314 Read online

  She walked down the hall and didn’t breathe the entire way. When she got to the door, she listened against it for any sign of life on the other side.

  Finally, she swung the door open to reveal absolutely nothing to be afraid of. She gasped and was nearly relieved, but searched the closet first. Then she walked to the spare bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen pantry to make sure she’d checked everywhere. She was safe. Her father wasn’t in the apartment.

  She tucked her phone back into her purse in an attempt to keep from losing it, which she often did. Then she closed her eyes and felt an overwhelming exhaustion.

  Alma returned to her bedroom and set the kitchen knife on her nightstand, beside the alarm clock. The red numbers displayed the time, 12:14.

  She fell back onto her pillows and set her hands over her eyes, exhausted and thankful for a new day. Perhaps this day would go better than the last.

  As she tried to relax, she couldn’t help but do the math in her head. It was 12:14. One plus two is three. 314.

  She turned the clock away from her.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Recurring Nightmare

  Widowsfield

  March 14th, 1996

  “I don’t know what’s wrong,” said Anna as she looked out of the library window. “Maybe there’s a low pressure system coming through or something.”

  The school’s library looked out onto the field that separated Ozark Hills High from its sister school, Widowsfield Elementary. There was a gym class playing soccer and Anna looked for her ex-boyfriend, Clint, who had broken up with her two weeks ago because he wanted to be single for a while. His bachelorhood lasted two days before he started dating the captain of the swim team, Clarissa Belmont.

  “Oh yeah, sure thing, Banana,” said Jamie. Anna despised that nickname. “You’re staring out the window at the football field because you’re a budding meteorologist and not because Clint’s out there. Do you think I’m an idiot or something?”

  “I’m serious, I’ve got a headache and my dad said that weather patterns can cause them.”

  Jamie gave a sideways glance away from her Social Studies book as she frowned. “Sure.”

  “Don’t be a bitch. I’m not stuck on Clint. He can go fuck himself for all I care.”

  Jamie folded the book cover’s inside flap, made from a brown paper bag from the grocery store, over her page and then closed the book. “Then what’s up? For real. You’ve been in the dumps since the dickhead dumped you. That’s not like you, Banana. You’re the most fun girl I’ve ever hung out with, but you’ve been a total downer lately.”

  Anna scribbled her black pen in one of the spots on her book cover that had previously been adorned with Clint’s initials enshrined in a heart. She’d blackened out the picture, and now the paper bag cover was dangerously thinned. She didn’t doubt that her pen marks had managed to cut through the cover to deface the textbook, but she continued to scribble the circles anyhow.

  “I’m not going to lie, I mean, I was pretty pissed at him, but it’s not like we haven’t done this before. You know? We’re always, like, breaking up and getting back together again. It’s sort of our thing. It’s like I have this need to be heartbroken or something.”

  “Then why do you keep going back to him?”

  Anna sighed and shook her head. She knew that Jaime hated Clint, and had since grade school. In fact, most of Anna’s friends disapproved of her relationship with the stoner. She was an Honor Roll Student, a member of the Mathletes, and all but guaranteed a scholarship to a major university. Clint, on the other hand, was the epitome of the ‘C’ student.

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ve got a self-destructive personality or something.”

  “Yeah, ya’ think?”

  “Give me a break, Jamie.” Anna set her pen down and put her head on her book. She worried that the fresh pen ink would stain her forehead, so she moved the book aside and then set her head down on the cold table.

  “I’m just sick of you doing the same thing to yourself over and over. I’m sick of seeing you down like this.”

  “I told you, I’m not upset about Clint. Honestly. I’ve just got a really bad headache right now. I don’t know why.”

  “I think I’ve got some aspirin in my locker. I can get you some after school if you want.”

  Anna nodded with her head still on the table. “That’d be great, thanks. What time is it?”

  Jaime glanced back at the oversized clock above the library’s main desk. “Not quite a quarter past.”

  Anna groaned and then sat up with her arms draped over her head as she arched her back over the edge of the seat. “This day’s dragging on forever.”

  Jaime tapped her pencil on her book and looked like she was about to say something, but then decided not to. She set her chin on her hand and stared off at nothing.

  “What?” asked Anna. Jaime looked surprised, as if she didn’t know what Anna was asking about. “You were about to say something. What was it?”

  “It’s just that, well, I guess I just want to know why you do it. Why do you keep making the same mistake over and over again? You and Cunt, I mean Clit, I mean Clint,” She smirked at her own joke. “You guys are a bad match.”

  “I guess I just hope he’ll change; that the next time it’ll be different.”

  “You know what the definition of insanity is, right? Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting something to change.”

  “Then call me crazy, I guess,” said Anna. “Maybe I’ll just take up drinking to calm me down.”

  Jaime rolled her eyes. “Alcohol’s not the solution.”

  “Chemically speaking, any alcoholic beverage is a solution since the alcohol is mixed up with other stuff.”

  “Well shit,” said Jaime as she started to scribble numbers onto her book’s cover. “Break out the Boone’s Farm then. Time to get the party started.” They both laughed before Jaime mocked her friend. “You’re such a nerd, ‘Chemically speaking, blah, blah, blah.’”

