Chain Letter Read online

  “At least he won’t report you to the principal,” she said.

  Brenda gave a wan smile. “I think he was glad I stopped by.”

  Miss Fogleson was the next victim. A grossly overweight lady in her mid thirties, she taught English literature and made it seem like a foreign language class. No one liked her because unless you read and reported on Moby Dick and Tale of Two Cities and similar classics, she thought you were a tasteless waste who certainly deserved a poor grade. Once again, Alison held the door slightly ajar.

  Miss Fogleson was grading papers while her senior class was pretending to read Hemingway and Dickens. All was quiet. Brenda had reached the front desk when Miss Fogleson, without glancing up, said in her crass voice, “Yes, what do you want?”

  “I want you to go to hell,” Brenda said, loud and clear.

  Miss Fogleson’s right hand twitched and her red pen dropped and rolled off the desk and fell on the floor. Alison felt a nasty tickle of pleasure. Miss Fogleson looked at Brenda in amazement. “What did you say, young lady?”

  “You heard me. I told you to go to hell.”

  She heard her all right; her fat neck began to swell up like a red balloon. The class put down their books and watched. “How dare you!” Miss Fogleson said furiously.

  “I’m just speaking for all of us kids,” Brenda went on, getting revved up. Alison did not cringe as she had with Mr. Hoglan. Then the poor man had been innocent, and back then there had been a chance Brenda would get off clean. Today, she was doomed before she started; best to get it over and have it done with. She gestured dramatically, “We all hate you. You have lousy taste, no patience, and you’re ugly! You should be a character in one of those boring books you make us read. Then we could rip out the pages you’re on and wad you up and throw you in the garbage where you belong!”

  Miss Fogleson climbed to her elephant legs, and her mouth dropped open wide enough to swallow in one bite the doughnut she had on a napkin on her desk. “You cannot say these things! You will be severely punished!”

  “Hah!” Brenda snorted. “Take me to court! Any jury will be able to see you’re the fat slob I say you are. This is a free country. I can call a pig a pig when I see it. Pig!”

  Gyrating like a rippling bowl of Jell-O, Miss Fogleson appealed to her class. “Steve, Roger, get the principal. Get the security guard. Get her out of here!”

  It was then things got real interesting. A short, black-haired boy, whom Alison recognized but whose name she could not place, stood in the back and said with a straight face, “Miss Fogleson, I don’t believe that Brenda has done anything that could be called illegal. She is, after all, only expressing an opinion. And who knows, there may be some merit in it. I suggest we listen with an open mind to whatever she has to say and don’t get upset.” He sat down without cracking a smile.

  The class went berserk. They did not merely start laughing as they had in Mr. Cleaner’s room, they positively freaked with pleasure: falling out of their chairs, jumping up and down, even throwing things. Miss Fogleson was like a thermometer thrust into fire, the red blood swelling in her head, ready to burst. It was Brenda who waved for order.

  “Let’s take a vote!” she shouted. “All those who think Miss Fogleson’s worth a damn, raise your hand.” Whatever hands happened to be up, came down. “See!” Brenda pointed at the teacher. “I told you I speak for the masses. You’re out of it, lady. You should roll your fat ass down to the administration building this minute and hand in your resignation.” She bowed to the applauding class. “Thank you for your time.”

  Alison caught her—or tried to catch her, Brenda came storming out the door—as she spun into the locker room, leaving a riot at her back. “I think you deserve a break after that one,” she said.

  “No breaks,” Brenda said, her eyes narrowed. “These teachers are going to pay for what’s happened to Kipp.”

  “But they didn’t do anything to Kipp.”

  “Well, they didn’t help him any.” She barreled around the corner and flung open the first door she came to. Too late, Alison reached to stop her. The class was Algebra II and the teacher was Coach Sager whose no-nonsense “slap them till they get in line” attitude was notorious. Alison put her back to the wall and closed her eyes. This one, she couldn’t bear to watch.

