Authors: Peter Straub
And it went on until the last senior had said no. Mr. Broome stood at the end of the aisle with his back turned to the school. The cloth of his jacket shook. I was afraid that he would turn around and start all over again with the freshmen, and looked at my watch and saw that the whole first period had disappeared. Just then a bell rang in the hall.
'Okay,'
Mr. Broome said. 'We're not finished yet. One of you has lied to me twice. I am not through with him. Dismissed.'
During the next class I looked through the windows onto the parking lot and saw Mr. Thorpe driving Mr. Broome out onto Santa Rosa Boulevard. An hour later Mr. Thorpe drove back in alone. Mr. Broome did not appear back at Carson for two days.
11
Hazing
After English class the next day we had a free period. Morris and his trio had permission to practice on the stage, and so did Del; the club performances were now only three weeks away. Morris immediately set off around the back of the school and down the stairs — we could see the two sophomores who struggled with bass and drumsalready swinging open the big door off the downstairs corridor. Del hung indecisively by his locker for a few minutes, wondering how he could work on his act without his partner. Tom had stayed home — gossip told us — because his father had been taken to the hospital 'for good.' Then Del muttered to the rest of us, 'Oh, well, it's better than study hall,' and wandered away after Morris.
'I think that guy's a homo,' Bobby Hollingsworth said. Sherman told him to shut his trap.
After five or ten minutes in the library, I realized that I had left one of the books I needed in my locker. Dave Brick was across the table from me, but he too had forgotten to bring the book — it took a long time to extract this information. Ever since Laker Broome's astonishing chapel performance, Brick had begun to look dopey and half-awake everywhere but in algebra class. 'Hey, I have to look at that too,' he whispered, surfacing out of his daze. 'You can have mine when I'm done,' I whispered back, and got permission to leave the library.
I found the book in the jumble at the bottom of my locker and turned around. The halls were empty. A lively conversational buzz came from Fitz-Hallan's room, a disgruntled roar from Whipple's. A door to the Senior Room at the end of the back corridor cracked open, and Skeleton Ridpath edged around it, still with that moony look on his face. Then he stiffened and turned toward the far corner; a second later he began to run down the empty hall.
What the dickens?
I thought. Through the thicknesses of glass I saw him round the corner and race down the stairs. Finally I realized that he had heard the piano. 'Oh, no,' I said out loud, and began to go quickly down the corridor. I had just reached the Senior Room when I saw the top-left-hand corner of the door to the stage — all that was visible to me — swing out.
I ran down the stairs and opened the door again just in time nearly to be knocked down by Brown and Hanna, the sophomores working with Morris. 'Don't go in there,' Hanna said, and sprinted up the stairs. Brown was leaning his bass against the wall just inside the door and trying to get outside at the same time, and he just stared at me as if I were nuts. I could hear Ridpath's voice but not his words. Brown left the bass rattling from side toside like a heavy pendulum, and flashed around the door.
I went into the gloom. ' . . . and don't come back or I'll cut your balls off,' I heard Skeleton curse. 'Now for you two.'
The first thing I saw was Morris' pale face far off above the piano, looking both frightened and obstinate. Then I saw Del standing beside a table covered in black velvet. He had turned in my direction. He just looked frightened, and about ten years old. Skeleton's long back hovered before me, about ten feet away. From the way his head was turned, he was looking at Del.
'They have a right to be here,' I said, and was going to continue, but Skeleton whirled around and stopped the words in my throat. I had never seen anything like his face.
He looked like a minor devil, a devil consumed by the horror of his ambition — the shadowy light hollowed his cheeks, somehow made his lips disappear. His hair and his skin seemed the same dull color. He might have been a hundred years old, a skull floating above an empty suit. In the monochrome face, his eyes smoked. They were screaming before he did, so loudly and with such pain that I was silenced.
'Another one? Another one?'
he yelled, and jerked himself forward toward me. The light shifted, and his face returned to normal. The purple badges below his eyes looked as though they itched. 'Damn you,' he said, and his eyes never altered, and before he hit me I had time to think that I had seen the real Steve Ridpath, the one his face and nickname concealed. He flailed out and clouted me in the ribs, and dreamily grabbed my lapels and twisted us both about and pushed me back between Del and Morris.
The blood pounded in my ears. I faintly heard the sound of wood on wood — Morris quietly closing the lid of the Baldwin. 'Now, wait a second,' came Fielding's voice.
'Wait? Wait? What the hell else have I . . . ' Skeleton raised his bony fists up to his head. 'Don't you tell me to wait,' he hissed. 'You don't belong here.' He was speaking to Morris, but looking at Del Nightingale. 'I warned you,' he said.
