Slaughterhouse High

"You see okay?" asked Dex. He had reached the cache of saxophones in back, set midway in the tall gray doors angled polygonally about the outer edge of the room.

He fumbled out his key.

"Yes, if I don't look at the lightbulb."

Tweed threaded through a tangled forest of stands, shoving the black nuisances aside. She touched the leather thong of her key, unpursed it, and felt for the right orientation.

The trombone closet unlocked.

Musty odor inside always, like the inside of a ventriloquist's dummy's mouth. There stood her trombone case.

Tweed hesitated, an irrational fear gripping her that someone was hiding a few feet inside the closet. She and Dex had once knocked on its back wall. Knowing that the slasher's secret byways wrapped around the band room, they had heard then the hollow reverb and wondered if this very panel had ever afforded him entry for the kill.

Eight years past, a couple had been butchered by Mr. Dunsmore right where the trombone players sat. Just yesterday, Tweed had emptied her spit valve upon a painted-over blood patch.

But fear was absurd.

It wasn't yet time for the kill, nor was it likely that she and Dex had been assigned to sit in the band room. Still, this might be the place again. Preparations may have been underway before they had interrupted them.

Something touched the back of her hand. A sound strained in her throat.

"Hey, it's okay, it's just me." Dex squeezed her hand.

"Don't scare me like that," she said.

"Sorry," he said. "Here." He lay down his alto sax case and snapped it open, flan flan, right-angling the lid. "I'll put the envelope in my case. Get your axe and let's go. Mr. Jones will start worrying about us."

Swooping her instrument out of the closet, Tweed walked cautiously with Dex to the band room door, breathing easier when it had swung-to behind them.

Rather than circle back past the front table to get to the gym, they continued counterclockwise along the first floor corridor.

On the left, science labs gloomed by, site of the hillside creep and the polar creep in geology, memorable goads-to-learning, and the place as well where chem, bio, and physics had been crammed into their skulls.

On the right, thick glass doors to the barn and the slaughterhouse areas made a valiant effort to hold in the stench. Not so long ago, that area of the school had terrified Tweed, despite the gradual progression from primary school petting zoo, to junior high's dissection of frogs and pig embryos, to high school's more demanding course of instruction in slaughter, rendering, meat-packing, tanning, butchery, and taxidermy. But now these skills were old hat. She felt as if part of her life was over. She would miss the down-to-earth Lily Foddereau, her loamy wisdom, her steady hand, her lethal axe-blade.

They turned left at the water fountain.

Far ahead, by the gym door nearest the front of the school, a clump of seniors congregated, the boys high-fiving and lobe-tugging as though they were wearing jeans and jerseys and topsiders, not tuxes and ruffed shirts.

No reason not to go in. They were waiting, it seemed, for the lights and the music to draw them out of the hallway.

That's us, she thought.

"My God, Tweed, look at it!" said Dex as they reached the entrance to the gym.

She paused beside him, her eyes at once drawn to the Ice Ghoul. Even with the lights not yet low, he seemed suddenly larger and more menacing. Fog swirled about him from pedestal vents, a low white roll of guile and menace.

"Jenna told me over dinner that they'd filled in detail." The vast gymnasium seemed to swallow her voice.

"Yeah I know. You mentioned it," Dex said. "Some brushwielder, some real sicko, understands what high school is all about. That face really captures the feeling."

It made her shiver. She wondered, once they survived the stalking, whether it would seem less horrific. "Why's it… oh look, Dex, the roof must be leaking."

"Too bad," he said. "But when the lights change, it'll look like just another effect."

A voice called to them from the bandstand, off to the right. Festus Targer at his drumset softened a cymbal and twirled a brush at them. The bass drum thumped.

Farther along the same top riser, Butch and Zinc were de-belling low furious arpeggios from their down-directed trumpets. They were seniors, a couple in the throes of breaking up on account of being college-bound in different directions, Butch to the east coast, Zinc to the west.

Zinc had the blush-pink look of a tender, unflogged for days, and it was clear, had been clear since last week's lottery, that Butch felt guilty piggybacking his salvation on his lover's monthly reprieve from beatings and the luck of the draw. Some students resented those who escaped the slasher's knife that way, but Butch was much harsher on himself than were any of Tweed's friends.

Tweed took her seat on the middle riser. Dex sat below and to the left, next to Wyche Fowler, ego insufferable, but man could he blow Dex out of the water on the sax.