Night screams, p.13
Night Screams, page 13
“A man?” Beth said. “It’s easy to make a man, let me show you.”
She pulled a chair over, sat in front of him, placed some more clay on his desk. He regarded it sourly, eyebrows furrowed. “Now, watch me, watch what I do,” Beth said. She kneaded the clay, then pulled it apart, shaped a torso, rolled arms, legs, head. She assembled the figure, then, taking a pencil, said, “Now we draw some eyes, a nose, a mouth, and—look—we have a man.” She placed it beside Garth’s lump of clay. “There. Now you try.”
Garth scowled at the figure; retracted his upper lip, showing pointed teeth, and tore the appendages off the man; ripped the head off, and squashed it flat. He stared at Beth defiantly.
“No, that’s not good,” she said. “I want you to make something, not destroy it.”
He just kept staring at her hard. Deciding not to press the issue, she stood and said, “Well, let’s see what Shirley’s doing.”
She arrived at the dining room late that evening. The only available space was with Mr. Critch, the principal, and two women. Feeling anxious, she sat across from Critch, who introduced the women: secretaries. Sally Z., the waitress, set a large steaming bowl of soup before Beth, who thanked her and then fell silent.
“How are you finding the work so far?” asked Critch as she took her first sip of the soup. He was sixty or so, with silvery hair that was thinning quite badly in back. His charcoal gray suit was expensive-looking, but worn.
Beth swallowed the hot soup quickly and said, “I’ve already learned so much.”
“There is so much to learn,” said Critch. “So much that the books don’t teach you.” With exquisite care he sliced some meat and lifted it to his mouth.
The secretaries daintily ate to the background noise of gnashing teeth, soft moaning, high squeals. Beth had another spoonful of soup, then said, “I was wondering about Garth and Adrian. What kind of syndrome are they?”
“Syndrome?” Critch said. He dabbed at his mouth with his napkin.
Beth blushed. “They look so much alike, I thought—I figured they were a syndrome. And Horace and Roland look like them, too—don’t you think?”
“They do?” Critch said. He glanced at the secretary on his left, a thin, lined woman named Marple, then looked back at Beth. “I never noticed any resemblance. However, now that you mention it. . . Hmm. Interesting observation. But no syndrome, so far as I know.”
Beth looked at the table that stood near the kitchen doors, where Garth and Adrian sat at opposite ends. They were both quite short, about four feet tall, but extremely stocky and solid-looking; had dark furry eyebrows and long snout-like noses, huge hands, couldn’t talk . . . She looked across at Roland and Horace, who couldn’t talk, either. All four of them could have been siblings. And there, that other one, what was his name again? Brice?
It certainly seemed like a syndrome to her, and she suddenly thought: Wouldn’t that be something? If Daddy’s little ne’er-do-well, with her little old bachelor’s degree, discovered a brand-new syndrome?
“Billie Rae F. is a Treacher-Collins,” Critch said as he sliced more meat. “Note the narrow, pinched face. The palate is very high and arched, resulting in nasal speech. Intelligence often isn’t affected, but in Billie Rae’s case, it was.”
“I haven’t met Billie Rae yet,” Beth said.
“She’s at the west wall,” Critch said. “The young woman in the yellow dress.”
“Oh, yes,” Beth said. And there was another one! “Who’s that next to Freddie?” she asked.
Critch squinted. “That’s Eldreth H.”
Another one, absolutely. And Critch had never seen the resemblance? Weird.
As Critch and the women chatted, Beth looked at Freddie. A waiter came by with a tray of desserts. Eldreth gave hers to Freddie, who smacked his lips. Two desserts! He was thirty or forty pounds overweight, and they let him eat two desserts? Didn’t anyone supervise diet at Radbourne School?
And now Sally Z. was standing beside her and saying, “Bwownies and ice cweam?”
“Miss Lewis?” Critch said.
“Oh—I shouldn’t,” Beth said. But then said she would, and so did the others, Miss West, Mrs. Marple (who could certainly stand to gain a few pounds), and Critch himself. Folding his napkin with great precision, Critch said, “We’re quite proud of our dining service.”
“It’s easy to see why,” Beth said.
