Horror - Novelette

This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and any similarities to actual persons, locations, or events is coincidental. This work cannot be used to train artificial intelligence programs.  No AI tools were used in the writing of this story.

All rights reserved. David Copyright © Eddie Generous 2026

DAVID

The second hand of the huge wall clock hanging behind the vacated seat of the lifeguard stand rolls between 2:09 and 2:10. A public pool, nine boys in attendance, a single teacher in training currently on placement, and what seems like miles of silence.

A pump chugs to life.

Cheryl, the teacher in training and active lifeguard, stares down at her chubby knees, looking anywhere but at the boy before her or the boys in the semi-circle around them. Her hands press into her uneven skin, nails painted cerulean blue, but chipped and grown enough to feature a pink border.

Nobody knows what to do. The real teacher has stepped away to check on the non-swimming students in the viewing area above, where they sit at desks and ready reports on the history of Canada’s Olympic swim teams—each given a different range of years to avoid cheating.

Poolside, one boy is away from the others, his WWJD bracelet gleaming, wet though much of the rest of him has already dried. Clumsy bowl-cut hair matted tight to his scalp. Short green swim trunks snugged to his body. It’s those trunks he last saw before he closed his eyes, frozen in terror and embarrassment.

They’d been practicing CPR when Cheryl picked this boy to assist her. His name, David Hallman. She’d positioned him flat no more than five feet away from where the others sat, and sit, cross-legged on the deck of the Hobson Regional Pool. Practiced motions, Cheryl reached a point where her breasts, hidden behind a reasonable, red, one-piece bathing suit, pressed against David’s left arm while she pretended to listen for his breath.

“When you don’t—” she’d begun and stopped, jerking her body backwards to look at David’s erection sticking straight up from his clung tight shorts.

Four seconds past 2:10, one of the students, Kirk Donaldson, says, “Christ, man.”

That breaks the spell over David’s body and he scrambles to the change room. After a few moments with his thoughts, fists slamming the sides of his head, he hears the lesson continue.

A few minutes after that, Mr. Davis enters and sits down on the island bench parked in the center of the change room. “David. How are you?” His voice booms. He is a big man, played on the Hamilton Tiger-Cats’ practice team for two seasons while in college before he came to the conclusion that he’d never make the cut. Though never lost the near-linebacker physique.

David turns his head to his wrist and spins the beads on the leather WWJD bracelet he wears.

“It’s perfectly normal. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

Still, the student can’t face the teacher.

Mr. Davis breathes heavily in the quiet of the room. Time passes in decades under that pressure, but eventually the big man stands. “Do you want me to call someone? Your parents maybe?”

At this, David looks up, sucking in a deep breath before saying, “No, sir.”

—

The boys in his gym class said nothing, most likely Mr. Davis had given them the talk. Though David had to opt out of sex-ed. classes at his parents’ orders, he knows about erections, and what the general population thinks acceptable to do about them.

David is from the small town of Denton and has to ride a bus over to Hobson every day for high school. Thirty-three other high schoolers also ride the Denton-Hobson bus. Denton is a one light, one restaurant, one veneer plant town.

The students on the bus do not have to worry about Mr. Davis.

“What’s this?” Stacy Visser asks. A boy who’d had to drop out for three semesters and was currently the eldest student at Hobson Heights Secondary. He has a licence and a car, but gas is expensive and the driver has no qualms about him riding despite being two months from twenty. “What’s going on?”

“Hallman tried to put his pecker in the teachers’ college chick.” Debra Hines speaks with glee as many of the students chant HARD-ON, HARD-ON, HARD-ON!

Stacy sits at the back of the medium-sized bus and looks up to the middle section. “He did what now?”

Pete Williams shouts, “She was doing CPR on him and he was so horny he pulled his dick out and tried to—!”

“Bullshit.” Stacy continues to look forward at the boy staring out the window as if he doesn’t hear a word of the chants around him.

HARD-ON, HARD-ON, HARD-ON!

“Is bullshit, but he got a stiffy when the teachers’ college chick leaned over him.” Wayne London smokes cigarettes under a tree at the side of the school. So does Chet Newman. Chet Newman was in Mr. Davis’ twelfth grade boys’ gym class that afternoon, spilled all the beans.

Stacy shakes his head. A year and a half out in the real world laboring was enough to tell him he had to go back and finish high school, it was also enough to give him some perspective. He gets to his feet, making eye contact with the bus driver in the rearview mirror—the old man’s lips move, hard-on, hard-on. Stacy says under his breath, “Always the God-boys who fuck up so royally.” He makes his way to David Hallman’s seat.

