Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller (12 page)

He was old.

And tired.

She was young.

She slithered downward, fast, lifting her rump off the ground repeatedly while trying to shoot toward her digging heels.

It didn’t work.

He cast his leg atop her middle immediately and sat his full weight down on her until she knew that continuing would gain her nothing.

He had her.

Solidly.

No escaping.

It was clear to Bailey he was wrong in the head.

A teacher wouldn’t drag a student behind a shed!

She had to think differently, not from panic, she knew. She had to use her brain. She needed to know what he wanted?

We can chat back here
, he had said.

And what about Carla Cummins?

“Mr. Renly,” she muttered into his hands. “Get off.”

“Are you relaxing?” he asked. But he kept both hands to her mouth, lifting them off but slightly to hear what she was saying.

She stared up at his dark and hovering form, her eyes wide, and nodded vigorously. “I’m stopping,” she said. “I’m listening. Please. I can’t breathe.”

“This wasn’t what I wanted, Bailey,” he said, sounding earnest.

I’ll bet that’s true!
she thought.
I’ll bet you’re starting to realize exactly what you’ve done! And that you’ll be arrested tonight, and fired Monday, assuming I get away!

She wasn’t about to say that out loud, though.

She had to think.

She had to use her brain.

What did Renly want?

“What do you want?” she asked. But then she adapted the question to sound less accusatory and downplay—or attempt to downplay—the reality of the situation, saying “What do you want to tell me about Carla Cummings?”

“I’ve already told you,” he answered. “She’s dead.”

“Yes, but how?”

“How matters less than why.”

Not to me
, Bailey thought. “Mr. Renly, would you please get off me?” she asked. “I can’t breathe. I’m calm now.”

“You’re only acting calm,” he said.

“In truth, you’re scaring me,” she answered.

He dismounted, holding onto her wrist for safekeeping.

“That’s not my intention,” he said.

“May we please go back the barn?” Bailey asked him, attempting to sit up.

He helped her sit upright in the grass behind the shed.

“No,” he said calmly. “I hate to say it, but we can never go back now. Only forward.”

She had a bad feeling that Mr. Renly had gone psycho over Carla Cummings. He didn’t have to say it. The situation itself spoke loudly enough. Carla was dead, and Bailey was assuming he killed her.

“Never say never, Mr. Renly,” Bailey offered.

“Miss Cummings is lying on the floor inside this shed,” he said. “I bashed her skull on a tractor.”

“I’m sure it was an accident,” Bailey told him.

She was only trying to use her brain, to tell him what he probably wanted to hear.

Then he got mad. Instantly mad. His tone of voice raised to a harshness she had never heard from him before. He slammed his fist into his thigh, and said, “You have no idea what I’ve done for you tonight, Bailey! To protect you! To protect your name and reputation!”

“I believe you,” Bailey said.

“She was going to defame you!” he said. “So was Jackson the Sackston!”

“Jackson Saxton?” Bailey replied.

“Yes. He’s dead, too.”

“Jackson had an accident, too?”

“I stove in his ear and the side of his head with a barn pulley. He was going to tell Eric Cady you were pregnant and scheduled for an abortion next week. How do you like that?”

“Who said that?”

“Let’s just say miss Cummings had a big mouth, like her reputation claimed.”

Carla Cummings and Mr. Renly?

It wasn’t possible.

“Unlike Carla,” Bailey said, “I don’t have a big mouth. And this is none of my business. I’ll stay out of it.”

“None of your business? I did this for you, my love.”

My love?
she thought, edging back to the wall.

Without thinking, she said, “I’m not your love, Mr. Renly. You’re my math teacher.”

In the darkness surrounding them, a silence fell cold and hard. In the distance, coming from the barn, the eerie, horror-stricken notes that opened
Freddy’s Revenge
played loudly.

Mr. Renly said, “Lie down on your stomach, shut your mouth, and put your hands behind your back. If you hurt
me
, Bailey, I’ll hurt
you
. Ask the bitch under my bed.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean that,” Bailey said.

“So you say now,” he told her.

O
n her stomach,
hands behind her back, Mr. Renly sat on the back of her thighs. He was undoing his belt, Bailey could hear. She could hear the jangle of the buckle’s clanking tine. Was he going to rape her now? she wondered, sudden fear boosting her heart that thumped the ground below her chest. He had one hand pressing down between her shoulder blades. Had he raped Carla Cummings? Had he really killed her?

If he
had
, which seemed impossible for Bailey to believe, wouldn’t he also do the same to her?

Didn’t rapists who killed their victims kill
all
their victims?

Bailey had never imagined Mr. Renly to be a murdering psychopath, who captured high school girls, raped them, mauled them, killed them, mutilated them, then jammed their mangled bodies under tractors and beds.

What had he said…

Ask the bitch under my bed?

Which girl was under his bed, crammed with limbs twisted and a ghastly, bug-eyed expression of horror still on her rot-infested face?

As Mr. Renly shifted his weight atop her, he pressed the air from her lungs and made it hard for her to inhale without gasping. Grass and dirt was embedding into her left cheek.

She had to say something, she decided. She couldn’t just succumb like a helpless bunny pinned beneath a hungry wolf.

Gasping, she pleaded, “Mr. Renly, don’t hurt me.”

She had neither the capacity in her squashed lungs to manage more, nor the capacity in her frazzle mind to assemble more.

“You’re not helping endear yourself to my good intentions,” he said. “Would I hurt you, Bailey? Is that how you see me?”

“No,” she answered.

“We’re going to talk about how you see me,” he said. “Stop moving your hands to the sides.”

She had tried to sneak her hands from behind her, hoping to get them into a pushup position where she might lever herself up and buck him off.

