Feelers Pt. 7

At first I thought the world was coming back into focus again. I could still feel Grant’s hand clenching mine tightly, and the earth seemed to firm up against my feet. I swayed a bit and I felt Grant stagger and then steady back up. I blinked, and then I blinked again. It didn’t do much good. A dull, dead mist seemed to blur into whiteness whatever I tried to look at. I turned to look at Grant and felt a flood of relief. His features were still solid and full of the color of life. I tried to smile at him, and he tried to smile back at me.

“Okay. That was wicked,” I said, and dropped his hand to brush back the hair from my face. Somehow my pony tail holder had come loose. I looked around. If I kept Grant in my field of vision, I didn’t feel as disoriented as I did at first. The white mist was like a fog, but didn’t move or swirl. It wasn’t especially thicker or thinner in any direction. It was more like a world of nothing that was out of focus.

Grant was groping around, waving his arms.

“What are you doing?” I asked, afraid for his mental state.

“I just thought if the box that brought us here was somehow still here, it could help us get back from wherever it is that we are!”

That sounded reasonable, so we spent the next twenty minutes sliding around, waving our arms like windmills until we gave it up. Once, we got separated enough that it seemed he was sliding out of focus, and I panicked, calling him back. Finally we gave up and just stood there, peering into the fuzz and thinking. I felt a shiver.

“I’m not sure if it’s my imagination or not, but I see some sorts of shapes around me.”

“Yeah, I see something too,” Grant replied. “I think my eyes are getting used to this. It’s almost like I can see the shapes of walls, and moving things, and other objects.”

“You’re right! It’s like people. In fact it’s like people on a sidewalk, but they’re just like dim shadows.

“Andie,” Grant slowly said. “Can you see? It’s just like the corridor at school.”

And then I felt truly scared for the first time. I could even recognize some of the shadowy people that passed in front of, behind, and through me. I waved my hand, and it passed through a dim, shadowy wall object. “Are we ghosts?” I whispered.

For some time after that, we wandered around, recognizing the familiarity of the school, but being somewhere else, somewhere we didn’t know. There didn’t seem to be any substance to our surroundings, but it was real enough, as I felt when I tripped over my undone shoelace and fell on one knee to the ground. It was hard, and I winced at the bruise. Once in a while, I’d see some other shapes, shapes that didn’t match up to anything familiar. In fact, they didn’t look like anything on Earth.

“It’s almost like different scenes going on at once here, and we’re the only ones who can see that,” I said.

“How long have we been here?” Grant suddenly asked.

I looked at my wristwatch. It had stopped at noon. I put my ear to it. There was no ticking.

“I can’t tell,” I said. “A couple hours?”

“We’ve got to figure out what to do next. We can’t just wander around forever! Think!”

I sat down cross-legged, putting my backpack on my lap and my chin in my hands.

“Well, for one thing,” I said, “It’s obvious that this machine was used before, so there has to be some point to it.”

“Unless Mr. Devious made it but was waiting for some guinea pigs to try it out on!”

I frowned. “I’m going to assume this isn’t the first time someone’s gone through. So either they made it back, or they didn’t. If they did, then we can too. If they didn’t, well, we’ll just keep trying!” That was the best I could come up with at the moment. “So, it seems like we are at some strange crossroads, maybe like a meeting place of worlds.”

“Are you sure you haven’t been reading too much science fiction?” Grant asked, sarcastically.

I ignored that. “It’s the only explanation I can think of right now. Unless you have a better one, then keep your mouth shut!” I felt irritated and sulky. Grant crossed his arms and rolled his eyes, saying, “Just give me time, and I’m sure I will!”

And then I heard something off in the distance. It was faint, but distinct. Since everything was dead-quiet around us, the sound was very obvious. It was a scurrying, a pattering, and a snuffling. We both tensed. I made sure the zips were closed on my backpack and hefted it in front of me. It was not much but was the only weapon we had. There was nowhere to run and hide, so we just waited for it, whatever it was.

And then, out of the gloomy whiteness, it appeared and was upon Grant before I could even scream. 

Feelers, Pt 6

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Grant whispered.

It was strange; I didn’t feel particularly scared or even numb. I felt a little exhilarated. There we were –trapped. I couldn’t do anything about it. What was, was. My feeling was that we could either sit there an moan about it, which I certainly did not intend to do! Or we could just go with it. We could continue to explore and see what else we could find out about what Ol’ Devius was really up to. Carefully and quietly, of course. I felt Grant’s hand close over mine.

“Are you ok?” He asked.

“Of course!” I answered, somewhat impatiently. “Do you hear anything else out there?” We both strained to listen with our ears pressed against the door.

“Nothing. I think he’s left the room.”

“Ok. We have until just after lunch until the next class starts. Devius teaches a math class in the other building until noon, and hopefully, he won’t be back in here until after he eats.

“Unless he comes back in here to eat lunch.”

“We’ll just have to make sure we can be hiding if we hear him start to come in then.” And hope that he didn’t take the time to do a double lock the next time he came in and left! I thought.

“Let’s explore some more!” I said. “Flip on the light.”

