Slaughterhouse High

Trilby would have eased the door open, but Brest, always more violent and impetuous, flung it back and held her splayed fingers out to catch the rebound as it banged off the wall.

Pill sat cowering in the corner.

No blood.

In her arms, held so tight as to deform its plush body, Gigi the goat tried to comfort her.

Her face held shock. Her eyes took their time focusing. She looked smaller, every limb tight, as if the muscles tensed around her bones drew all her flesh inward.

"Come on out, Pill," Brest said.

But Trilby tore past her, went into the coat closet, crouched to her child and peeled her from the flimsy wood walls and into her arms. Her skin felt ice cold.

"Mommy?" A voice barely audible. "Mommy?"

"Yes, Pill. It's Mommy. Mommy's here. You're safe now." Nothing mattered but holding and soothing her little girl.

Brest's attempts to break them free of Bix and trio them up with Delia Gaskin, Bix's openly expressed wish for extramarital affairs, Trilby's own subservience to Bix and Brest, not just under the riding crop but in everyday life-none of that mattered now.

The one thing of importance in the world was hugging Pill. Bringing her back. Healing her in the days ahead, once this nightmare was over.

"He killed them, Mommy."

"I know he did, Pill. But he's gone now and Mommy is here and you're safe. Safe as can be."

"The man in the janitor suit. I saw his hand. It had a knife in it. The girl was just asking. That's what she said. I'm just asking. But he killed her." Her voice, weak as tea, lanced Trilby's ear with hurt.

She rocked her little girl there on the floor of the coat closet.

Brest's shadow fell on them.

The child suddenly let go of her goat and groped at her mother, her head nestling deep into Trilby's neck, her hands as clingy as claws high up where the shoulderblades nearly met over her mother's spine.

"He killed them both, Mommy."

"I know he did, Pill," she soothed. "I know."

16. In the Midst of Mayhem, Love

Bray and Winnie had entered the gym with the bodies of the dead trumpeters, stunned at the savagery of the kill.

Bray nodded as his date-that's how he had begun thinking about Winnie-angrily abandoned her optimism. They followed the seniors, attached to the crowd but not integral to it, off far enough that no one could hear their conversation.

She understood now, she said, that their killer friend wasn't the champion she had believed him to be.

Disillusionment lay bitter upon her face.

Then they had seen the slain girls and "Oh, Jesus," Winnie had said, nearly in synch with his unspoken thoughts.

The sheriff had fallen.

The bandleader.

And Bray understood that he and Winnie, there under false colors and archly eyed by the amazing Miss Brindisi, were quite possibly in the deepest of shit one could be in.

Through the principal's speech, through the huddle of faculty and the uneasy buzz of students, Bray held Winnie. She seemed airless, without focus. A forlorn sylph. Even in her distraught state, he thought, she was gorgeous.

He would protect her.

He felt brave. He didn't know why such a feeling had come to him, but it had.

While Winnie, gung-ho for glory at the start, had deflated, Bray had somehow gained in strength. Poor lamb. They would survive this night somehow. Then they'd go off and start a life together.

Her head suddenly twisted up, her eyes newly flaring. "Where's that packet from Fronemeyer's house?"

"In the car. Why?"

She slumped back down. "Great."

"Except for this." He reached into his tuxedo jacket and pulled out the thick sheaf of twice-folded paper. "In case we wanted to go exploring, I thought-"

"The map!"

He unfolded it like a flower coming into bloom. Four pages, stapled, the top one with a three-digit combination Bray guessed allowed the designated slasher, and him only, access to the school's secret passageways.

"We could-"

It occurred to him too. "Of course." Their means of escape. Why hadn't he thought of it?

"-find him," she said, "and reason with him."

"It's our way out." Then Winnie's words registered. "Hey, wait a minute. I'm not gonna let you get near our madman. He's wigged out. He'll kill us both."

"No, listen." Winnie paused.

Bray could tell she had been ready to go at him again. To attack his cowardice. But now her mind slipped into gear, more furious in its cogitations than he'd ever seen it.

Jonquil Brindisi stood at the mike. Two men were near the Ice Ghoul, hacking at the rope that held the dead sheriff aloft.

Winnie's hands danced in colored light as she pieced things together. "We find him," she said. "We sneak up on him, overcome him, maybe knock him out. Then we reason with him, we talk to him, for as long as it takes. We get in touch with his problem, soothe him, convince him he's already done enough to solve it. Then we get him to confess, give himself up, make a speech to the press, go national."

"Oh sure, Winnie. And he's just gonna go along-"

"Yes. He will."

Bray stopped speaking. Her certainty never ceased to amaze him.