Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller (10 page)

So the rumor was true, Stuart decided.

Rumors often are.

Finding the Cady family farm had been child’s play for Stuart Renly.

Parking up the road and reconnoitering through the dark along the edge of the tall corn, yet to be harvested, had likewise been easier than a game of hopscotch.

It was dashing from the group of parked cars to behind the barn that challenged him physically. The single pole light towering over the vehicles cast a progressively diminishing yellow glow in a radius of roughly two hundred feet.

A four hundred foot diameter, using simple geometry.

Carla stopped, lifted her chin, and said to Jackson, “You’re going to do it, right?”

His tone a groan of frustrated anticipation, Jackson answered, “Yes, Carla. I said I would.”

“What’s your line again?” she wanted to confirm.

“Bailey Howard is pregnant. She’s having an abortion next week,” Jackson said. “Keep going, Carla.”

“Don’t cheat me,” she said, going down.

What Carla was up to, Stuart Renly had no idea. But it was certainly untrue about Bailey Howard. It was nothing but slutty rumor mongering, he knew, since Carla Cummings was the purveyor of all things slutty.

Case in point…

She lifted off Jackson again, aiming his shaft to the left.

Stuart retreated behind the corner in case Carla’s eyes followed the projectile of Jackson’s discharging weapon.

Then Stuart stood up and waited patiently. He considered the sudden tingle in his own armament, deciding to let it be momentarily. It would be wiser to stay alert and on his toes, at least until Carla and Jackson sauntered back in to rejoin the party.

The volume inside the barn could only be described as deafening. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to be in the midst of that noise. Slashing sounds. Deep rumbling sounds. Screaming sounds. Eerie violins and cellos raking menacingly across horsehair strings. Teenagers and young ruffians had such little regard for the preciousness of the inner ear and drum.

Live and learn, he liked to explain to the most ignorant students, the ones who never listened.

And they certainly would learn over time, too, he knew.

Though time taught harsh lessons to the ignorant.

Carla Cummings was one, and perhaps Jackson Saxton, it seemed to Stuart now.

“Wait here five minutes,” Carla told Jackson.

“No problem,” he answered. “By the way, thanks.”

“Don’t tell Eric where you heard the rumor.”

“He’s sure to ask.”

“You can tell him Jany Fry,” Carla said.

“No way, but I’ll figure it out,” Jackson said.

“Don’t cheat me,” Carla reminded him.

Stuart listened to the sound of Carla Cummings hoofing off toward the front of the barn.

From the sound of it, Jackson began kicking rocks.

For anyone to disparage Bailey Howard’s name wasn’t going to stand with Stuart Renly. He looked around in the darkness behind the barn for a pitchfork or a pipe or a rusty scythe, something—anything—which could be used to stop the rumor from even starting. The bit of light that filtered past the side of the barn’s north wall, the fellatio side, barely illuminated the tall weeds near the corner where he stood. But he didn’t see anything to be used as a dissuader lying in the weeds.

Adapt and overcome, he remembered.

He moved along the rear of the barn to the opposite corner.

Earlier, from over here, he had watched through a crack in the splintery barn planks the young ruffians swinging on a rope inside the barn under flashing colored lights and strobes across a room full of hay, having lots of fun, some making the swing across, others falling off in mid-flight to plop down in the loose and dusty hay. A side-hinged window stood open just around that corner, where two or three beer cans had flown out.

He saw no weapon in the grass along the southern side of the barn either. Just a thick hemp rope, with weeds growing through it, lay in a coil under the window. Careful not to be seen—using a sleuthing crouch—he dragged that back into the semi-darkness of the corner behind the barn.

It was a long rope, and the end in his hand was double-knotted. He assumed it had been a swinging rope at one point in time. Hand over hand, he drew the rope toward him until it petered out at the opposite end. At the opposite end, another knot had been tied through a heavy steel pulley. Two of the four twisted lag bolts still jutted menacingly from their holes in the pulley’s rusted mounting bracket.

The old swinging rope had finally torn loose, he assumed, and a new swinging rope had gone up in its place.

Stuart Renly dragged the old rope through the darkness to the opposite corner where, hopefully, Jackson the Sackston—as he was called for tackling quarterbacks—would still be kicking rocks according to little miss Cummings’ five minute mongering plan.

Yes, Stuart Renly heard. The reputation defiler still made random noises of impatience on the north side of the barn.

Carefully, Stuart peeked around.

It would be easier than he could have imagined.

Jackson was leaning his massive left shoulder against the planked sidewall, facing west toward the barn’s entrance, where Carla Cummings had headed just a few minutes ago.

Headed, Stuart thought. How appropriate, that word.

And in more ways than one, he knew instantly.

With the speakers blaring inside the barn, Stuart was able to sneak up behind Jackson, twirl the pulley-end of the rope, and smash it sideways into the pale right ear of the oversized boy.

The oversized boy went down.

*     *     *

Dragging the lumpy
body into the darkness behind the barn proved to be the strenuous part. By appearances, Jackson’s body probably weighted another third again to Stuart Renly’s own weight. Roughly two hundred and fifty pounds, he figured. To say the least, dragging a flaccid two hundred and fifty pounds over grass put a strain on the old spinal column. Flaccid, he thought, was another appropriate word—amusing how such perfect adjectives kept coming to mind. He hardly felt like popping a lumbar, though, so he heaved the body only far enough around the corner to get the oversized shoes out of sight.