“Ok, but we’ll have to be quiet so we can hear him coming in time to switch it off,” Grant said. He flipped the switch back on. The fixture hummed, and the sallow glow returned.

We walked back to the curtain that hid the dark recesses of the long narrow space. I pulled it back a little on its rod, to let some of the light illuminate the way. I stepped through, Grant following close behind. The shelving continued along one side as far as I could see through the gloom. More bottles, jars, boxes cluttered up these shelves also, but they were more dusty, more old and derelict that the artifacts in the front office. The smell was worse too. It smelled a little bit like mushrooms.

“Do you smell that? Sort of like mushrooms?” Grant asked. “I heard that there are fungi out there that live in the dust, and if you breathe them in, they can colonize your lungs. Sort of like filling up your lungs with toadstools.”

“That’s ridiculous!” I said. “Really? Where did you hear that?”

“I read it somewhere,” he said. “Maybe I read it wrong. Maybe they grew in your sinuses!” We laughed, but I noticed we both breathed more shallowly, and when a puff of dust got kicked up, Grant covered his nose with the tail of his shirt.

I was still lugging around my backpack, and it was starting to make my back hurt, but I was afraid to take it off, afraid I might have to leave it somewhere if we had to slip away and hide from our teacher if he surprised us by coming back too soon. I pulled the straps up to put it higher on my back and followed Grant, who was now in the lead, running his fingers along the edges of the wooden shelves.

“You know, I think this pre-dates Devius,” he said, thoughtfully. Some of this stuff looks like it’s been here longer that that. And look at the dates on these papers!” The papers were obviously students’ work, but were thirty years old and had a different teacher’s name on them. “It’s just sort of a mish-mash of old teacher’s stuff. Like an attic that never gets cleaned.”

I could see that the sides of the room looked unused, except for the occasional area of disturbed dust and used paper coffee cups resting on a shelf or two. But it was obvious the central path was well-traveled. It showed footprints and scrapings of black and wheel tracks, like a dolly had moved down the narrow tile floor. We kept walking until I was sure we had reached the very end of the building wing, in our dark, man-made cave.

“Here we are; this is it,” I said, a little disappointed about the mundane surroundings at the dead end.

“Not quite,” Grant said as he reached out to what looked like the end wall. I squinted in the near-darkness. What he touched was soft and moveable. I realized it was a blanket of some sort, and that it covered something. Something big. We both tugged, cautiously. But then, as if gravity took over, the whole covering slid down onto the floor at our feet. No dust arose to choke us and grow mushrooms in our lungs. No, this was a well-used part of the room that had no time to collect dust. A smooth handle projected from the flat surface of some kind of box, like a refrigerator. In fact, that’s what I thought it was at first, even after I opened it because a light came on at that moment. Or perhaps it was on all the time and we just couldn’t see it.

“Oh my gosh!” Grant breathed as he stuck his head in.

I wanted to pull him back. Who knows? Maybe something would happen to a body part that you stuck in there.

“Grant, be careful!”

“No, look! It’s so weird!”

I looked. It was glowing a soft blue inside, sort of like an electrical color. Once, when I was little, I saw a transformer explode near our house. It was night, and the blue glow was scary and pretty both at the same time. But the loud crack! and the thought of all those volts let loose in the air kept me away until they got it fixed. This reminded me of that night. I could hear a very soft hum now that the door was opened.

What was really weird about the inside of the box was that the sides were fuzzy and you couldn’t really see them. In fact, I had to assume they were the sides, just based on the outside dimensions. It looked like a square, box-like opening of the prettiest blue, just hanging there in a pale blue fog.

I picked up a dusty book on a nearby shelf and tossed it inside the square. It dropped to the bottom, acting sort of like I’d tossed it onto a blanket. Grant pulled a wooden stick that looked like an old-fashioned pointer from a pile of stuff and poked it. Nothing happened. He reached a hand inside, carefully. Nothing happened. I had a silly urge to grab him suddenly around the middle and go “Zzzzt!” in his ear, but I stuck my hands in my pockets to keep from doing that. That would not be cool.

“Feel it, Andie!” Grant said. “It’s like threads, soft threads,” as he fluttered his fingers across the fluffy blue interior. It was strange, though. As his hand twined with the blueness, it also became sort of fuzzy-looking and out of focus.

“I don’t like it,” I said. “It makes me feel a little creeped out. I’ve never seen anything like it before.

“I know,” Grant said, wonderingly.

And then we both heard a click, click, click, and my stomach dropped. I’d been so enthralled, I’d forgotten our precarious position. Those were heel taps, knocking their way methodically into the office.

“Quick! Quick! Hide!”

“Where?” Grant snatched his hand out of the box and frantically looked around. There wasn’t much to see. The room was fairly empty back here, and the big box was flat up against the back wall.

“Inside!” I hissed, “Quick!”

We stepped inside and pulled the door gently shut, leaving a small crack just in case it had an automatic latch. I had the disorienting feeling that I was standing on water that had mostly solidified. Firm, but still pliable. My hand reached out to the sides and stroked their softness. Grant was right. It was mesmerizing.