  She did not have long to wait. A thick palm on her shoulder, the other hand pinning her arms behind her back, a stern mask of discipline riding shotgun above her white face, Brenda reappeared thirty seconds later, Coach Sager manually steering her in the direction of the administration building. Alison was thankful the coach’s feet pounded past her without notice. She slumped to the ground, losing the laughter she had found only a moment ago. A student poked his head out the door.

  “Wow!” he exclaimed. “Did you hear what that girl told Coach Sager?”

  “I can imagine,” she muttered.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The days had been hot since the Caretaker’s appearance, and today had added a stilling humidity, a leaden front up from a tropical storm in Baja, to make sure they did not forget that they were not far from burning in Hell. At least that’s how Neil saw it, though he had always been religiously inclined. It was his turn. The Caretaker hadn’t done him any favors.

  N.H. Burn Down School

  Fran and Kipp were nowhere to be found. The police had returned twice to question the others, but the interviews were obviously uncoordinated. They had asked Brenda and Alison about Fran and had spoken to Tony, Neil, and Brenda about Kipp. No one had thought to quiz Joan. Why should they, the police didn’t know of the existence of their cursed group. The kidnappings were big news locally.

  Neil and Tony were sitting in Tony’s room, Neil on the corner stool, Tony on the floor. The window was open and the sun had a bird’s-eye view of their heads. Both of them were sweating but neither of them was bothering with his drink. There was a lot they had to talk about but they were letting it wait. Tony wished he could shut off his mind as easily as he could his mouth. He kept rehashing the events that had brought them to their current dilemma, trying to find the turn he had missed that would have taken them all to safety. But the only exit he could see was the obvious one, Neil’s trap door: Confess and face the consequences. Now, with the Caretaker’s last threat, even that way was blocked.

  “How is Brenda?” Tony asked.

  “Expelled, grounded, depressed, and alive,” Neil answered.

  Tony half smiled. “In order of importance?”

  “No.”

  “It was a joke. I’m sorry; it wasn’t funny.” He wiped at his face with his damp T-shirt. For a moment, he considered calling Alison. Their romance had been put on hold since the pints of blood—the police had confirmed that it had been human blood—had soaked through Kipp’s bed sheets. He wanted to be big and strong in front of her, and he had nothing to offer that would make him appear that way. And he wanted to be with Neil. “How’s your leg?”

  “Sore.”

  “You still don’t have enough money to get it fixed?”

  Neil took a sip of his orange juice and coughed. “My mother’s gone to Arkansas to visit her brother. The strain was wearing her out. I gave her what money I had.”

  “How does she feel the strain we’re under?”

  “She feels it,” was all Neil would say. Putting his lips to the glass for another drink, Tony could see every bone in his jaw through his pallid skin. Neil would soon be a skeleton.

  If he lives that long, Tony thought, shamefully.

  “You wanted to get her out of the way in case something happens to you, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. I’m not leaving your side.”

  Neil pressed the cool glass against his cheek and closed his eyes. “I’d rather be alone. It’s strange, but I don’t feel as afraid when I’m alone, not anymore.” He opened his eyes. “But you can give me one of your father’s guns.”

  Tony nodded. He had already lif
ted one from his dad’s collection and hidden it under his bed. But rather than reaching for it, he picked up a Bic lighter instead, striking the flame up to maximum, as if they really needed more hot air. He was staring at the flame when he said, “It could be done.”

  “No.”

  “We have a small pump in the garage. I could take my car from gas station to gas station and use the pump in between stops to siphon the fuel into a bunch of old five gallon bottles we have out back. If we hit the school at, say, three in the morning, drove through first and dropped the bottles off, then came back on foot and broke a window in a classroom in each wing, and then poured the gasoline inside, it could work. When everything’s set, I could take a flare and a box of Fourth of July sparklers and make one mad dash around the campus. The place would be an inferno before the first fire truck could get there.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll do it myself then, dammit.”

