After School

We’ve shed white cotton turtlenecks, collared shirts, neckties. Its navy-blue emblem polos and wrinkled chinos we’re in. It means summer, or that it’s close by.

We’re on the baseball diamond after school, the grass is high. Our team won’t use this field. It’s junk. We play off campus, in the neighborhood. Mr. Madsen’s our coach. We practice Tuesdays and Thursdays, but today’s Wednesday. I’m on the team, so I know this stuff. Landon’s not, so he probably doesn’t. He swims and has abs. Not even a six-pack but more like an eight. No one else in seventh grade has muscles like him. I’m glad we’re in our polos. It’s like we’re the same this way. Except his hair is long, dark brown, and the pool chemicals have left it brittle, even faded it a bit. Mine’s shorter, dirty blond, with no chlorine color.

Mr. Madsen says, for baseball, you need good hand-eye. I think I have that. Landon … not really. We’re tossing a football on the junk field. It’s not official size, which means my hands can fit around it just fine. I’ve tried stretching my fingers over a regulation ball, and I can almost get there, but it hurts. I do better on this one. My throws are Peyton Manning’s. I chuck it up to Landon. The ball’s ovular like a torpedo and whizzes a zipline hum through blue May. Landon flails his pale-white arms, his wide hands—better fit for butterflies and breaststrokes—and completely botches the catch. Me, I’d snag it like T.O. 

It’s Landon’s turn to quarterback. He drags his arm back to do it. It’s so ridiculous, a shot-put motion, that I laugh straight out, a chuckle that plays melodically off the warm evening air. I like hearing my own laugh. It’s five o’clock, which means our parents should be here soon, but it’s a toss-up for whose will get here sooner. Mine both teach at another school, Edith Sherwood, an all-girls high school. Landon’s … well, I only know they’re divorced. Everyone knows that. It’s kind of like a mark you wear here.

Landon is still in his Happy Gilmore windup when he stops, just stops outright, like some forceful magnet grounded him. The football drops from his fingers and vanishes in the tall weeds. I can’t make out his face wholly, but something’s off. My first thought is that it’s a seizure. I’ve heard about epilepsy—some kids have it and will seize out of nowhere. I haven’t seen it, though. I don’t know if Landon has epilepsy, and I don’t know what to do if he does. They don’t teach us things like that. In health we talk about sex and look at illustrations of tadpole sperm. I hope Landon isn’t having a seizure.

“Hey! Are you okay, man?” I shout across the junk field. My voice is not melodic anymore. It’s mousy and dumb, which is about how I feel. I know nothing about seizures. I can’t save my friend, but I race to him anyway.

Landon’s frozen. His face is whiter than normal. Dad calls Landon’s face “homely.” He says it about other people too. Mostly guys, and the way Dad says it makes me think it’s an insult. I haven’t checked for myself. But the guys he says are homely, I kind of like. I think they have nice faces. Landon’s face is nice to me. He has blue eyes—a trait we share—but his are bigger and wider. Muppet-ish with thick lashes. He has lots of freckles, various shades of brown; thin, bright-pink lips; and his nose, like mine, is a little big. Not too much, though.

And he’s not having a seizure. I look in his eyes; the life inside them wavers like shadows over the artificial blue in swimming pools. “Landon, what’s wrong? You’re … you’re scaring me, man. Snap out of it!” I step back. I clap my hands in front of his face, how characters do on TV. It’s fireworks cracking. He blinks. It brings him back. 

“What?” he asks.

“What’s wrong, man?”

“There—” 

“What?”

“There …” Landon raises his hand, it goes up like a slow elevator, and points his index finger over my left shoulder. I follow it. “There’s something over there,” he whispers, and that sends chills through me. Electric icicles. That thick fear in his voice. It strokes the nape of my neck. Has he ever been this scared? When we watched The Sixth Sense, I’m pretty sure he was. But not really. Not in real life. His finger guides my eyes to the street, over the low stone wall that perimeters our school, to the sidewalk across the ever-busy East Woodbine Avenue. A white Subaru races by, late sun sparkles in the dash, and then it’s gone. A gold Volkswagen convertible with its black canvas top up replaces it, zooming the opposite direction, its hum like a well-thrown spiral. The school’s speed light doesn’t flash. Too late in the day. 