David turns and sneers.

Someone yells above the chants, “Did you cum on her?”

Stacy gives David an elbow. Friendly. Gentle. “Why don’t you go back and punch one of those shitheads. It’ll shut ‘em up.”

HARD-ON, HARD-ON, HARD-ON!

“Do not repay evil with evil, or insult with insult.” David has turned his head back to the window but speaks plenty loud enough for Stacy to catch it.

“You kidding? They already ride you. Go pop one of them. Get off your high horse and get dirty for once.” Stacy isn’t trying to start a fight, in fact, he’s fairly certain his presence near David is good enough to insure little to no retaliation.

“Do not plot harm against your neighbor. I’m the sinner. The sin comes from within.”

HARD-ON, HARD-ON, HARD-ON!

Stacy’s eyes scrunch at this. “Man, listen to them.”

David taps his WWJD bracelet.

“Y’all Christians, it’s like you’re asking for it.”

David taps again.

“Okay, but is Jesus here right now taking any of this shit for you?” At that, Stacy gets up.

HARD-ON, HARD-ON, HARD-ON!

—

From the documentary The Last Days of David Hallman

Rachael Watson sits in a recliner, a cigarette between the index and middle fingers of her right hand. She wears a jangling bracelet and two silver rings. Wears a long dress, a rainbow of colors. She is thin and her light brown hair stretches down to the middle of her back. Forgettable face, features gentle, and eyes small and dull.

“I don’t know. She joked, like, about how she couldn’t get a good guy, but she could get little boys hard. I think it embarrassed her. Well, like, I know the David kid’s boner embarrassed her, but I think her bad luck with guys embarrassed her.”

“Did she—?” a male voice off camera begins.

“Like it wasn’t that she was bad with guys. It was all the acne and she had fat legs and real big hips. Shaped like someone’s mother, you know?”

“Did—?”

“Not like that meant she deserved it. But, like, okay, I had a dream once that I was in that gym class and Cheryl saw that kid’s boner and started to jerk him off. It wasn’t sexual to see, like, it was giving him medicine and it meant nobody had to die.”

“Did she say anything else about the gym class, about David before that day?” The voice off camera belongs to the filmmaker, a man from south of the border, chasing a story that had already been covered by every news outlet and a big CTV exposé.

“No. Why would she? We went out for drinks. She met us in Guelph and spent the weekend. That was, like, ten days after the boner thing. She was super serious about becoming a gym teacher. I don’t know.”

—

David’s eyes close, head downturned to his hands, trying to pray while his father says grace over a table of plain chicken breasts, green beans, mashed potatoes, and homemade white buns. Like mud to white sneakers, David can’t get Cheryl’s breasts out of his head, can’t shake the rounded V of her swimsuit and the heat that seemed to emanate over his knee as she touched him.

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

David gasps but manages to say, “Amen.”

“How was swimming?” David’s father is a scrawny man with small, strong hands. His face is what David’s face will look like someday. He works at the recycling center out of town six kilometers. It’s government funded and takes only one man, as only those living in Denton and the farm county to the north use the facility.

David shrugs his shoulders at the question, but also has to speak because only God can hear what goes on in a head. “Guess it was okay. We did CPR stuff, with rubber dolls.”

David’s father tilts his head. His name is Luke. The blue light in the fixture over the table glints off the gold crucifix hanging between the open buttons of his flannel shirt. “Got you playing with dolls?”

“Not really. Just abdomens and heads.”

“I’ve seen those on TV,” Mary Hallman says. She doesn’t work because a woman’s place is in the home. Instead, she keeps a spotless house and lets Prayer TV play all day while she minds her duties, or knits, or simply sits to watch. “On a Haiti mission. They were teaching some of the young locals to save themselves.”

This assuages Luke. If it happened on Prayer TV, it was probably okay at school. He’d agreed to let David join the swimming portion of the class because it was boys only. “Anything else happen?”

David knows his father expects constant heathenism from classmates, but he can’t bring himself to tell the man he was so right and much more. Even if they make fun of him, spit wads of paper at him, punch him, and chant HARD-ON at him, he needs them, needs the normalcy of leaving the house, being one of the crowd.

“Not really,” he says.

“Better school than the ones in America. I see them on TV. They try so hard to put the Lord in the lives of those children and still they show up with guns. It’s so sad, if they’d only see His light.” Mary sips from a glass of water. She doesn’t speak all day and sometimes she can’t help but ramble at the dinner table.

David finishes right behind his father, it’s always the way. Luke stands then David stands, usually. Today, David remains seated, eyes closed trying to think about things that are not the curves of the young teacher in training. His hair still smells like chlorine and his mind is stuck.

