The Yearbook (9 page)

Had I known my teachers would expect me to be Einstein, I would have screwed up that test on purpose.

Depressed, I slumped out of class and headed for second period.

I met Jason in the hallway. “You think his wife treats him like that?” Jason asked.

“What?” I walked briskly toward English, and Jason trotted along beside me.

“I read that if a person is mistreated, but feels powerless, he represses his anger, then lets it out at a
safer target
— meaning us! See? It’s Freudian.”

“Jason, thanks for the analysis, but — ”

Jason laughed. “It’s not analysis. If it were, I’d be charging you! That’ll come in a few years, after I graduate … Perm State!”

That was more an announcement than a statement. He was grinning proudly. “Was that the one you were wait-listed at?” I asked.

He nodded. “A local Penn State alum called me at home this morning — and he’s meeting me here for lunch, to congratulate me. Amazing, huh? See you!”

He sprinted away, cornering another classmate. I turned left into another hallway.

“David! Wait up!”

My blood ran cold. Goose bumps sprouted on my arms.

Rachel Green was running toward me.

For a dead person, she looked good. Solid. Happy, even.

“Guess what?” she gushed. “Mr. Brophy found out one of his workers wrecked the yearbook! The guy was drunk the night he set the text, and he admitted to it. So Brophy fired … what’s wrong? Why are you looking at me like that?”

“R-Rachel?” I creaked.

“Y-yes?” It was a cruel imitation.

“I just thought — did Chief Hayes call you last night?”

“Yeah. He brought me this.” Rachel held up her left hand to show me her ring. “How did you know?”

“I … was the one who found it.”

“Well, thanks. That’s what I get for exchanging rings with old Pigskinhead.” She held up an enormous ring hanging around her neck. “Do I lose
his?
Noooo. Wait till I get my hands on him. You haven’t seen him today, have you?”

“No.”

“Well, if you do, let him know I’m after him.”

“Rachel — ” I blurted as she started to run off.

“What?”

My head spun. I tried to picture the foot, but I couldn’t. Was it male? Female? Could it have been John’s?

“Earth to David,” she said. “Come in.”

“Um … nothing,” I replied.

I ran to English. John was absent. I sat through forty agonizing minutes of William Faulkner, then headed straight for the
Voyager
office.

I punched John’s number on the yearbook phone.

“Hello,” said a stiff voice. “You have reached the Christopher residence. We cannot come to the phone right now, so — ”

I hung up and tried the police station. I was put right through to the chief.

“Hayes.”

“This is David Kallas, Chief. I found out that Rachel Green had actually given her ring to a guy named John Christopher. That’s C-H-R — ”

“David, I know,” he interrupted. “We found him.”

My throat instantly parched. “Alive?”

“No.”

I
DROPPED THE PHONE.

“David!”
Chief Hayes’s voice boomed through the room, even from the phone receiver on the floor.
“Are you there?”

I picked it up. “Uh-huh.”

“David, I need your help. Did you know the boy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“How about Arnold?”

“A little.”

“Can you think of any connection between the two? Were they friends? Enemies? Did they belong to the same teams or clubs?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Well, call me if you think of anything, okay? I’m working with the parents, but the families don’t know each other. Serial killers tend to work in patterns. If we figure it out, we can set a trap.”

“Is that what you think this is, a serial killer?”

“Could be. Could also be a copycat who’d read about the killings in 1950.”

“What do you
really
think?”

He was silent for a moment, then let out a loud breath. “I wish I could answer that.”

“Me, too,” I said. “I’ll do the best I can, Chief Hayes.”

“Thanks. See you, buddy. I know it’s hard. Believe me.”

I let the phone drop into the cradle. I was numb.

John was my friend. I had known him since second grade.

This was getting too close to home.

I waited for Ariana outside the cafeteria before lunch. That was usually the time we crossed paths.

The cafeteria was at the end of the main hallway. Through the crowd I could see Jason, yammering to a tall, young black guy with a terrible skin condition on his face. I assumed he was the Penn State alumnus. The guy was nodding patiently, probably wondering how the admissions committee could have made such a mistake.

