The Devil Next Door

7

And, at the moment Macy Merchant lost control, upstairs in Mr. Cummings 5^th hour BioLab, Billy Swanson waited.

Waited.

Because even the best plans were really a matter of timing and stealth. The new Billy knew this even if the old one was too goddamn stupid to realize such basic laws. So he waited until Cummings paired them up for their lab assignment. He waited until Cummings asked for a volunteer to pass out the dead frogs for dissection.

“I’ll do it,” Billy offered, grinning pleasantly.

Cummings looked surprised, but shrugged. “Go to it,” he said.

Tommy Sidel laughed as he passed by. “Think you can handle it, dip shit?”

Billy kept smiling. “I can handle anything, douchebag. Didn’t you know that?” He leaned in closer. “You still going out with Shannon Kittery, Tommy? Lucky boy. I think I’m going to fuck that bitch in the mouth.”

Tommy tensed. “You’re fucking dead,” he said.

“We’re all dead, Tommy. Take my word for it.”

Tommy looked like he was ready to piss nails and Billy knew that after school, old Tommy star-running-back-scumbucket-pencil-dick was going to be thinking payback and it would be the worst decision his little pea brain had ever come up with. But then, everyone knew that Tommy Stick-Up-His-Ass-Sidel had all the cunning of a box of petrified camel dung and all the charm of an open sore. Yeah, he’d come looking for payback and Billy would give him a little treat he’d never forget. And when he was done cutting on him, he’d do something to that uppity prick’s corpse that would make his own mother puke.

They were all assholes.

They all deserved to die.

For like Macy Merchant, something inside had suddenly changed. Whoever and whatever Billy Swanson had been all those years was gone. The worming caterpillar named Billy had crawled into its cocoon and emerged as a pissed-off butterfly with a brand new attitude, one that looked down in disgust at the mess the old Billy had made out of his life.

There came a time, the new Billy assured him, when enough was enough. When you stopped chewing other peoples’ shit and asking for seconds.

And that time was now.

Because the old passive shit-eating Billy days were all over. History.

He’d been picked on, put down, and shit upon… but no more. That was for the weak. And Billy was no longer weak.

The supply room in which the frogs were stored was in a large, bulky stainless steel refrigerator reached by a door at the back of the classroom. The storeroom had another adjoining door which led to the chemistry classroom. It was closed, the room on the other side empty. The storeroom was where the chemicals and lab glassware and utensils were stored.

It was also where Cummings and a few other science teachers stored their lunch bags and coats.

Billy saw Cummings’ red Thermos.

He smiled.

There was a yellow metal cabinet on the other wall which read DANGER HAZARDOUS CHEMICALS! in brilliant red letters. As always, the key was in the lock. Calmly, purposefully, Billy opened it and removed the jug of sulfuric acid. He slipped on the elbow-length protective rubber gloves and did what had to be done. Afterwards, he got the frogs out. They were in heavy plastic bags. He passed one out to each lab team and placed them unceremoniously on the wax-lined dissection trays.

It was simple.

All things truly wonderful usually were.

Then he took his seat. His lab partner was Lisa Korn, another much put upon student who always looked a bit ragged. She was jittery and prone to fits of crying and sudden fainting spells. She had all the earmarks of a future neurotic, a condition that was in many ways fostered and encouraged by the incompetence and blind eyes of the public school system. Billy always felt sorry for her, because he knew what her life was like. The abuse the other students handed out to her which the faculty simply preferred to ignore. By the nastier students and uppity bastards like Tommy Sidel and his posse, Lisa was known simply as Lovely Lisa Korn-Hole.

She looked nervous as always, afraid maybe that she had done something wrong or would say something wrong if she dared open her mouth.

“Don’t worry, Lisa,” Billy told her. “It’s all about to change.”

She just looked at him and he smiled.

He could smell the sex between her legs. It made him giddy.

“Let’s do it,” he said.

Taking the scalpel, he slit open the frog’s belly like it was something he’d done a thousand times. While Lisa turned an amusing shade of green, he pinned back the frog’s skin with tiny dissection needles and got to work.

And waited for the shit to hit the fan.

He did not wait long.

Mr. Cummings went into the supply room and came out with his Thermos, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He made it all the way to his desk before he took his first gulp. Like he always contended, he was nothing without his caffeine and today was the day when he would finally get his fill. He raised the cup to his lips, scanning the lab teams with disinterest, and swallowed a big gulp.

No one was really paying any attention to him at that moment.

No one but Billy Swanson.

Cummings drew the cup away from his lips with dawning horror. What was at first a scowl of distaste soon became a twisted rictus of agony. The coffee cup slid from his trembling fingers and shattered at his feet.

And then everyone was suddenly paying attention.