Then he swiveled his head toward Morris. 'Get awayfrom that fucking piano.' He began to move spastically toward Morris, and Morris smartly separated himself from the bench. Nearly sobbing, Skeleton said, 'Goddammit, why can't you
listen
to me? Why can't you pay attention to what I say? Now, stay away from . . . Christ!' He pushed his fists into his eyes, and I thought perhaps that in fact he was sobbing. 'It's too late for that. Oh, Jesus. You
crappy
freshmen. Why do you have to hang around here?'
'To practice, you dope,' Morris said. 'What does it look like?'
'I'm not talking to you,' Skeleton said, and took his hands away from his eyes. His face was wet and gray.
Morris' mouth opened.
'You think you know everything,' Skeleton said quietly to Del.
'No,' Del said.
'You think you own him. You'd be surprised.'
'Nobody owns anybody,' Del said, rather startling me.
'You
shitty
little bastard,' Skeleton erupted. 'You don't even know what you're talking about. And you're the one who thinks I should wait.
Damn.
I know as much as you do, Florence. He helps me. He wants to know me.'
By now Morris and I were sure that Ridpath was literally insane, and what happened next only confirmed it.
As scared as he was, Del had the courage to shake his head.
This enraged Skeleton. He began to tremble even more than Laker Broome during the chapel interrogations the day before. 'I'll
show
you,' he shouted, and went for Del.
Skeleton slapped him twice, hard, and said, 'Take off your jacket and your shirt, goddamn you, I want to see some skin.'
'Hey, come on,' Morris said.
Skeleton whirled on us and froze us to the boards with his face. 'You're not in it anymore. Stay put. Or you're next.'
Then he jerked at the back of Del's dark jacket and pulled it off. Del hurriedly began to unbutton his shirt, which glimmered in the dim light. As if having somethingto do helped his fear, he seemed calm, despite his haste. His cheeks burned where Skeleton had slapped him.
Morris said, 'Don't do it, Del.'
Skeleton twisted toward us again. 'If you dare to say one more thing, either of you, I'll kill you, so help me God.'
We believed him. He was bigger and stronger, and he was crazy. I glanced at Morris and saw that he was as terrified, as incapable of helping Del, as I was.
'You fucking Florence,' Skeleton moaned. 'Why did you have to
be
here? I'm going to initiate you, all right.' His face constricted and blanched, then went a dull shade of red. 'With my belt. Bend over that piano bench.'
Morris groaned and looked as if he might faint or vomit.
Del dropped his glimmering shirt — it was silk, I realized — on the dusty floor and went to the piano bench. He knelt before it and leaned over, exposing his pale boy's back. Skeleton was already breathing oddly. He unfastened his belt, drew it out through the loops, and doubled it.
For a moment he simply looked at Del, and I saw on his face that expression I had seen before, of a devil's desperation and need and distrust, of a hungry certainty all mixed up with fear. I too groaned then. Skeleton never paused. He moved slightly behind Del, to one side, and raised the doubled belt and sliced it down on Del's back.
'Oh, Jesus,' he said, but Del said nothing. An instant later, a red line appeared where the belt had struck.
Skeleton raised his belt again, tightening his face with effort.
'No!' Morris shouted.
The belt came whistling down and cracked against Del's skin. Del jerked backward a bit and closed his eyes. He was silently crying.
Skeleton repeated his odd, painful prayer — 'Oh,
Jeesus' —
and raised the belt and cut down with it again. Del gripped the legs of the piano bench. I saw tears dripping off his chin and breaking on the floor.
And that is the second 'image which stays with me most strongly from Carson. The three lines blistering in Del Nightingale's white back, Skeleton twisting over him inhis agony, his face twisted too, the belt dangling from his hand. The first image, of Mr. Fitz-Hallan ironically proffering a ball-point pen to Dave Brick — that picture of the school's health — jumped alive in my mind, and I thought without thinking that the two were connected as two points on a single graph.
'You rich little freak,' Skeleton wailed. 'You have everything.' He broke away from Del, looked wildly at Fielding and me from out of his tortured face, broke toward us and we scrabbled backward toward the heavy curtains. Skeleton uttered a word, 'bird,' as one speaks without realizing it, broke direction again, and threw the belt at the curtains and began to lunge toward the door. We heard it slam; then heard a loud silence.
12
It felt as though a cymbal had been struck in that cavernous dark space, the shattering sound cutting us free from whatever had held us up, held us in place. Morris and I, already sitting, collapsed onto the boards. Del slipped off the piano bench and lay beside it.