The heel clicks were coming down the room past the curtain. It seemed like he was heading straight for us! And then they stopped right in front of the box. Just when I felt like I was going to break out in gibberish and tears from the tension, I saw the door slowly close that last half-inch, ending in a soft little “snick!” We were locked in!

“Andie, look!”

I realized I could see Grant’s face, bathed in a dim blue glow. The edges of the blue fuzz were now lit up and the light was spreading deeper. I could hear an electric buzz. It got brighter and brighter. I felt dizzy.

“Grant, what’s happening?” I yelped.

“I don’t know! Hang on!” he shot back and grabbed my hand. I shut my eyes against the burning glow. Now it wasn’t just my head that was spinning but my whole body. I held Grant’s hand tightly and we leaned into each other as the out-of-focus blue walls seemed to embrace us and pull us apart at the same time. And then the whole world seemed fuzzy for what seemed a long, long time.

Feelers pt. 5

Time passed. It felt like hours, but it might have only been twenty minutes or so. Grant and I exchanged a little bit of small talk, about ourselves, our classes, but I think both of us were too nervous to relax into any sort of easy conversation. He trailed off from talking about his dog and turned his head towards the office door. It was so dark I couldn’t see, but his “shh!” sounded like it was no longer pointed in my direction, but towards the door. I shifted my position to ease the cramp in my legs and then strained to hear what Grant did. I heard the click-click of heel taps out in the lab coming closer to the office door. Mr. Devius wore metal heel taps on his old-fashioned leather shoes. You could see them from the side, making up for the edges of heel that had been worn down.

“I really think we should move further back, behind the curtain,” I breathed. “Right now!”

“I think you’re right. If we can do it without making any noise!”

“I’m going to crawl,” I said. “I’m afraid I’ll bump into something and knock a jar off or something.”

“Okay,” Grant said. “Good idea,” and we both shuffled back further into the depths, the dirty curtain brushing over my head like an used gym towel. I shuddered and held my breath.

“Over here!” Grant hissed. “Some boxes we can hide behind. Hurry!”

The metallic snick of a key being inserted into the locked doorknob made my stomach clench. I told myself that I was being silly, absolutely ridiculous. Mr. Devius was a teacher, for goodness sake! Teachers have to be fingerprinted and go through background checks. They can’t do anything suspicious or outlandish without getting into trouble. We couldn’t possibly be in any real danger. The only danger is that we might get hauled off into the principal’s office, get detention for cutting class if Devius really wanted to hang us. Was there a penalty for being in the teacher’s office without permission? There must be, but surely nothing in proportion to the fear we were both suffering from! Instead of being found out like little squirrels hiding away, we should at least have the respect of facing him standing up and taking the punishment. I started to say, “Oh Grant, this is…” but he suddenly clenched my wrist with a pressure that hurt enough to shut me up.

The door slowly swung inward, staying open for several seconds. Long enough for me to hear that the lab was now empty. Class must be over, and the next class wasn’t due in until after lunch. I heard a wheezy cough and the ghastly fluorescent light switched on. Then I heard the door shut and the soft click of heels as Devius strolled over to his desk.

I can’t explain it, but I understood why Grant clenched my wrist to keep me from talking, from revealing ourselves. I’d never really felt evil before. But now, was it an odor? A coldness? Or was it something I couldn’t sense but was making all the small hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my face grimace? I guess I’d sort of felt that way all the other times I got close to the man, but it seemed greatly magnified in this small closed-in space that belonged to him.

Devius was rummaging around on his desk now, muttering things to himself that I couldn’t quite make sense of. I turned to look at Grant. Now that the light was on and filtering softly through the curtain I could see his face, but couldn’t understand Grant’s stricken look. He made a small movement with his hand and flicked his eyes down at it and then back up to mine. I looked down and saw a white corner of paper held between his thumb and forefinger. The letter! Grant had forgotten to put Mr. Devius’s letter back on the desk! I just hoped he wouldn’t miss it until we could return it.

The rummaging was getting more serious now, with drawers opening and shutting and with folders sliding around. I heard him make a sound that could have been a small chuckle, or it could have been a growl. One of the cabinet doors opened, and through the curtain, dimly, I saw the silhouette of our teacher pouring something out of a bottle into a glass beaker and sip it. He went back to his desk and sat at the chair. I heard papers rustling and then the scratching of a pen, accompanied by a continual mutter, occasionally clear enough for me to hear what he said.

“It’s GOT to work! There’s no excuse! Incompetents, all of them. Am I missing something? Fresh eyes, maybe…” Devius trailed off into incoherence again.

Finally Mr. Devius folded up the papers he’d been writing on, slid them into a portfolio that he tucked under his arm and let himself out, shutting the light off and closing the door with a definite push. It must be lunch time. My stomach growled as I stood up. Grant led the way back to the door, with me holding on to the back of his tee shirt. He flipped on the light.

“What are you doing? We have to get out of here, now!”

“Hold on, this might be our last chance to take a quick look. I want to see what was in that bottle he was drinking out of!”