Mary stands to begin bussing the table. Luke pats David as he walks by toward the living room and David calculates his best chance at two backs turned. He springs from his seat and swings a hand down his pants in a practiced motion. Erection pinned beneath his waistband, he steps off slowly.

“I still smell like the pool. I’m going to take a shower.”

Neither parent cares. Mary has the tap running, but that won’t affect the shower David plans on taking.

Naked, standing before the sliding bathtub door, water running, he puts his hand on his cock and prays. “God, I need strength. God, let this go away.” He squeezes tight as he can. “God, help me be worthy of you. God, help me or take me away like you took Mark.”

God isn’t moving the blood so David steps into the shower. It’s so cold his breath catches in his throat.

—

Hobson Post, June 29 2014

Obituary

Mark John Hallman, 12, has passed in his sleep in his home. He is survived by his mother Mary, father Luke, and twin brother David Hallman.

The family asks for privacy and respect at this difficult time.

Visitation will be held July 2 at noon to 2:00 PM at Sheffield Family Funeral Home. A private funeral service will be held July 3 at the Grace Greens Cemetery.

—

The grunting down the hall stirs Luke from one of two single beds in the master bedroom. Barefoot and somewhere between worried and annoyed, he stomps to the room that used to belong to his sons, but now only belongs to his son. The door is open—as are the rules.

A warm night, the boy sleeps with only a bedsheet over him. His moaning becomes panting.

The flicked light switch sends a message to the bulb and a pale glow illuminates.

“David.”

The boy starts shivering, then convulses three times before opening his eyes wide.

Luke sees and understands. With a single yank, the sheet is gone, revealing semen soaked pajama pants.

“Get up.”

David’s mouth trembles. “I-I-I.”

“Flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love, and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Now repent!”

Mary has joined and stands in the doorway, looking in disgust and fascination at her son.

David sits up. “I didn’t… It just happened, it’s not my fault! Just happened. A wet dream…Mark used to get them too!”

“And look where he is now.” Luke grabs onto David’s shoulder and pinches. “Strip out of those soiled clothes.”

He does as told, his sticky penis shrinking rapidly. “It’s not my fault. It’s called a wet dream. It’s called nocturnal emissions. It happens to everyone.”

“Is this what they teach you in school.” Mary seethes this statement, for it is a statement and not a question.

“No…it was on TV.”

Luke has directed David to his dresser, fingers still clenched. “No, your work pants.” David has clean pajama bottoms in hand. “You will spend the night in the shed and work until Jesus reveals Himself to you.”

“But it’s not my fault!”

“Arguing now too? Honor thy father. Repent!”

The shed stinks and flies buzz so loudly it’s like being shrunk and stashed inside a beehive. Across the yard, thirty-eight feet from the backdoor and four feet from the bush and swamp that belong to the town, the shed is a sixteen-by-sixteen box. It has a single roll-up door, a hanging lightbulb, a manual can crushing device that works on an arm and lever system, and an empty stand where duel plastic bags can be fitted and filled.

On a non-permanent basis, the open space of the shed is filled with cans Luke rescues from the recycling plant as well as from the racetrack south of Hobson. Every Sunday before church during stock car race season, he goes out to the track and picks up all the cans below the grandstands. He does not take David because it is a man’s business to provide for his family.

The collected cans enter the shed and wait until it is time to remind a child of his duty to God. Several months have passed since David was last in trouble, so the cans reach like a hill all the way to the ceiling of the far side of the shed. To walk, one must kick, as if trudging through autumn maple leaves.

The floor clanks and rustles, the already loud flies increase their sugar and alcohol drunk fervor. David looks over his shoulder to his father standing at the backdoor of the home. He then shuffles further inside and hits the light.

After loading two empty bags into the frame, he picks up a Pepsi can and crunches it into a disc. He drops it into the bag on the left. Picks up a Hires can and does it all over. Picks up a Budweiser can, says, “One,” crushes it and drops it into the bag on the right. Beer cans have a higher refund.

The sun is up and he can only see the eyes of the mural of Jesus hanging on the cross behind the wall of cans when his mother comes out. “You will continue tonight. School time now.”

—

The words in fat black Sharpie on the face of his locker read, HARD COCK DAVE. David pretends to ignore it, opens his locker, surrounded by sniggers. A bro walking by says something about the size of David’s penis. Until then, he hadn’t thought much about the size. His brother had an identical penis and most of the boys in the change room cover up.

