Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons (originally by Wikimedia user Vassil)

PART ONE: HERE

The lesson trailed on, tracing through the basics of the first few textbook chapters. Miles replaced all of Smith’s faded whiteboard notes with his own careful bullet points, narrating through cell reproduction and human anatomy as he went.

By the time the bell rang, most of the students had lost focus or fallen asleep entirely, their sugar highs long worn off. They nudged themselves awake and scrambled for their bags, hurrying out the door. Only the boy in the sweatshirt took his time, gathering his bag and slinking along the back wall. Miles watched from his desk, then raised a hand.

“Ah, excuse me, can I speak with you for a moment?” he asked.

The boy stopped, still facing the doorway. His shoulders twitched and his spine went rigid, and Miles watched him take a long, deep breath. He held it, then let it out.

“No, you can’t,” he hissed.

Someone called out from the hallway.

“Come on, Alex!”

The boy–Alex–twitched again, then muttered under his breath and took off running. Miles watched him go, then sighed and started sorting through Smith’s old drawers.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist, Miles figured, to guess which child was most likely to be the prankster who’d kept leaving him messages. And now he at least had a name to go with it. But not a motive. Why? Why haunt Smith so hard, and now him? Surely Alex had to realize Miles wasn’t the same person. So maybe it had less to do with identity and more to do with position; maybe Alex wasn’t happy to have a new neighbor, or–

Miles stopped, halfway through opening a drawer. Most of them were cleared out of all but dust bunnies, the occasional paperclip, and old pieces of hard candy melted against the metal. One, though, resisted as he tugged at it, and when he wrenched it open…

…When he wrenched it open, he saw a knife, nestled in the gap between the drawer’s bottom and its face. It was a small steak knife with a black handle, likely stolen from a kitchen block somewhere. And yet… And yet, as Miles held it up to the light, he could see brownish-red smudges on the blade.

Someone had carved into the handle, in jagged script. SATAN, read one side. HAIL, said another.

“Oh! ‘Hail Satan’!” Miles said. And then: “Oh… hail Satan… That’s not good.”

The clock kept ticking away. Kids milled up and down the halls, shouting and laughing with each other. Miles turned the knife in his hand, then set it down, carefully, back in the drawer. Alex’s voice echoed in his head, smug and hateful.

I sent Mr. Smith to Hell. 

“Oh, Alex… what have you been doing?”

#

Miles took his time heading back from school. He gathered up his lesson plan, his introductory papers, and any notes he could find, carrying them out to the break room. Then he spilled them out on the table–a battered card table, lined with stiff office chairs and stained with coffee–in a thick fan.

Mr. Smith had left early in the year, so there weren’t a lot of grades to draw records from. Still, Miles had a hunch. So he poured over the past records, sifting through a stack of quizzes until he found one that seemed promising.

Alex Peterson had failed his last Biology quiz. Apparently, he’d started off attempting to answer some of the multiple choice questions, but after several missed answers by the time he’d gotten to the essay portion, he’d lost interest. Instead of an essay, it looked like he’d stabbed through the paper multiple times, some of them violently enough to leave gashes trailing down. Mr. Smith had circled one in red pen, adding the words SEE ME AFTER CLASS.

More digging. Miles pulled up several incident reports for Alex Peterson. Poor grades. Reclusive. Needs to study more. Threatens other students. Poor home life.

…And one, buried at the bottom of a dozen condemnations, in curly handwriting from a teacher Miles didn’t recognize: Artistically gifted. Never had any trouble with him.

Outside the break room window, the wind picked up. Fat droplets of autumn rain splattered against the glass, dripping from a chalk-gray sky. It was getting late. Miles brushed the papers back into a pile, thinking to himself.

A troubled kid. Undoubtedly troubled. Violent. Seems to struggle with studying and focus. But talented in other ways. What does that mean…?

He didn’t know. He gathered his papers and moved towards the door. It was a long walk home, and he wanted to be back before the rain started in earnest.

The heaters rumbled overhead, but he felt cold, anyway. Ever since he’d come here, he’d felt colder. He shivered, hugging his sweater, and pushed on.