“Do you see it?” 

And yes. I do. I see something. A man. He wears dark jeans and a dark-gray hoodie. 

“They’re here.”

“What?” I ask and see that Landon’s ready to bolt. His cool-water eyes say it first. I catch it there, then grab his wrist. Have I touched his skin before? It’s soft, smooth, cold. I don’t like gripping it this way, tight and hurtful. I wish I didn’t have to. His arm is pale on the underside and freckled on top. I’ve seen pictures of leatherback turtles swimming in blue water. I think they have freckles like Landon’s. The veins in his forearm twitch. He wants to break for it. “Landon! What’s wrong?”

But he doesn’t answer. Just tugs fast and gets loose. And of course he does. He’s stronger and doped on adrenaline. I shout after him, but he’s already hit blacktop. His legs pump as in the pool. Pat. Pat. Pat. The rubber soles on his buck oxfords—the tan suede ones we all wear—echo off the pavement and carry to me. I’m furious. Impressed. I don’t want to look back to the street, but I do and see him there. The man. Not a man. Closer. Just beyond the low stone wall. It’s crossed Woodbine. Its features are more definitive now. It’s not its clothes that are gray but its skin. Which is scales. Gray scales head to toe. But its eyes are wide and white. Its long, sharp snaggleteeth are white too. Its mouth protrudes slightly from the rest of its face, a bit like a horse’s muzzle. Some anthropomorphic monster. Where its fingernails should be, lengthy gray tendrils wire out. Even more snake out from around its neck. A sick skin-frilled collar. I parrot Landon and run.

The junk field has become massive, stretching miles not yards. I check my shoulder, and the monster’s clearing the low stone. Chasing. Its gray feet are immense, humanlike in shape. The veins there bulge. In lieu of toenails, there are claws. I hear its hard-boned heels beat the ground. Weighty. Each hit rips traceable vibrations through the earth, to its core. The quakes are enough that I’m thrown from my own feet and tumble into the high grass. It brushes my cheeks, my ears, stinging the skin that is sensitive. I’m among the weeds now. Ready to die beneath the heavy-heeled gray foot. Which rattles, rattles, rattles. I regain my run. It’s awkward—clumsy as Landon at wide receiver—but I’m up. Moving. Not looking back. I know how close it is, the monster. The ground-shakes tell me. I bound onto blacktop. 

There are no cars in the parking lot. No tykes on the woodchip playground, though I think a black rubber swing seat rocks nominally without breeze. I can’t be sure. Everything’s shaking in my vision as blood wells up in my eyes and I beat feet. Faster. Faster.

“Hurry!” I hear Landon yell. He’s at the school, holding one of its hollow metal doors—the push doors that gasp open, that lead us after-schoolers out into sunlight, to yard-football and freedom. But the outside is compromised now. “Come on!”

I do. I am. I try to dissociate, to imagine rounding third base, pounding chalk line, and needing to score. And needing to RUN! I can’t waste a second craning my neck. Checking the throw, checking the monster. I need to—

“Get inside!” I hustle in. Landon drags the door closed behind me. It clicks shut.

“Did you …” But I can’t finish. I’m bent over, huffing. There isn’t room for words. My lungs are greedy for air, and I do my best to comply, sucking, wheezing. Bang! The walls shake. Bang! The monster. Battering. Its efforts come like atom bombs on a fallout shelter. Bang! Its dark-gray body flashes across the door’s small-cut window. Landon and I stumble back. We race the checked linoleum hallway that holds eerie glimmers of the overheads. Fluorescent spirits ripple beneath our schoolboy shoes. Red rubber soles. Bang! I look back. Landon won’t. In the window the monster lowers its gray muzzle. It might be grinning. It might always look that way with saberteeth long enough they don’t fit its face. It whiffs its equine nostrils and fogs the glass. Its eyes are pupilless white marbles. Can it see? Bang! The lights blow; one of their frosted panels falls, smacks the tile floor. It’s the sound of a large textbook dropping, and it’s followed closely by a bulb. The glass tube erupts on impact. I wince. Uselessly, I cover my head as in a war movie. We duck inside the nearest room. I swing the door shut. And lock it.