I watched them disappear down a hallway. Ariana was approaching from the opposite direction.

“I have nothing to say to you,” she said as she swept past me into the cafeteria.

I followed behind her. “Ariana, something really horrible has happened — ”

“Yeah?” She took a tray and slid it along the metal track. “Well, try not to think about it. A little repression is healthy. You’d be surprised how well it works.”

“Ariana— ”

“I’m having lunch with
Stephen,
if you don’t mind.”

“Ariana, John is dead.”

Her hand knocked over a salad bowl. She turned to me, her eyes wide with disbelief. “John … Christopher?”

“Those feet we saw in the pipe — ”

“Oh, no.” Her voice was a whisper. Her face blanched.

“We need to talk,” I said.

I took her by the arm and left the cafeteria. Just outside the door was a group of seniors, mostly cheerleaders and jocks.

One of them shouted, “The yearbook dudes! Yo, how about this one: Leo Franken, jock and flirt, grinds opponents in the dirt!”

“Hey, you guys keeping the shrunken heads in the new version?” asked another.

I mumbled something and headed the other direction with Ariana. Small groups were hanging out everywhere.

We found a deserted area near a row of lockers. Tears now streamed down Ariana’s face.

“Look, I know you’re mad at me,” I said. “I
was
spying on The Delphic Club, but not just to find out about Smut — uh,
Stephen.
John, Rick, the pipe, that hidden part of the basement — they’re all connected somehow. We have to get involved in this, for John’s sake, at least. Now, Chief Hayes thinks there might be — ”

The clatter of footsteps made me stop. Three girls were heading toward us, deep in conversation.

Behind me was the backstage door to the auditorium. I pulled it open, and we walked onto the empty stage. “— a serial killer,” I went on as the door slammed shut behind us.

“Oh, great,” Ariana replied. “So who’s next?”

“Well,
if
you believe that’s true, we need to think of a pattern of murder.”

“What do you mean,
if
? What else could it be?”

“I — I don’t know. I think something much weirder than that is going on here — ”

“Oh. Like what? Something
paranormal,
David?”

I shrugged. “Well …”

“A ghost?” Ariana was looking at me sharply. “Or maybe a dead dog come back to life? You’ve been reading too much Stephen King, David. If some murderer is on the loose here — ”

“Yeeeeaagh!”

The scream cut Ariana off. It was muffled, and directly below us.

“Oh, my god,” I said.

“Come on!” Ariana ran to the spiral stairs and threw open the gate. We practically tripped over each other to get to the basement.

The scenery shop light was on. The bookcase had been swung open.

We barged into the cavern. The scream rang out again, much louder. This time I recognized the voice.

“Jason!” I called out.

The graffiti swirled past us. We rounded corner after corner, following the voice. The basement seemed endless, opening again and again, into areas not visible from the bookcase. My blood pounded now. A mist swirled around us, and the chalky smell invaded my nostrils.

“Where are we going?” Ariana yelled.

“I don’t know!” I was ahead of Ariana now, and turning to answer her, I only saw mist.

“Help! Don’t let him do this to me!”

We were close — just
how
close was impossible to tell.

“Where are you, Jason!” I bellowed.

“AAAAAAAGGHHHHHHH!”

To my left. About twenty feet. I pushed through the soupy mist. I couldn’t see the floor, and I felt as if I were floating.

“David!”

Ariana’s call seemed to come from under a blanket.

“Here!” I answered.

I was shocked by the immediate touch of her hand on my arm. She was right behind me.

A long, wide, darkness appeared, almost invisible. As I came closer, it solidified, took the form of a gash in the ground.

My knees locked. I had gotten too close, standing inches from the edge. The crack was enormous now, at least six feet wide. It spewed huge, cumulus puffs of smoke in irregular rhythms.

And between each one was a view of the bottom. A churning mass of yellowish-white, not purely liquid or solid or gas, but somehow all of them interchanging.

I became aware of Ariana’s hand in mine. I did not need to look at her face. I felt the shock through her fingers.

“No-o-o-o-o-o-o!”