While Grant opened that cupboard door, I looked at the desk. Grant’s science book, the one he had left in the lab was lying there, along with a copy of the form that teachers fill out when they need to send someone to the office. It had both our names on it and said, “Cutting class.”

“Look at this!” Grant said. He held up a short bottle of ugly green glass with a cork stopper in it. Or maybe it was ugly green just because of the lighting. A clearish liquid swirled around inside the nearly full bottle. He pulled the cork and sniffed.

“Whew! This isn’t alcohol, I don’t think. It smells really weird! Here, smell it!”

I put my nose near to the side of the opening and waved the odor toward me, sniffing, just like they had showed us in class. It was the way to smell unknown chemicals without scorching your nose hairs or passing out.

“Pretty weird,” I said. On an impulse, I picked up an empty smaller bottle lying randomly on a shelf and poured some into it from the greenish flask. I hoped Devius wouldn’t notice that any was missing, as I screwed the lid on the small container and slid it in to join the other jar my backpack.

“Huh! There’s my book!”

“He’s going to make you pay to get it back. And he’s filled out a cut slip on both of us!”

“At least that means he thinks we took off!”

“Maybe,” I said, thoughtfully. “So, let’s go?”

“Yeah,” he said, but pausing. “You know, that was kind of scary, but kind of fun too. You didn’t act scared or cry or make a noise. Andie, let’s have lunch together, and maybe we can hang out sometime.”

It was funny, but I’d sort of forgotten about Grant being the boy I’d been drooling over for the last few months. I guess the excitement sort of drove those thoughts out of my head for awhile. “Sure,” I said. “That would be cool,” and brushed back from my face my too-long bangs that had escaped my hair tie. Grant laughed.

“We’d better wash up when we get out. You just left a streak of dirt across your forehead!” He started to grab his textbook.

“Wait! You can’t do that! He’d know we were in here!”

“You’re right.” Grant slowly put it back where it was. “Darn it! I just know he’s going to make it miserable for me!”

I checked to make sure everything was in order and reached out for the knob. Grant put his finger on the switch, waiting for me. I went to slowly turn the knob, but something was wrong. Very wrong. It wouldn’t turn. It wasn’t stuck or stiff. Somehow, it was locked from the outside.

Feelers Pt. 4

Dear Lothar,

This letter is to inform you that we did receive the recent samples that you sent to us. I am sure that you are anxiously awaiting to hear the test results from our laboratory. Unfortunately, it has been a great disappointment for the samples to show nothing by way of the results that you promised so assuredly. From your enthusiastic recommendations of the latest package, we had expected to at least find traces of the promised effects. But nothing showed itself but that which was within normal odds.

Please believe me when I say that I am using my best efforts to keep our mutual friends from becoming too impatient and from contacting you directly. From your last communication, I understood exactly what you meant, that their interference and close contact would distract you from your work. Understand, however, that time is of the essence, and if our friends get tired of waiting, then I, as the go-between, will likely be the initial sacrifice. Therefore I urge you to redouble your efforts, perhaps trying some new method for discovering the source of that which we have staked our futures upon.

Anxiously awaiting your latest news,

Benedict Rasmussen

Grant turned the letter over and examined the envelope, but there was no further information to be had. “What do you think this is all about?” he asked.

“He’s doing something on the side. Some kind of experiments for some company?” I asked. “Do you think it has anything to do with the school?”

“Doesn’t sound like it to me. Maybe some high-tech company needing some product or something?”

“It’s obviously a secret. Otherwise we would have heard about it.” My friend Emily’s cousin worked in the front office and passed along any juicy tidbits she came across to Emily, who shared them with me. Mr. Devius doing some experimental work on the side would definitely be a subject for gossip around the soda machine.

Grant put the letter back the way he had found it and we stepped further back into the office. What had seemed like the back wall was now revealed to be a dingy curtain hanging across another opening. We stepped around some small boxes that were carelessly scattered about, and I pulled the frayed edge of the fabric aside. I could not see far into the blackness, but I could tell the room went further back; it was narrow and seemed to stretch back along the wing of classrooms. Obviously, a long time ago, someone had created a hidden sort of office area by cutting into a few feet of classroom space and walling it off. Surely there was a light switch somewhere, but I couldn’t feel anything like one against the wall.

“Look here!” Grant said excitedly. He pointed to a small table up against the wall on the other side of the curtain. In the gloom I could see several jars that looked like baby food jars, some packing material and small cardboard boxes. I picked a jar up and held it up to the harsh fluorescent light behind us. About an inch of soft blue flecks shimmered in the container. I slipped it into the side pocket on my backpack.

All of a sudden, I felt a sick rush in my stomach.

“How long have we been in here?” I hissed.

Grant looked stricken. “Probably too long,” he said. “We should get going.”

We stepped around the disorder and back to the door. I put my hand on the knob.

“Wait!” I froze while Grant flipped off the light switch. “Now crack the door and take a peek.”

As slowly as I could, I turned the handle and opened the door a fraction of an inch. A sliver of light caught the dust motes we had stirred up, and I put my eye to the opening. As quietly and slowly as I could, I shut it again and let the knob turn in my hand until it stopped.

“What is it? What’s going on out there?

