Waking Dead Things

Chapter 4

Chapter 4October 13th

I dreaded going back out into the hallway after French class but Principal Skinner had been true to his word and most of the flies had already been removed. I did see a couple crumpled black bodies littering the corners of the hallway and some smeared remains on lockers but only a couple flies buzzed around the lights and dive-bombed the students.

By third period my bladder had reached its capacity. Too much orange juice this morning, I guess. I got a hall pass from Mr. Greenberg and headed out to the restroom. I like the school best when it is like this, empty. The halls are wide and I can walk freely. And without flies at this point. It feels a bit like freedom to walk past classrooms full of students busy working. Mr. Greenberg teaches art, thankfully, so it wasn't like I was missing something important. He believed in letting each 'artist' work on their own pace. My painting of our flower garden could wait.

I was at the bathroom before I noticed the smell. It stuck in my nose. The rank foul smell of something rotten. I stopped with my hand on the door and debated going in or not. If I went down the East corridor there was another restroom. I couldn't tell if it was even coming from the bathroom or not. I thought it had to be coming from the dead rodent that had produced the flies. When they moved it to clean it up the gases must have gone into the air system or something. I grimaced and pushed the door open.

The bathroom looked as it always did, clean and white. There were a few smudges on the mirrors but mostly the place was clean. None of the stalls were closed. It looked like I had it to myself. It would have been nice except the smell was much worse in here. I gagged on the stink and held my gut. I wasn't going to get sick. I breathed through my mouth and forced my stomach to settle down. The feeling that I was going to heave all over the place subsided and I straightened up. The place was rank but I could deal and I still had to pee. In fact I had to pee worse than ever. I hurried into the stall, closed and latched the door and went about my business. I'd just about finished when I saw the girl standing at the sink. I hadn't heard her come in and could only see her through the narrow gap between the stall door and the frame. She had long black hair that hung nearly to her waist. No curls or even a braid, yet it wasn't neat. You see some women who have their hair perfectly straight but this wasn't like that. It looked like she had slept on it and not bothered to brush it out. She wore a long dark skirt that went down to her ankles and a dark sweater with long sleeves. Her hands were clasped together behind her back. The nails were broken and bloody. Her hands were dirty and scratched. The more I looked through the crack the more I noticed about her outfit. It was dirty too. Torn in places and wet looking. I noticed that the smell had gotten even worse, something that I wouldn't have thought possible only moments before. It was coming from her, I thought.

Even though I didn't want to believe that, I couldn't shake the thought. It was horrible but she scared me. I shrank back from the crack and slowly lifted my feet from the floor. I didn't want her to know I was in the stall. I felt ashamed. The way she looked she needed help from someone but I was scared. I grabbed onto my knees and held them.

She twitched. It started at her legs and ran up her body. Her hands clenched spasmodically. Her body shook. Her head stuttered to the side. Slowly she started to turn around. I closed my eyes. I didn't want to see her face. The thought of it was unbearable. I screwed my eyes tight and held onto my knees. I gritted my teeth and breathed as quietly as I could through my nose despite the stink that made my gut clench. Tears stung my eyes and leaked out down my cheeks. I wanted to know where she was but I couldn't look. Then I heard a familiar and terrifying sound. The buzzing noise of flies. My breath caught in my throat and I opened my eyes. She hadn't turned all the way around. She still stood by the sink but I could see her profile. With her hair hanging about her face I couldn't see much but a slight curve of a pasty gray cheek and the swell of bluish lips. A fly crawled across her pouting lower lip. Others buzzed around her in a nasty cloud. I saw something move on the floor and saw something even worse. Smashed and crumpled flies lurched and clawed their way across the tiles toward her. She shuddered again, twitching and convulsing, and started to turn more towards the stalls. Several flies took off into the air as they were dislodged by her spasmodic movements.

It was too much. A pent up scream burst out of my throat. I jumped off the toilet and clawed open the latch. With one hand pulling up my pants I used the other to wrench the door open. I tried not to look at her as I ran for the exit. It's hard to run with your pants undone and something like that behind you but I managed. At least for a few steps. I might have made it except for the fly that flew right in my screaming mouth. It stopped me just as effectively as running into a wall. I jerked back and my much abused stomach couldn't take anymore. I bent over and let loose across the floor. Bye bye breakfast. The heaves shook my body and brought me to my knees. I braced my hands on my legs and gave up the last of everything in my stomach. It was only a small relief that I saw the fly struggling in the midst of my vomit.

I didn't faint. I don't know what happened after that, but I'm sure, despite what the nurse said, that I didn't faint.

I woke up in the nurses' office with a cool towel on my forehead and the bitter aftertaste of bile on my lips. Nurse Greenberg was right there beside the bed.