Until then, he did what he could to think about anything else. Penises were part of sex and sex was a road sign on the way to hell. His grandmother told him that.

Books transferred from backpack to shelf, David starts off to his classroom. From his left, moaning rises above the din of the hall full of teenagers. It grows louder and closer.

“Uh-uh-uh, Jesusfuckingchrist!”

David keeps his face forward.

Something soft and wet and sticky lands on his cheek. He jerks away and turns into the canister of Silly String pointed at him. Simon. A boy from the bus, same grade, but smaller.

Most times, a remembered Bible verse comes to mind the second before reacting—a life of training—but not this time. David’s math text and binder of lined paper fall to the floor. Two pens and a pencil skitter free of the binder upon impact.

Fist balled, David swings at the smaller Simon, striking him on the shoulder. The boys drop, hands slapping upon landing. The voices change, growing excited with the heat of action. David begins wheezing and half-screaming like a deranged monkey, an evolutionary throwback he’d undoubtedly refuse to admit possible.

The sounds seem to erupt from his throat and he spins, unable to control himself. Hands come down on his shoulders. Taut and ripping, breaking point in the rearview mirror, David rotates and swings his little fist into the forehead of Mrs. Robinson, the school’s music teacher.

Her face rocks back and then comes forward, scowling.

The hall goes silent but for David’s lessening howl.

His head hangs and he moves along with Mrs. Robinson’s quick pace. Simon watches them go by from his spot on the floor, vindicated.

—

CTV’s W5, June 30, 2018

“How was I supposed to know? They’re books, there should be no rules on what is or isn’t available because someone’s sick.” The librarian agreed to be recorded, but was at work and filming is not prohibited in the Hobson Library.

“The books David Hallman had were on loan from this location and given what happened—” The reporter’s name is Sasha Birk and she’s driven two hundred kilometers from Toronto, interviewed nine people, and so far has come up with almost nothing.

“He never actually took out books, so get your facts straight. And are you seriously suggesting that what happened was a result of Satanism or the occult, and not of a planned attack made to mimic the supernatural?”

“There were no incendiary devices found on the field and according to experts, the fissures are completely inexplicable given the terrain and seismic inactivity.”

The librarian laughs—clipped. “You’re talking to the wrong damned person if you’re looking for someone to help quantify a theory about a supernatural incident.”

—

David apologizes to Mrs. Robinson. She didn’t know the story before, but after the principal explained in quick whispers just outside the office, she seems sorry at all to have broken up the fight. Forgives the strike—hadn’t hurt anyway.

David still has Silly String in his ear, hair, and eyebrow. His eyes remain pinned to his hands. Once the teacher departs, the principal gets down to it.

“I know your father. Went to school with him.”

David lifts his head and looks at the man who appears much older than what his words suggest. Bald up the middle, soft everywhere, wrinkles around his eyes and mouth. Oxford shirt with a black and red tie. Gold watch, ring, and cufflinks.

“Things can’t be easy with trouble… I mean with the… I have to punish you. Zero tolerance, but I get it. You’re seventeen. Old enough to take responsibility. Old enough that an in-school suspension is absurd.”

David looks at the man, mostly sees the impending disappointment in his parents and the life of can crushing that will consume him for weeks to come.

“There’s no reason for things to get any hard—I mean, more difficult for you. How about you take the bus and once you get here, you go to a park or something for the day? A three-day vacation, sort of. I don’t see any reason to tell your parents and I don’t see any reason you need to hang out in the suspension room.”

The principal stands behind his desk, sending his padded chair rolling toward a long filing cabinet that reaches about four feet high. David waits for the sound of a castor touching steel, but it never comes as the chair stops short. As if trained and perfected.

From his locker to the door, the principal follows David. “You have money for lunch?”

“My mom packs my lunch.”

The principal nods. “Of course she does. Have a good day.”

David watches the heavy old door slide closed like a slow breath and stares at the chipped blue paint, trying to understand how it all fits together. It makes him want to go to church, but his church is in Denton. Instead, he walks until he comes to a bench.

The bench faces the quiet end of the main drag where cars and trucks pick up pace to continue along the highway. Old people and mothers with small children dot the sidewalks, most have their noses in cellphones. David does not have a phone—electronics are the first step to being marked by the beast—so he sits and watches, praying for forgiveness for his erection, for his wet dream, and for the violence. It is almost three when he realizes that sitting on a bench all day probably adds sloth to his sin checklist.

—

“Shut up already!” Stacy was on his way to the back as the first ones on the bus began chanting HARD-ON! HARD-ON! Rather than go all the way, Stacy drops into the vacant seat behind David’s assigned seat. David tosses his bag and falls onto the cushioning vinyl bench. “I saw you cutting today. Heard you punched the music teacher.”

