The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) (7 page)

VII

“Miss Beasly has gone insane!” someone screams down the hall. It sounds like a young man who has yet to experience the full power and might of puberty. I feel bad for the squeaky-voiced youth, who is no doubt experiencing something horrible. I look past the principal who is also looking over his shoulder down to where the young man is standing outside of his classroom door, waving his arms and screaming for help. Soon, there’s another silhouette next to him and another appears after that. I look at the principal, waiting for some kind of action here. Clearly there’s something happening down there. He looks back at me.

“If we don’t go down there,” I tell him in a calm, determined tone of voice, “those kids are going to panic and they’re going to flee the classroom, and there’s going to be no way of knowing who is in trouble next.”

“What do you mean?” He lifts an eyebrow, looking at me suspiciously. I wonder what it was that possessed him to grow a mustache. I keep seeing them everywhere. Someone out there convinced the world that mustaches are badass, just like they convinced the world that real men have beards. No, they’re just as dumb as they’ve always been. I think facial hair is for men who are trying to hide something, most likely their flaccid, limp dicks. I look at him and want to rip that mustache off of his smug, ignorant face. I don’t have time to explain everything to him. I need him to get the fuck out of my way and let me do my job.

“There’s a man using a neurotoxin,” I lie to him. I can’t think of a better excuse. So far, I’m only operating under the assumption that after this, Mendez is going to run with the neurotoxin idea, that it’s being transmitted from victim to victim, thanks to the killer. Hopefully no one starts to ask questions like:
why is it only one victim? Why aren’t people just dropping dead before infecting others? Do you even know how neurotoxins work
? So far, all I have is this and I’m sticking with it. “He’s selecting, targeting, or whatever you want to call it, his victims by using a neurotoxin that the victims transfer to the preceding victim without ever knowing it. He’s created a chain reaction, killing the last people that come in contact with his last victim. So I’m promising you, whoever Alice touched last is in that classroom and they’re about to give someone else, if not the entire class, the neurotoxin. So I need you and your rent-a-cops to get your asses in gear, put on your serious, big boy pants, and get down there and quarantine that class before more people start dying.”

He looks at me with fully justifiably suspicious eyes. I mean, I hardly believe that story myself and I was trying to convince myself that it was a thing before Lola and I watched those three precious frames of pure horror. I look at the officer and feel something rolling in my gut. Maybe the next victim isn’t in that room. Maybe whoever Alice touched already touched someone else, throwing us off, wanting us to quarantine just the classroom while it got away scot-free. Shit. If the demon is on to me, then I’m totally fucked. I have to hope right now that the demon doesn’t know that I’m completely aware of what it truly is, or how it’s doing all of this. If I’m lucky, it’ll still be in the classroom and I can partition off the kids one by one.

Another scream followed by dozens more roll down the hallway. I stop looking at the stupid principal and stare down the hallway where more and more classroom doors are opening, curious, morbidly interested heads are popping out. Any second now, they’re going to lose complete control. I see bodies stepping out of the doorways now, in front of me down the hall, to my right and left, out of my peripherals. This whole thing is about to blow. If another body drops, then this school is going to erupt and the demon is going to get away completely. It’s going to slip through my hands just as I was closing my fingers in around it. I want to scream, pull out my gun, squeeze as many rounds off into the rent-a-cops before running down that hallway to execute every one of the possible hosts for that demonic entity. So far, if the principal doesn’t move, that’s my only option. It’s the only plan that I can think of that will keep my daughter safe.

Or I could just run. I look at the security guards who are completely preoccupied by the screams, and the students that are beginning to trickle out of the classrooms, peeking around corners, and craning their necks to get a glimpse at the fresh abattoir. Not a single one of them still has eyes on me and if they’re worth anything they’re being paid, then this might just be my chance. I decide that it’s worth the try.

