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3:14

Her hands were shaking.

The chatter stopped.

“What’s going on?” Jaime stood up, and her
pencil stayed upright as if a ghost were holding it in place. They
both stared at it and the pencil slowly tilted. It finally set down
as if time around them was moving at a different pace than they
were.

“Anna?” said Jaime as she stared out the
window. A thick fog was descending over the field, rolling across
their view as if a wave of water had broken free and was about to
wash away the students. It sparkled with green light and billowed
over the lush grass. It was beautiful to watch as the puffs of fog
spread across the horizon. The bright blue sky was eaten away, like
vestiges of white paper succumbing to flame. “We’re lost.”

Anna looked at her friend and nodded. “I
know why.”

Jaime rushed around the table to stand
beside her. Anna felt dizzy and confused. “Why?” asked Jaime. “Tell
me what you know.”

“I forgot all of it, but now I understand.”
Anna looked out the window and watched as the gym students were
enveloped in the thick fog. “It’s like I heard him, or understood
him, just for a minute.”

“Heard who?”

“The one the kids call The Skeleton Man. He
hates the name. He thinks giving something a name is the first
attempt to control it.”

“What the fuck is going on? Why do I feel
like I’ve done this before? What’s happening?” asked Jaime.

“He thinks we’re too old.” She put her hand
back on the window and looked across the field at the Middle School
that was quickly disappearing amid the haze. “He wants the
children. He thinks we already know how to hate, and he only wants
the innocent ones.”

“Anna, you’re scaring me.”

Anna watched the shapes in the fog advance.
The silhouettes of children ran across the field from their school,
and the barking of dogs grew louder. Soon, the soccer players were
attacked and chaos erupted in the library. Teachers and students
rushed to the window and time returned to normal as everyone
panicked.

Jaime moved closer to Anna and ignored the
massacre outside. “Why are we doing it again? Why do I know what’s
going to happen? I’ve never felt this way before.”

“He checked on us this time,” said Anna.

“What do you mean?”

The librarian yelled for everyone to get
away from the window after an explosion of green light shook the
walls. One of the students, a sophomore boy whose name Anna never
learned, was stuck inside of the window and couldn’t move away. His
face had been pressed against the glass when the explosion
occurred, and now his head was hanging halfway outside. The glass
wasn’t broken, but the boy’s head was on the other side of it, as
if he’d passed through a pane of water instead of glass. Anna saw
the boy’s eyes search frantically around him before he tried to
jerk back. The movement caused his skin, which was fused to the
glass, to rip. Blood coursed down the window on both sides as the
other students screamed.

Jaime and Anna ignored the bloody scene;
they’d seen it countless times before. Jaime pulled Anna between
two book shelves, away from the screaming mass, to speak in
private. “What do you mean he checked on us?”

“I don’t know, I can’t explain how I know.
I’m not sure what’s going on. I just, for a minute, I could hear
him in my head. I knew his thoughts. He’s looking for a girl he
lost. She was an innocent, and he needs her to help him stop this
from happening again.”

“I don’t understand any of that,” said
Jaime.

“I don’t either, but I know he’s going to
keep doing this over and over until he finds her.”

“Then what?” asked Jaime.

“I don’t know. For some reason he thinks
that if he has her, then he can make this perfect.” She drew a
circle in the air with the tip of her finger. “He’ll complete the
circle. Until then we’ll keep dying. This will keep happening over
and over.”

“Why do I know about it this time?” asked
Jaime. “I can remember all the other times this happened, and I
never felt this way before.”

They both stared through the books on the
shelves at the chaos in the library. Students were crying as the
teachers tried to overturn tables to keep the creatures in the fog
from breaking through the glass. Anna knew it was useless. In
minutes, the window would shatter and the demonic, twisted children
would rush in. They were the children that The Skeleton Man gave up
on. They became his soldiers, and their hatred mutated their
fragile bodies into demonic, dog-like creatures.

She could hear their paws scratching at the
windows.