“Wasn’t cutting, the principal said I had to be away from school, but I could still come in on the bus. Violence was a mistake.”

“Sometimes you gotta punch someone. Did they give you—?”

“Violence is a sin.”

Stacy smirks, huffs, grips the seat, his scuffed knuckles on either side of David’s turned head. “Stupid. Putting up with harassment is more like a sin. You Christians get so high and mighty…maybe if you let yourself live now and then you wouldn’t be such a target. I’m telling you man, no gods but bad ones want a kid to suffer.”

“There’s only one God.”

Stacy ruffles David’s hair as he gets up, a little rougher than affectionately. “If God didn’t want people fighting, he wouldn’t have made his followers so fucking punchable.”

—

Supernatural America, Episode 9: David Hallman

“You kidding me? The cops asked me all kinds of shit. I guess some of the younger kids on the bus saw me talking to him. Man, I hate talking to cops.”

“Is that because you did something or knew something?” Tamara O’Neil had chased a lead into Canada once before for another show. It turned out bad, but the story was great. Worth the risk. If any more of these stories in the supposed peaceful Great White North are good, she might have enough to do a monthly special. Call it something like Canada: Polite and Dangerous.

Stacy exhales on screen, annoyed. He’s spoken to dozens of people about how he isn’t one of the dead, despite seeing David the afternoon all the shit went down. “No, no matter how it sounds to you, the cops believed me because it’s the truth. I didn’t go to the ceremony because it’s bullshit. They mailed me my diploma, eventually, and it’s not like anybody was going to show up and watch my overage ass graduate from high school. I didn’t go because I was past the point of becoming a fucking butterfly and spreading my goddamned wings. It was just a weird coincidence that I met up with David Hallman before he did what he did…however the fuck he did it.”

“And how do you think he did it? Was he carrying a bag or any devices with him when you saw him?” Tamara O’Neil has plans for this footage, thinking even as she Skypes this man, she’ll intersperse video clips she recorded from her visit and stills of the massacre, Stacy’s voice in the background.

“He had nothing important. As far as how I think he did it… Wait, let me put it this way; those WWJD bracelet-wearing types seem to wear big old bull’s eyes on them, bright as a fucking lighthouse beam on a clear night. Jerks get them, bullies get them, and maybe something else can get to them. Maybe that he was so devout made him a juicier target for something else.”

“What do you mean something else?”

Stacy offers a so be it a look and a headshake. “I’ve seen your shows, you know exactly what I mean.”

—

A little after 4:00 AM, the pale blue eyes of Jesus Christ watch David crush cans. At 4:30 AM, Jesus calls to David with his dead brother’s voice.

Too late and too exhausted. David curls against the garbage bags of already crushed cans and lets himself drift away, trying not to listen.

—

Hobson Post, June 27, 2018

Join us as we again congratulate the Hobson Heights Secondary School graduating class of 2018. The official ceremony is scheduled for this Friday, June 29, 2018 at 6:00 PM on the Trojans’ football field. If raining, the events will take place inside the school’s gymnasium…

—

David stares straight ahead as he walks. He doesn’t dare look to his left where Jesus walks next to him, wearing the visage of his dead brother Mark. The final day of the unofficial suspension finally mixes the boredom and the stress of guilt with the long nights spent in the shed into a semi-controlling concoction.

“Oh, you don’t need a library card if you don’t take anything out.” The librarian is a nice woman, somewhere in her thirties on her way to her sixties—hair in a bun, pencil through that bun, big glasses with a red string strung to the arms, blouse baggy, trousers a little baggy as well, shoes that look so comfortable even a nun might find them too modest in design. “You’re a senior? Doing a project?”

Jesus says, That’s correct.

David says, “That’s correct.”

“You know, you can get a card even though you live in Denton.”

David has already begun to move towards a catalogue computer. He’s never been so uncomfortable searching something. Even the time his computer lab partner tried to show him a pornography website that wouldn’t trigger the school’s security systems wasn’t this off-putting.

It’s okay. All of God’s creatures were created to serve the Lord. His plan involves the use of each and every one of them. You don’t think He makes mistakes, do you?

David shakes his head at Jesus’ words. Finds the section he seeks.

The day blows by as he reads from the two books featuring pertinent information and the thirteen website printouts. At 3:06 PM, he has to sprint back to school to catch the bus.

Three boys ask him about the state of his penis. A piggy girl named Roseanne reaches out and grabs his crotch. She laughs with two other girls and David scurries to his seat, erection quickly mounting.