Mrs. Marple smiled. Miss West inspected a fingernail. Beth glanced at the various tables; at Sara and Pat and the new teacher, Marnie, eating dessert; at Shirley, eating, at Freddie—still eating!
And then she saw Garth.
Garth was not eating. He sat there, his arms hanging down at his sides as around him the others swallowed and chewed, his thick single eyebrow frowning. Frowning at her, at Beth. Yes, frowning at her.
That night she woke out of a dreadful nightmare and sat straight up in her bed. She listened, cold sweat on her skin.
There. She heard it again. It had been in her dream, but was real—a scream, far off somewhere. It stopped. She lay there, scarcely breathing, as again it rose into the night. She heard the sound of machinery then, a whining, metallic sound, and a pitiful faraway voice pleading, “No! Please! No!”
She got up and went to the window and lifted the shade. The night was totally black, without any moon. The lamps had gone out at ten o’clock, Radbourne’s official bedtime, and now she could barely distinguish the pathways snaking across the lawn. No movement, nobody there. And now no sound.
She sat on the bed, her heart beating wildly; took a deep breath, let it out. She looked at the window, the bright high stars far off in the blue-black sky. Somebody coughed down the hall somewhere. Sara? Pat? Beth stared at the door to the hall, which was bolted, then looked at the door to the storage room, its mint-green panels gray in the feeble light. She finally lay down again, pulling the sheet up, and after a while she slept again, but not well.
“She already quit?” Beth said.
She was walking with Pat to her morning class. “Yep, she’s gone,” Pat said.
“Wow, that didn’t last long.”
“Hey, let’s face it,” Pat said, “this job is tough. You have to be right on top of things every second. At the end of a day here, I’m really wrung out. And I’m a high-energy person.”
“Yeah,” Beth said.
“Diane was not a high-energy person.”
“Oh.”
Beth was quiet a minute, then frowned at the yellow brick path and said, “Pat?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you hear that screaming last night?”
Pat rolled her cow-like dark brown eyes. “That’s another thing. These folks have a nightmare, and bang, they go off the deep end. They think dreams are real, I guess—like those primitive tribes?”
“They were having a rough time, whoever they were.”
“I’ll say. It’s that kind of stuff that gets you. I guess if you’re here long enough, you can sleep right through it. To tell you the truth, though, I don’t want to be here that long.”
They’d reached the schoolhouse, and went inside. “Well, see you at lunch,” Pat said.
“Yeah—and save me a seat,” Beth said.
The morning did not go well. For some reason, Freddie was not in a very good mood, and swiped a crayon from Yola R., a dour white-haired woman with long ruddy cheeks and gray eyes.
“Give it back,” Yola said.
“No.”
“Yes! Give it back!”
“No!”
Yola, flushed and furious, sprayed spittle as she said, “You meatball!”
“No!” Freddie said, his eyes suddenly wide. “No meatball! Me . . . no meatball!”
Garth, who’d been sullen all morning, grinned at this; then laughed with a series of short loud grunts.
So that’s what turns him on, Beth thought. A fight. “Freddie, give it back now,” she said.
“Me . . . no meatball!” Freddie said, and Beth was surprised to see he was close to tears.
“No, you’re no meatball,” she said. “Give Yola her crayon now.”
“No meatball,” Freddie said, shaking his head as he handed the crayon back. “No meatball, no.”
Exposing his jagged teeth, Garth laughed again.
“Garth, it’s not funny,” Beth said sharply.
Garth continued to grin. Beth glared at him, hands on her hips.
A piece of paper floated off Shirley’s desk and landed beside Garth’s chair. “Ooopth!” Shirley said.
“I’ll get it,” Beth said, and leaned over; was rising again when she felt a sharp pinch on her arm. “Garth!”
His grin was huge. “That’s not funny!” Beth said. “Not at all! We don’t pinch people here!”
Garth’s grin dissolved. His eyes grew dark.
Pure hatred in those eyes, Beth thought, and she took a step backward, saying, “You do anything like that again, I’ll report you to Mr. Critch—or Miss Hemphill, you understand?”
He continued to scowl, and she suddenly wondered: Did he understand? After all, he couldn’t talk . . . The other students looked away—at the floor, at their desks—with sheepish eyes.
