“This sound-proofing better be as good as you said it was,” I whispered.
Travis and I had returned to Charlie’s house the night after we toured it for the first time. Well, more like the morning after. It was about 3 AM.
“I still don’t get why we need to test the sound-proofing at this ungodly…ha…hooooouuur,” Travis yawned.
“If you’d like to explain to your parents–who just grounded you for playing in a strange man’s band without telling them–why you’d rather rehearse in that strange man’s house without his permission while the sun is still up, you be my guest,” I replied, trying to keep myself from dozing off and face planting into the soundboard, “And we can’t expect the jocks to pick a fight over who will get to pay for Jeff’s ice cream every day this week.”
“Have you seen Jeff? I’m sure the jocks will fight over plenty of other junk foods that he’ll be happy to eat.”
Even sleep-deprived, Travis still somehow managed to be Mr. Literal and Mr. Sass at the same time.
“You were the one who said ‘let’s do it,’ when I asked if you were with me this morning,” I began to say.
“You mean yesterday morning,” Travis cut me off, “And I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Yes, you are,” I replied as I fiddled with the drum machine software, “So quit complaining. It’s not like we’ll be doing this every night. Just the next few nights to get used to this drum machine before the battle of the bands audition.”
“Why does it have to be every night before the audition? We both know the material. And once you get this drum machine up and running, it will surely know the material as well.”
“First of all, I don’t know how long it will take me to get this drum machine up and running. Second of all, once I do it’s not just a matter of hitting a pedal and letting it play. This is a new tool I’m not familiar with. I’m not going to risk setting it up once and assuming it will play fine during the audition.”
“Good thing we’re not taking any unnecessary risks,” Travis muttered. I pretended not to hear him. “Well since I’m here, you messed up the drum fill Charlie does before the bridge. It’s supposed to go da-ga-digga da-ga-digga DUM, da-ga-digga DUM, da-ga-digga DUM DUM! Not da-ga-digga da-ga-digga DUM, da-ga-digga DUM DUM, da-ga-digga DUM! And the snare you’re using sounds terrible.”
Travis wasn’t only alluding to the obvious risks of meeting here at 3 in the morning: getting caught by our parents, getting caught by the police, getting caught by Charlie himself, etc. We were probably taking an even greater risk: being exactly where Charlie wanted us to be. After our little problem-solving session on the walk back to school, we realized Charlie may have been influencing our actions the entire time we had known him. But if he was still trying to influence us, vanishing into thin air and abandoning not only us but his job was a weird way to do it.
Speaking of his job, we were beginning to question whether Charlie ever officially worked at Felmore Middle School at all. We questioned how a middle school janitor could afford so many top-of-the-line instruments when we first met him, and his home gym, recording studio, and workshop we recently discovered only strained his credibility even further.
Although our deal required this, the fact that he went an entire month without anyone in school seeing him made us wonder if he was even cleaning it. Well, almost no one at school saw him, except Purple Hair. Which brought us to another issue: Jeff overhearing Purple Hair’s conversation with Principal Porter. That conversation alone, or at least Jeff’s version of it, didn’t convince us of anything at the time, but after we had overheard Porter’s conversation about the teachers union and a “metalhead recruiter,” we started to question our previous conclusions. It was time to do some more research.
–
We visited the library during study hall the next day at school to review Encyclopaedia Daemonica again. Although I knew lack of sleep had a deleterious effect on memory, I didn’t expect it to be so bad that we’d forget how to find the book we had looked up just days before. After a few minutes of unsuccessfully searching for it, we conceded defeat and asked Mrs. Kelsey for help.
“Sorry young men, I’m afraid it’s checked out,” she said in a friendly tone with an apologetic smile.
“When is it due back?” I asked.
“There’s a waiting list for it.”
“How many people are on the waiting list?”
“Many, many people, Eric,” her tone became sterner and her expression more solemn, “I’m afraid it’s going to be checked out for a while. If I were you two, I would just forget about that book. Besides, like I told you the other day, it’s all a bunch of misinformation written by a conspiracy theorist quack. Why would a couple of nice boys like you want to waste your time on something awful like that?”
Travis, not picking up on the subtext of Mrs. Kelsey’s comments, began to say “‘Many’ is not a number, Mrs. Kelsey. Can’t you just tell us how many people are oof!”