“He searched us this time,” said Anna. “He
let us know him because he wants to find the one he lost. He
doesn’t know how long it’s been, or how old she is now. If he can
find her, then he can start this all over in a way that he’s never
done before. He let us know him the way the children do because he
wants to find the girl he lost.”

“I know her name,” said Jaime.

Anna held her friend’s hand as they
continued to look through the books. “I do too.”

Jaime said it, “Alma Harper.”

The glass broke.

Jaime and Anna embraced as they waited for
their inevitable death. Then it would begin anew, slightly
different from the times before, and they would forget the prying
mind of The Skeleton Man as he continued to try to complete the
circle.

16 Years Later

March 10th, 2012

Alma was in her classroom and an oversized,
ornate harp was beside her desk. The instrument’s strings were
black and thicker than they should’ve been.

“Miss Harper?” asked one of her
students.

“Yes, Dave, what is it?”

Dave had his head on his desk and his arms
draped at his sides. He didn’t lift his head as he spoke. “Are you
pretty?”

“Excuse me?” asked Alma.

Claire Powell, a popular, pretty girl that
sat at the front of the class, raised her hand and wiggled her
fingers in the air. She didn’t wait for Alma to give her permission
before she spoke. “He wants to know if you’re ugly.”

“What sort of question is that?” Alma’s
heart raced and she felt as if she’d been transported back to high
school where social standing was a constant concern. She
desperately wanted to be one of the pretty girls, but she wasn’t.
Llama Harper is what the kids used to call her and she never
understood why. They used to cut out pictures of Llamas and tape
them to her locker. It was the sort of careless bullying that
provided short-lived amusement for the aggressors, and a lifetime
of heartache and doubt for the victim.

“Your mouth is bleeding,” said Dave, his
head still down.

Alma put her hand over her mouth and felt
wetness. She inspected her palm and discovered a smear of dark red
blood. The children laughed as she searched in her drawer for a
handkerchief, but there was nothing but pens inside the desk. She
rifled through the hundreds of pens in search of anything that
could clean her blood, but there was nothing to be found. The
children continued to laugh.

“It’s not funny,” said Alma as she gave up
her search. When she closed the drawer, it rattled as if there had
been change inside.

The bell rang and frightened Alma. Her mouth
was in pain now and the clanging of the bell seemed to aggravate
her mysterious wound. The children sprang from their seats,
gathered their things, and rushed for the door. They laughed as
they passed Alma, furthering her embarrassment.

Alma went to the counter at the rear of the
room where there were paper towels and a sink. There were craft
supplies littering the area from the art class that used this room
part of the time and Alma shoved the bottles of glue and glitter
away. She cupped her hands to collect the cold water and splashed
it on her face. The blood and water swirled around the stainless
steel drain, but didn’t seem to go down. It just kept spinning as
the colors blended. Glitter, glue, and paint mixed with the blood
and water to create a hypnotic spiral that wouldn’t dissipate.

Alma took a few paper towels from beside the
sink and put them into her mouth to search for the source of the
blood. She felt her shoes sticking to the floor and wondered if the
glue had spilled on her feet. Her attention flitted between
concerns as the spilled glitter and glue dripped from the edge of
the counter.

She felt stinging pain from one of her lower
incisors. The tooth wiggled at the slightest provocation. Alma took
the paper towel out of her mouth and started to press at the back
of the tooth with her tongue. It bent forward until it brushed
against the inside of her lip.

The tooth wiggled back and forth as she
prodded it. Blood continued to pour out of her mouth as she gripped
the tooth between her thumb and index finger. It took no effort to
dislodge the incisor and she rinsed it off before inspecting it.
The tooth looked normal and healthy, white with lengthy roots.

“Alma?” Blair Drexler, the head of the PTA,
was at the door.

Alma swiftly hid the tooth in her front
pocket and then rinsed more blood from her face. The water still
swirled in the sink, refusing to go down the drain. She didn’t turn
to greet Blair and focused on the mess.

“Hi Blair,” said Alma as she struggled to
clean herself.