“We can’t leave now.” My heart was pounding. “The class is coming into the lab.”

“What are we going to do? Any minute Devius will see that we aren’t in there.”

“If he thought he locked his office, he won’t suspect we’re in here. He’ll think we cut class, right?”

“Maybe.” Grant reached out and put his arm around my shoulder. “I think we have to just stay put for now. Move back up against the curtain, so if he does come in, we can hide behind it.”

In spite of the danger we were in, it gave me happy thrill to feel Grant so close to me. In just a short time, it felt like we were already friends. “Okay,” I whispered, and we felt our way back to the curtain and sat down on the floor, leaning against the wall.

Feelers pt. 3

“Should we turn the light on?” I whispered.

“If we do, we have to shut the door,”

“I really don’t want to do that!”

“I know; me neither, but if someone looks in, it will just look like we ducked outside to the hallway,” Grant argued.

I had to agree with that. So I carefully closed the door shut behind me and heard it softly click shut, at the same time that Grant flipped the light switch up. Greenish fluorescent light flickered overhead, turning his skin a sickly shade and casting shadows under his eyes that looked like bruises. I looked away from him and took in the surroundings.

My first impression was how very untidy the place was. Manila folders bulging with papers were piled on every horizontal surface. The wall shelves were stuffed with artifacts. My second impression was that the room was much larger than it had seemed from the architecture of the building. I’d been in several of the other teachers’ offices. One time, when I was in the band teacher’s office waiting for him to come back and give me a lecture for not participating in their silly team-building exercises, I’d had some time to look around. It wasn’t even as big as my parents’ walk-in closet in their room. A tall bookshelf with an old, beat-up tuba perched on top, a battered teacher’s desk and swivel chair, a filing cabinet and one “chair of shame” were the only items could have fit comfortably inside. But Devius’s office, while only as wide as the usual, extended further back. In fact, I couldn’t see the end from where I was standing, there was so much stuff, and the light was so dim.

I turned back to Grant. He was already snooping around, flipping folders and looking under empty bags of potato chips and Taco Bell wrappers. I turned back away and began to inspect the shelves.

The shelves went all the way to the ceiling. Some had doors across them, and some were just open, with jars, boxes and objects piled and filed in them. Close to my hand was a wooden box about the size of a shoebox. I picked it up and turned it to look inside the top, which was covered with a panel of clear glass. A dozen iridescent beetles, green, red, blackish, gleamed on their respective pins that impaled them to the cork beneath. I re-shelved the box and pulled out another, flatter one. This one held butterflies. I didn’t recognize any of them, but that wasn’t surprising, since I really only paid attention to the bugs that crawled or hopped around on the ground, like preying mantises, which were my favorites. I moved along the shelf, looking for more oddities. I picked up a jar that seemed fresher than the rest. I turned it, trying to understand its contents despite the depressing lighting.

The contents were floating in a liquid, just like most of Devius’s other specimens. I looked closer and swirled it around. Tiny paws swirled around, unattached to whatever used to own them. My fingers twitched so suddenly, I almost dropped it, and had to fumble it back to the shelf with the other hand helping. Yuck! Yuck! I wiped my hands on the sides of my jeans.

“Hey Andie! This guy is really into some kind of business that I can’t figure out, but it sure doesn’t look like school stuff!”

“Like what kind of stuff? Against the law?” I shuddered with a little thrill that maybe Devius was doing something illegal that could get him fired. We would be the whistleblowers. But only if we could be anonymous.

“I don’t know. Look at this.” Grant came over with a file folder that was less dusty and coffee-stained than its companions on the desk. Inside was a letter that had been addressed out by hand, in a crawling black script to Mr. Lothar Devius, but with no return address. It had been opened, not neatly with an opener or a knife like the other correspondence scattered around, but hurriedly, carelessly ripped open, leaving the edges jagged, like a saw. “Come here; let’s see what’s in it,” he said, and moved in close with his head inches away from mine.

I still couldn’t believe that Grant Johnson, the boy I would have picked to be on a desert island with, was alone with me, talking with me in an exciting situation like this. This close, his hair smelled like coconut shampoo, and I could see how long his eyelashes were, longer than mine! I could have admired his clear brown eyes, but right now they were like black holes in the ugly light. I was sure that I looked just as bad, my blue eyes turned to murk, my light brown hair a muddy green. As Grant pulled the folded sheet of paper out of the envelope, I leaned in to read what it said.

Feelers pt. 2

Mr. Devius ALWAYS shut and locked the door to his office. As far as I knew, and truthfully, there aren’t many secrets in this school, no one had ever even had a glimpse inside his office since he had become a teacher here, years ago. Even the custodians didn’t go in to clean. One time my friend Katie told me that she had gone back into the lab a little after the last bell rang to pick up her textbook she’d left on the counter. She saw the janitor at the other end of the room jiggling her key in the locked office door, but it wasn’t working. All of a sudden the door between the rooms banged open and Mr. Devius stomped in, yelling at the janitor to get away from his office. Katie just hid behind the supply cabinet and tried to breathe quietly while they argued. The custodian was trying to tell him it was her job, and Mr. Devius had kept interrupting said, “I clean my own office! I always have, and everyone is supposed to be aware of that! Do you understand?” Katie swore she could hear the spittle flying from his lips as he chewed her out. The custodian grabbed her cart and got out fast; Mr. Devius mumbled angry comments to himself as he let himself into his office and locked the door behind him with a loud click; and Katie grabbed her book and slunk away through the door to the other classroom. And then, of course, she called me right away to tell me all about it.