#

As Miles neared his house, shoulders hunched against the spitting rain, he decided, on a whim, to move towards the back of the house instead of the front. He remembered the note on his door and the pentagram on his driveway; Alex, apparently, expected as much from him.

He edged around the neighbor’s yard, slipping between dried-out hedges and onto the grass, then made his way up towards the house. As soon as he got near, he heard high-pitched voices ranting at each other, and he knew he’d made the right call.

“Dude, this is gay and dumb,” one of them whined. Miles recognized the voice; the same boy who’d yelled come on, Alex from the hallway earlier today. “I was with this when it was cool, but this is gross and boring–”

“Shut up already,” the other hissed. “An’ pass me the hammer. This is important. We have to make it real, got it?”

Miles turned and saw two boys lurking around his back door, along with a scattered pile of nails and a mason jar of red paint. One tugged at his frayed jacket, face drawn in a pout. The other, in a familiar oversized black sweatshirt, reached up, hammering something against the wood.

As he looked closer, Miles realized it was a long-dead squirrel, likely peeled off a road somewhere. Patches of fur drifted onto the stoop as Alex hammered it in place. As he nailed, the other kid kicked the dirt, then bent over to grab the paint jar. He dipped his finger in it, then scrawled a jagged circle around the squirrel. He sniffled, shuddering, and wiped his nose, smearing red paint across his face.

Miles cleared his throat.

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he said.

The boy in the frayed jacket screamed. He dropped the jar, letting it thud and fall over against the grass, and whipped around.

“It was his idea, Mr. Freeman!” he yelled, pointing at Alex. “He said it would be super dark and cool and give us sick demon powers but I don’t even wanna!” He sniffled again, eyes watering.

Alex said nothing. His spine had gone rigid again, his knuckles flaring white against the hammer. For one tense moment, Miles braced himself, waiting for Alex to swing at him or at the other boy. And for one long, tense second, Alex held onto it, as if to do so.

But then Alex breathed, relaxing his grip, and the hammer bounced into the dirt.

The other boy was bawling outright, now, smearing more paint across his face as he wiped at his tears.

“P-please don’t kill me, Mr. Freeman,” he wailed. “Please. My mom’s already gonna kill me, so please don’t kill me.”

Miles raised an eyebrow at that. He glanced around–no neighbors seemed to have been drawn to the noise just yet–then crossed his arms.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked.

“Eddie,” the boy whimpered. “Edward. Sir. Mr. Freeman, sir. ‘Cause my mom really likes Twilight an’ she’s read all the books an’ she wants my dad to be like Edward but my dad’s Hispanic and Jamie says that Hispanic people can’t be vampires so I don’t–”

“It’s okay, okay, that’s enough. Thank you.” Miles put up a hand and lowered his voice, as if coaxing a scared animal. “Go home, Eddie. Your mother’s probably worried something fierce.”

Eddie didn’t need to be told twice. He gave Alex a shove, muttering, “You’re such a dillweed,” then scurried along the side yard and out onto the street, and to freedom.

Which left Miles and Alex alone. Alex had barely moved… no, that wasn’t quite right. He’d tilted his face up to Miles, and fixed him with a glare so violent his entire face contorted into it, as if he’d bitten into a lemon. His hands were clamped into fists at his side, hard enough to tremble. To Miles, he looked like a shaken-up soda can, one misstep away from exploding.

Miles kept his hand raised.

“Alex, right?” he asked. He crouched down, trying to get more to Alex’s level. “I’ve heard a lot about you, believe it or not.” He glanced up towards the house, with its empty rooms and labeled mailbox. “You could say you’re the real reason I’m here, huh?”

Alex didn’t answer.

“Let’s go inside. I want to talk to you about what you can do.”

Again, no answer. But when Miles moved past him to push open the door (the squirrel swung on its nail, shedding fur), Alex huffed a breath and stomped inside.

#

Miles started to make tea, reconsidered, then poured them both glasses of soda from a lukewarm two-liter bottle. Alex settled at the kitchen counter as Miles hunted for Oreos, his legs swinging between the chair legs.

“I hope you don’t mind the boxes,” Miles called out from the pantry. “I’m still settling in.”