Beth gave Shirley her paper. To Blenda she said, “That’s a very nice flower. A beautiful flower, good job.”
“No meatball,” Freddie said with another slow shake of his head. “Me. . . no meatball.”
“Just forget that now,” Beth said, and avoided looking at Garth again, and thought of Diane, who had already quit after only a month at this place. A month could be a long time when you had to face Garth and Adrian every day, she thought. A real long time.
The pay phone stood in the first-floor hallway, next to Critch’s door.
Beth looked at the massive squat-legged table with its dimly glowing brass globe lamp, at the heavy brown velvet drapes in the archway, the dull Persian runner on the varnished floor, and swallowed against the homesickness lodged in her throat. “Oh yes,” she said, quite challenging. I’ve already learned so much.”
“Just gorgeous—especially now that the leaves are beginning to turn.”
“No, not till Thanksgiving, I don’t get any time off before then.”
“I love you, too. Say hi to Daddy. Bye.”
As she placed the receiver back in its cradle, the loneliness hit her hard. She looked at the gilt-framed painting above the table: a landscape devoid of human figures, feathery and dark. The hallway suddenly seemed to contain no air. She left it, crossed the vestibule, and entered the library.
They were some kind of syndrome, she was sure of it. Garth, Adrian, Horace, Roland, Eldreth, Brice—and Grindle P. They looked alike and acted alike: stubborn, surly, and sometimes downright cruel. She had seen Grindle P. deliberately trip Amos A., sending him sprawling onto the yellow brick path, where he skinned both palms. And Brice had shoved Blenda into the drinking fountain, cutting her lower lip.
Beth wanted to check their files, their medical records, but that was forbidden; administration alone had access to those. What else could you expect from a place that wouldn’t even tell you your students’ last names? “Confidentiality is paramount at Radbourne,” Critch had told her. “Many of our parents are quite . . . sensitive.”
Denied the records, she spent three nights in the school’s dank library, searching the ponderous volumes on disability, but found no pictures that looked like Garth or the rest. Mucopolysaccharidosis (what a mouthful) came closest, but wasn’t quite it. Maybe she was onto something new. If so, she wouldn’t call it any tongue twister. Beth syndrome? Or maybe Troll syndrome. For that’s what they looked like, those mythical, evil elves. Troll syndrome, yes indeed.
“Adrian? Are you kidding?” Sara said, placing her cup in its saucer. “She’s done nothing in class for the whole three weeks I’ve been teaching. Nothing.”
“Same here,” Beth said, nodding, poking her meat with her fork. “I just can’t seem to motivate her. Anything I show her, she refuses to even try.”
“She pinched me once,” Pat said; and Marnie, who’d been at Radbourne for only a few days, widened her big blue eyes.
“Garth pinched me once,” Beth said, “but Adrian hasn’t tried it yet.”
“Garth,” Sara said. “I’m glad I don’t have him, he gives me the creeps.”
“And Adrian doesn’t?” Pat said.
“Well, yeah, she does, but not as bad as Garth.”
Pat shrugged. “Horace, Roland, Adrian, Garth—they all give me the creeps.”
“They’re a syndrome,” Beth said. “They have to be. I mean look at their faces, the way they behave, their lack of speech. And they all make that grunting noise.”
“Isn’t it gross?” Sara said. “They sound like a fish I caught in the Delaware Bay.”
“What kind of a fish was that?” Pat said.
“A grunt.”
“Excuse me for asking.”
“No, that’s what they’re called—really,” Sara said, smiling.
Beth swallowed a piece of her meat and said in a soft voice, “I call them the trolls.”
Pat giggled.
“I know,” Beth said, “it’s not professional, it’s downright nasty, in fact, but these folks are not nice.”
“More coffee?” asked Edwin, their waiter, the pot in his hand.
They declined.
“More meat and eggs?”
“No thank you,” Beth said. In spite of her resolution, she’d already gained six pounds—in only two weeks! The others said they were finished too, and Edwin left.
“I’m fat, fat, fat,” Pat said. “I think that’s really why Diane quit, she was turning into a butterball.”
