The Devil Next Door

“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…

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