CHAPTER 10: Now…

Natalie watched as Aaron bent the metal doorframe around Ms. O’Shea’s classroom door, sealing in the three strange, faceless kids that had just attacked them. It had been his idea to block them inside a room until something else could be done. It was that or kill them after all, and despite Nat’s enraged efforts, they had found themselves unwilling to cross that bridge. 

She should have been impressed watching him so easily warp the frame. He was surprisingly gentle with it as he pulled it inwards, enough to block the door from opening, but not enough to snap the metal entirely. But instead, she felt absent of herself. She had lost control in front of all of them, and her attack on the kids was monstrous. She tore into a girl’s throat and broke her bones. She drank the girl’s blood—her blood!—right in front of her classmates and friends. She expected that was not the kind of moment they were just going to forget about. 

She wanted to shrink to the back of them all, but she knew they would be suspicious of that. Would she attack them next, that’s what they would think. So she merely stayed silent as Gene pulled on Ms. O’Shea’s door to see that it was properly blocked. They were all trapped on the second floor together with nowhere to go. They couldn’t get away from Nat even if they wanted to (and she knew they had to want to), and more importantly, she couldn’t get away from them. How many more questions about death and caskets were they going to have for her?

Suzanne was missing. Vinny, her best friend, was probably dead or something. And all she felt was shame and embarrassment for what she had done. I hate myself, she thought. She had been so caught up explaining herself when Becky was the one who thought of Vinny. Why couldn’t Nat bring herself to mourn her friend and sister? Why was the only thing she could focus on was the blood staining her hands and clothes? Was she that selfish? Was that another example of her beastly new nature?

She knew what she needed to do. She had to volunteer to leave. She had to get away from them, get away from her shame. She could jump out a window or something, she figured, without letting in those things from the cafeteria. Her classmates wouldn’t miss her. They would—

“What do we do with these?” Smith said, picking up Vinny’s clothes. 

“We could put them in a locker. Is his locker on this floor?”

“I don’t know, Gene. Smith?”

“It might be? I’m not sure.”

There it was again. While she was thinking of herself, the others were thinking about Vinny. She knew where his locker was, of course, but she couldn’t bring herself to answer them. 

“How is this our concern right now? Just leave them there and check the other bathroom.”

Okay, so Aaron wasn’t thinking of Vinny, but that was hardly surprising given their animosity. 

Smith shrugged and set the clothes back down in a neat pile. He was about to put Vinny’s shoes on top of therm, but he seemed to doubt the idea. He scooped the clothes back up, put the shoes down first, then set the clothes on top of them. He looked to everyone else, as if he was expecting them to pass judgment on how he put the attire together. Becky buried her face in Aaron’s shoulder, and Aaron begrudgingly nodded to Smith. Gene shrugged his shoulders. As she felt Smith about to look to her, Nat turned her head away, not wanting to make eye contact.

“Sorry, Nat,” Smith said in a small voice. She has no idea what he has to apologize for. He didn’t just freak out and brutalize a girl…

Before she could lose herself further in her guilt, a shout came from down the hallway; it seemed to emanate from Mr. Farquar’s class. It didn’t seem menacing; it gave Nat the feeling of shock more than anything. 

Aaron pulled Becky behind her and lowered his head and shoulders as if in preparation for something.

“I checked that area!” Gene exclaimed under his breath. “There was no one there.”

“Yeah?” Aaron doubted him. “Not well enough”. 

The five of them bunched together, though Nat had no idea what to expect at that point. The day had been anything but predictable. She felt an anger welling up inside her; the skin on her fingers started tighten the way it always did when her hands became more clawlike. She closed her eyes and tried to push it away; she did not want to lose control around her friends again. Her fingers relaxed, if reluctantly.

Mr. Farquar’s door shoved open out into the hallways. A naked Vinny, grasping downward to his cover his more delicate areas rushed out.

“Holy shit,” he cried upon seeing them, “you’re still here! Thank god.”

“Vinny?” Nat exclaimed, in shock at seeing him. “What… how?”

“Is that really him?” Smith asked.

“What happened to you?” Gene, seemingly less in doubt, followed up.

“I don’t know!” Vinny said. He looked like he was about to shrug, but kept his hands covering himself up all the way instead. “The girl came at me, and I just… fainted or something. I don’t know,” he reiterated. “When I came to, I was in the science lab. When did I get in there?”

“No idea, man,” Gene answered for all of them.

“You just disappeared when the girl stabbed you, and now… here you are.” Nat was trying to help him figure out what the hell was going on.

“Stabbed…?” Vinny looked down at his midsection. “She didn’t stab me, though. She was about to! But then…” He closed his eyes hard, causing the space between his eyebrows to wrinkle up. “Something like… shocked me instead. Like I hit my head?”

“Because you passed out? And fell down?” She tried to give him more info again.

“No,” he looked back at Mr. Farquar’s room. “That happened before I passed out. I remember feeling it.”

Nat glanced to the others, and they appeared as confused as she was. She wondered briefly if the masked kids would have any answer, but it seemed they lacked the ability to tell them anyway. 

“Why did you get out of your clothes?” Smith asked.

“I didn’t try to!”

Smith shook his head. “No, I guess… How did you get out of your clothes?”

“Yeah! Why am I naked all of the sudden?”