Stacy drops onto the vinyl bench behind him. “That was sexual harassment. You could get her in shit for that.”

David shrugs and peers out the window. Jesus has gone off, thankfully. However, David had to promise to do as the Lord asked of him in order to get Him to leave.

“I bet you’ll be glad when you’re done with this shit, huh? I know I will be.”

“I saw you at the library, you jerking off to the National Geographic tits?” The voice comes from the front. The bus driver hears it and smiles as he looks in the mirror, pulling away from the curb.

David’s cheeks flush.

“Christ, man. Stand up for yourself.” Stacy rises and moves to his seat.

—

“All right, pens to paper, folks.” Mr. Davis is at the front of the gymnasium. Three classes have exams together on the basketball court, in lines of six rows of desks more than double the age of the eldest student. “Twelve Geography, you have two hours. Ten Math, two hours, textbooks and notes permitted. Nine Civics, you have sixty minutes. No talking. No cellphones. Don’t make me remind you.” He adds the last part eyeing a ninth grader who has one hand in the pouch pocket of her hoodie, barely able to fight the urge.

David is there and for the first time in his life understands and recalls every topographical label, which are stalactites and which are stalagmites, knows the six different trade routes listed and who captained the vessels, knows where to put Cancer, where to put the Sudan, where to put the pencil to paper to score two shy of a perfect grade—Jesus instructed him that an imperfect exam was the wise way to go. Though nobody who knew him was apt to suggest he’d cheat. David’s sins are always accidents, or rather part of God’s mysterious will. Understanding why he’d embarrassed himself and withstood taunts is not important.

Most importantly, Jesus Christ and his dead brother Mark are one and proving themselves to him over and over. Questioning that perfect entity is no longer even a consideration.

After the exam, he visits the library one last time and prints nine more sheets at five cents per. Jesus inside Mark tells David where to go and what to find, and the lies to give the librarian.

“I’d never judge someone their research or reading materials, I’ll leave that to mothers and the panel judges of so-called CanLit.”

David nods, doesn’t know what the librarian means and does not care.

—

CTV’s W5, June 30, 2018

“The Lord took the wrong child when he took Mark.” Luke Hallman rubs his chin. “That’s not true. God has a plan, it’s not always for us to understand.”

Mary Hallman pipes up, leaning towards the camera, “Never for us to question.”

They sit in a cramped, dated, but immaculately clean living room with pale walls and thinned shag carpet. On two walls are Bible quotes done in cross-stitch:

Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen

The god of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelievers, to keep them from seeing the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ

Sasha Birk appears in the shot suddenly, nodding gently, not so much in agreement, more like in understanding. She then flips a page in a small black leather notebook and looks at Luke. “What do you think was on David’s mind? Why would he orchestrate such a ruse?”

Luke scrunches his face and sneers. “Ruse? He got the devil in him. Anyone can see that. People talking about bombs. What bombs? What bombs, come on? Weren’t nothing like that and David was the stupid one. He got the devil in him because some kids caught him…you know…saw his… You know the story, about the pool. I tried, I did. Made him do penance and he took cold showers and—”

Sasha stiffens, just in the foreground of the frame centered on Luke and Mary where they sit on a brown loveseat. “Are you talking about his erection? Are you suggesting you further frustrated the boy as he went through an especially—?”

“Don’t talk about that. Don’t you dare. David was not right with God and temptations of the flesh turned him away from the good.” Mary has folded her arms, righteous fire in her gaze.

“Did you know the other children teased him, called him,” she pauses and flips a page, as if she doesn’t recall, “hard-on?”

—

Stacy Visser taps his fingers on the outside panel of his 2006 Ford Focus wagon. A pipe burst at a job site the afternoon prior and gave him a Friday off. He is on his way to a rented cottage on Lorne Beach to meet with some friends. He hasn’t made it past the backside of the Welcome to Denton sign when he sees David Hallman’s skinny thumb pointed to the air.

David wears jeans and a backpack, his t-shirt tied around his head like he plans to cross the desert. Five or six hairs sprout from his deflated, milky chest.

“Never thought I’d see you hitchin’.” Stacy speaks through the open passenger’s side window as David leans in. He offers a sour expression. Stacy says, “What?”

“You’re not going to graduation, are you?”

Stacy snorts. “No, I’m going to the beach, hopefully hook up with girls in bikinis, drink some brews, see where the weekend takes me.”

David’s face changes and he swings his bag to in front of his chest and opens the car door. Stacy turns down the stereo further. They roll with Body Count pounding quietly in the background until David clears his throat.

