Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller (11 page)

He had to hurry!

A blurt erupted from the mouth of his cargo.

“Help m—”

But his hand was quick, smothering the exclamation before it rang out loudly past the edge of the corn.

“The crows won’t help you,” Stuart told her. “Scream again and I’ll break your neck.”

“Mr. Renly?”

“No, it’s not Mr. Renly.”

“Why are you doing this?”

He wasn’t sure if she had identified his face behind the barn, or if she had only recognized his voice just now. It was very dark behind the barn, but perhaps her youthful eyes had adjusted quickly. Either way, she had called him by name, and further responses from him would only make her certain.

The girls from the toilet had reentered the barn.

He dashed out across the grass, towing her, her waif of a body, and within seconds they were inside the shed where total darkness engulfed them.

He couldn’t see hide nor hair, nor how much open space there was to move, nor what kind of metal buckets his stepping feet just toppled. Loudly. Clankingly. And she was kicking her heels, too, knocking over what sounded like rakes and brooms.

Raising her upright, he tried to stabilize their clamoring about, tried to think.

It didn’t work.

She pushed and leaned, tipping them, shook loose her mouth, and started again with her cry of distress, saying “Help!”

He needed a gag. He needed a rope.

But he couldn’t see.

His hand recovered her mouth. He was losing control in the tightness and blackness of the shed. Only the open door cast any light at all, and dimly. That was her goal, he knew, to scramble toward light if she could twist and fight and manage to break free.

She bucked again, harder than ever, obviously having a foot lifted now against something solid. She was using it to push off from. They went crashing backward into a farm implement of sorts, something big, something unmovable.

Without thinking, he wrenched her waifish body around, and banged her head repeatedly against the object in the dark until her fight and spirit evaporated completely.

*     *     *

As for the
blubbery lump, Jackson the Sackston, all Stuart Renly could manage before collapsing with fatigue was to drag him six rows into the corn. He wasn’t even breathing anymore. What did it matter if he rested in peace beside Carla?

Neither killing had been part of his plan.

Both had just happened.

Now he had to waste the balance of the evening cleaning up the mess, which meant disposing of the bodies, he knew.

Not what he had planned.

From inside the corn, he ducked back over to the field’s edge. There
was
a line now in front of the portable toilet, just as he had predicted. They were mostly females. However, the males hadn’t wandered back behind the barn to urinate, so on that guess he’d been wrong. The few males loitering outside were goofing around in line with the girls, trying to impress them by acting cool.

The last person in line was Bailey Howard.

The poor girl wasn’t talking to anyone, Stuart observed, just like in school. She seemed to be standing alone, facing forward, waiting patiently. As always, she seemed to be the most intelligent one, content to do her duty without resorting to fakery or antics in order to get along. He prided himself on see that. She wasn’t a follower. She had self-respect.

Stuart looked for Jany Fry.

He didn’t see her around.

Now Eric Cady’s voice began blasting the speakers inside the barn. He was explaining something, but the words were too distorted for Stuart to discern.

All the cars were parked in the grass at random angles on either side of the gravel drive. It would be a long dash through the corn and around the implement shed, but if he hustled, he thought he could emerge from the darkness behind the cars and sneak up within hearing distance of the toilet.

His objective, the vision in his mind, was to hear the sound of Bailey Howard urinating down the plastic hole. It would be rare fuel for his imagination, he knew with sudden pleasure, and he was already tingling with anticipation.

*     *     *

He couldn’t hear
it over the sound of Eric Cady’s voice spewing out the barn door. No matter how close he lurched toward the portable toilet, duck-walking between cars, trying to stay in the shadows, he couldn’t hear the hissing sound he knew that Bailey Howard was making right now inside the blue and white privy. Her jeans and panties were bunched in a wad around her ankles, he knew, and she was most likely hovering her silky biscuit directly over the hole.

That was the vision he had in mind.

His powers of imagination never failed.

The poor girl had no friends, Stuart Renly knew. Everyone else had left her outside alone, going back into the barn, after selfishly finishing their own potty break, to hear what the fantastic Eric Cady had to say.

We lived in a cruel world of heartless people, he thought to himself, shaking his head.

And Bailey Howard had no idea of the viciousness of bitches like Carla Cummings, he decided, who would slander Bailey’s good name just to slurp the tastiest jock.

Bailey was better than that. She deserved to be treated better. But for her innocence, she was also ignorant of people like Carla Cummings. Someone should explain that to her.

It was on his mind when Bailey unlatched the plastic toilet door and emerged onto the gravel.

Someone should explain that, he repeated to himself under his breath.