“I don’t care,” Alex muttered back. He kicked out at one, sending a pile of clothes and hangers and plastic bags scattering across the tile, then made a face. “These are all new. Did you buy these as soon as you moved in or something?”

“Of course. I had to dress nicely.”

“Ugh, you’re so weird.”

“You’re certainly one to talk.” Miles rolled his eyes as he crossed the kitchen, Oreo package in hand.

Alex was a scrawny child, Miles noticed. Pale, with crooked teeth and stubby fingernails bitten to the quick. He didn’t seem malnourished or abused, as far as Miles could tell, but he wore a black rubber bracelet and faded black jeans, and he slouched into himself like a pillbug.

Miles peeled back the Oreo wrapper, taking out a cookie.

“To be clear, you’re not in trouble,” he said. “But I understand that you’ve had trouble in classes before. Especially with Mr. Smith. Can we talk about that?”

Alex said nothing. This time, though, Miles waited him out, chewing on a cookie and letting him have his silence. After a minute or so, Alex shrugged.

“I dunno, he was a jerk,” he said. “Most of the other classes suck, but his was way too hard. He didn’t even give extra credit or anything. So I got tired of even trying.” He mumbled, “Just like he got tired of me.”

“Mm… it’s understandable. I heard he could be strict, and I’m sorry. You should’ve at least had the chance to try.” Miles reached for another cookie.

Alex blinked at that; clearly, he hadn’t expected sympathy. He bit his lip.

“Anything else?” Miles prompted.

Another silence. Miles waited, and Alex pushed on.

“I dunno. I thought that if I threatened him, he’d be so freaked that he’d have to let me pass. Or maybe I could take over his mind or something, I guess.” Alex shrugged. “I even made him quit. But instead, right away the principal said we’d have a replacement, so I ran to his house and I saw all these boxes of someone movin’ in. I kept picturing… like, this big conveyer belt of Biology teachers, steppin’ into place whenever the last one fell off.” He shrugged. “It’s dumb.”

“It’s not dumb. It makes sense. When you hear about someone hired to fill the void another person left, it’s natural to expect they’ll fill it in every way, including being too strict.”

“Mmm.”

“But I’m not Mr. Smith, Alex. I’m not interested in picking up exactly where he left off. I want to work for you, not against you.”

“Yeah, until you freak out and give up on me, too,” Alex muttered.

That struck Miles as deeply funny. He pressed a hand to his mouth and laughed, a loud and ridiculous noise that petered off into bright chuckles.

“Oh, trust me. You’ve done some creative work, but you’re not nearly as wild as some of the people I’ve seen back home.”

“Back home where? In the asylum?” Alex drawled.

“Somewhere like that.” Miles pushed away from the counter, crossing his arms in thought. “Look, Alex. I know you’re troubled, but believe me, you have a lot of artistic potential. You can be someone truly special, I know it.”

“Yeah, right.” Alex rolled his eyes, sagging further forward against the countertop.

“Tell me something, Alex,” Miles said. “What all have you done so far? Drawing pentagrams, sacrificing animals, making promises…?”

Alex nodded.

“Candles, too, sometimes. Mr. Smith hated those. Chanting and burnt paper and incense.”

Miles hummed under his breath, reaching up to adjust his glasses. Yes, that all made sense. He closed his eyes, thinking it over.

“Of course,” he said. “I wondered how I ended up here, of all places.”

Alex stared at him. Miles opened an eye.

Then his other eye.

Then his other eye.

Alex staggered back, his chair hitting the floor with a resounding crash. His chest heaved and his eyes bulged as he retreated, tripped, stumbled, caught himself, and kept moving back.

Miles’s shadow stretched high over the back wall, looming over them and splitting into several quivering, twitching parts. Insectoid limbs scratched at the tiles, tentacles curled and grasped at the countertop, and hundreds of eyes rolled in their sockets. Miles still stood there, smiling placidly at the kitchen counter, but he tilted his head and he was also everywhere, pressed against the ceiling and the floors, hundreds of sharp teeth tearing and writhing at the seams of a human-shaped vessel.

It really was too small in this house. It really was too cold in this town.

“Your pentagrams really were perfectly shaped, Alex,” Miles said, and spat, and gurgled, in a hundred bleeding voices, “and those runes were beautifully traced.”