"You're okay," she said. Her lips pursed. "How do you feel?"

I thought about what I had seen in the bathroom and felt sick in an entirely different way. Whatever that was that I had seen, had I woken it up? Was I a necromancer? If I was I couldn't afford to let anyone know.

"I feel fine," I said cautiously. "What happened?"

"You were found in the bathroom. It looked like you had vomited and then fainted."

I didn't faint, I thought. I couldn't tell her that. "Who found me?"

"Michelle Parker. Scared her quite a bit, I'll tell you. She thought you were dead." Nurse Greenberg chuckled. "By the time I got there you were already coming around. I have to ask, Ravyn. Have you been taking drugs?"

I shook my head.

"Have you been sexually active? Is there a chance you're pregnant?"

"No. I mean, I haven't gone that far yet."

Nurse Greenberg nodded and I realized that I could see it in her eyes that she didn't believe me. I sat up but she put a hand on my shoulder.

"Can't I go to class?"

"I'm afraid not. We've called your mother. She's going to come and take you home. We'll be running some tests. Once we have the results the school board will decide what actions to take, if any."

"Tests? You can't do that!"

"It's policy, and we have your mother's permission. She signed the form at the start of the year. We have to do a drug screening. They'll also check for pregnancy. We need to get to the bottom of what happened."

"You don't need to do that. It was a fly."

"A fly?"

"That's right." I seized on the memory. "I have a thing about flies. I was in the bathroom and one of those flies went in my mouth as I was leaving. I'm sorry, it just freaked me out and made me sick."

"Well, the school board is going to insist on the tests anyway. I've already taken the blood sample so you can just wait for your mother to get here."

It was infuriating. They didn't have the right to do that. It creeped me out thinking about Nurse Greenberg drawing blood while I was out of it like some sort of vampire. Thinking of her like that made me remember the real reason for what had happened in the bathroom. The dead girl. I put my hand to my head and lay back down. Nurse Greenberg must have been satisfied that I wasn't going to be difficult and she left me alone. As soon as she was gone I sat up and looked around the room for another way out. In my mind I kept seeing that girl. Her twitching stinking self could show up out of nowhere for all I knew. Maybe she could walk through stuff like walls. I had a mental picture of seeing a gray hand suddenly reaching through the wall with broken and bloody fingernails, twitching like a spider. Icky. I tried to focus on escape instead and ignored the other thought that I could feel scratching around in my skull.

There were two windows in the room. Both were long and skinny with frosted glass and not the sort that opened. I figured I could break them but there wasn't any way that I could squeeze through that narrow frame and I'm petite. I might be able to get my legs and arms through but I was busty enough that there was no way my chest could make it. At least not without scraping off a n****e or two in the process. I winced. No, I wasn't going to try that. With the windows ruled out that left me with the door or the ceiling tiles above the bed. The door was risky. I couldn't know if the nurse was right outside or not. To reach the ceiling tiles I'd have to put the stool on the bed to reach and I didn't even know if there was anything up there that could hold my weight. Assuming there was and I could get up in the ceiling I couldn't see how I'd get rid of the stool so she'd know where I'd gone. It'd also probably be dark up there. And where would I go? I'd have to come out some place. Could I really find my way crawling around through the ceiling?

I had to face it. I didn't have any good options. Ultimately it was Mom coming to get me so eventually I'd have to deal with her even if I did manage to escape. Probably the bravest thing I could do right now was wait and maintain my innocence.

It might work with Mom. I didn't see it working with Inquisitor Lockwood. That's what was really bothering me. True, the dead chick had scared me. I couldn't think of a time when I'd been more scared. It made me feel queasy just thinking about it again. The space between my shoulder blades itched and I had to check behind me to make sure she hadn't come through the wall. I wished I hadn't ever wondered if she could do that. I couldn't ignore what had happened in the bathroom. Some dead thing had appeared. The building hadn't been evacuated and I didn't see any red suits yet so I had to think that she had been gone when Michelle Parker came into the bathroom and had found me lying in my own pool of vomit. So there was a fairly good chance that they didn't know about that part. It gave me some breathing space but didn't answer the question. Had I woken that dead chick up somehow? I didn't remember doing anything to have caused that to happen. And if it hadn't been me then there must be a necromancer in the school. Right now I didn't know which it was. When they talked about witches in history books they didn't exactly give instructions on how their powers worked. I'd gotten the impression that they didn't always have a lot of control over what was happening. Maybe I'd done it and didn't realize it.

There were only two people I knew that might be able to answer the question. One with a good chunk of her brain burned away and one that would burn my brain if he thought I was waking dead things. What is a girl to do?