Nat pointed off towards the lockers where Smith piled the clothes. “Your clothes are over here, Vinny.”

“Oh thank god! My clothes!” Vinny rushed forward toward the pile, looked down at it, then back towards his classmates. He turned his front away from them and bent his knees to reach down and grab his underwear first.

“Hey!” Gene called. “What if this is your power? What if you are a Gap, too?”

“My superpower is being naked?”

Aaron shook his head. “Your superpower is definitely not being naked.”

“I was covering up! You couldn’t see my… anything!”

“I was talking about the rest of your body.”

Vinny pulled his underwear up, then went for his khakis. He bounced his head side to side. “Oh, okay, that’s more fair.”

“No, I mean, what if you can, like, vanish away from things like that? Like you vanished before the chick could stab you, and you reappeared in Mr. Farquar’s room.” Gene motioned as he spoke, moving a hand from right next to him over towards the science lab room. “Like, you talked about that room earlier, so maybe it was set in your brain, you know?”

“Like teleporting?” Becky suggested.

“Yes!”

“You think I teleported in there?”

“That or you turned invisible,” Nat mused, barely aloud.

Vinny pulled on his polo shirt, finally fully clothed again. “I don’t think I was invisible.”

“Then you must have teleported,” Gene smiled, as if he had pieced something together.

“Or it’s not really Vinny.” Smith still seemed hesitant to believe this, despite the fact that he just watched Nat turn into vampire and could light his own hand on fire.

“If you don’t believe it’s me, ask me something only I would know.”

“What’s your middle name?”

“Samuel.”

Smith turned towards Nat and the others. He made a confused noise. “It dawns on me that I don’t actually—“

“It’s Samuel,” Nat reassured him.

“Your middle name is Sam, and you go by Vinny?”

“Vincent was my grandfather’s name, Aaron. What’s your middle name, so I can insult you, too?”

“I’m not telling you.”

“Oh my god, this is so mature,” Becky sighed, elbowing Aaron in the chest. “Who cares? We’re all okay is what matters, right? Vinny teleported. Nat saved us from those monsters without faces. Those… things are locked off the floor. Who cares about middle names?”

“Well, he goes by Vinny. Who would choose to…”

Becky shot her boyfriend a look that sent chills down even Nat’s spine. Aaron seemed to get the message, as he shrugged apologetically.

“You should try practicing that stuff, man!” Gene announced to Vinny. His posture was excited, like he couldn’t wait to see what his friend could actually do.

Vinny looked down. “Man, I just got dressed, but…”

A sharp clang of metal sliced through the moment. There had been a steady clattering at the gate Becky had locked, but that sound was different in its suddenness and volume. Everyone’s breath caught as they turned toward the noise. Another loud strike rang out, and Nat jumped suddenly at that one. A third was then followed by something more ominous: a cacophony of banging and rattling metal, the sound echoing through the hallway. It was clearly the sound of something hitting the floor.

“What was that?” Becky asked. Nat imagined she knew what it was—she figured they all knew—but Becky was trying not to let herself admit it.  

Several duller metallic clangs came, followed by a screeching and scratching sound that cut into Nat’s core as it grew in intensity, meaning whatever was causing it was getting closer.

The six of them were motionless. Nat knew they had to do something—they had to hide or run or jump out a window after all or something—but it seemed as though none of them could force their legs to work. At the far end of the hallway, Devil Face stepped out from around the corner. 

He was closer this time, the length of the hallway could not have been more than fifty feet. She could see he was, in fact, topless, and the fiery hue of his body was actually his skin. He dragged his axe menacingly behind him, and Nat noticed the scar it was tearing into the floor of the hallway.

“Guys…,” Smith started. He must have been trying to get someone to come up with an idea he clearly didn’t have.

“No,” Aaron stated flatly. “No, you know what? I’m not running away from this guy again. You know what?” He turned toward Devil Face. “Fuck that this guy, actually!” Aaron basically spit out the first word of that sentence. “Who even are you?”

Devil Face responded by lifting his axe off the ground and over his head and continuing his march towards them. 

“Oh, fuck you and fuck this,” Aaron growled, pushing the rest of them back with his left arm. “You’re about to see who you’re screwing with.”

Devil Face closed the gap between them slowly, clearly unimpressed by Aaron’s posturing. Nat and the others took Aaron’s cue and backed off, though Becky seemed hesitant to leave her boyfriend’s side. Nat wrapped her hands around Becky’s arm and guided her back, too. 

Aaron never flinched as Devil Face approached. He just seemed to tense up. The monster brought down the axe causing Becky to shriek, but Aaron’s right arm shot upward, catching and halting the swing well clear of his own head. 

“Aaron!” Becky cried.

“I’m fine,” Aaron said, never taking his eyes off of Devil Face. “I told you: he doesn’t know who he is…,” at those words, Aaron tugged at the axe, trying to pull it away from the fiery monstrosity. 

But it didn’t budge. 

The rubber around Devil Face’s mask flexed around the mouth, and Nat imagined the beast smiling underneath it.

“Screwing with?” Aaron finished, Devil Face still refusing to yield his axe. The devil’s free arm launched into Aaron’s gut, sending Nat’s classmate to his knees in a flash, though he still held onto the axe for all he was worth. Devil Face reached down and grabbed Aaron by the throat.

“Help?” Aaron forced out while being choked.