearly as much as I’m sure I’d been in the mausoleum. I’m sure she felt shitty about being responsible for my most recent and most serious injury. And she should of.

The Slasher didn’t give me a chance to yell at her about how she should’ve been more careful. It lunged at me, its yellow claws stretched out before it.

I didn’t have any way of running. I was trapped. And when you trap an animal, it fights back.

“Come and get me bitch!” I exclaimed.

Part 17: Slasher's End...and Mine Too?

2011-10-14T23:59:00.000-04:00

The Slasher lunged at me.

Still with the pitchfork in my back, I rolled to the side. The Slasher pounced onto the pole that I'd tied the pitchfork to, making the pitchfork curl further into my back in a particularly painful way. Then, to my good fortune, it slipped out.

I caught a glimpse of the end of a hammer that was stuffed into a pile I'd made while setting up the room. I grabbed it and whipped around, ready to slam the thing into the Slasher's face.

The Slasher was two steps ahead of me. The pitchfork dove toward the floor.

Two of the prongs hit the side of my foot and dug in. It felt like someone had dropped a 50 pound weight on it. The pitchfork had no trouble tearing through my skin and muscles. My back arched and my chest pushed forward as I wailed out in agony. Every muscle in my body seemed to tense, except my hands, cause the hammer slipped right out and bounced as it hit the floor.

The Slasher left the pitchfork in my foot, I supposed to keep me from going anywhere. It reached into its cloak and, and as a magician would reveal a pair of doves, the Slasher revealed its metallic blade, already splattered with dry, rust-colored blood.

I spent a moment trying to pull the pitchfork from the floor, before realizing the uselessness of my efforts. I have to say, I was surprised. The board it was stuck through surely was just as decrepit and crappy as the rest of the church.

This must've been what it was like for a fox in a trap, looking around desperately, not knowing exactly how little its chances were of surviving. I picked my hammer back up and held it before me, using it like a shield. It spurred a new thought. I didn't need a weapon. Just a shielded!

Beside me, in the pile the hammer had been in, was part of an old tin gutter. I grabbed the gutter with my free hand, forced it before me just in time to catch the Slasher's attack. The blade went right through, just as I had so cleverly planned. Unfortunately, it also went through the palm of my hand, so that I saw the end sticking out of my skin.

Shit, shit, double shit!

Despite the super-fail, I tried to use this to my advantage. I twisted my wrist so fast that the blade slipped from the Slasher's grasp. I turned my hand so that the handle of the blade faced me, and dropping the hammer to free my unharmed hand, I pulled the blade from the gutter and my other, pain-filled hand. Now I was armed. I only had one usable hand now, but it was better than the nothing I'd had before.

The Slasher didn't seem to be taken off guard by my quick maneuvering. It jumped on top of me, scratched at me with its yellow fingernails.

I took a few stabs, but the cloak was flying around and so in my face that all I managed to get was the cloth. While amidst the struggle, I thought what a bitch Carrie was for just sitting around while I was getting mauled by the creature that she and her friends had released from another dimension.

A loud clang echoed through the room, and the Slasher dropped onto me, its black cloak covering my eyes.

The Slasher was incredibly heavy, as I figured it would have been based on its size. I tried to push it off me, but having one hand uselessly curled up, and the other trapped under between my own and the Slasher's body, I didn't get far.

The weight lightened as the Slasher rolled off of me. Carrie, shovel in hand, had pushed it off. It didn't take me long to realize that she was responsible for the creature's demise. It was the second time she'd saved my ass. I felt bad about thinking she was being a lazy bitch. Truth was, I kinda owed her.

She grabbed the half-pitchfork, half-cultivator that was still nailing me to the floor. "You ready?" she asked.

"Ready for what?"

She ripped it out of the floor and my foot. I wailed again, even louder than I had when it had first gone in.

"SSHHHHIIITTT!"

Carrie didn't give my pain a second of her time. She got up, hurried over to a pile of kerosene drums, picked one up, and headed for the Slasher, who was already starting back onto its feet. I'd set the drums that still had kerosene together. It had been part of Leslie's instructions. She had said that we'd need to burn the corpse in order to get rid of the monster for good.

Carrie quickly emptied at least a gallon of kerosene on the Slasher before the drum ran out. She dropped it on the floor, headed back for another.

"Just burn it!" I exclaimed.

Carrie hesitated, but as she saw the Slasher was now nearly standing again, she knew I was right. She reached into her pocked, whipped out the lighter she'd used to light the candles in the cellar, and sparked it to life.

I don't know if the Slasher was aware of what was about to happen, but before she had a chance to touch it with the lighter, it turned back to me and lunged again.

We rolled around on the floor. It clawed at me, while I stabbed at it with the blade. One of my stabs was a success. I drove into its side. It wailed like I had when it'd stabbed me with the end of the pitchfork. Although, its wail sounded far more animal-like than mine had. As I pulled the blade out to stab again, I noticed that it was covered in a thick, syrupy, crimson blood. Not so different than people blood.