  Neil sighed, wiping his thinning hair out of his sunken eyes. “And what will you do for me when I’m in Column III?”

  The question was as honest as it was fatalistic. Tony leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling. The worst thing was this waiting and doing nothing . . . no, that was the second worst. Neil’s refusal to blame him ate at him more than anything the Caretaker had dreamed up. “I got you into this predicament, I’m going to get you out of it, at least for this round. I’m burning the blasted place down. It deserves it, anyway.” Neil said nothing. Frustrated, Tony threw the Bic lighter at the door, half hoping it would explode. “One word from you that night and I would have turned myself in. I swear, one word and I wouldn’t have given in to Kipp and the others.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not blaming you, don’t get that idea.” He chuckled without mirth. “How could I blame you?”

  “Tony?” Neil asked suddenly. “Do you ever think about the man?”

  “I think about nothing else. If we hadn’t hit him, life would be about ten thousand times rosier.”

  “No, I mean think about who he was: whether he was married and had kids, what kind of music he liked, what he hoped for in the future?”

  “I would like to say I do but . . . I don’t.”

  Neil hugged his glass tightly. “Since the accident, even to this day, I read the paper in the morning and look for an article or picture about the man. In the days following that night, I was sure there would be something about him, at least one person looking for him. But there was nothing.”

  “We were lucky.”

  “No,” Neil said sadly. “It made me feel worse that no one cared for him, that only I cared.” He put his drink on the floor and tugged at his emerald ring, which could now have fit on his bony thumb. “It must be lonely to be buried in a place where no one ever goes.”

  “Personally, I would prefer it.” Tony wanted to get off this morbid bent so he changed the subject to a much cheerier topic—guns. He leaned over and pulled the walnut case from beneath his bed, throwing back the lid. “This is one of my father’s favorites.” He held up the heavy black six-shooter. “It’s a Smith & Wesson .44 special revolver. The safety is here.” He pointed to the catch above the handle. “This is a mean weapon. Just be sure before you pull the trigger.” He handed the gun to Neil, along with a box of shells. Neil looked at it once with loathing before tucking it in his belt, hiding the butt beneath his shirt. “Remember to load it,” Tony added.

  “You don’t think it would scare the Caretaker, empty?”

  “Not if he knew it was empty.”

  Neil swallowed painfully. Reality was hitting home. A tear started out of his right eye. He wiped it away and another one took its place. At that moment, Tony would have given his life to know for certain that Neil would be safe. Cowards like himself, he thought, were always heroic when it was too late to make any difference.

  “I guess I should be going,” Neil said.

  “Won’t you stay, please?”

  “I can’t.” He took hold of the shelf and pulled himself up. It struck Tony then, only after all this time, that Neil’s leg could not possibly have simple cartilage damage.

  “Thank you for everything. I won’t forget you, Tony.”

  Tony stood and helped him to the door, where he hugged Neil. “Of course you won’t forget me. You’ll see me tomorrow, and the day after.”

  “But if something should happen . . . ”

  “Nothing will happen!”

  “If it should,” Neil persisted in his own gentle way, “I want you to do something for me.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The clouds rode high and swift in the sky, covering and uncovering the sun, casting the sloping green cemetery in shadow and light. Life was like that, Alison thought, the world one day a dark and dreary place, the next day bright and full of promise. But death she couldn’t think about right now. It all seemed so black and hopeless.

  Neil was dead.

  They stood by the grave, dressed in mourning, atop a low hill that looked through tall trees to an orchard and a wide watermelon field beyond. It was a pretty place, she supposed, if you had to be buried. Neil’s mother was present, as were Tony and a minister, but pitifully few others had come to pay their last respects. Brenda and Joan had both bowed out, pleading too much emotional distress. Alison did not doubt the validity of their excuses. She was beyond wondering and worrying.

