As she checked the paper-towel containers, she caught a glimpse of her face in one of the mirrors and was startled into looking at it closely. She didn’t care for what she saw — not a bit.
There was a look that hadn’t been there two days before, a frightened, watching look. With sudden shock she realized that the blurred reflection in her glasses of Robert’s pale, respectful face had gotten inside her and was festering.
The door opened and she heard two girls come in, giggling secretly about something. She was about to turn the comer and walk out past them when she heard her own name. She turned back to the washbowls and began checking the towel holders again.
‘And then he — ‘
Soft giggles.
‘She knows, but — ‘
More giggles, soft and sticky as melting soap.
‘Miss Sidley is — ‘
Stop it! Stop that noise!
By moving slightly she could see their shadows, made fuzzy and ill-defined by the diffuse light filtering through the frosted windows, holding onto each other with girlish glee.
Another thought crawled up out of her mind.
They knew she was there.
Yes. Yes they did. The little bitches knew.
She would shake them. Shake them until their teeth rattled and their giggles turned to wails, she would thump their heads against the tile walls and she would make them admit that they knew.
That was when the shadows changed. They seemed to elongate, to flow like dripping tallow, taking on strange hunched shapes that made Miss Sidley cringe back against the porcelain washstands, her heart swelling in her chest.
But they went on giggling.
The voices changed, no longer girlish, now sexless and soulless, and quite, quite evil. A slow, turgid sound of mindless humor that flowed around the corner to her like sewage.
She stared at the hunched shadows and suddenly screamed at them. The scream went on and on, swelling in her head until it attained a pitch of lunacy. And then she fainted. The giggling, like the laughter of demons, followed her down into darkness.
She could not, of course, tell them the truth.
Miss Sidley knew this even as she opened her eyes and looked up at the anxious faces of Mr Hanning and Mrs Crossen. Mrs Crossen was holding the bottle of smelling salts from the gymnasium first-aid kit under her nose. Mr Hanning turned around and told the two little girls who were looking curiously at Miss Sidley to go home now, please.
They both smiled at her — slow, we-have-a-secret smiles — and went out.
Very well, she would keep their secret. For awhile. She would not have people thinking her insane, or that the first feelers of senility had touched her early. She would play their game. Until she could expose their nastiness and rip it out by the roots.
‘I’m afraid I slipped,’ she said calmly, sitting up and ignoring the excruciating pain in her back.
‘A patch of wetness.’
‘This is awful,’ Mr Hanning said. ‘Terrible. Are you — ‘
‘Did the fall hurt your back, Emily?’ Mrs Crossen interrupted. Mr Hanning looked at her gratefully.
Miss Sidley got up, her spine screaming in her body.
‘No,’ she said. ‘In fact, the fall seems to have worked some minor chiropractic miracle. My back hasn’t felt this well in years.’
‘We can send for a doctor — ‘ Mr Hanning began.
‘Not necessary.’ Miss Sidley smiled at him coolly.
‘I’ll call you a taxi from the office.’
‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Miss Sidley said, walking to the door of the girls’ lav and opening it.
‘I always take the bus.’
Mr Hanning sighed and looked at Mrs Crossen. Mrs Crossen rolled her eyes and said nothing.
The next day Miss Sidley kept Robert after school. He did nothing to warrant the punishment, so she simply accused him falsely. She felt no qualms; he was a monster, not a little boy. She must make him admit it.
Her back was in agony. She realized Robert knew; he expected that would help him. But it wouldn’t. That was another of her little advantages. Her back had been a constant pain to her for the last twelve years, and there had been many times when it had been this bad — well, almost this bad.
She closed the door, shutting the two of them in.
For a moment she stood stiff, training her gaze on Robert. She waited for him to drop his eyes.
He didn’t. He looked back at her, and presently a little smile began to play around the comers of his mouth.
‘Why are you smiling, Robert?’ she asked softly.
‘I don’t know,’ Robert said, and went on smiling.
‘Tell me, please.’