Cummings was staggering around and shuddering, clawing at his throat as gouts of steam wafted from his mouth like cigarette smoke. No one said a word in that split second of realization that something was very wrong with him. His glasses flew off, his eyes bulging, his face the color of Wisconsin cherries. Rivers of sweat coursed down his brow.

“What’s he doing?” Tommy Sidel said.

Cummings fell back against his desk, overturning a stack of graded test papers. His fingers were hooked into claws, thrashing and tearing at himself and everything in sight. “Ggggghhhhlll,” he gagged, blood running from his mouth in dark ribbons.

“Mr. Cummings?” Tommy Sidel said, the first one on his feet. “Mr. Cummings! Are you all… right…”

Cummings collapsed to the floor, his fingers tearing open his shirt, cutting deep red welts in his corded throat. A high, inhuman wailing came from him. He thrashed around, thumping his fists and moaning just moments before he began to vomit out great clots of steaming, bloody tissue.

“Mr. Cummings,” Tommy said, at first trying to get a hold of him, but now backing away in disgust as gore sprayed in the air. “Mr. Cummings! Goddammit, somebody get an ambulance, a fucking doctor! He’s dying or something…”

And he was.

His mouth opened in a terrible continuous scream, his teeth snapping and gnashing, tearing his lips to shreds. His face was a contorted red fright mask, his tongue dangling from his lips until his teeth literally bit it in half. All the students were gathered now in a tight circle to watch his agony. He was like some nightmare cartoon run in fast motion. An evil caricature of someone possessed by a demon, hopping and flopping and moving with epileptic speed and at such impossible angles that they could hear his tendons popping and bones dislocating.

Nobody rushed out for help.

Not a one.

Something was happening to them, something they did not understand or really even question. It passed from one to the other like cold germs and when it was done, the students of 5^th hour Biolab were not who they had been a few moments before. They were altered, changed. They looked down at Mr. Cummings and there was not a single twinge of remorse or sympathy in them. What they felt was rage, a stupid and insane rage that consumed them. And one that needed to be voided on something, someone.

Billy stood behind them with Lisa Korn at his side. “Watch, Lisa,” he said. “Now you’re going to see what they really are down deep.”

Lisa just stood there, speechless, her eyes unblinking, her mouth pulled into a straight colorless line.

Billy was smiling, smelling the raw stink of atavism coming from the crowd.

It was delicious.

For maybe twenty or thirty seconds, the students ringed around Cummings did not move. They stood in mock surprise at what had happened, at the dying thing at their feet. Then they began to move. Slowly, inexorably, like some machine cycling up, they started to move as one. Cummings was barely moving, but that didn’t stop them. You could see what was coming in their eyes, in the grim set of their mouths.

There was a sudden flurry of voices that combined into a steady, flat droning:

“—gave me a C on that report—”

“—wouldn’t have gotten kicked off the team if it wasn’t for you—”

“—coulda let me slide, you rotten fuck—”

“—just had to tell my old man you saw me smoking—”

“—always making fun of me—”

“—flunked me—”

“—narced on me for changing grades—”

It all kept rolling, the petty hatreds and accusations and suspicions until it became a sort of mindless chant, building inside each and everyone of them to a pulsing, deadly crescendo and the very air was roiling with heat and malevolence.

And it was then that first true incident of mass insanity in Greenlawn struck. The students went after Mr. Cummings, kicking and scratching and punching and biting him. They went after him like animals with sheer bloodlust and brutality. Something inside them needed voiding and that something needed a common enemy and in their dying teacher, they found it. They crowded in, beating him to a pulp, trying to twist his limbs off and stomping his guts to sauce. They did not even slow down until their fingers were red, their mouths drooling, their clothes spattered with blood.

And the only thing that really slapped them out of it was a voice that cried: “What in the name of hell is going on here?”

The voice belonged to Howard Sullivan, the head custodian. Known as “Sully” to faculty and students alike, he was much loved and had been at Greenlawn High since the days of the Kennedy administration, was only a year shy of retirement, in fact. Anger was a rare commodity for Sully; he liked the kids, year after year, he honestly liked the kids. Liked their fads and music and devil-may-care attitudes. He said they made him feel young and custodian at the high school was the only job he could land where he never really had to grow up.

But today, Sully was mad.

He was shocked and sickened and beyond words. He waded right into the mass of students, pulling them away from Mr. Cummings, actually shoving them out of his path.

When he got a good look at Cummings’ corpse, he looked at the circle of students around him. He saw their vacant eyes, their grinning mouths, all that blood on them… smeared, splashed, dripping. Tears rolled from his eyes. “Kids… Jesus Christ, what… what the hell are you doing here? What have you done? What the fuck have you done?”

The students pressed in closer.

Sully looked from face to face, saw what was coming, tried to get away, but it was just too late.

They fell on him.

Like lions falling on a gazelle.

And behind them, Billy Swanson grinned…