The Desolate
a novel
Brian J. Jarrett
Copyright © 2012 Brian J. Jarrett
Elegy Publishing, LLC
All rights reserved by the author. No part of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted by any means without the written consent of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, people, locales, or events are purely a product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any person (either living or dead), to any event, or to any locale is coincidental or used fictitiously.
2012.TD.1.5
For Traci
The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness.
– Joseph Conrad
CHAPTER 1
Art Menkis stepped into the school gymnasium and immediately knew those little shits had been at it again. Though the large room was only dimly lit by a few rows of fluorescent lights, he instantly noticed a dark shape far across the room. Being mostly cloaked in shadow, Art couldn’t tell exactly what the thing was, but he knew he hadn’t put it there. And if he didn’t put it there then it was definitely not supposed to be there.
Whatever it was, he could be goddamn sure it was the work of those ungrateful fuckers that scurried around his hallways like filthy little roaches. It wouldn’t be the first time the kids had pulled pranks at his school. Only a couple of years ago a group of them inflated a sex doll and left it in front of the building. And to make matters worse, poor Edna, the sweetest little lunch lady one could ever imagine, had to endure the unfortunate displeasure of finding it.
’Kids will be kids’, they all had said. Even the principal agreed. Art called bullshit on it, but he was overruled. That figured. They let the ones who did it off practically scot-free, with no more than a couple of days of detention for any of them. That figured too.
These days you couldn’t find a good kid in the mix. It wasn’t like the old days, back when Art had been a kid, back before the Marilyn Mansons and the Ozzy Osbournes of the world became role models. Sure, back in those days pranks had been played, but it was all good-natured ribbing. Back then it was about kids being good kids. Things couldn’t be more different in today’s liberal, single-parent society.
Cursing the fall of civilization at the hands of its own youth, Art quickly shuffled across the gymnasium’s polished floor, toward the strange shape in the shadows, dreading the inevitable cleanup job that would follow. Truth was he was tired of cleaning up after them. Thirty-three years was more than enough. He swept their floors, he took out their trash, and he cleaned their bathrooms. After lunch he dumped into the garbage the leftover food the little pricks were too good to eat. He took care of them, for Christ’s sake. Hell, he even salted the sidewalks so the little fuckers didn’t fall down and break their precious asses in the winter.
And what did he ever get for it? A laughably small paycheck and a few weeks of vacation. Neither was enough to put up with the daily crap he received from brats who thought they were better than him. He was more glad than ever now that he’d never had kids of his own. Better to not have them at all than to suffer the disappointment they would ultimately bring.
The sex doll in front of the school had been one thing, but this was another thing altogether. This was breaking and entering, plain and simple. Prank or not, they couldn’t just walk into his school any time they wanted, doing any damn thing they wanted to do. There were rules after all, and just because the young didn’t respect them didn’t mean those rules couldn’t be enforced. He’d see to that personally this time. If the administration wouldn’t press charges, then he fucking would.
Still cursing under his breath, he continued across the gym as quickly as his arthritic knees would allow, toward the main row of light switches lining the far wall. He wondered if maybe this was the work of the same jerks who had keyed his truck last fall. That incident he had reported to the police, but of course they never found the degenerates who did it. No surprise there. These kids today had no respect for other people’s property. They were ungrateful and entitled. With kids like that this country was royally screwed.
Grumbling, he finally reached the row of light switches. He flipped them on as quickly as he could, one by one, the sharp click of each switch echoing throughout the gymnasium as it slid into the on position. As the fluorescent bulbs overhead came to life they hummed and buzzed, flooding the room with harsh, white light. With the overhead lights chasing away the shadows, Art got his first look at the hanging object.
What he saw next he could never have prepared for.
A young girl hung suspended from the rafters above by two long ropes. Her skin was a pale, milky white. Her long, black hair was matted with blood, contrasting starkly with the whiteness of her skin. Her lips were a dark shade of blue. Her mouth was slightly open, the tip of her tongue resting on her bottom teeth. Dried blood ran from the corners of her mouth and onto her chin. There was so much blood that it crisscrossed all over her white skin in jagged lines, like a macabre road map. Her eyes remained open, empty and lifeless.
Art’s world spun around him. A hard shock raced through his body, starting at his head and ripping through to his feet. He felt cold all over. His heart pounded, beating a manic pulse in his ears. He opened his mouth to speak, to say something, anything, but no words escaped.
Unable to accept the horror before him, his mind worked to find another explanation. He thought it was possibly a mannequin, like the sex doll, but more lifelike. He entertained the notion for only a moment until his mind aptly quelled such nonsense. There could be no mistaking that this girl was real and she was dead; the victim of unspeakably terrible brutality.