I stabbed at it again. The creature grabbed my wrist with its mangled, blistered hands. I struggled with it for a moment, before realizing that fighting its strength was useless. I turned to Carrie, who was just watching us, wide eyed. Sometimes she could be so useful, and then there were times like those. "Carrie!" I shouted, trying to snap her back to reality.

"What?!" she called back, genuinely seeming not to know what to do.

"Give me the lighter!"

She hesitated, like she needed to think about it, but then shook herself from whatever thought she'd been trapped in and tossed the lighter across the room.

It landed a few feet from my reach. I wasn't about to give up on the blade, as the moment I let go, I knew the Slasher was just going to slit my throat. I leaned and leaned towards the lighter, till the middle finger of my crippled, bleeding hand was just inches from it.

As the Slasher's strength intensified and mine quickly dwindled, I slid out from under the Slasher and released the blade. I whipped my good hand around and grabbed the lighter off the floor. I turned back around as the Slasher was coming at me with the blade.

I scoffed at its pathetic blade.

"Fuck you, douche," I said, ready for my triumphant moment. I started the lighter.

"JASSSOONN!!!" Carrie shrieked. "NOOOOOOOO!!!"

Half a second passed before I realized that my entire body was now soaked in kerosene, from having been rolling around on the floor with the Slasher.

"Shit," I said, as flames rushed up my arm and across my chest.

I was dead. But I wasn't going down without that son of a bitch. I leaped forward and jumped at it with my good foot. Flames were practically shooting off me, so when I was as far as a foot from the creature, it caught aflame as well. It stabbed the blade into my shoulder.

We shrieked together as I rammed the Slasher into the wall, which had been so destroyed by termites and age that it broke open. We fell out of the church, into the cool night. I, of course, wasn't feeling the cool night. The fire covering my body was keeping me plenty warm.

I didn’t see what happened to the Slasher. I was too busy screaming in agony as I watched my flesh turn from a light brown tanned look to ash-black.

At some point, the flames reached my eyes, and it felt like fluids were just pouring from my sockets. I was completely blind and in a devastating amount of pain. I flailed about in vain, feeling like nails were being driven into my skin from every angle. My nerves and muscles twitched about.

And then…I blacked out.

Part 18: Rejection

2011-10-13T23:59:00.000-04:00

Twos, ones, parentheses, and what looked like a billion pi symbols blurred together.

I stared at the pop quiz, my mouth hanging open.

This is fucking ridiculous.

And it was too. I had just been through hell the night before. I shouldn’t have had to take a quiz.

I glanced around the class. Everyone was busy with their own quizzes. A deep resentment tightened in my chest. It was as if I thought everyone should have known about the events that had taken place the night before. Like they should have known that I’d been nearly drowned to death in the school pool. Like they should have known I’d been chased through the woods by a giant cloaked insect from another dimension--that I nearly had a panic attack in a coffin, and had sharp objects stab through my chest and hand. Not to mention being burned alive.

High school’s supposed to suck, but not like that.

Pain. That’s all there’d been. An intense burning fire in my flesh, my lungs feeling like they’d been filled with nails, my muscles twisted to the side and immovable. It’d been overwhelming.

I’d caught fire and had blacked out. When I’d regained consciousness there’d been nothing but this blackness and the intense pain. I could only assume by the intense pain that I was in hell. I always figured that if hell existed, that’s where I’d end up, and when I’d felt that swirling pain rippling through my body, splitting my muscles, I was confident that’s where I was.

It’d been so different from my original concepts of hell, as presented by my schooling. I had expected lots of people, fire, vivid colors, chains. What I’d had was my own screaming and pain and darkness. I’d figured that was so much worse than anything the nuns or priests had ever taught us. If they’d warned me that it was going to be like that, I would’ve worked harder to be a good person.

I’d been in this dark, painful state, contemplating spending an eternity there and horrified at the idea that the pain might never end, when my eyes burst open and were filled with a light so white and bright, I’d thought it could have only been heaven.

All the pain in my body had completely disappeared and there’d only been me and this bright light. But why had I gone to hell first? For an instant, my entire notion of the afterlife had undergone radical transformation.

Then, I’d heard the most beautiful voice, like an angel. “Jason…Jason…”

My eyes had quickly adjusted. Carrie had been knelt over me, looking down calmly, certainly.

“Close your eyes again,” she’d said. “They won’t be able to adjust this quick.”

I hadn’t closed them. I’d just kept on looking around. Everything had felt so different. I’d felt light and eager and excited. And then, like I’d wanted to throw up. I’d shut my eyes quickly.

Carrie later had explained that she’d dragged my body back into the church and used her super healing powers or whatever to bring me back. She’d said that I hadn’t died but had just been really really close.