I cut him off by elbowing him in the ribs, again forgetting that both his rib cage and my elbow were still sore from Jeff and his friends beating us up.
“We understand. Thanks, Mrs. Kelsey,” I interrupted.
Her expression and tone of voice returned to its friendly demeanor, “Sorry I couldn’t be of more assistance. Is there anything else I can help you boys find today?”
“No, that’s all for today. See you later!”
As we left the library I whispered to Travis “follow me,” leading him to the handicapped restroom. This time I was sure to lock the one door to the hallway and check the entire room, including the stall, before Travis or I said anything. After I had checked, re-checked, and double re-checked the entire restroom to make sure we were the only ones there I said “I have some good news. We won’t be going back to Charlie’s house tonight to rehearse with the drum machine.”
“Great!” he replied, “Why did you need to take me all the way to the handicapped bathroom to tell me that?”
“Do you remember what Porter was saying when we overheard her talking to someone in her office yesterday?”
“Yeah, she called your mom a scab, whatever that is. Didn’t sound like it was supposed to be a compliment.”
I sighed, “No, not that. Remember what she said about a book that most other school districts had banned except for this one? Whoever she was talking to blamed Porter’s ‘scab problem,’ whatever that is, on that book. Porter didn’t seem to entirely agree, but clearly it must have made an impression. Tell me, what’s a book we read lately by ‘some Italian guy,’ as she put it?”
“You’re either talking about The Encyclopedia of Dermatology or Encyclopaedia Dae-oh. Giuseppe Andolini, right. No wonder it’s going to be ‘checked out’ for a while.”
“Right, and that’s something our school was supposed to have banned earlier, but never got around to doing it. Think of everything else the guy Porter was talking to told her to ban that she already banned. What are this guy, Porter, and the teachers union trying to hide?”
“You mean other than the answers to next week’s exams?”
I sighed again, “Yes, other than-oh crap, you’re right. I haven’t even begun to study for those. But other than that, what could they be hiding in this school?”
“I don’t think they’re hiding Encyclopaedia Daemonica, or any other forbidden material, Eric. If that book is really as big of a threat to them as you think it is, they probably burned or shredded it so there’d be no chance of it getting into the wrong hands.”
“That may be, but that’s not going to stop us from looking. Because tonight instead of rehearsing with the drum machine,” I took Charlie’s keychain from my pocket and jingled it, “we’re going to be here, looking for anything Porter and her union don’t want us to find.”
–
Travis and I took a minute to catch our breaths upon arriving at school. It was the longest ride we had done on our bikes in a while, and neither of us were in particularly good shape. Once we were ready I started testing Charlie’s keys on one of the side doors of the building; this way there were only woods behind us instead of potential witnesses. Unless some scary monster living in the woods was watching us, which wouldn’t have surprised me at that point. Heck, it was more likely than us getting caught on security camera footage, since Felmore Middle School didn’t have any.
“I need labels for these things,” I said as I went through every single key on Charlie’s keychain, trying to find one that worked, “How did Charlie remember the right lock for each of these keys?”
“Well, if he’s really a demon he’s probably got a pretty good memory,” Travis answered.
After I tried nearly every key, one of them turned in the lock. I gently pushed the door open and peeked my head inside. This side door opened to a hallway that led to the gym and the locker rooms, but I only knew that because I knew what the school looked like in the daytime. The only light in the hallway came from the exit signs. Travis and I turned on our head lamps and went inside, gently closing the door and locking it behind us.
“That confirms one thing: Charlie must have been employed as a janitor here at some point for him to have keys to the school,” I said, “And unless these keys are copies, he still is. Why didn’t Porter fire him? She seemed to think he was a pretty big threat judging by that conversation she was having before she met us. If nothing else, he’s been absent for work the past three days. That alone is enough reason to fire someone.”
“Maybe Charlie and Porter aren’t as opposed to each other as you might think,” Travis said, “They both have that same orb with the purple mist. They both work, or worked, for Felmore Middle School. How do we know they’re not both part of the union? How do we know we’re not doing exactly what Charlie wants us to do again? We got into here the same way we got into his house.”
“Maybe, but it’s a teachers union, and Charlie was no teacher. Well, he was for us, but that wasn’t his job.”