“Is everything okay?” Blair’s high heels
clicked on the tile as she walked toward Alma. Blair was an upper
class housewife, always adorned with jewelry that was worth more
than a month of Alma’s pay.

“Fine, fine, I’m fine,” said Alma as she
tried to hide what had happened. She wiped the counter and tossed
the bloody paper towel into the trash. Her blood smeared, as if it
were made of oil. The glue and glitter were gone now, as if her
blood had soaked it up.

Blair was at Alma’s back. “We’re all waiting
for you.”

Alma didn’t turn, fearing that blood still
stained her chin.

“Waiting for me? Why?”

“It’s time for your party. We can’t do this
without you.”

Alma shook her head and got more paper
towels to clean up with. “No, I’m not going. I can’t. Sorry, but
I’m just too busy right now.”

“It’s your party.” Blair put her hand on
Alma’s shoulder.

Someone started to play the harp, which
startled Alma. She glanced over to see the principal, Mrs. White,
seated beside the massive golden instrument, strumming the black
strings. The instrument seemed warped now, as if it had been slowly
melting behind her back.

“Don’t disappoint us,” said Mrs. White. She
plucked the strings and the sound they emitted was unnaturally low.
Each note seemed to fade in and out as if Alma was moving closer to
the source and then away again, over and over.

“Okay,” said Alma. “I just need a little
time. Maybe, like, ten minutes? Would that be okay?”

Blair looked perturbed, but nodded before
walking away. Mrs. White got up from the seat beside the harp and
met Blair at the door. Her hands were bloody, and Alma noticed that
the instrument’s strings were dripping wet now.

“We’ll see you in the auditorium,” said
Blair.

Mrs. White looked at Alma before she left
the room. The principal’s teeth were chattering as she smiled and
left.

Alma breathed a sigh of relief after they
were gone and turned back to the sink. She set her hands on the
counter and leaned forward. The water had finally disappeared, but
the sink’s drain catch was missing, leaving only a black hole at
the bottom now. Alma leaned further forward to peer into the hole
when she felt something fall past her open lips.

Another tooth clinked against the porcelain
sink and spun around the basin. She tried to catch it, but the
tooth fell into the hole before she could stop it.

Alma clapped her hand over her mouth as she
felt another tooth begin to slip out of her gums. She whimpered as
she searched her mouth with her tongue. The metallic taste of blood
overwhelmed her as more teeth sprang free. The blood gagged her,
and she wretched. She had no choice but to open her mouth, but she
didn’t want her teeth to fall into the drain. Alma stepped back and
watched as blood and teeth fell from her mouth and hit the tile
floor as if she were vomiting a macabre meal. She staggered to one
of the student’s desks and fell into the seat. Blood covered her
blouse and one of her teeth was stuck between her sock and loafer.
There was glitter in the blood on her hands.

Students laughed from the room’s entrance.
She looked over to see a crowd of children at the door.

“Get out of here!” She screamed at them.
Blood and spittle trickled from her toothless gums.

They pointed and laughed.

A tall man stood behind them, shrouded by
what appeared to be smoke in the hallway. She couldn’t see any
details about him except his wide, smiling mouth. His teeth
chattered as the children bellowed with laughter.

Alma opened her eyes.

Her pillow was wet from sweat and she pushed
it aside as she sat up. It was still dark outside and she put her
hand over her mouth to reassure herself that it was just a dream.
This was a familiar occurrence. She’d suffered from the recurring
dream of her teeth falling out for nearly as long as she could
remember. The circumstances of the dream often changed, but the
setting was usually the same. It almost always happened in a
school, with children laughing at her as the tall man in the
shadows watched it all unfold.

Alma looked at the red LED display on the
alarm clock beside her bed.

3:14

“Fuck you,” said Alma as she reached out for
the clock. She lifted it and paused a moment to calm herself. Her
instinct was to throw it across the room, but that seemed childish.
Instead, she decided just to pull the cord hard enough to unplug
it, but when she tried the clock slipped from her hands and bounced
off the edge of the bed to the floor. It landed with the time face
up, blaring the reminder of her mother’s insanity in bold, red
light.