He popped up between the cars without thinking of the consequences. And once he was up, he couldn’t take it back, because the suddenness of his movement caught her eye, and she jumped sideways, startled, her open palm springing tightly over her heart, against her chest, which heaved with engorgement and a terror-stricken gasp.

“Easy, Bailey,” he said. “It’s just me, Stuart.”

“Mr. Renly?” she asked.

“Can I talk to you, Bailey? There’s something important you need to know.”

She shifted toward the barn, eyeing him suspiciously.

He could tell she was frightened.

He watched her throat swallow dryly.

“Why are you here?” she asked, taking a step away.

Then he lifted his palms toward her, showing he meant no harm. “It’s about Carla Cummings,” he said. “I came here to tell you something has happened to Carla. It’s not good, and I don’t want everyone alarmed. Could you please come with me, let me explain it to you? Then we can decide what to do, and who else should know.”

“What happened to her?”

“Please, Bailey. Come with me.”

“Tell me here,” she said. “No one’s around.”

He waved her over to the cars. “Come this far, at least, Bailey. I’m your teacher. You know I wouldn’t show up at a party unless it was important. I can see that you’re nervous, but trust me, I’m not Freddy Krueger.”

She shook her head. “I’m not coming over there. Say what you want right now.”

He started to move forward, toward her.

With hands raised, he said, “Okay, Bailey, Carla Cummings is dead. Will you listen to me now? Don’t freak out.”

An expression of disbelief changed her beautiful face to a mask of retched horror. The news shocked her stiff, and she failed to move away as Stuart Renly closed the final gap between them. At the last moment, she jolted, shifting her weight away.

That was not what he had in mind.

He wished she would trust him and simply come along.

She wasn’t going to, though, he realized with sudden disappointment.

He reached out fast and latched onto her wrist.

She began to scream, but he grabbed her tightly around the middle and hurriedly covered her mouth.

Dragging her away, he regretted it with all his heart.

I
have to
fight!
she thought.
I have to fight and break away, while we’re still in the open where someone might see! He’s pulling me toward the dark! If we get in the dark, who knows what he’ll do! Fight, Bailey! Now!

She began thrashing, shoving backward against him, heels digging into the gravel and slipping for traction. She threw her free hand behind her head and tried to scratch his eyes. He turned his face away. She found his ear with her fingernails and tried to rake it off. He simply tipped his body left and escaped her reach.

“Bailey, stop that,” he said. “If you stop fighting me, I’ll let you go. I don’t intend to hurt you. That’s not why I’m here.”

She screamed for help into the palm of his hand. The sound was loud but the annunciation was muffled. The wetness of his palm—from her saliva—created more suction than lubrication, at least so far, and as she tossed her face viciously left and right, his hand followed, sucking ever tighter.

The more she fought, the more she needed to breathe. The more she needed to breathe, the more his top finger smothered the flaring holes of her nose. Almost immediately she felt the fear of suffocation.

Her backward thrusting only helped his effort, she decided, seeing the periphery flowing into a blur. The cars now. More cars. Now into the grass. Green. Light to dark. The grass was darkening quickly as he manhandled her into the shadows of trees, then behind a short building that had swept out of nowhere from the left. She could see the rain gutter unfurling just above her head.

I’m losing!
she thought.
I’m going to be dragged out of sight!

It was too late, she knew with sudden dread. Too late now to hope that her muffled screams and weak fighting would be heard and seen by anyone glancing out the barn.

She quieted herself, and she heard the sound of Eric’s voice saying something loudly yet calmly through the speakers in the barn. Her mind flashed briefly to a vision of him standing tall on a bale with the microphone up to his lips.

Then Mr. Renly tripped, and she felt herself falling weightlessly to the ground, him behind her, knees in the small of her back as they hit, and after the chuff of air blew through her nose—and through his loosening hand—she felt him scramble sideways, out from under her, twist toward her, and get both hands on her mouth to pin the back of her head to the grass.

“We’re safe here now,” he said, gasping for breath.

“Let me go!” she drawled, perfectly clear in her head. But what came out, through the slobbery bottoms of his palms, sounded like a barking walrus under water—or a beluga whale.

“We can chat back here,” he said.

She felt his knee pressing firmly against her hip, and she sensed he was ready to straddle his leg across her waist if she tried to writhe away.

She could only see the darkness of his form.

She sucked fast now what little air she could, thinking.

She couldn’t escape on either side.

They were directly against the wall of what seemed like—by touching it with her hand—a wooden shed of some kind.

She also realized that, in less than a hundred heartbeats, the situation had changed entirely. Her heart thumped loudly now and fast in her chest, almost painfully.

It felt as if he had dragged her to an island.

We can chat back here
, he had said just now. Or, she wondered, had more time passed than that? As she watched his shadow lifting and sinking, she knew he was huffing air.