And there we were, with almost a whole hour on our hands, looking at the unlocked door to a room full of mysteries and secrets. The brass knob was somewhat tarnished; few hands had buffed it clean and shiny, like the yellow gleam the hundreds of other doorknobs at the school had. Some grimy smudges had lingered there on the varnished wood surface of the door’s edge for as long as I could remember. I’m sure that none of the custodians would even touch the outside of the door, knowing how he was about it.

Was that a faint metallic odor wafting under the unsealed sill of the door?

Instinctively, I leaned a little closer to Grant, who was staring at the invitation in front of him. His breath was coming faster, and I knew that nothing I could say would stop him from opening the door and peeking inside. But it wasn’t just Grant; I was also intensely curious, and while I don’t know if I would have had the courage to open it by myself, I felt like there was safety in numbers.

“Do you see that, Andie?” Grant whispered. “We have to see what’s in there!”

“What if he comes in and sees us?”

“He won’t. You know how he keeps a beady eye on the class the whole period. We’ve got at least 40 minutes before we have to worry!.”

“But we can’t touch anything. He’d know!”

“Ok, agreed.” He put his hand on my shoulder, which gave me a little thrill in spite of my anxiety. He looked at me and grinned. “Let’s go!”

As Grant led the way, I pulled my other arm through the strap of my backpack to keep both hands free. I reached into my pants pocket, past my phone to pull out my cherry mint lip balm. My lips were getting dry from the whole stress of the morning, so I glided some on and then stuck it back into my pocket. Now we were up near the door. We both kept glancing back over our shoulders at the connecting door, listening for any warning sounds.

Just before I reached out to touch the knob, the door to the classroom popped open! Thinking fast, I grabbed a piece of chalk from the tray and began furiously scribbling numbers and symbols on the chalkboard. Grant stood there with his mouth open and his face turning white.

“No, I told you!” I tried to cover for us both.” You have to divide it, not multiply it, and you’re not considering the molecular weight of the element!” I babbled. Then I slowly turned my head. A student stood in the doorway, staring, while curious faces of students craned forward to get a better look. I could see Mr. Devius in the background holding his long slender pointer with the sharp black tip, twirling it like a delicate screwdriver, his cold eyes glancing toward us. Did he know?

“Miss Blackstone and Mr. Johnson! Please continue.” He twirled the pointer some more, this time pointing it at the door. “Miss Beard! Will you collect the model of the sheep brain, or do you wish to join your two friends working on equations?” He sounded bored, even careless, but everyone knew there was no time to waste when he asked something.

“No, no! I’ve got it; I’m coming!” the girl yelped as she fumbled around on the shelf for the sheep brain model. Mr. Devius’s brain models were a little spongy, and we all suspected they weren’t really models, but real body parts that had been preserved somehow. She found it, and gingerly taking ahold of it, scampered back into the classroom, dropping the door shut behind her.

We were alone again in the silent laboratory. We both exhaled loudly. Grant drew an exaggerated hand across his brow.

“Whew! Thanks! I just froze. That was quick thinking.”

“Thanks.” You owe me one, buddy! I was thinking. Now that the danger had passed, Grant seemed a little more hesitant, standing in front of the door, but, strangely, I felt more bold. “Come on,” I said. “It’s now or never!” I grasped the door knob, and slowly, very slowly, in case of booby traps, pulled it open.

It was dark inside, and I couldn’t see anything. The light coming in through the high windows was now behind clouds, and dim, and it didn’t seem to reach six inches past the jamb of the opened office door. A mélange of soft smells rolled out along with the dead air of a shut-up, uncleaned room.

“Blah! What a smell!” Grant murmured. Normally I didn’t take too much offense at bad smells; that’s what country life will do for you, but I had to agree with Grant. It was unpleasant, but thankfully, not strong. “Well?” he said, “Are we going in?”

“Yes!” I whispered. “Let’s go!” And I carefully stepped over the threshold into the gloom, Grant right behind me.

It never occurred to wonder whether Mr. Devius had possibly left his office door unlocked on purpose.

Feelers pt.1

The heavy pull of my backpack was a reassuring weight across my shoulders and down to the small of my back as I pushed open the heavy wire-reinforced front doors of the school. The little stream that had been the few dozen chattering students on the sidewalk, their breaths making foggy puffs in the cold morning air, had flowed into the river of bedlam that was the main hallway. Even though I was caught up in the current like the rest of the flotsam, the weight on my back made me feel more substantial and not bumped around, but able to plow steadily through the crowd.

