Twenty-two
Becky Marple wandered her least favorite classroom.
There were no computers in the Social Skills room. Here, students learned
to communicate face to face and develop the skills to interact with the
most complex machine in the world, the human personality. Social Skills
tackled formal debate, public speaking, and verbal sparring with friends,
enemies and strangers. Social Skills taught a student the art of
surviving in an overcrowded world.
She had never participated in the Social Skills
classes. She had watched, though, and learned much about her fellow
classmates. As quiet as she had been, she knew more about human nature
than most.
She knew it would be hard to convince Rick, Marla,
and Mort that they were dreaming. Rick's denial of the black dog turned
white warned her of the challenge she faced. It was too easy to
rationalize fear away when the stakes were so high.
But they had to know. They had to see for themselves
the nature of reality in this strange place. Otherwise, slowly, their
fears would feed upon themselves, take physical form and attack them.
Becky wandered the circumference of the room thinking
she would have to grow flowers from the walls to be believed.
Flowers from the stone walls?
Why not? She took a seat and decided to do just
that. Pale violet orchids, her favorite, would do just fine. She closed
her eyes and imagined what the delicate blossoms covering the walls would
look like, and how surprised the others would be.
Fear crept into her thoughts like cold fingers. She
had imagined a dog wandering outside the school, but putting sound-proofed
stone and glass between her creation and herself had made it safe. Too
safe. Rick had been able to explain it away too easily. Growing flowers
from the walls would be harder to deny, but far from safe. Fear would
give even a flower the power to harm her. Power of that magnitude would
too easily bring Mr. Peters back to life. The real Mr. Peters had
probably died of old age years ago, but the Mr. Peters that lurked in the
depths of her imagination was like an evil god and would haunt her for the
rest of her life.
She considered conjuring Bobby Randolph to convince
the others of the nature of their crisis. Bobby would lend encouragement
and support. Bobby, though, was dead in the reality that counted, and a
deep part of her did not want to encroach upon the subject of life and
death.
Despite the risk, she had to try for the flowers.
Pale blue orchids growing from the walls would convince the others, and
there was strength to be found in numbers. Together, the four of them
would swim together, or sink alone, until whatever agency had inflicted
this nightmare upon them grew weary of their sport.
Becky leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes.
Violet orchids growing from the walls? She smiled, thinking of vines
covering the walls and moonlight glowing upon masses of flowers along the
window sill.
She opened her eyes after a time.
Nothing.
Why?
Because the dog had been a real possibility. Orchids
growing from stone were just too incredible. She needed something
farfetched to jolt Rick Kaiser from his complacency, but she was suffering
a credibility gap of her own.
She tried another tactic.
She kept her eyes closed and did away with the walls
entirely. She imagined herself back in the jungle where it had all
started. In her imagination, she had only to intensify the moonlight and
get rid of a few trees, and the orchids would grow profusely. If she
tried, she could even imagine their delicate aroma.
Time passed. And a moment of partial consciousness.
Her eyes flew open. She staggered to catch her
balance, discovering herself on her feet rather than seated at a desk in
school. She stood in a clump of pale orchids bathed in moonlight, just as
she had imagined.
She took a shuddering breath of air. This was what
she had imagined. It wasn't quite what she wanted. Only when the
pounding of her heart subsided did she attempt to return to the classroom
and take her orchids with her.
Crickets chirped in the underbrush. Their annoying
chorus undermined her concentration. When she imagined the crickets
falling silent, her petty fears preyed upon the sudden silence. An animal
growled in the underbrush, something much more ominous than a harmless
house cat. In order to shake off the stalking predator, she had to bring
the volume of the crickets back up to a cheerful cacophony of noise.
Perhaps if she imagined this place in the jungle to
be near Armstrong High, then she could simply walk back to the school and
tap on the windows. That would surely convince Rick of the magical would
they inhabited.
And be locked outside? With the big white dog
roaming the school grounds?
She had to do something. She was getting scared.
Once her fears began to feed on the eerie darkness filled with carpets of
moonlit orchids, she would lose control of her fantasy. Even now a dim
yellow light shone among the trees. She had not put it there, at least
not on purpose.
A light in a window? A cottage in the wilderness?
She pushed through the orchids and stumbled onto a blacktop road.
Buildings on the horizon told her she wasn't at all far from town. The
blacktop went off in two directions. A driveway led the way up a hill to
the warm yellow light. As she had suspected, the light was a table lamp
in a window of a small house. An aged, stooped man passed as a dark
silhouette against the glow from inside.
Becky stopped, riveted to the spot by startled
surprise. She knew that bent figure. It was everything she had ever
feared in her young life and had all but obsessed her for as long as she
could remember. And still it had taken her by complete surprise.
The old man in the window was Mr. Peters. Too bad
her subconscious couldn't give her a break and come up with something more
original from time to time. Always it came back to this. Always back to
the panic of a child caught in the arms of a predatory adult.
She turned back to discover her way blocked by masses
of orchids. She let out a soft cry, half in surprise, half in
astonishment at the enigma. She had wanted orchids capable of growing out
of concrete, and capable of growing very quickly. Well, here they were,
quiet beauty exploding to life in the wrong place at the wrong time.
"Is someone out there?" Mr. Peters gravely voice
called into the darkness.
A screen door creaked open. Becky remained
absolutely still.
"What in blazes..."
Becky tried to outflank the flowers. Rick Kaiser the
football player would have appreciated the maneuver. The orchids puffed
up in front of her faster than she could run, cutting off one avenue of
escape, then another.
"Hey, little girl!" Mr. Peters called excitedly.
"Don't run away! I won't hurt you!"
And he wouldn't. He had never hurt her. In his own
mind, he was not an evil man.
He liked little girls.
Becky ran shrieking. She pushed through the orchids
and ducked through the underbrush at random. Mr. Peters was calling
somewhere behind her. Grimly, she felt certain he could never catch her
now.
Moonlight glimmered on a body of water off to her
right. The shimmer of light sent her reeling back in renewed terror.
Even her screams caught in her throat as she turned away and fled through
the woods a half mile from the summer camp where she had been told over
and over to never go into the woods alone. He was here, too, as the young
man chasing her through the trees.
She cut back through the woods and encountered a dark
building the size of a house. Dimly, she recognized it and circled around
back to slip through an unlocked door. She hurried along dark walls in
empty rooms, pushing through one door after another.
She had been here before. She knew where to hide.
She slipped through one final door into a cramped space and closed it
behind her.
Now, she was safe.
She sat trembling against the back wall, desperately
sucking air and hoping her poor overburdened heart wouldn't burst.
The door flew open. A massive shape loomed above
her. Directly overhead, a dim, low watt bulb clicked on in the closet of
the Day Dreams Child Care Center.
Mr. Peters leaned over her, grinning maniacally.
Overjoyed, a thin-lipped mouth filled with stained teeth opened wide. He
reached for her with gnarled hands, like the claws of a cannibal witch.
"China doll. What are you doing here? Come to Mr.
Peters, child. Mr. Peters likes little girls..."
Becky Marple started screaming and dared never to
stop. All around her, the lavender orchids pressed in close, filling her
lungs with their stifling aroma.