Robert said nothing.
And went on smiling.
The outside sounds of children at play were distant, dreamy. Only the hypnotic buzz of the wall clock was real.
‘There’s quite a few of us,’ Robert said suddenly, as if he were commenting on the weather.
It was Miss Sidley’s turn to be silent.
‘Eleven right here in this school.’
Quite evil, she thought, amazed. Very, incredibly evil.
‘Little boys who tell stories go to hell,’ she said clearly. ‘I know many parents no longer make their . . . their spawn . . . aware of that fact, but I assure you that it is a true fact, Robert. Little boys who tell stories go to hell. Little girls too, for that matter.’
Robert’s smile grew wider; it became vulpine. ‘Do you want to see me change, Miss Sidley?
Do you want a really good look?’
Miss Sidley felt her back prickle. ‘Go away,’ she said curtly. ‘And bring your mother or your father to school with you tomorrow. We’ll get this business straightened out.’ There. On solid ground again. She waited for his face to crumple, waited for the tears.
Instead, Robert’s smile grew wider — wide enough to show his teeth. ‘It will be just like Show and Tell, won’t it, Miss Sidley? Robert — the other Robert — he liked Show and Tell. He’s still hiding way, way down in my head.’ The smile curled at the corners of his mouth like charring paper. ‘Sometimes he runs around . . . it itches. He wants me to let him out.
‘Go away,’ Miss Sidley said numbly. The buzzing of the clock seemed very loud.
Robert changed.
His face suddenly ran together like melting wax, the eyes flattening and spreading like knife-struck egg yolks, nose widening and yawning, mouth disappearing. The head elongated, and the hair was suddenly not hair but straggling, twitching growths.
Robert began to chuckle.
The slow, cavernous sound came from what had been his nose, but the nose was eating into the lower half of his face, nostrils meeting and merging into a central blackness like a huge, shouting mouth.
Robert got up, still chuckling, and behind it all she could see the last shattered remains of the other Robert, the real little boy this alien thing had usurped, howling in maniac terror, screeching to be let out.
She ran.
She fled screaming down the corridor, and the few late-leaving pupils turned to look at her with large and uncomprehending eyes. Mr Hanning jerked open his door and looked out just as she plunged through the wide glass front doors, a wild, waving scarecrow silhouetted against the bright September sky.
He ran after her, Adam’s apple bobbing. ‘Miss Sidley! Miss Sidley!’
Robert came out of the classroom and watched curiously.
Miss Sidley neither heard nor saw. She clattered down the steps and across the sidewalk and into the street with her screams trailing behind her. There was a huge, blatting horn and then the bus was looming over her, the bus driver’s face a plaster mask of fear. Air brakes whined and hissed like angry dragons.
Miss Sidley fell, and the huge wheels shuddered to a smoking stop just eight inches from her frail, brace-armored body. She lay shuddering on the pavement, hearing the crowd gather around her.
She turned over and the children were staring down at her. They were ringed in a tight little circle, like mourners around an open grave. And at the head of the grave was Robert, a small sober sexton ready to shovel the first spade of dirt into her face.
From far away, the bus driver’s shaken babble: ‘ . . . crazy or somethin . . . my God, another half a foot . . . ‘
Miss Sidley stared at the children. Their shadows covered her. Their faces were impassive.
Some of them were smiling little secret smiles, and Miss Sidley knew that soon she would begin to scream again.
Then Mr Hanning broke their tight noose, shooed them away, and Miss Sidley began to sob weakly.
She didn’t go back to her third grade for a month. She told Mr Hanning calmly that she had not been feeling herself, and Mr Hanning suggested that she see a reputable doctor and discuss the matter with him. Miss Sidley agreed that this was the only sensible and rational course. She also said that if the school board wished for her resignation she would tender it immediately, although doing so would hurt her very much. Mr Hanning, looking uncomfortable, said he doubted if that would be necessary. The upshot was that Miss Sidley came back in late October, once again ready to play the game and now knowing how to play it.