“I’m glad you’re not going to graduation.”

Stacy catches a whiff of something awry. “Why?”

“Just good.”

“Hey, man. You’re not gonna go postal or something, right?”

David tilts his head quizzically.

“You don’t have a gun in that bag, right?”

“Oh. No.” David opens the bag and lets light shine on a black candle, a pencil case, a knife, a three-ring binder, and an empty water bottle.

“I’m genuinely surprised. You’re just, that type. I remember one other guy, like you, I mean he got shit from everyone. People called him Rotten Ronnie. One day Rotten Ronnie was walking down the street and he says ‘hey, Stacy, got a smoke?’ Right then I had this vision of Ronnie taking an oozy to school, like on Terry Fox Day when we’re all in the gym, and cutting us to shit. It was over in a snap. I reached into my pocket, pulled out the pack and said, ‘have two, save one for later.’ His face fucking glowed. ‘Hey, man, thanks, eh?’ he says and walks away.”

David has his face forward. “Then what?”

“Nothing. Ronnie graduated or dropped out. You know how it is, hell I dropped out, but I went back.”

“So your vision was false.”

Stacy taps the middle of his forehead. “Ah, but what if my good deed was enough to push him back from the murderous abyss. I mean, maybe he had a big American gun and a plan and a date set and everything.”

“Huh.”

“Yeah, huh.” Stacy pulls his cigarette pack from a gap beneath the stereo and presses the lighter next to the empty spot where car manufacturers used to put ashtrays. “You want a smoke?”

Jesus leans forward and whispers to David from the backseat. David says, “Sure, first time for everything.”

Stacy looks at David from the corner of his eye. “You want two?”

David shakes his head and accepts the lit and temporarily dry-lipped cigarette from Stacy. Inhaling is beyond his skillset and he puffs it like a cigar until they enter Hobson. Stacy pulls up to the curb in front of the school.

“See ya ‘round.”

“Maybe.” David says and yanks his t-shirt over his head as he walks towards the side entrance.

Out in the field are a platform and about two hundred white folding chairs. For some reason, Stacy wishes David had accepted the second cigarette; one is such a lonely fucking number.

—

In his robe, feet bare, David charges over the hot asphalt of the parking lot toward the stage. The principal reads out names and is well past Hallman alphabetically. It is sunny and muggy, many of the friends and relatives in the crowd wave paper fans before their faces.

This heat has been around for two weeks already and seems to be building towards a storm, though the consensus among TV and radio weather-people is that locals will have to bear the heat for a minimum of three more days before the sky breaks and drops refuge.

David is short of breath and sweating by the time he gets to the back of the line behind Todd Zajac. “You’re supposed to be up there, Hard-on.”

David nods slowly, the bottom row of his teeth forced in an irregular under bite while his wide eyes show pupils so dilated that black encroaches on the scleras. He keeps his hands hidden in the folds of the black robe.

“Rebecca Trottier.” The principal’s voice echoes onto the field, loud enough that only Todd Zajac hears David’s mumbling.

“Shut the fuck up, you freakshow,” Todd whispers over his shoulder. Todd was not in any of David’s classes, was a shop kid, wouldn’t have come, but his mother wants to see him in a robe and a stupid hat.

“Linda Turner.”

David continues mumbling in a tongue he does not know, repeating the sounds Jesus Christ says into his ear.

“Ken Ullick.”

“Cut it out, Hard-on, you goddamned wack job.”

“Stephanie Young.”

David’s glazed and starry eyes pass over the crowd. A purple thunderhead begins roiling free above the distant treetops.

“Loretta Yount.”

His feet move as if controlled by another. David is inside, and not long ago all these ideas seemed crazy and blasphemous and downright anti-Christian, but the more he’s come to understand the fullness of the Lord’s command, he’s come to accept that the Lord uses embarrassment and frustration and faith to put certain individuals in the perfect mind frame to do His bidding.

He also understands that God uses demons to contact His children on Earth. This was the most difficult fact to wrestle with, but David has succumbed.

“Todd Zajac.”

David and the principal occupy distant ends of the stage. Cheryl the teacher in training volunteered to help with grad and digs into the box of nine remaining faux-diplomas—the real papers would be mailed—looking for the one designated for David Hallman.

Some in the crowd speak to one another, most stay silent, watching the strange fidgety young boy mumbling to himself while his fingers jitter beneath the bulky sleeves of his robe.

David turns his head to look at the principal. The man has the proper coiled document and leans into the microphone.

“David…”

David’s mouth freezes, his hands do as well.