I go for it. I plant my feet on the white linoleum, leaving dead Alice behind me in a pool of her own fluids, and shoot down the hallway as quickly as I can. I dodge the principal, who doesn’t even register my flight with the bubbling chaos that is rising up all around him. All I care about is getting to the hallway where five kids are now stumbling out, their hands over their mouths. A girl plants her hands on the lockers nearest to the classroom before she bends over and relieves herself of her lunch. There’s more screams, more shouts, and soon, there are others vomiting all around me. All I know is that this place is going to need to be emptied immediately.

“Stand aside,” I shout to the five kids. I can hear the principal coming hard down the hallway after me, shouting to his hired help to stop me. Thankfully, there are too many children around for them to pull out their tasers and put me down.

I feel the principal’s hand clamp down on my shoulder and I resist the urge to just lay him out, but instead, I think I’m going to need him. He looks at me with horrified eyes, seeing into the classroom at whatever the demon has waiting for me before I get a chance to enter the room. His eyes are transfixed, glued to the scene within. Thankful for the momentary lapse in his focus, I use it to my advantage.

“Hey,” I slap him across the cheek, bringing him back to reality. He flinches and shudders before shooting a hand up to his cheek, rubbing where I smacked him as hard as I can. His eyes are watery, terrified, and as clear as a mountain creek. “I need you to focus,” I tell him. “I need you to keep anyone coming out of this classroom nearby. I don’t want you to touch them, I don’t want you to speak with them, and I don’t want them getting out of your sight. Everyone in this classroom needs to be against the wall and everyone else in this school, I need them to get out. Whatever you have to do, get them out of here.”

He nods to me, barely cognizant, from what I can tell. His already shaken mind is now a whirlwind of questions, memories of what’s lurking in that room, and scenarios of what could possibly be happening to his school. I look at him, hoping that he’s done with his little power struggle with me and I can expect him to actually help me now. He stares at me, blinking, while I give him a shove. Several of his security are standing in their uniforms like golems, staring into the classroom where dozens of teens are up against the walls, trying to sort through what they’ve witnessed before they escape whatever horror has happened inside. Reaching down to my side, I grip my badge and yank it free. It’s time to do this. I don’t want any of them to touch me, but if that’s how the demon wants to play this, then so be it.

“Evacuate the school,” the principal tells one of the guards. “I want you to have the teachers escort the students off of the campus. Tell them that we have a serious incident and that everyone needs to get out. Don’t let them see Alice. Make sure they’re going different directions.”

“You got it.” One of the men turns and starts to take off slowly, picking up pace the farther away he gets from the gravity well that is the classroom.

“You two take the other halls,” the principal says as I try to figure out what the hell I’m doing. I might have a little time before the ambulances arrive. If they take my theory to heart, then they’re going to call the Center for Disease Control. They’ll call them up and they’ll have hazmat crews sent out, a quarantine set up, and I’ll have plenty of time to make my way through all of the students in the classroom, questioning each of them. If that’s not enough time, then the tests will ensue and the demon is going to have plenty of doctors to jump inside of. I look at students nearest me and wonder if it wouldn’t make more sense right now to start threatening each of them. Maybe the demon will come out that way. Then again, maybe it’ll just stay dormant until I’m forced to take more drastic measures.

Inside, the classroom is sectioned by long work stations that are anchored into the ground, built in with ovens, dish washers, and sinks. I look at the cutting boards, the knife holders, and dozens of cupboards that cover the walls of the long classroom. I feel a sinking sensation deep within me, like my intestines are slithering, squirming together like a mess of worms tangling into one mass. I look at the students hunkered down, hiding behind their stations as my eyes are drawn to the far end of the classroom where the teacher is standing as if she’s teaching a lecture.

Written on the white board in red ink, the teacher, Miss Beasly, wrote out her final words. Much like all the other victims, the demon wants to make certain that we’re all very well aware that this is its work. I look at the writing, there like an epitaph to her rather long life, cut short by the ambitions of something monstrous, something horrid. I read the words and feel the anger shooting through my veins. Maybe it does know that I’m on to it. Maybe it does know that I’m hunting it now. ‘Detective, let’s up the ante. –Miss Beasly’. I look at the words and feel the wrath inside of me roaring to life. It’s playing a fucking game with me.