I had never really thought about much about why I didn’t mind lugging my bulging Jansport all around at school. Mom was always on my case about how I would hurt my back, and that she would threaten to go to the school and insist they give me a locker. But I did have a locker; I just didn’t like to use it. It was an open secret that the school staff snooped in random kid’s lockers. Everyone here knew that kids didn’t have that many rights at school, and when anyone complained to a teacher, she would just put one hand on her hip, raise the skin on her forehead in that exasperated smirk they all do, and say, “Oh? Do you think that our lives are so boring that we need to poke around in the students’ lockers to feel entertained?”

Plus, I just have a thing about privacy; I didn’t feel like I wanted anyone going through my stuff.

But that wasn’t the total reason I wouldn’t be caught without my trusty backpack. No, I just felt better knowing that I had everything I needed, right on my back. Especially now. Especially this period, going into Room 223, Science Class.

Science class with Mr. Devius was a grueling ordeal every eight-grader at Stonebridge Middle School had to plow through in order to graduate. It wasn’t just his appearance that put one off, though that was bad enough. He was ancient, and his heavy-lidded eyes seemed to look right through you with a coldness that was even more scary because it didn’t seem personal, just uncaring. He was always asking for a little piece of some assignment that was from weeks ago, and he would always demand it from someone who had finally given up bringing it to class, and then he’d seem to get a nasty pleasure in saying, “Miss Richards, if you are not going to be completing your homework, does that mean you intend on repeating this class?”

But not me. No, I dragged around everything I might possibly need to produce for Mr. Devius and his weird little assignments. All I wanted to do was to get through his class with a decent grade and as little public humiliation as possible. Maybe that’s why he seemed to be noticing me more. I would see him scan over the class, settle his baleful stare on me, pausing for a bit, and then frown and move on to some other hapless student.

In the hall, I stopped in front of Room 223. The door was opening and shutting as students wandered into the classroom. A stale odor wafted out, like rancid floor wax and musty insects. I shifted my pack over to one shoulder and pulled my tee-shirt down so it would lay smoothly against my back. I pulled my pony tail out of the way and pushed the light brown strands of my grown-out bangs back behind my ears, doing a quick breath check at the same time. And then there was Grant, the guy I’d been noticing since the first week of school. He had just come around the corner and was heading to science class too. I looked around and then down, hoping I wasn’t turning red and that I could say, “Hi, Grant,” in just that right tone of voice. And then, just as he would have been right beside me and maybe opened the classroom door for me, a squeaky little voice said, “Andie! Wait for me!” And the breathless little form of my next-best friend, Val, scooted up next to me and grabbed my arm.

“Let’s go in together,” she gasped, “I was so afraid I’d be late; we got out of gym class late, and then I had to go to my locker to get my homework, but I don’t know if I have all the papers!” I sighed as I watched Grant walking up the steps to the back row of the lecture hall. He hadn’t even noticed me. But Val was taking all my attention now.

“I’m so glad we sit next to each other.” She shuddered. “It’s hard enough to even be here! I just know Mr. Devius is going to call on me,” the girl said as she flipped through her science book hunting for papers.

As if in response to his name being spoken, Mr. Devius glided into the room. No one had even noticed the back room door that led to the lab and his office opening up. All of a sudden, it just seemed like he was there. He was very thin, and a wide black utility belt held up his olive green chinos. Today he was wearing his beige button-up shirt with the faded check design. I’d sort of been hoping he would try wearing that Hawaiian shirt again. Yes, we’d all been punished in his malicious way when the group of girls had giggled at his appearance, though what could you expect from cheerleaders? But then some of the guys had started snickering too.

I didn’t really blame them; he looked sort of like a topiary, a stick with a flapping bunch of flowers sprouting from the top, but I wasn’t tempted to laugh. I didn’t want to bring that malevolent cloud down upon me. His face turned a sort of puce color, which was kind of scary, seeing as how he was normally so pale. His dry lips pressed tightly together, but then the edges started to curl, showing a little tooth at the sides. The class gradually fell silent. If anyone had still been breathing, I think you could have heard it; it was that quiet. One poor girl was hiccupping. I didn’t dare turn around to see who it was.

“Sssso!” Mr. Devius had hissed. “The class seems to be feeling quite, hmm, lively today. Your enthusiasm is contagious. I feel enthused to conduct a spot quiz this morning on yesterday’s lecture, “Mathematical Solutions for Biologically Diverse Problems in Lower Life Forms!” We’d all flunked. And it hadn’t done any good to complain; all the staff either loved him or were afraid of him.

Today Mr. Devius prowled the aisles, casting about for signs of weakness.

“Mr. Johnson!” The teacher suddenly snapped. Most of the heads turned to the back of the class to look at Grant, who had stiffened. “Do you have the assignment ready to submit that I gave on March 2nd, regarding calculating the chemical make up of the secretions of the banana slug?” Grant flipped through his binder, fingers trembling a little. I hated seeing him put on the spot like that; I wanted him to produce the paper and hand it over, casually saying, “Here ya go!” I could tell the rest of the class were just glad that it was him and not them.