Jason’s voice was to my right.

I took only five steps. Smoke exploded in my face and dissipated like dancing fingers. When it cleared, I saw Jason.

His eyes were like two eggs, sunny-side up. His mouth was frozen in a mask of unspeakable horror. Tendrils twined around him, pocked and lumpy like stone, yet somehow elastic and fluid. They pulsed rhythmically, glistening with a whitish ooze. His arms were pinned to his sides, his legs half sunken into the crevice. From behind his head, translucent yellow veins snaked over the contours of his face, pointing into his mouth.

“It’s eating him!” Ariana’s voice was a choked whisper.

The tendril points dug into his mouth, ears, navel. They poked under his fingernails, lifting them off like soda-can poptops.

“David, let’s get out of here,” Ariana pleaded.

Every human instinct told me Ariana was right. My brain was shooting flight commands to my legs. But I could not move. A part of me felt drawn to the hole. My body felt an energy pure and powerful, my mind a jolt of awakening.

Jason’s face now registered nothing. But as he slowly twisted, sinking into the hole, his eyes caught sight of us and flickered with recognition.

Under the tendrils, his hand fumbled frantically. He managed to reach into his pocket and throw its contents to the ground. Scraps of paper floated on a current of smoke and landed near the edge of the crevice.

A garbled sound escaped his mouth. The word was unintelligible, but the intent was clear.

Jason’s plea for help would be his last if Ariana and I just stood there.

I stepped toward him, breaking the hold of logic and fear.

“David, are you crazy?” Ariana cried.

I did not answer. My knees bent, and I sprang toward Jason, who was now under the floor surface.

Arms wide, I hurtled into the abyss.

S
TILETTO PAIN.

Harsh, ripping, stretching. Pulling my body in all directions, like dough.

My vision blurred. I felt my fingertips a mile below my toes, my knees behind my head. I blinked and felt a shot of electricity carom through my brain, which now felt as if it were the size of a football field.

I was neither standing nor falling. I saw only white-yellow, the color of the tendrils and bubbling mass at the bottom of the crevice.

Words echoed and overlapped, building into shrieks, sobs, and babbles. Some were mine, some Ariana’s and Jason’s.

But most of the voices were completely unfamiliar, shifting in and out of English with the fury of a cyclone. I tried to cover my ears, but I couldn’t tell where my hands were.

Then, without warning, the voices stopped.

I felt my body snap together like a rubber band. I still saw nothing, and I lurched about like a leaf on the wind.

But my fear was disappearing now. I felt peace covering me, massaging me. I began to soar, forgetting about anyone but myself. Soon all my thoughts seemed to be swallowed up, and I was in a state of blissful emptiness.

You’re early.

I didn’t exactly
hear
the words. They seemed to plant themselves inside me, in some mental place I’d never been before. I tried to move my mouth, but I couldn’t feel it. Instead I thought the question
Where am I?

A small giggle was the response. Then,
The omphalos, daddy-o. Try that on for size.

The voice — if you could call it that — was male. Young, too, as if it belonged to someone my age.

Where’s my friend?
I thought.

Silence. Mumbling. And then another, older, male voice:
He was needed.

And me?
I asked.
I’m needed, too?

In a different way, David,
answered someone distinctly female.
First, go back. Your task is to find out who we are. If you do, you will earn your place.

What if I don’t?

I felt a low, agitated rumble.

We’ve delivered all we can of the message,
the female answered.
Now, go.

Wait a minute
—

The first voice cut me off:
Do it. Dig?

And then a hand grabbed my arm, and the floating stopped. So did the voices. I heard screaming, muffled at first, and then piercing.

I was yanked upward, and found myself sprawled on a dirt floor.

When I looked up, the mist had become thin. I could make out the basement walls.

“David?”

Ariana was gaping at me, her face streaked with black, sooty tears.

“Whoa … ” I said. “What just happened?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “But it turned your hair white.”

S
CREECH!

A driver’s ed car swerved to avoid Ariana and me as we bolted out the back door and into the school parking lot. The teacher bellowed profanities, but we barely heard them.