This choice: Sneak onto the school grounds, find Mary. • Go Back...Chapter #8The Nightcrawler and the Juggernaut by: Masktrix   “Shit,” you say. “This wasn’t how it was supposed to go down.” You’re at a greasy spoon on the I-62 just outside Lattyville, trying to work out what comes next. You got short shrift at the school, but obviously Mary didn’t expect this Dalton Reeves guy – seriously, who names their kid Dalton? – to collect everything at the gate. You came through on your end, but you’re not sure what to do next.
“Let’s just head back, man,” Keith says. “We’ll tell my dad there’s a change of plans. We can load up a few games and I’ll kick your ass at ‘em.”
You chew your lip. Visions of Catholic schoolgirls – drunk and partying just for you – dance in your head. “Fuck it,” you say. “Let’s go back.”
“Good call,” Keith says. “I’ll call my dad and—”
“No,” you say, fixing him with a steely gaze. “I mean we go back to the school.”
“Uh, did you see the size of that gate? Which they closed? Gonna be security cameras, and I bet they’ve got guard dogs, too.”
You make a pffft sound. “Why would a school have guard dogs?”
“Why would a school have a fucking stone gatehouse? This is beyond us, dude.”
Too late. You’re already on Google, looking for another entrance. A satellite map shows there’s a clutch of forest from the edge of the school grounds to the main buildings themselves, which look like they back onto the Mohegan river. And a quick look on Wikipedia brings up the history of the place, suggesting some ancient asshole called Letty – probably the guy Lettyville is named after – crashed his car and died on an old road that ran along the river. That means, assuming you can get over the perimeter, there’s a straight route direct to the main school…
***
“All set. I’ll see you in, like, 10 minutes.” You’re parked up in a lay-by a few hundred metres north of the stone gatehouse, beside a simple wooden fence concealed behind thick bushes. Keith is waiting in the cab of your truck, while you’ve climbed out. You texted Mary a minute ago saying the plan had screwed up and you were going to try and get in through the woods. Hopefully she gets it and sends someone to meet you outside.
“Just be careful, dude,” Keith says. “We don’t know what the hell is in those woods.”
“A party with our names on it,” you say. “Right, here I g— Ah, fuck!”
“What?” Keith says. You scramble free of the thorny bush, which is snagging the plaid T-shirt and picking holes in it even before you’ve made two yards.
“Nothing,” you mutter, pulling yourself free. “Later.” You sidestep the bushes, slip a little down a muddy bank, and drive your shoetips against the wooden fence. It’s a scramble, but you manage to haul your ass over it, pausing at the top to put your phone and its flashlight between your teeth. All clear. You hop over, down into the uneven ground. A few hundred metres of woodland and you should hit the main house.
A few hundred metres of trees in the day is a different thing to doing it at night. You stumble constantly, slip-sliding over thick clay banks and tripping over gnarled tree roots. The woods at night are completely disorienting, and the flickers of moonlight don’t really give you a clear sense of direction. Occasional rustles in the bushes tell you that you’re not alone, either, and you just hope it’s not a skunk that you’re going to blunder into at a moment’s notice. Gradually, with the aid of the flashlight, you’re able to make enough progress that you hit a jogging trail, and everything becomes easier. And, up ahead, you start to see pale lights from avast complex.
It’s hard to tell the scale of the place from the woods. There’s a smaller building blocking your view of the main house, and there’s a shadowy, larger block over to your right. To your left, a wall rises out of nowhere – the strange semicircle you saw on the map, maybe? – with the rest of the area clear as far as the dark, swift course of the river. You cut the flashlight, not sure whether you’re going to get spotted by someone other than whoever Mary sends, and stumble blindly in the dark. Eventually, creeping around the side of the smaller building blocking your way, you spy the full extent of The St. Francis Xavier School. The place is straight out of a period drama: you can just make out the battlements on the top floor, while most of the lights are still on, burning bright out of latticed windows.
You suddenly realize just how dumb a plan this was: there’s no way you’re going to find Mary here. You tap your phone, checking for a message from her. Nothing. Shit. Again, you edge forward, stepping first onto the crunch of a path, and then onto the soft, damp squelch of grass. You’ve come too far to back down.