Grant was shuffling through his papers, a nervous twitch starting on his cheek. A few pages slipped from his fingers and slid along the aisle on a vent of air. Mr. Devius just continued to stand over him, smiling his little smile that never met his eyes. But then I paid attention to the thing that was nagging at my thoughts. I’ve always had a really good memory, and something didn’t ring right. We’d studied the banana slug in February. What did we study the first week of March?

I surreptitiously slid my hand down into my backpack on the tile floor next to my feet and pulled out my science binder. I looked at the assignment for March 2nd. “Compute the mass of the frass a Pacific Flathead Borer will produce in one week feeding on a young apple tree.” Without thinking of the consequences, I raised my hand and spoke out.

“Excuse me, Mr. Devius, but the assignment for March 2nd was to compute the mass of the frass a Pacific Flathead Borer will produce in one week feeding on a young apple tree and not to calculate the chemical make up of the secretions of the banana slug.” Val shot me a stricken look. This was it. I was dead.

The teacher turned in my direction and smiled, as if something like that was what he had been waiting for. “Miss Blackstone.” He said it like, “Blakk-stonnnne.”

“Miss Blackstone!” He turned back around to Grant. “And Mr. Johnson. One of you seems to not be prepared, and one of you seems to think he or she should, perhaps, be teaching this class.” He rubbed his hands together as if he were rubbing oil into them. “To avoid further disruption to the class, please remove yourselves to the laboratory where you will find an equation written on the whiteboard. Using materials from the supply cabinet, draw up a series of experiments that will either prove or disprove that mathematical statement.” He pointed at the door. “Due tomorrow!”

As Grant gathered his things, I lifted my backpack up and slung it across one shoulder. I wasn’t sure if I was happy that I got to be alone with Grant for the first time, or if I was nervous about a task that might be impossible, sure to be difficult, and could send my grade plummeting. I slunk through the door to the lab, Grant following me, and heard the heavy door shut behind us.

“So, you’re Andie, right?” Grant asked, as he dropped his books on to the nearest lab table.

“Yes,” I mumbled, letting my eyes glance across his face as I looked around.

“Well, I’m Grant. And I don’t know whether to thank you for stepping in or to be sorry you got us kicked out of class.” He paused. “But to tell you the truth, I’m just as glad to be out of there!” He smiled, and my heart lurched a little. He was so cute, with his front tooth that was a little crooked and his brown eyes that crinkled when he smiled.

“Me too!” I chirped, and then hated how little-girl I sounded. “Guess we’d better see what Ol’ Devius has got for us.”

The lights in the deserted laboratory were still off, and the only illumination came from the windows high up on the wall. We dodged around the big black lab tables and drab gray metal wastebaskets on our way up to the front of the room. The place was old, and a long slate chalkboard was mounted along one wall, its surface shiny with age. A set of newer big whiteboards had been screwed to the same wall, partially covering the black slate on one end. Black mathematical equations covered the top third of the board, written in our science professor’s cramped and compulsively neat handwriting. I groaned.

“This is going to take hours to do!” I exclaimed. But Grant wasn’t beside me anymore. He was looking around, opening cupboards and drawers, flipping through a stack of notebooks.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Do you realize that kids don’t normally get to be alone in here?” He said. “When we have lab class, no one dares to look at or do anything that isn’t on the assignment. I’ve always been curious about some of the stuff around here!” I followed over to where he was rummaging around.

“Shh! I said nervously. He might hear you banging the drawer shut!” Grant had gone on to another section of the room, a bank of cupboard doors, their varnished surfaces yellowishly reflecting the morning sun that had just moved into the window view. He tried one, and it was locked. We were both curious now. He reached a hand to the next door pull, grasped the pewter handle and tugged at it. With a soft pop it released the door, and Grant slowly pulled it open. Inside were several sliding trays with bundles of brown, oily cloths heaped here and there. I took the corner of one of the cloths and lifted it. A tuft of gray moth-eaten fur came into view, and before I could quite register what sort of creature had been, I dropped the drape as if I’d accidentally touched our electric fence at home.

“Ick! Who knows what other horrid things he’s got in here!” Grant shuddered. “Are you ok?” I nodded. I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t that I was grossed out, that it had just shocked me, but I couldn’t think of a way to say it, or if he was even interested.

The next cupboard door was also unlocked. Its shelves were loaded with glass jars filled with fluid, their stringy and disturbing contents floating timelessly in the greenish liquid.

“Now that is one ugly sucker!” Grant murmured, staring at a sunken-eyed toothy specimen that looked like it had been hauled up from the bottom of the sea. It seemed as if I could smell the formaldehyde in the pickling jars and felt a twinge of nausea.

“Ok, I’m done with these,” I said, drawing back.

“The rest of the doors are locked anyway,” Grant said, and stepped over to where I was standing in the middle of the room. We both stared at the far end of the room.

“Do you see what I see?” He asked.

I did, but hadn’t been sure I’d wanted to be the one to point it out to him. By now, I had a feeling Grant wouldn’t be able to leave well-enough alone.

“Yes,” I said. The door to Mr. Devius’s personal office had not clicked shut when it had closed, and even though it was locked, I knew the door would open.

coming soon! ...

It won't be long now, maybe by Saturday that I'll have my first piece of my story up.