Alex screamed. He turned to run, but caught himself on his own shoelace, on a mass of pulsing flesh, on alien things and human things all at once. He hit the floor hard, curling into a tight ball and clamping his hands over his ears, hiccupping for breath and bracing himself and…

…Nothing happened. After a bit, he peeked open an eye, glancing back.

“A-are you gonna take my soul?” he whimpered.

Miles blinked, then smiled with rows and rows and rows of jaws.

“Of course not, Alex. Again: I’m here to work for you, not against you. And I’m here to teach.”

“T-teach?”

“Yes.” Miles straightened up. “You have a lot of potential, but your form still needs work. Your grammar is all wrong, your pentagrams are crooked, and you use all the wrong materials. Not to mention, you’ve barely even studied biology. How can you expect to sacrifice anything if you don’t understand how the blood flows or the organs function?” He shook his head. “You’ll never summon anything more than a lesser demon at this rate.”

Alex stared. And stared. When he didn’t seem likely to do anything else, Miles sighed.

“Meet me after class so we can work on some revisions. And yes, I’ll give you extra credit for it.”

He raised a hand. The back door swung open. Alex gave a high, aching sob, then climbed to his shaking feet and fled.

#

The next day, Alex didn’t show up to school. Miles called his parents, who informed him that Alex was sick in bed.

“I’m really worried. He’s barely moved all day,” Alex’s dad sighed, over the phone.

“I’m sure he just needs time,” Miles reassured. “I’ll ask his friend Eddie to drop off his homework so he can catch up.”

On the other end, Alex’s dad huffed a laugh.

“Hey, thank you, Mr… Freeman, was it? We always had to twist the old Biology teacher’s arm to get him to accept any absences.”

Miles chuckled.

“Well, I’ve always believed in supporting those with potential.”

He hung up, then passed around a get-well-soon card for the whole class to sign. On the front of it, he taped a piece of chocolate Halloween candy.

#

The next day, someone knocked on Miles’s door.

He glanced up, curiously, from his organizing. It’d taken several trips back and forth from IKEA and the town dump, but gradually, each of Mr. Smith’s rooms had been filled with new furniture and tasteful decorations. He’d even managed to repaint the mailbox, which showcased the words FREEMAN in bold block letters.

(He’d always been a strong advocate for man’s freedom, after all. Part of the job.)

Another knock, and Miles stood up. He opened the door, looking downwards, and saw Alex.

Alex looked different from when they’d last met. He still wore that same oversized black sweatshirt, but he’d brushed his hair back, and the bags under his eyes seemed lesser than before. Furthermore, he carried an armful of library books, with titles like ‘Demonology’ and ‘History of Witchcraft’.

One thing that hadn’t changed, though, was his glare at Miles.

“I didn’t do that bad,” he said, before Miles could get a word in. “And if I did, it’s because I traced it from one of these, so it isn’t my fault.”

“Mm, understandable. A lot can get lost in translation.” Miles pulled open the door further. “Did you bring your Biology textbook?”

In reply, Alex shrugged, tilting his head towards the backpack resting on his shoulders. Miles nodded, stepping aside and gesturing indoors.

“Excellent. We can start with basic animals and work our way from there. Do you know why goats are a traditional sacrifice?”

“Not yet. Can you do that freaky shadow thing again?” Alex’s eyes lit up.

“Later, I promise. But first, about goats…” Miles began, and eased the door shut behind them.

#

At the end of the year, to Principal William’s amazement, Alex aced Biology. Miles sat with her in her office, smiling to himself as she sifted through Alex’s report card.

“He’s never done that well before,” she breathed. Miles shrugged, politely.

“Like I said. With understanding and without judgement, kids can open up in surprising ways.”

“I’ll say! You really are an amazing replacement, Miles.”

Miles blushed, but he was hardly surprised. Alex was a smart boy–smart enough to be frustrated with school’s limitations. What he needed, more than anything, was something to draw his interest and test his skill.

His parents were delighted, of course. They sent Miles a box of chocolates as thanks, wrapped in a cute little bow.

Alex, as thanks, sacrificed a goat, with perfect technique and form.

It was a lovely school year.