A part of me had felt silly about all my divine revelations. Another part of me just felt sick. Regardless, Carrie’d told me I had to go to classes. I don’t remember why I’d listened. I guess because I’d been so confused and disoriented that I woulda pretty much listened to anyone.

So, there I was in Trig, struggling to think my way through a quiz that my bitch of a teacher, Miss Gray, had forced on us.

I wondered if Miss Ryder’s body had been found. I wondered if there were police swarming the clinic, trying to determine cause of death. Although, if they had discovered a body, I don’t know why we’d still be in school. Wouldn’t that be grounds for a day off? Like snow day? Only a murder day or something.

While all these thoughts swirled around in my skull, I wondered what a zero on a pop quiz would do to my grade. Though, let’s be real, I wouldn’t have done that well on it anyway.

When class was almost over, and I had adequately failed the quiz, I decided after the bell rang I was going to skip the rest of school.

A voice came over the intercom. “Attention students and teachers.” I recognized that voice. It was that weirdo Father Daniels who’d "welcomed" me to St. Lawrence. “Due to a malfunction in the air conditioning, all students are excused from class immediately.” He repeated the message again.

“Fuck you,” I whispered to the cruel universe.

They released us from class. As I headed down the hall, watching the students bustle about, it looked like any other school. It reminded me a lot of St. Luke. It was funny. When I first arrived, I thought this place was weird and noticed that everyone seemed to be overly concerned about the town serial killer. Now, it was like they weren’t concerned enough. I wanted to go up and shake everyone and tell them what I’d been through, but I knew that they’d all just think I was crazy. And that’s not a way to start the year at a new school. I could just imagine Megan hopping around the halls, her boobs shaking, mouth running. "Did you hear about Jason? He went totally psycho. You know he was kicked out of his last school. I hear he tried to kill a guy. Just sayin'..."

As I started toward the double doors, I wondered how awkward it was going to be to see Seth and Brad again. I wondered if they even knew why I’d been gone last night. I bet they did. Those bastards. I was still sure that they had somehow gotten the Slasher to come after me. It was just too coincidental that it had come for me, of all the students in the school. And I wasn’t in the mood for their supposed superpowers.

And it was as if the bitch-of-a-universe had read my mind, cause coming down the hall were Carrie, Seth, and Brad, side by side, gazing at me with looks of concern. They had good reason to be concerned. I was ready to just beat the shit out of all of ‘em—except Carrie, of course. I hated to admit it, but she was starting to get to me. She had been there for me when I hadn’t had anyone. She’d probably saved my life at least three times the night before, and had restored me to perfect health today. Though I had to remind myself that she probably only did it because she felt partly responsible for why I’d been attacked.

They didn’t bother to act like we’d just sorta stumbled into each other. You know, like you do when you’re asking a girl out and you just sorta ‘happen’ to run into her by her locker. No. They came right to me with a fierce intent in their eyes.

I moved over to the lockers so that I wouldn’t get pounced by the hall traffic.

Seth was ahead of Brad and Carrie, and as he approached, he stopped about four feet from me, a look of hesitation in his eyes. I hoped he had superpowers to see the images of me beating the shit out of him that were scrolling through my head.

“Hey Jase,” he said, trying to act friendly or condescending. I wasn’t sure which.

I cringed. I hate it when people call me that shit.

Seth didn’t seem nearly as tough as he had when I'd been pressed up against the wall. Even Brad, who right now looked twice Seth’s size, was looking weak and uncertain.

“Hey,” I said nonchalantly.

“Listen,” he continued, “Carrie told us what happened, and we’re really sorry.”

“Really sorry,” Brad added.

“That took some real balls, though, and we just wanted to know if maybe you wanted to join us.”

Seth looked so pathetic. I wondered if this was how he asked girls out. At the same time, I figured that was a rarity if it did ever occur.

“Join you?” I asked, raising my brow. Funny to think that it was singed off just the night before.

Seth’s dark eyes avoided mine completely, as Carrie’s had done when I’d first pinned her to the wall in the clinic. “The League. Carrie said she told you about it.”

“Did she?” I asked, looking to Carrie, who was staring at the lockers. What else had she told them about me? I hadn’t thought about it, but she was still their bitch, and her loyalty remained with Seth. Something about that pissed me off.

I looked back and forth between all three of them. I was the only one trying to make eye contact. What a bunch of pussies.

I rolled my eyes. “Yeah, she did,” I said. “But I’m not interested.”

Seth opened his mouth to continue, but I pushed between him and Brad. I wanted to make it clear that I had nothing to say to them, and they shouldn't have anything to say to me.

I may have been new to this school and the supernatural, but I knew my rats and I wasn’t about to team up with them. They were on their own, especially if releasing evil was their preferred extracurricular activity.

I headed back to the dorm, and went to sleep. I deserved it, and I figured I might stay in bed the rest of the week.