As for Miss Beasly, she is a mess. She appears to be a woman in her late seventies, the kind of matronly woman that you’d picture in your mind as someone uttered the words ‘culinary teaching’ or ‘home economics’. She has a full head of white curly hair, glasses that are kept secure around her neck by a beaded chain. She has crow’s feet, bags under her eyes, and enough wrinkles to need an iron. I look now her neck that has a wattle and spy the turkey thermometer jammed into her throat, upwards toward her skull, probably piercing the base of her skull, cracking in two it like a walnut. But the demon didn’t stop there. I look down her wallpapered, floral patterned dress, past the light pink cardigan that she wore today even though it’s a million degrees outside and a cardigan is about as useful as a third ear.

The sleeves of her cardigan and her dress are spattered, completely matted in gore, blood, and chunks of bone. I stare as her hands are still being mangled inside the two blenders that whir in front of her. The glass pitchers are fully painted in the gory spatter and I stare in disgust at the chunks of deep red and pale white whirling, floating in the stew that has become her hands. I can hear the bones grinding against the metal teeth at the bottom of the blender, rattling and clanking. It grates against my nerves, listening to the horrific sounds, making me fight back the vomit bubbling up in the back of my throat. Her body is twitching, going pale as she continues to grind off the last of her hands and into her wrists. She’s leaning forward, her eyelids getting heavier as her jaw hangs low in an open, silent scream, waiting for it to come, but the pain and horror of all of this is just too much for her.

Eventually, she tips over, slamming her face into the high counter of her teaching table. I can hear her nose crack immediately before the blenders are knocked over and the smoothie of Miss Beasly is spilled across the counter and floor, quickly followed by the shattering of the glass pitchers, sending crimson teeth of crystal across the floor. Students are throwing up all around me and I feel nauseous looking at her. Her hands are completely gone, all the way up past the wrist. Even still, the gluttonous teeth of the blenders are whirling, chewing up the floor, bouncing, still plugged in as they go. I want to rip the things out of the wall, but Miss Beasly’s death can only mean that the demon is now elsewhere, hunting its newest victim down and feeding on their sorrows and their despairs.

I look at the faces in the classroom.

“Is she dead?” someone mutters as a pool of blood spreads out from under her head, staining her snow white hair. Her legs are still twitching, flopping as her whole body quivers. Her stumps are still sending out rivulets of blood that are splashing onto the floor, filling the front of the classroom with even more gore and disgust. I’m not sure what to do. I stare at the woman, waiting for another kid to stand up and jam a pen through their eye or something along those lines, waiting for the demon to make its path known. I wish that the principal would give me access to the cameras. I would be able to stop all of this carnage from continuing.

I’m about to tell them all to stand up and file out of the classroom slowly before there’s another scream from another room, deeper into the school. Shit. I’m too late. The demon must have hopped into Miss Beasly and then hopped into someone else who went to another classroom while the teachers and security ushered them back to class. The demon could be three people ahead of me, maybe more by now. I grind my fingers into fists, wondering what other horrors are awaiting me deeper into the school. How desperate is this demon right now to get away from me? It must not have expected me to be this far along, this close on its trail. It’s trying to throw me off, trying to draw me away from its host, scrambling to secure its plan. I turn and race out of the classroom, watching as people are filing out of their classrooms patiently and orderly, but all of that is short-lived. They’re catching on. The students aren’t sheep. They’re getting the hint. People are dying.

A mad rush breaks through the main hallway and kids begin shoving each other out of the way, storming down the hallways, screaming for freedom as they break the bonds of their instructions and try to flee before whatever’s killing the other kids comes for them. I don’t like any of this. I don’t have any more of the control than I thought I was going to have coming here for Alice. I shove a kid out of my way and rush into the vacant classroom, greeted by yet another horrid sight.