She would try it anyway, she decided.

Go!

Up went her body, strong, lifting. She felt his weight break loose as her shoulders and back thrust skyward, drawing knees under. Her knees scrambled for traction in the grass, toes prying to shove off. She tried launching her body straight ahead.

As if tethered, her escape jerked to a halt.

Mr. Renly had grabbed the waistband of her jeans, and Bailey felt her jeans coming off. Her jeans and panties were being dragged off the fleshy curves of her hips, dragged off easily, too, as if her skin had been powdered in talc.

Instinctively, she stopped pulling.

I can’t lose my pants!
she thought.

But she would hardly care about her pants, if she knew she could break away and run, and make it to the barn.

She lit forward again, clawing and digging the ground.

The button of her jeans was holding, keeping her jeans on, keeping them from sliding clean off her hips.

And then Mr. Renly crawled forward onto her legs again, got her arrested by both shoulders, and flattened her body with the heavy weight of his own.

“Don’t do that,” he said. Then he crawled forward more, put his mouth near her ear, and added, “I don’t like how you’re acting, Bailey.”

Bailey inhaled desperately, trying to fill her lungs with air.

His breath was a used filter of stagnant, moldy coffee grounds.

She turned her face the opposite way.

It took restraint, but she held in check the words that came to mind.
Get off me, puke!
she wanted to shout. And it would blast him off her back with the raw force of her hatred.

He wouldn’t like that, though, she knew.

Had she successfully broken loose, she wouldn’t have cared what he liked, or disliked. She would have shouted at the top of her lungs that he was a puke, or worse, while running for her life. She knew she could outrun him. He was old.

She had to!

She had to gain her feet somehow, then break away, then bolt.

Except he was unexpectedly heavy.

She was being smashed to the ground.

Mr. Renly was stronger, too, than she would have guessed, which proved that rapists were stronger than they looked, she decided. They needed to be stronger than they looked in order to overpower weaker, unsuspecting females.

I’m wasting time
, she thought.
I’m paralyzed. I need to think. Be productive. If I can’t overpower him, I shouldn’t try. Just think.

What did he want?

What did he want to hear?

What could she
say
that would work?

What could she
say
to gain an advantage?

Saying was all that she had.

Or saying nothing.

Until she knew what to say, she should say nothing. That was the intelligent decision.

He sat upright again now, sliding backward to position himself on top of her rump. Bailey watched his silhouette from the corner of her eye. He had lost the belt apparently, because he shifted suddenly, twisting backward to find it, and then he held onto her waistband while he leaned to retrieve it.

He dragged it through the grass.

Bailey listened to the clank and clatter of the buckle.

She had started with the right strategy, she decided, telling him that Carla and Jackson’s deaths were surely accidental. It was the “You’re-Not-Guilty” strategy, and the main idea was to convince him—a murdering psycho—that that was true. An accident was an accident, which people would believe.

Until his “my love” comment had ignited her fear.

What did he want?

He looped the belt before grabbing her right hand. He worked the looped end of the belt over her wrist. He pulled that tight. He grabbed her left hand, wrapped the belt around. He picked up her belted hands, weaved the belt’s tail through, and frapped it around again.

The blood swelled in her fingertips, which began to throb immediately.

“You don’t need to tie me, Mr. Renly,” she said. “I believe you. I’m on your side.”

That sounded good, she decided.

He got to his feet. “Stand up, Bailey,” he said. “We can talk while walking. Don’t try to run. I’m holding the belt.”

“I won’t run, Mr. Renly. I trust you,” she lied. “You’re my favorite teacher.”

She felt a nudge, stepped forward, and moved according to the guidance of his left hand on her shoulder. With her arms belted behind her back, she listened attentively for him to speak. The first dozen steps were in silence. As he steered her toward the rear of the farm, Bailey could see the open barn door lighting up and flickering with blue flashes from the movie playing within. She could hear the movie’s soundtrack permeating in eerie, low tones.

And at that moment, she saw the shape of Eric Cady emerge in the open doorway. He peered in the direction of the portable toilet. He was looking for her, she knew.

Mr. Renly slipped his hand over her mouth, and suctioned it tightly before she called out.

Eric Cady exited the barn, walked onto the gravel drive, approached the portable toilet, then wandered toward the cars.

He thinks I left
, Bailey thought.

Mr. Renly’s lips touched the tip of her ear, and he whispered, “Don’t squeal or try anything. I’ll drag you into the corn.”

Bailey moved her face side to side against his cupped hand, acknowledging she wouldn’t dare.

She struggled to breathe through her nostrils.

They were walking alongside a corn field now, and Bailey watched Eric Cady disappear amongst the cars.

He’s looking for my car
, Bailey thought.

Once Eric was out of sight, Mr. Renly removed his hand from her face, mercifully allowing her to breathe through her mouth again.

What does he want?

What should I say?

Nothing came to her.

Then, suddenly, she whispered, “I’m glad Carla’s dead. I hated her. I hated Jackson, too.”

“What’s that?” Mr. Renly asked, leaning in.

“I’m glad they had accidents,” she said. “I hated them both.”

“Don’t say that, Bailey. You’re better than that.”

“But they were mean to me, Stuart.”

He seemed to think about that a moment. Then his lips touched her ear again, and he exhaled hot, stale breath, while asking, “Am I Stuart now, my love?”

Bailey turned her head carefully, holding it against his face until she felt his nose dragging along the back of her skull. Then she hammered her body forward and back, in an unexpected lightning explosion, slamming her skull back hard into his nose. She heard the crunch of cartilage, and while he reeled backward, blinded by pain, Bailey bolted forward. At tether’s end, his grip broke, and Bailey felt the sweet release of freedom.