  “It’s true,” said Anna. “What are you writing?” She leaned over the table to look at Jaime’s book.

  Jaime looked down at her scrawling.

  3.141592653

  “Is that pi?”

  “Yeah. We were supposed to memorize ten digits of it for Mr. Trager for pi day.”

  Anna settled back in her chair and snickered. “Sure, for the test this morning. Why are you still writing it?”

  Jaime paused for just a moment. “I don’t know. There’s something calming about it. Is that crazy?”

  “A little bit, yeah.”

  Anna watched Jaime write the sequence over and over, oddly transfixed. Then Jaime wrote the final digit as a 4 instead of a 3 in one line. “You got that one wrong.”

  Jaime didn’t stop writing and didn’t look up. “There’s no such thing as a perfect circle. There’s chaos in all of it.” Jaime looked up at the ceiling and then at the window before she asked, “Do you hear that?”

  “What?” Anna thought her friend’s statement carried an undercurrent of malice. Then she looked down at her own book and saw that she was continuing to draw spirals in the spot where Clint’s initials used to be. Her marking had worn well past the paper cover and was digging into the book itself. She dropped the pen and it spun in a circle on the table as if the tip was tied down, with the other end rolling awkwardly around.

  Anna heard the chatter of teeth and put her hand over her lower jaw. The noise seemed to be coming from her own head, as if she were shivering but didn’t know it. Her jaw wasn’t moving, but the chatter continued.

  “It’s time,” said Jaime. “It’s starting over again.”

  “I know.” Anna stood up and walked to the window that looked out onto the field. She put her right hand on the glass, her fingers splayed wide, and savored the cold sensation. Dogs howled in the distance and Anna took her hand away, letting her fingertips linger for a moment.

  The chatter continued.

  “How man
y times have we done this?” asked Jaime.

  Anna knew exactly what she meant, but understood none of it at the same time. It was as if she had wandered into a dream where she was certain everything made sense, but could never have explained it if asked to. She watched Clint on the field and wondered if he would die immediately, or if they would let him live this time.

  “Too many to count,” said Anna. She looked at the large white clock on the wall above the center desk in the library.

  3:14

  Her hands were shaking.

  The chatter stopped.

  “What’s going on?” Jaime stood up, and her pencil stayed upright as if a ghost were holding it in place. They both stared at it and the pencil slowly tilted. It finally set down as if time around them was moving at a different pace than they were.

  “Anna?” said Jaime as she stared out the window. A thick fog was descending over the field, rolling across their view as if a wave of water had broken free and was about to wash away the students. It sparkled with green light and billowed over the lush green field. It was beautiful to watch as the puffs of fog spread across the horizon. The bright blue sky was eaten away, like vestiges of white paper succumbing to flame. “We’re lost.”

  Anna looked at her friend and nodded. “I know why.”

  Jaime rushed around the table to stand beside her. Anna felt dizzy and confused. “Why?” asked Jaime. “Tell me what you know.”

  “I forgot all of it, but now I understand.” Anna looked out the window and watched as the gym students were enveloped in the thick fog. “It’s like I heard him, or understood him, just for a minute.”

  “Heard who?”

  “The one the kids call The Skeleton Man. He hates the name. He thinks giving something a name is the first attempt to control it.”

  “What the fuck is going on? Why do I feel like I’ve done this before? What’s happening?” asked Jaime.

  “He thinks we’re too old.” She put her hand back on the window and looked across the field at the Middle School that was quickly disappearing amid the haze. “He wants the children. He thinks we already know how to hate, and he only wants the innocent ones.”

  “Anna, you’re scaring me.”

  Anna watched the shapes in the fog advance. The silhouettes of children ran across the field from their school, and the barking of dogs grew louder. Soon, the soccer players were attacked and chaos erupted in the library. Teachers and students rushed to the window and time returned to normal as everyone panicked.

  Jaime moved closer to Anna and ignored the massacre outside. “Why are we doing it again? Why do I know what’s going to happen? I’ve never felt this way before.”

  “He checked on us this time,” said Anna.

  “What do you mean?”

  The librarian yelled for everyone to get away from the window after an explosion of green light shook the walls. One of the students, a sophomore boy whose name Anna never learned, was stuck inside of the window and couldn’t move away. His face had been pressed against the glass when the explosion occurred, and now his head was hanging halfway outside. The glass wasn’t broken, but the boy’s head was on the other side of it, as if he’d passed through a pane of water instead of glass. Anna saw the boy’s eyes search frantically around him before he tried to jerk back. The movement caused his skin, which was fused to the glass, to rip. Blood coursed down the window on both sides as the other students screamed.

  Jaime and Anna ignored the bloody scene; they’d seen it countless times before. Jaime pulled Anna between two book shelves, away from the screaming mass, to speak in private. “What do you mean he checked on us?”

  “I don’t know, I can’t explain how I know. I’m not sure what’s going on. I just, for a minute, I could hear him in my head. I knew his thoughts. He’s looking for a girl he lost. She was an innocent, and he needs her to help him stop this from happening again.”

  “I don’t understand any of that,” said Jaime.