Then a beam of light hits you straight in the eyes, causing you to close your eyes as your night vision is torn away, replaced by bursting spots of orange and blue-black. You try and shield yourself, but soon realize that’s not going to help. Two figures are rushing toward you, both holding flashlights.
“There he is! Go!”
Fuck. You turn and sprint, running as hard as you can for the treeline. The flashlights jig and jostle around you like search beams, spilling enough light to let you see where you’re going. Behind you, you can hear a sound like a freight train, the thud thud thud thud of footfall powering after you. And the lights seem to be closing.
“Go on, Todd!”
You’re sprinting for all you’re worth now, lungs scooping in air and shoes kicking deep into the shingle of the path. The treeline that seemed so close, so endless in its labyrinth, now feels like a mile away. You turn to look back to see if your pursuers are closing, just in time to see a huge shadow fly straight at you. It smashes hard into your torso, twisting your spine and knocking the air out of your lungs, before careening you hard into the ground with a heavy thud. You’re still in agony, rolling on the floor and trying to make sense of it, when a flashlight beam hits your eyes and blinds you, too.
“Got you, you little fucker.” Another set of feet rush up too, and you see a second figure emerge into the light. The first – the one that hit you – is effectively a wall of solid muscle. The second is leaner but no less physically imposing in his own right.
“Good work, man. Now, let’s find out what the hell he was thinking.”
***
You’re in a canteen, if canteens were designed by the cast of Game of Thrones. The dining hall is arranged in long wooden benches, surrounded by oak panels with stern portraits on the walls, and even has a fucking minstrel’s gallery at its far end. Every so often, someone walks along it, just in view. You’re far more concerned about the gathering before you.
There are four figures assembled, all around your age. The first two are those you ‘met’ outside. The wall of muscle, a thuggish-looking guy who despite his size ran you down seemingly with ease; the second leaner, tall and, you have to admit, handsome. You know the type instantly: Gordon Black all over again. The third is a girl, short with a friendly, almost sympathetic face; the fourth you’ve met before – Dalton ‘dumb name’ Reeves.
“We waiting for Abi and Lucas?” the girl asks.
“We’d be waiting all night. Both have exeats. Let’s get this show on the road.” Handsome turns to you. “All right, give me a reason not to call the cops.”
You don’t say anything. You don’t know what to say. My friend and I used a fake ID to purchase liquor so we could smuggle it inside here and party with drunk Catholic schoolgirls?
“You’re the one from earlier,” Dalton says. “White truck. Charity drive.”
You nod. You can’t help but think you looked a little smarter back then. Your plaid shirt is ruined, ripped to shreds from bushes and smeared in mud, while your trousers are black with clay. Your trainers are in bad shape, too, and your hands and side are grazed from the bulldozer guy, Todd, smashing you into the ground.
“Why did you try and break in?”
You shrug. “I threw away something I didn’t want to lose,” you say. “I couldn’t get the buzzer on the gate to work.”
“So you climbed over a fence, hiked through the backwoods, and tried to knock on the front door? Bullshit.” The handsome one, clearly the leader, isn’t taking your crap. The girl furrows her brow at the cuss word but says nothing.
“Well, it sounds stupid when you say it out loud…” you say. Everything about this plan sounds stupid, you dumbass. You’ve realized why Mary never texted you back. There never was an invite to the party – just a chance to get a free booze delivery from some saps in town. You bet she saw the text, went and found whoever these assholes are, and told them she’d seen a light in the woods and a burglar must be trying to break in. The humiliation burns even more fiercely than your mini-golf failure.
“No shit it sounds stupid,” Todd says. “Give me one good reason not to take you back into the woods and smash your fucking face in.”
“Todd,” The girl says, reprimanding him, before turning to you and speaking softly. “I’m guessing you were trying to get to someone here, right? Trying to deliver something? See a girl? Or a guy? I’m not judging.”
You don’t say anything.
“You’re going to find us easier to deal with than the cops,” the handsome one says. “We can just ring ‘em. Trespass. You really want a criminal record?”
You bite your lip. You could spill and bring that double-crossing bitch Mary into the shit with you. Or you could keep quiet and hope this kangaroo court decides just to kick your ass off the property…  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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