AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I saw them turn down the hall, heading toward the back of the school. With a quick glance around, I saw everyone else in the cafeteria had noticed the strangeness of it all, too. It had fallen dead silent.
I stood, and Angelina and Cherith stood with me. I gave them both a nod and said, “Let’s go.” Neither one of them argued with me as we hurried to catch up to Kaity and the principal, following the same path they’d taken.
As we turned down a hall, we came upon the secretary trying to tell Kaity to go back to lunch. “Let the adults handle this, sweetie,” she was busy saying, but Kaity wouldn’t have any of it.
“I’m not going back to lunch,” Kaity hissed out, sidestepping the secretary, who was too slow to stop her. She hurried around her, continuing down the hall.
The moment the secretary saw us coming, she let out a sigh. That’s when I saw the walkie-talkie in her hand. As we walked around her, I heard the principal’s voice patch through: “We need to shut the school down, now.”
Angelina and Cherith glanced at me, overhearing it, but I said nothing, too focused on catching up to Kaity. We rounded another hall, emerging in the back wing of the school, where the new science labs were. You could tell this was a slightly newer part of the school, the walls made of cinderblocks that had been painted white instead of old red brick. The school library was back there, along with the science labs, and right beside the library sat a double set of doors labeledemergency exit only.
One was propped open, and I saw Kaity slip outside. I picked up my pace, gaining on her, and I held my breath when I stepped out into the bright light of day. The sun was blinding, unseasonably warm for a spring day, and I had to squint when I stepped outside.
A teacher stood with the principal, a bag of takeout food forgotten on the ground near her feet. She was on the phone with emergency services, it sounded like, while Mr. Huckleberry had frozen in place. They stood past the first row of cars. This was the teachers’ lot, where they parked their cars when they came in in the morning. It was half the size of the student parking area.
Kaity had rushed to Mr. Huckleberry’s side, and he was too in shock to stop her from seeing what had caused the commotion. I couldn’t see it from where I was, but the wail Kaity let out after that told me enough.
We had our third body.
I led the way, Angelina and Cherith behind me as we zigzagged through the cars. Once we passed the first row, I was able to see the body lying in an empty spot—in the spot that the teacher who’d originally found the body had vacated when she went to buy lunch.Her car was parked in the aisle nearby.
Mr. Huckleberry finally sprang into action, grabbing Kaity and pulling her away while saying, “I need you to get back inside. We don’t know if he’s still out here, somewhere—” He turned around, and as his frail arms struggled to keep hold of a frantic, screaming Kaity, he noticed us. “Girls, get back in the school. That’s an order.”
His orders were nothing like Alistair’s, and I did not feel compelled to follow them. I took advantage of the fact that he was struggling with Kaity, stepping around him to see it for myself. All of the air whooshed out of my lungs the second I laid eyes on the body.
“All of you,” Mr. Huckleberry’s voice grew firmer, louder, telling me that others had followed us from the cafeteria, “get back inside! I’ll hand out detentions for anyone who doesn’t listen! This is a serious matter! This—”
Other girls screamed. Maybe it was Angelina and Cherith, or maybe the screams belonged to someone else. Kaity had been taken over by sobs, though if you listened closely, you could hear her muttering, “That’s her. That’s Erin. Oh, God, what did they do to her?”
Behind us, the school’s alarm sounded, though it was faint from outside. I could hear in the background the secretary’s voice as she announced a lockdown. But it was too late. Dozens of students had come outside, too curious for their own good, and now they could see just how bad things were.
It was Erin. It had to be. But… there was nothing identifiable on her. Not her face, not her flaming red hair and freckles, not the fuzzy sweaters she often wore. She looked both human and inhuman, out of this world and so very bizarre, yet natural at the same time. She looked how we all looked, underneath the skin.
Brett had said my art inspired him. I guess what he’d done to Mrs. Watts had only been practice. This was the real deal.
All of Erin’s skin was gone, including her scalp and the hair on it. She was a body of red, wet and gooey. She looked like she should be hanging from a meathook in the backroom of a butcher’s place. She had no skin whatsoever, no eyelids, no lips, no ears, no nipples on her chest; everything on the outside was gone, only the underlayer of muscle and tendons visible.
Behind me, Cherith turned and threw up, and I could hear Angelina crying between her gagging fits. Mr. Huckleberry was still trying to get everyone inside, away from the body, but I couldn’t take my eyes off it. Her body was crumpled, her arms and legs splayed out in an awkward position, almost like Brett had gone to great lengths to pose her for me.
Me. This was for me. It had to be.
The worst thing was, I couldn’t take my eyes off her. I’d torn into Neo, yes, but I’d done that in the shadows of a house with no electricity, no light, other than what little light came in through the windows. This was different, different than seeing her mom’s body from far away on the playground, different than hearing about her dad’s mutilated body hidden in their house.
No. This time, I could see every single detail for myself. This time I could bear witness to the way a human body looked underneath the surface.
I didn’t feel like throwing up. I wasn’t queasy at all. I couldn’t take my eyes off her… because she was beautiful. My first instinct, other than hating Brett for what he did to her, was:I want to paint her.
Someone’s hands grabbed me and pulled me away from the body. Angelina and Cherith. Mr. Huckleberry had wrangled Kaity and pulled her inside the school as he corralled everyone else back inside. He kicked the doorstopper and shut the door in our faces, using his back to block the small window on the metal door.
“That’s Erin,” Kaity was busy muttering in between her sobs, “I know that’s Erin. Someone did that to her. Someone did that to her and left her here…” As I turned toward her, I saw plentiful tears streaming down her face. “Why? Why would anybody do that to her? What the fuck is happening?” She ran her hands through her curly hair, getting them tangled, and she went to the nearest wall, collapsing into herself as she sunk to the floor.
I heard someone say, “Did you see it? It’s like someone kept her skin for a meatsuit. What’s that guy’s name? Hannibal Lecter?”
His friend shook his head. “No, that’s the cannibal dude.”
As they talked back and forth, I heard sirens in the distance. An ambulance probably, even though it was way too late to save her. It was only a matter of time before Rick got here with some backup.
The librarian, an older woman wearing tiny glasses on her nose, the kind with a string attached to their ends so she could hang her glasses off her neck, came out of the library, next door to where we were. “All of you, in the library, now,” she spoke, her voice containing more authority than Mr. Huckleberry’s.