  “I don’t either, but I know he’s going to keep doing this over and over until he finds her.”

  “Then what?” asked Jaime.

  “I don’t know. For some reason he thinks that if he has her, then he can make this perfect.” She drew a circle in the air with the tip of her finger. “He’ll complete the circle. Until then we’ll keep dying. This will keep happening over and over.”

  “Why do I know about it this time?” asked Jaime. “I can remember all the other times this happened, and I never felt this way before.”

  They both stared through the books on the shelves at the chaos in the library. Students were crying as the teachers tried to overturn tables to keep the creatures in the fog from breaking through the glass. Anna knew it was useless. In minutes, the window would shatter and the demonic, twisted children would rush in. They were the children that The Skeleton Man gave up on. They became his soldiers, and their hatred mutated their fragile bodies into demonic dog-like creatures.

  She could hear their paws scratching at the windows.

  “He searched us this time,” said Anna. “He let us know him because he wants to find the one he lost. He doesn’t know how long it’s been, or how old she is now. If he can find her, then he can start this all over in a way that he’s never done before. He let us know him the way the children do because he wants to find the girl he lost.”

  “I know her name,” said Jaime.

  Anna held her friend’s hand as they continued to look through the books. “I do too.”

  Jaime said it, “Alma Harper.”

  The glass broke.

  Jaime and Anna embraced as they waited for their inevitable death. Then it would begin anew, slightly different from the times before, and they would forget the prying mind of The Skeleton Man as he continued to try to complete the circle.

  16 Years Later

  March 10th, 2012

  Alma was in her classroom and an oversized, ornate harp was beside her desk. The instrument’s strings were black and thicker than they should’ve been.

  “Miss Harper?” asked one of her students.

  “Yes, Dave, what is it?”

  Dave had his head on his desk and his arms draped at his sides. He didn’t lift his head as he spoke. “Are you pretty?”

  “Excuse me?” asked Alma.

  Claire Powell, a popular, pretty girl that sat at the front of the class, raised her hand and wiggled her fingers in the air. She didn’t wait for Alma to give her permission before she spoke. “He wants to know if you’re ugly.”

  “What sort of question is that?” Alma’s heart raced and she felt as if she’d been transported back to high school where social standing was a constant concern. She desperately wanted to be one of the pretty girls, but she wasn’t. Llama Harper is what the kids used to call her and she never understood why. They used to cut out pictures of Llamas and tape them to her locker. It was the sort of careless bullying that provided short-lived amusement for the aggressors, and a lifetime of heartache and doubt for the victim.

  “Your mouth is bleeding,” said Dave, his head still down.

  Alma put her hand over her mouth and felt wetness. She inspected her palm and discovered a smear of dark red blood. The children laughed as she searched in her drawer for a handkerchief, but there was nothing but pens inside the desk. She rifled through the hundreds of pens in search of anything that could clean her blood, but there was nothing to be found. The children continued to laugh.

  “It’s not funny,” said Alma as she gave up her search.

  The bell rang and frightened Alma. Her mouth was in pain now and the clanging of the bell seemed to aggravate her mysterious wound. The children sprang from their seats, gathered their things, and rushed for the door. They laughed as they passed Alma, furthering her embarrassment.

  Alma went to the counter at the rear of the room where there were paper towels and a sink. There were craft supplies littering the area from the art class that used this room part of the time and Alma shoved the bottle
s of glue and glitter away. She cupped her hands to collect the cold water and splashed it on her face. The blood and water swirled around the stainless steel drain, but didn’t seem to go down. It just kept spinning as the colors blended. Glitter, glue, and paint mixed with the blood and water to create a hypnotic spiral that wouldn’t dissipate.

  Alma took a few paper towels from beside the sink and put them into her mouth to search for the source of the blood. She felt her shoes sticking to the floor and wondered if the glue had spilled on her feet. Her attention flitted between concerns as the spilled glitter and glue dripped from the edge of the counter.

  She felt stinging pain from one of her lower incisors. The tooth wiggled at the slightest provocation. Alma took the paper towel out of her mouth and started to press at the back of the tooth with her tongue. It bent forward until it brushed against the inside of her lip.

  The tooth wiggled back and forth as she prodded it. Blood continued to pour out of her mouth as she gripped the tooth between her thumb and index finger. It took no effort to dislodge the tooth and she rinsed it off before inspecting it. The tooth looked normal and healthy, white with lengthy roots.

  “Alma?” Blair Drexler, the head of the PTA, was at the door.

  Alma swiftly hid the tooth in her front pocket and then rinsed more blood from her face. The water still swirled in the sink, refusing to go down the drain. She didn’t turn to greet Blair and focused on the mess.

  “Hi Blair,” said Alma as she struggled to clean herself.

  “Is everything okay?” Blair’s high heels clicked on the tile as she walked toward Alma. Blair was an upper class housewife, always adorned with jewelry that was worth more than a month of Alma’s pay.

  “Fine, fine, I’m fine,” said Alma as she tried to hide what had happened. She wiped the counter and tossed the bloody paper towel into the trash. Her blood smeared, as if it were made of oil. The glue and glitter were gone now, as if her blood had soaked it up.