The Devil Next Door

They all just stood there for a few minutes, approving of what they had done. Donnel was hanging from the wall, blood running down his face and out of his left eye. They listened to it drip to the floor for a time, then they went to take care of the kid…

13

Macy Merchant walked home from school that day in something of a daze. She did not understand what had happened. She only knew that it left her feeling very scared. Very disturbed. She thought it over and kept thinking it over and all she came up with was a blank. An absolute blank.

It just did not make sense.

Sure, she couldn’t stand Chelsea Paris or Shannon Kittery or any of the rest of their uppity, elitist pack. But she’d never mouthed off to them before. She’d never dared. And she certainly had never attacked one of them. Macy couldn’t remember ever being in a fight. Chelsea and Shannon had been mean to her long as she could remember, but even when they shoved her in the halls in junior high or knocked her books out of her hands, she’d never fought back.

You did more than fight back, Macy, a stern voice in her head informed her. You attacked. You attacked Chelsea. You stabbed her in the cheek with a frigging pencil.

Oh, God. Oh, dear God.

Thing was, she could remember doing it just fine.

She could remember the absolute hatred and loathing she’d suddenly felt for Chelsea. It had been like a poison working its way through her, until…until she had just lost control. All of it boiled in her and she’d started calling Chelsea names.

Then she’d grabbed her.

Pounded her head off the desk.

Then stabbed her with the pencil.

And the blood…God, the smell of it. It had made her hungry. It had made her mouth water. And worse, far, far worse, it had made her horny.

Just the memory of that sickened her.

Mr. Benz had dragged her down to the office and Chelsea was taken to the school nurse. She remembered Mr. Shore, the principal, reading her the riot act, asking her again and again why she, a straight A honor roll student with a spotless record, had done something so vicious and cruel. Chelsea was being taken to the hospital. She would need stitches. And as Shore went on and on, Macy just sat there, that black poison still seething in her guts. She kept smiling even though Shore told her to wipe that goddamn smirk off her face. But she hadn’t been able to. It was like someone was smiling for her, thinking awful things and doing worse things, and she had only been along for the ride.

While Shore raged, she had stared at his belly. It was so full and round beneath his starched white shirt. What a mess it would be, she thought, if someone opened it with a knife.

Then…whatever had taken hold of her, just faded.

Macy started crying.

And not your average boo-hoo crocodile tears, but the real thing. Whatever that awful compulsion had been, when it released her, it was like she had been torn open inside, cut right to the bone, and then the blood had flowed and kept flowing. This blood was clear and ran from her eyes, but in her mind it was just as red and just as hot as blood as it spilled down her cheeks. Even Shore had melted when he saw it happen.

Macy…sweet, gentle, kind…was back and maybe he saw this.

That other thing was gone. Shore had tried to console her, tried a great many things, in fact, short of telling her it was okay, it was nothing to get upset about. But, truth be told, Macy was in such a state of tearful despondency by then, it had even crossed his mind to say that. Then the school secretary, Mrs. Bleer, had come in and did what many men seemed so incompetent at and incapable of: she soothed Macy. She talked her down, hugged her, let her know that while, yes, it was bad attacking another student, that they would work it out.

Had it been someone other than Macy Merchant, the treatment would not have been so sympathetic or understanding. But Mrs. Bleer knew Macy just as Mr. Shore did and Macy was a good kid. Smart, well-adjusted, dutiful…she was not some wildcat that routinely assaulted other girls.

Both of them kept asking her the same thing again and again: Why? Why had she gone after Chelsea like that? What had Chelsea said? What had she done? Because neither of them were ignorant of Chelsea Paris and the sort of girl she was. And the way they were seeing it was that Chelsea must have really, really done something bad this time around to get a reaction like that out of Macy Merchant, of all people.

Yes, they wanted to know why.

And as Macy walked down Colidge Street, making for 7 ^th Avenue and Rush Street, she wanted to know why, too.

She saw Kathleen Soames standing on her porch. She waved.

She kept walking, aware only of the thoughts that filled her head and this was enough. Clutching her books to her chest, her head slumped down, she stared at the sidewalk. The cracks in it. The anthills blossoming every few feet.