“Okay, but Porter said something about this person she was talking to having ‘control over other industries.’ How do we know Charlie’s not part of some janitor’s union that’s connected to the same guy?”
“Yeah, but Porter only mentioned that to express doubt about that control. She also said we got beaten up for hanging out with a ‘metalhead recruiter,’ and did not sound happy about his presence at her school. Who else could the term ‘metalhead recruiter’ be describing? Come on, we both would have known that was Charlie even before we realized he recruited us to his band.”
Travis shrugged, “Okay, where do you think we should start to look first?”
I hadn’t even considered that question. I was still surprised Charlie’s keys even worked.
After thinking for a minute, I said “Let’s start looking in the places we didn’t have access to the last time we looked for Charlie: the band room and the janitor’s closets.”
Although Charlie had a key for all of those locations, we couldn’t find anything no matter how many nooks and crannies we checked.
“Where should we try searching now?” Travis asked, “It’s a big school, we don’t have time to search all of it. Some of the janitors who still work here as well as clubs and sports teams will be here as early as 6.”
“Well if we can’t find Charlie himself, let’s take a look at what Porter is hiding. There could be something that will lead to Charlie.”
We started to make our way to Porter’s office, but stopped dead in our tracks when we saw the door to the staff lounge, which led to her office, was cracked open with noise coming from inside. We both turned our headlamps off, silently approached the door with one of us on either side, and listened. All we could make out was some faint rustling and some drawers being opened and shut. This person must have been in one of the rooms off the staff lounge. And I had a feeling I knew which one. One look at Travis and I knew he had the same hunch. Despite every fiber of my being screaming that this was a bad idea, I slowly opened the door, thankful it didn’t creak, and Travis and I slipped in.
We slowly groped through the dark, trying to use our memory of the staff lounge and its accompanying hallway from the other day to guide us. As we followed the noise, it became clearer that it could only be coming from one room. Our hunch was correct: it was coming from Porter’s office.
The door to her office was closed, with the window in the door covered, but we could see a light sporadically shining on the window and the cracks of the door from the inside. Probably a flashlight. I realized that as long as this person was going through Porter’s office with the door shut, there was no way we’d be able to find out who it was or what they were doing. Even searching other parts of the school while this person was in the building ran the risk of them catching us.
Using the light coming through the cracks in the door, I silently signaled to Travis to leave. But as he turned around he knocked over a chair next to Vice Principal Schultz’s office door.
THUMP!
The noise from Porter’s office ceased. The light turned off.
“Run!” I screamed.
So we did. We could hear whoever was in Porter’s office chasing us. They didn’t sound particularly fast or in shape, judging by their wheezing and the heavy thud sound of their footsteps. But after the bike ride we took to get to school, our injuries from Jeff, and our lack of familiarity with the staff lounge area, we weren’t faring much better. Using the glow of the emergency exit sign, we booked it for the door to the main hallway, with Travis in the lead and me right behind him. Unfortunately, the emergency exit sign didn’t illuminate a trash can on the floor, causing Travis to trip over it, and me to trip over Travis.
We heard the click of a gun cocking.
“Hold it right there,” a woman’s voice said. She was trying to sound threatening, which she was, but I could detect a flutter of nervousness in her voice. “Now get into a kneeling position slowly facing me with your hands where I can see ‘em.”
We did as we were told. The owner of the voice fumbled around for a few seconds, probably searching for her flashlight, until she realized she had left it in Porter’s office.
“Stay where you are,” she said. I could see her portly outline groping the walls for a light switch. When her hand reached one, I prayed she wouldn’t shoot in a panic upon temporarily blinding herself by turning on the lights.
Flick
After a few seconds, our eyes adjusted to the light and we all looked at each other.
“Purple Hair?!” Travis and I exclaimed, too astonished to remember that calling her that when she had a gun pointed at us was not the wisest idea.
“Eric?! Travis?!” she blurted out in equal surprise.
We stared at each other in silence for a few seconds without moving before she looked at her gun, realized she was still pointing it at us, and lowered it, flicking on the safety.
“Shoot, sorry guys. I must have scared the snot out of you just now,” she said, planting one hand on her face as the other hand holstered her gun. We stared at each other in silence for a couple more seconds. “You guys drink coffee?”