“I can’t quit, I need the job,” Sara said. “But I can see burnout coming on fast in a place like this. Hard work, long hours, low pay—The Radbourne School has it all. And, as an extra added attraction, it’s creepy. I feel like I’m being watched all the time.”
Pat frowned. “By Critch?”
“Yeah, by Critch,” Sara said, “but not only by Critch.”
“Yes, I know what you mean,” Beth said, “I feel it, too. I’ve felt it ever since I first came here. I thought it was probably just me.”
“It isn’t just you,” Pat said.
Marnie said, “No, I’ve been here for less than a week, and I feel it, too.”
They were silent a moment, and then Beth said, “Well, they give us plenty of food, at least.”
Pat rolled her eyes. “Another problem to deal with!”
They finished and went outside. As they passed the building that housed the woodworking shop, Pat said, “My God, it smells putrid out here.”
Sara wrinkled her nose. “Yeah, what is that, the sewage system?”
“Whatever it is, I wish they’d fix it—fast.”
The stench made Beth feel slightly ill, especially after all that food. As the four of them crossed to the schoolhouse, the feeling that Sara had talked about, that feeling of being watched, came over Beth. And then she saw why.
Far off, on the hill behind Kilby Hall, stood Garth, his thick arms at his sides. He was staring right at her.
She tried to deny what she felt, that quick stab of fear. Playing hooky today, Mr. Garth? she said to herself. Not a good idea. Mr. Critch isn’t going to like that. In the schoolhouse she told the others she’d see them later, then went to her classroom.
And Garth was sitting there, clutching the edge of his desk, feet dangling above the floor.
So it hadn’t been him on the hill after all; it must’ve been Horace or Roland or Brice. Proof positive they looked alike! “Good morning, everyone,” she said, and those with the gift of speech returned the greeting—except for Freddie, whose cheeks were shiny with tears.
She went to him. “What is it, Freddie? Don’t you feel well?”
Looking up, Freddie swallowed with effort and said, “Him . . . call me meatball.”
“Who?” Beth said. “You mean Yola again?” Freddie got “him” and “her” mixed-up sometimes.
“N—not him,” said Freddie. Then, eyes going wide, he pointed his stubby finger at Garth. “H—him!”
Beth frowned. “Garth? But Freddie, Garth doesn’t talk.”
“Him talk!” Freddie said. “Him . . . say meatball!”
“Garth?”
“Him say me meatball, yes!” Freddie said.
Frowning harder, Beth said, “Whoever called Freddie a nasty name, don’t you ever do it again. If I catch you, I’ll send you to Mr. Critch.”
At this, Garth snickered. Freddie, his hooded eyes flashing, sputtered, “You bad! You bad!”
Shirley gasped. Blenda B. bit her knuckles and moaned. Yola, mouth going wide, scraped her fingernails down her flat cheeks.
“All right,” Beth said, “enough. We’re going to do some drawing now. Jimmy, pass out the crayons, please.”
Jimmy, his eyes round and huge in his skinny pale face, got up from his chair and went to the shelf for the crayons. Garth snickered again. Furious now, Beth glared at him.
His eyes locked onto hers and stayed, and a chill went over her spine. Unable to bear his gaze, she turned away.
That evening, on her way back to Barrington Hall after dinner, she looked at the hill where Horace or Roland or Brice had stood staring down, and there, on its crest, she saw Adrian walking with Shirley. But not just walking—prodding her with a stick! Poking at her, herding her along. Shirley would turn every once in a while and utter a protest, lost at this distance, and then would submit again.
Bullies, Beth said to herself. They’re bullies, all of them. She started up the hill to intervene; but Adrian flung down the stick and walked away as Shirley went into the dorm.
Beth, tired now at the end of the day, decided not to pursue. But she would tell Critch about this, absolutely, it had to be stopped.
The shouts woke her out of another disturbing dream. She could hear the words plainly this time: “Please! Please! Oh no, my God!”
It sounded like a woman’s voice. But maybe it wasn’t—for some of the male students’ voices were almost falsetto, and some of the women were baritones.
The whining sound she’d heard that other time began, and the screaming stopped. Beth lay on her side, hunched up, and stared at the wall, at the door to the storage room, unable to sleep.