  The minister read a psalm about the shadow of the valley of death and having no fear, and Alison felt that for Neil it was a proper reading, for his life, more than anyone’s she had ever met, had been truly righteous. At the close of the prayers, they each stepped forward and laid a rose atop the casket. The casket was not an expensive one—Neil’s mother hadn’t much money—nor was it very big. But it was enough. The Caretaker had not left much, anyway.

  “Thank you for coming,” Mrs. Hurly told her as they hugged at the end of the service. “My son often talked about you.”

  The lady’s quiet strength, her calm acceptance of the tragedy, both strengthened and confused Alison. She stopped crying. “I thought about him a lot,” she said truthfully. “I’m going to miss him.”

  Tony came next, at the end of the line. The last two days, Alison had not seen him shed a tear, nor had he at any time failed to say the right words. He did not ask for sympathy and he continued to stand tall. Yet he had become a robot. His spark was gone. Perhaps it would be gone for a long time. “If there is anything you need help with at the house,” he said, embracing the tiny, gray-haired lady whose eyes were as green and warm as Neil’s had been, “let me know.”

  That had been a minor slip, though an understandable one. There wasn’t a Hurly house anymore.

  Mrs. Hurly nodded kindly. “Please walk me to the car. I would like to speak with you and your girlfriend.”

  Alison would have preferred not to have been invited. Though on the inside she had felt drawn to Neil, she had not really been a close friend. If his mother was going to bring up sensitive, sentimental memories, Tony alone would be the right one to share them with. But she could not very well say no to the lady, and she trailed a pace behind as Tony escorted Mrs. Hurly, arm in arm, to an aging white Nova.

  “I don’t know how best to put this,” Neil’s mother said as they reached the narrow road that wound through the cemetery, the sun temporarily out, warm on their faces, the overlong grass rippling in green waves in the shifting breeze. “When I received the call at my brother’s place in Arkansas that our home had burned to the ground and that Neil had been caught asleep in bed and had perished in the flames, I refused to accept it. I thought the officer had the wrong address and that it was the family next door or the one across the street. God forgive me for praying that this was so.”

  As Mrs. Hurly paused to find the right words, Alison was forcibly drawn back to two days ago. The phone call had come in the early morning instead of the middle of the night, and it had been Brenda, not Tony, who had brought the news of the fire. Brenda had rattled off the
facts with what had seemed mechanical precision but which in reality had been emotionless shock. Neil’s home was a smoldering ruin. So far, the firemen going through the debris had found only one body, the charred and scattered pieces of a skeleton of an individual approximately five-and-a-half feet tall who had worn an emerald ring on his left hand. All the evidence was not in, but the fire marshal was inclined to rule out arson. There were no signs that combustibles such as gasoline or kerosene had been involved. The blaze appeared to have started in the kitchen, probably triggered by faulty wiring. And it must have spread quickly to have caught the resting occupant—as the expert had called Neil—totally unaware. It was the gentleman’s opinion, Brenda said, that Neil had probably not even awakened.

  Listening to the account, Alison had felt a corner of her being cracking, the tight place where she had hemmed in the panic that had been growing since the Caretaker’s first letter. Released, the fear had rushed through her like an icy wave, leaving her shivering but strangely unafraid. She had probably felt that now, with this murder, things could get no worse.

  Remember, you have been told.

  Each passing day inevitably decreased Fran’s and Kipp’s chances of being alive. Three scorched skeletons in the rubble would not have surprised her.

  Yet the game rolled forward. Joan had received a letter and her task had been in the paper this morning.

  J.Z. Spread Rumor You Are Gay.

  Joan had been prepared to model naked in the mall, slap the principal in the face, and burn down the whole city. This demand, however, she simply could not meet. She was sleeping with a police-trained German shepherd, her bedroom windows covered with shutters that had been nailed shut. Her law-enforcement father didn’t even know his daughter was in danger.

  Alison was not looking forward to her own turn.

  “All parents react that way to accidents involving their children,” Tony said. “Don’t blame yourself.”