The bigger they are, the harder they fall.

But Jackson wasn’t dead.

He was breathing still.

Jackson’s main problem was going to be the blood draining out his ear. It couldn’t bode well for his future prospects since blood, and some grey matter, it appeared, was percolating from a caved in spot where his ear was supposed to be. The ear was there, just buckled in and gooey.

Stuart Renly kneeled, breathing and thinking.

He could drag young Jackson into the cornfield—some seventy-odd feet behind the barn—but what if the lad came to? He’d go staggering back into the barn, and Stuart would have to scramble to his car and disembark the scene.

Not what he had in mind.

What he had in mind was Bailey Howard. He wanted to catch a glimpse of her tonight, at least. See what she was wearing. See what time she went home. See if that cocky stud Eric Cady tried to have his way with her. Bailey wasn’t an idiot, but she was naïve. She had probably never even kissed a boy, let alone allowed some nimrod to try and make her pregnant.

In his mind, he imagined himself being the one she wanted to handle that task.

So he had to stick around.

Which meant he needed to hide young Jackson, and also secure him. That included a gag for his blubbery mouth, Stuart supposed.

As he kneeled, breathing and thinking, a voice called from around the north side of the barn.

With a conspiratorial tone, the voice called, “Jackson?”

It sounded like Carla Cummings again.

He wouldn’t mind grabbing Carla Cummings, too, while he was at it, he decided. But not to club her in the head—no, he supposed, the clubbing didn’t sit well with him. He was, after all, a teacher, and he took great pride in being accepted as a good mentor. Better to talk sense into students, rather than beat sense in.

And he could handle Carla’s weight.

She weighted about as much as a wet rag, probably.

He expanded his chest to make it bigger and said, “I’m pissing.” Then he waited with perked ears.

“The first movie’s over,” Carla answered. “Come on.”

If he kept quiet, he figured, she’d most likely wander back. It was the psychology of the selfish, impatient mind, and from everything he had observed about Carla Cummings, she fit that description.

As his perked ears listened to her footsteps coming, Stuart Renly reveled in his genius.

He quickly straddled the meaty legs of Jackson the Sackston, staying in the shadows against the back side of the Barn’s corner. Having already seen his swizzle-stick, Carla would peek around the corner with only moderate hesitation.

She was upon him sooner than expected.

Her head and face came around the corner, and she said, “Go tell him now, before the second—”

At that moment, she saw Stuart Renly.

He lunged and grabbed, caught her around the shoulders, and took her toward the ground. Together they landed in the grass with chuffing grunts, and he immediately cupped his hand around her mouth before she could loose a scream.

The violent twisting and kicking she began surprised him. She had spastic strength in her goofy noodle of a body. No fat on her bones, to be sure, and his weight crushed her down and piled her like a cricket under a hand, but no scream broke the suction of his palm against her mouth.

It
would
break soon, though, he knew, if they rolled around much longer. He slipped sideways off her body, letting her legs flail and her torso twist, and before she skittered free and away, he grasped her head with both his hands, got himself to his knees, and then to his feet.

While she fought for traction, trying to flip over off her back, he dragged her writhing, kicking body into the darkness behind the barn.

At this point she screamed.

But it was a short burst, and not very loud, because as soon as it started, he dropped his knee—the full weight of it—into her neck, and then he took his closed fist and hammered it down hard where her forehead met her nose.

Right between the eyes, that is, and she quieted.

T
hrough the corn
was the long way, but the safest, Stuart knew. He had to hurry. While dragging the dazed Cummings slut to the shed across the yard, and then gagging her, the young Saxton lad might come to. He was guessing the shed to be an implement shed, though he wouldn’t know until he got there. All he knew for certain was that the shed’s door was standing open.

Dragging, dragging.

Through the cutting corn.

He had yanked Carla Cummings perpendicular to the cornrows until they were a dozen rows in, and then he had shifted and back-peddled, dragging her by the head down the twelfth row of corn. The darkness inside made seeing impossible. He navigated by elbowing the stalks. By the time he stopped where he guessed the machine shed stood, he was exhausted.

The back of his neck and ears had taken a whipping.

Like paper cuts, it felt like.

He felt the sting and burn of each lashing the blades of corn inflicted.

Now, dragging perpendicularly again, back to the field’s edge where the corn met the grass, he muscled and heaved the whimpering trash bag Carla Cummings.

Her hair smelled like cheap shampoo, he decided. Expensive shampoo apparently smelled cheap on cheap hair. Unquestionably, the snotty, spoiled cheerleader ragged her parents for the best their money could buy.

The spring-loaded blue door on the portable toilet banged loudly, whapping sound across the farm. Stuart looked that direction, toward the gravel driveway, and saw two females skipping fast, arm in arm, back to the safety of the barn. They were fleeing the shadows, he noticed with amusement, as the toilet had been placed away from the pole light, and darkness and chills crept up behind it.

The movie soundtrack had gone silent, he also noticed now.

Which meant that more students were likely to filter out and use the toilet. But only female students would line up, it occurred to him then, while males would simply go behind the barn.