“Hallma—”

David’s arms come up and pull the robe buttons apart to let the silky material puddle around his skinny ankles. He is naked. On his chest are words and symbols, carved deep into the flesh. The blood trails down from these dark markings in streamers of red. A pentagram, a goat’s head, winding snakes, and three strings of six numbers and unusual symbols litter the once alabaster surface. His penis is erect, jutting from a mossy brown tuft. In his right hand is the fat black candle and in his left is the water bottle, not as empty as it looks. He begins snapping his teeth together. Blue sparks jump from between his lips.

The crowd stands. The purple and red clouds settle over the field. Nobody knows what to do. A handful are terrified. Most are irritated at this attention-seeking display.

David holds the candle forward.

“What in the heck are you—?” The principal is three steps away from reaching David when the young man’s other hand lifts and squeezes the gas from the bottle onto his face. The sparks light the fumes and flames envelope him, igniting the wick of the black candle.

The terrified onlookers begin making for the single gap in the chain-link perimeter around the field. Lightning dashes into the grass surrounding the chairs in nine brilliant strikes, sending the rest off in various directions. The first runners are only a few feet from the gap in the fence when the world shakes. A fissure opens, separating the field from the asphalt of the road and parking lot. David’s voice reaches a high wail as he swings around looking for Christ or his brother, or the demon he’d read about on all those printouts from the library.

“Crocell?” he rasps, flames reaching fiery fingers down his throat. “Cro-cell!”

From the fissure, a wave erupts, falling onto terrified attendees. Many are near the fence, are only ten feet away, certain they can scale it and… Rain begins falling so heavily and violently that it flattens all not standing on the platform.

The principal gawks in silent awe and David’s voice rises, somewhat. Suddenly he feels at home in his skin, suddenly every nerve ending is alive and thrumming, suddenly he sees the exploitations of his faith. “Forgive me, God!” he screams, sparks dancing from his D-I-Y teeth caps.

“What’s happening?” The principal stands at the very edge of the platform, his eyes turned sideways to David rather than on the battered and lifeless crowd or the vibrant nightmare sky. “What have you—?”

David’s form straightens, stiffens, hard all over. The wounds in his flesh begin to curl and as his blood works as an unnatural accelerant to the spread of flames. The floorboards of the platform snap and screws spin free. From dead center, three feet from David, six feet from the principal, a water gush like a fountain spray breaks upward, twisting and funnelling like a tornado. It works itself into another shape. The wide top is rounded and a face comes through the fluid. A mouth opens and engulfs David.

The principal staggers back and tries his luck against the heavier than heavy downpour. He makes it one step before the first massive drop cracks his shoulder and sends him sprawling. By the ninth hit, he is unconscious. Swelling to bursting, the principal’s flesh, like the flesh of the others in attendance, fails him. Fissures form in the taut skin, not so different from the growing gap making its way around the football field.

The flames dancing David’s body continue, despite the infinite moisture of the demon’s mouth. More lightning flashes. The bolts and the swirling water are the last things David sees before the mouth swallows the young man into its pit, deep, deep below the planetary crust.

Over the following three minutes, the rains cease and the immense cracks in the ground no longer split new surface. Every student and attending family member, including the sum of David’s twelfth grade gym class, lie dead on the field, many pounded just below the turf into muddy holes.

Every student but for David Hallman of course.

—

The Demon of Hansfield High, a limited location release by Boy Creature Films

“Coo athra, coo athra, coo athra, Satan compels you!” Danny Holinger (inspiration: David Hallman) wears a red graduation robe while the others wear black, flames shoot from his hands, and acid rain falls from the red sky, peeling classmates and onlookers. “Satan, command thine hands!”

As if throwing violent confetti, Danny Holinger swats at the people in the crowd—most who only just ceased chanting BO-NER! BO-NER! The ground begins to shake as lava spews forth, cutting people down with the heat. Close ups of bubbling flesh and sooty bones. Once all have fallen, Danny Holinger spreads his arms and bat-like wings jut from the undersides and somehow have attached to his abdomen. He soars above the massacre and out of the shot.

The credits roll and a remixed Sweet Dreams cover by Marilyn Manson pounds through the speakers.

Screen D has the smallest seating capacity and The Demon of Hansfield High has not been a great draw. Only one young man sits amongst the dozen rows of ten. A smile stretches across his face.

The credits finish and the lights brighten. A demon with a day pass moves the pliable and healthy flesh of the former David Hallman through the rows and towards the exit. Deep, deep down, a tiny urge pulls the demon and the demon has no interest in denial. Luke and Mary Hallman will see their boy. One. Last. Time.

XX