We’re in a kindergarten classroom. There aren’t any windows, and with the lights now blown it’s tough to see in the dark, but after a minute my eyes start to adjust. It’s imperfect, but I can make out the traces of things. Our parents sign us out in this room with the after-care staff, but there are no after-care workers here now. No parents or kids. We’re alone. And have been. The floor’s a bright-orange carpet, and there’s an avalanche of well-loved purple and navy beanbags stockpiled in the corner. Opposite those, there’s a jumbly AV cart. It trophies a bulbous Sony television and line of family-friendly VHS tapes, encased in thick, thick plastic.

“Where is everyone?” I ask. Early tears puddle my eyelids. I feel their weight, their density.

“Come on. Help me move this.” Landon’s behind the long and hefty hardwood desk. The infamous three-ring sign-out binder lies open on it alongside a gaggle of walkie-talkies that stand upright like toy soldiers. They teeter but refuse to fall as he tries shoving the desk.

“What the hell’s going on?” I whisper-shout. It’s becoming part of a new dialect. Survival.

Landon sighs, abandons desk, and comes to me. He grabs my bicep. Our faces are close. Have they ever been this close? His is severe.

“I don’t know,” he says. There are tearlets in his eyes too. “I thought …” His bright-pink lips tremble. It’s also how they go when he’s holding a laugh down. But he’s not laughing, and I might be more scared if he was. I wish we could laugh … in blue May, in late thrown-spiral sky.

“What?”

“This morning. My parents were fighting about something. When my dad was picking me up. I couldn’t hear, really. I was in the car, but my mom was saying something to my dad. It sounded serious. I don’t think she wanted me to come in today.” Landon averts his eyes. The tearlets fatten—one brims over and falls, it stains his freckle cheek. I want to wipe them. “Something really fucking bad’s happening, man.” He spaces the words out. It’s how adults talk sometimes on grave matters. He brushes the tears away himself. “Help me move this desk.” Bang! “Shit, shit, shit. Come on.”

I’m staring at the locked door, through it, envisioning the nightmare outside. Each charge. More ceiling tiles falling. It’s just a matter of time. “What … what if it can still get through. Those tendrils. What—”

“It won’t. But we need to block the door.” Bang! “Now!”

“I—” Before I finish, we hear glass break. It patters. Back there. Down the hallway.

“Jesus, man. Help me. Move. This. Desk!” Landon commands the instruction through gritted teeth, exerting all his energy. His face is flush. The desk budges, then catches momentum on the carpet, which hisses under its legs. The walkies tumble. Some slide to the floor.

“Landon. We can’t stay here. What happens when it gets in?”

“It won’t. And where the hell else are we gonna go?”

I sketch a mental map of the first floor, scan for the exit routes. It’s an odd power bolstered by years’ worth of after-care. I imagine that everyone has these places. Rooms we can mind-walk uninhibited. That we know intricately. Even the dark cobwebbed corners. Most of all those corners. I know this room opens onto another classroom, and beyond that is the music room. I see bathrooms there. I see a water fountain and across the hall … a stairwell! Where we can take one floor down to the basement—an idea that doesn’t thrill me, like locking yourself in your own funeral casket—or up to more hollow metal doors that lead outside.

“We can go out of that room and into the stairwell.”

“How’s that better? It’ll just get us out there.”

I stop wheeling through my mental map, indulging in the fantasy of reknowing sunlight, and I consider that he’s right. It isn’t better. It would just get us out there.

“You’re right,” I resign.