Art opened his mouth again; this time he vomited. Partially digested bacon and eggs from breakfast spewed freely from his mouth, splattering upon the previously spotless gymnasium floor. The splatter covered his shoes and the bottom of his pants as the sickening smell rose to meet his nose. Feeling another contraction in his stomach, he leaned forward again, regurgitating the rest of his breakfast through his mouth and nose.
Art had seen death before. His own father had died after falling off the roof of their two-story home, his neck twisted more violently than Art had believed was even possible. Only a boy then, he’d looked into the dead eyes of his father as they stared into oblivion, whatever force driving them only moments before gone forever.
He’d seen death before, that much was true, but he’d never seen death like this.
The girl’s head faced Art, her gaze directed toward the floor. Her body, however, faced backward. At first he thought the killer had twisted the girl’s head so far that she was looking behind herself. Then he saw the black stitches, woven around a violent and bloody cut that encircled her neck. He quickly realized the girl’s neck hadn’t been twisted at all; her entire head had been cut off and sewn on backward. Art dropped his gaze, no longer able to look into the girl’s dead eyes. As he did he saw that the girl’s hands and feet were also backward. To Art the girl’s backward feet looked almost as horrific as her head.
Art stumbled backward, away from the stinking puddle of his own half-digested breakfast, away from the poor, dead thing in front of him, shaking his head and wishing he was anywhere else. Wishing he could go back and unsee everything. Wishing he’d never gotten out of bed that day. He wanted to scream for help, but he knew there was no one to help him. Being so early in the day, Art was alone in the school unless…
Unless the killer was still there.
This possibility was enough to force him to finally move. He tore his gaze away from the girl’s body and ran across the gymnasium floor as quickly as his aging body would allow. A part of his mind realized he hadn’t moved that fast in years. He could barely feel the ache in his knees and back; those were the least of his problems now.
After crossing the gym he ran through the door and into the school’s main hallway. He darted toward his office, the one perk he did receive as the school’s head custodian. There was a phone in his office and, just as important, a deadbolt lock on the door. He kicked himself for never getting a cell phone; he’d never found them useful until now.
As he ran he almost expected to see a figure step out to block his path, still holding the knife used to slice up that poor girl. He tried to push the vision away, but with every classroom door and adjoining hallway he passed the notion returned. He repeatedly glanced behind as he ran, hoping each time he did that the hallway would be as empty as the time before.
After what seemed like the longest run of his life, Art finally reached his office. He fumbled with his impossibly large collection of keys, his mind blanking as he tried to remember which key opened his own office door. He glanced left and right, sure he would see the menacing shape of the girl’s killer slowly making his way toward him, just a pitiful old janitor who had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. The hallway remained empty, however; it was filled only with the sounds of Art’s desperate struggle with his keys.
After an eternity, Art found the key. He quickly inserted it into the office door, glancing again at the hallway behind him. It remained empty. The door opened and Art rushed inside, frantically closing the door. He locked the deadbolt with shaky hands. Slowly he backed away from the door, his eyes fixed upon the handle, praying it didn’t move.
It was only then he noticed he was crying.
Art continued backing away from the door until he ran into his own desk, nearly falling over it. His voice returned and he screamed. He caught himself at the last second, the muscles in his back screaming in protest as he righted himself. He inched his way toward the phone mounted on the wall beside his desk, his eyes never leaving the doorknob.
Despite the relative safety of the office’s locked door, fear gripped Art. It seemed that in the movies killers could just slip effortlessly into locked rooms. As if to prove that point, the psychopath who killed that girl had broken into the school easily enough. As such, Art worried that a single janitor’s office door couldn’t possibly offer any challenge to such a maniac.
With great effort he pulled his attention away from the door knob, dialing 911 before returning his eyes to the door knob. He barely heard the operator answer on the other end of the line, asking Art to state his emergency.
He found he didn’t know where to begin.
After the operator repeated the question Art finally forced some words from his mouth. They came out in a dry croak. “She’s dead,” he managed to speak into the handset. “Central High gym.” He swallowed hard, still watching the door knob for movement, wondering if his heart would just stop if he saw any. “Come quick.”
He ignored the operator’s additional questions, slowly returning the phone’s handset to the base. Without looking, it took three tries to get it on the hook, after which the phone went silent. He collapsed into the padded chair behind his meager desk, eyes still trained on the door knob and his heart still racing.
The image of the dead girl flashed repeatedly in his mind as he waited. Twice he thought he saw the doorknob move, just a little. He heard the sirens five minutes later. All he wanted now was to get out of the building. He needed to go home. There, in the bottom drawer of his desk, Art kept two very important problem-solvers: a bottle of whiskey and a revolver.
He wasn’t sure which one he would end up using on himself that night.
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