***

When the hollow metal doors finally crash open, they do with gun-blast. It shakes the classroom walls, the whole school. We’re huddled in the corner. We’ve hobbled together a makeshift fort of beanbags, built it up around us. It won’t do anything when the time comes, but it distances us from the nightmare, I guess … just a bit more. The footsteps follow, the flat feet and heavy heels I already know. Running. And then it’s a pounding. On our door. Thunk. That’s how it goes this time. Thunk. The door gives marginally on each blow. The desk bracketed against it shifts a millimeter at a time too. Thunk. It goes on like this. I’m not aware exactly how long. Seconds and minutes, like reason and logic, dissipated on East Woodbine. As did reality. Thunk.

Landon’s staring at the door. Maybe through it as I was before. I’m certain now that it was The Sixth Sense we watched together. His face is the same as it was then. Horror-struck. It was September, the night after our first mixer. I slept over at his dad’s house. I got halfway through the movie before falling asleep. When I woke up later, Landon was still awake, watching, his expression like it is now. I had missed the scenes that could do that to your face—freeze it. And your spirit too. Ice it.

Eventually, the batters stop. Landon looks at me. We hear a single, short equine huff, then the creature walking off—flat feet, heavy heels—farther into the school. I lose it. I don’t want to cry. It’s a reactionary emotion I’ve come to hate, but occasionally, as with any other bodily function, it just breaks through. Part of the design. We have to emote. It’s survival based. Crying’s a signal, a warning sign with brazen red letters spelling DANGER. Has Landon seen me cry? I’m ugly doing it. I prefer how he does, like when his parents split. It’s a temperate act like his laughter.

His swimmer arm slips behind my neck, his fingers light my shoulder. “Hey,” he whispers in my ear. I think he’s been crying, too, in his solemn way. He drags me into a hug. I hear his muffled sobs, feel them in the crook of my neck. I’m doing the same on his. “We have to get out of here,” he says, in a raspy whine with hitches. “We have to.” And, with the admission of that, something passes through me. It’s hard to say what it is. It’s dark, though, or at least akin to darkness, an emulsion of guilt and selfishness. The thought: If we never escape, I’ll always have Landon. It fills me with sadness, soul deep. I cast more tears into his clavicle. 

***

Two days. We’ve hooked the Sony up. The television runs a micro-static tingle and an enduring digital-blue glow that travels far in this darkness. It colors part of Landon’s profile as he contemplates the walkie in his hand. We’ve tried it, but it just buzzes.

I think it might be afternoon outside, but that world’s a thinning dream, slipping slowly from my conscious mind. I think to start counting new time in here. As you do on distant planets.

During the early trapped hours, we raided the closet. Besides packs of Ticonderoga pencils, layers of construction paper, and a fleet of orange-capped glue sticks, it offers sustenance in the form of Chips Ahoy! and Goldfish crackers. Not a long-standing diet. More importantly, we rustled out the six mini water bottles, lukewarm in their half-empty plastic case—treasures from a mermaid’s purse. We’ve had two each. Two remain. I know we’ll have to make it to the water fountain soon. Neither of us is excited by the prospect.

The thuds on the classroom door had come once more. I don’t know how long ago. A while. Yesterday? But not since.

“Come on. No one’s picking up, man,” I say.

“Who’s the last person you remember seeing?” 

I take care to answer, replaying images of forty-eight hours passed. “Ms. Ruth. On the walkie.”

“Yeah … I thought I saw a couple second graders on the swing. But I know I saw Ms. Ruth too. 

From the far end of the hall, there’s a crash. That still happens. Intermittently. There are hushed whimpers. Landon’s crying, and it’s my turn to console. I drape an arm over his broad shoulders. He falls to my lap, where I hold him. He shakes like a thunder-scared pup. “What if we never get out?” he asks through soft tears. I rock him.

“I don’t know.” And it’s all I can think to say. Because the dark shadow that feeds my intrusive and selfish desires … is growing, has been growing in here—I hug Landon tighter—and it won’t allow me to say anything more.