#intenseopening

Tuesday, May 5, 1983 — Sumter, South Carolina

An elementary teacher for thirty-one years, Beatrice Daugherty believed two things: One, first grade teachers should not have a favorite student. Two, she had a favorite student. It was little Jeremy Mailer.

“Mrs. Daugherty, Mrs. Daugherty!”

As usual, it was Tara the Tattler breaking the classroom rule against speaking while the teacher was either absent from the room or had her back turned. Tara’s high, whiny voice carried through the room as usual.

At the blackboard, Mrs. Daugherty chose to ignore the child. With only a month left in the school year, if Tara hadn’t learned that rules applied to her, there wasn’t much point in beating a dead horse, as the saying went.

With a posture so impeccably straight it could shame a yardstick, Beatrice Daugherty kept sketching a cat, a mouse, and a doghouse. She used bold, sweeping strokes and four different colors of chalk. It was one of her funner lessons, one she’d been giving for years—on things that belonged and things that did not. Once the main characters were complete, she added a piece of cheese, an Easter bonnet, a kazoo.

Mrs. Daugherty was slim—almost painfully so—and as she worked, the hem of her purple-flowered dress swayed against her knees, reminding some of her students of the brass bell she rang three times a day to signal the end of recess. Her left hand clutched a crumpled tissue, curled behind the small of her back. Her salt-and-pepper hair was tied in a terse bun. Were she ever to let it down, it was doubtful any of her students would recognize her.

“Mrs. Daugherty!”

This time the plea carried genuine fear, and it wasn’t Tara speaking. It came from Gerald, a chunky little boy who spoke so seldom that Beatrice barely recognized his voice.

“There’s something wrong with the new kid,” Gerald went on, sounding almost surprised at his own boldness.

“He’s not new,” Glenna hissed. “He’s been here since Christmas.”

Beatrice paused, set the chalk on the tray, and turned. In the small cotton-farming community of Sumter, these children had gone to preschool, kindergarten, and first grade together. By “new kid,” they meant Jeremy.

At first, she’d been skeptical about accepting him. For the first half of the school year, his parents had tried homeschooling. Then they recanted—not because it was hard work, but because they realized there were things he wasn’t getting. Things like learning how to make friends. Another concern had been Jeremy’s size. Runt wasn’t quite the word, but he was smaller than most of the kindergartners.

What the boy lacked in size, he made up for in grit, determination, and healthy doses of old-fashioned optimism. His reading was well beyond grade level. Twice a week when the class went to the library, Jeremy was the only one brave enough to choose a chapter book. In her experience, that alone made him rare.

His spot in class was the front row, dead center, and instinctively her eyes swung that way.

But it wasn’t Jeremy sitting there now.

Whoever—whatever sat in his chair flooded her with revulsion.

It wore Jeremy’s white shirt with the broad flat collar, but it was soaked through, dripping as if he’d just climbed out of a swimming pool. His hair—short, crew-cut bristles of white—was drenched too, rivulets running down his forehead and neck.

His head was turned away. His arms hung slack at his sides. He could have been a mannequin. Nothing about him moved.

“Jeremy? Sweetheart?” Her voice wavered. Cold spider-legs of dread skittered up her spine.

Jeremy heard her. He was a good boy—or at least he tried to be—and when adults spoke to good boys, it was polite to look at them. So he began to turn his head.

But why was it so difficult? Why did it hurt?

Oh. He knew. Carl sat behind him. Carl was what Mrs. Daugherty called a prankster. Sometimes Carl leaned forward and grabbed Jeremy’s ears. Jeremy didn’t like it, but Carl didn’t have other friends. And a person couldn’t be happy without friends.

Jeremy bit down and tried harder.

Finally, he got his head to turn.

Why was it suddenly so cold?

For the rest of her life, Beatrice would swear she heard the tendons inside Jeremy’s neck wrench and snap, like someone twisting the head off a desiccated mummy. She clamped a hand over her mouth.

This—this thing—no longer had the tender face of a little boy. Not anymore. His skin was translucent and crisscrossed by deep purple, pulsing veins—or were they cracks?

Then Jeremy’s eyes found her.

They were wide. Unblinking. The color of watered-down bleach. But worse than the color was the focus.

Whatever those eyes were fixed on, it wasn’t in this world.

No recognition. No confusion. Just that awful, vacant stillness. As if he were staring through her into something far away.

Then he smiled— and buckled forward.

Hard.

His face smashed into the wooden desktop with a sickening crack. For one stunned second, he didn’t move. The class gasped.

Then, just as suddenly, he sat upright and smiled the odd, bashful grin of a little boy who had just farted in front of everyone.

Blood poured from his nose, spraying with each exhale, streaming down his upper lip and soaking his shirt. His eyes rolled. He gave a shaky inhale.

That’s when the screaming started.

Chairs toppled. Children cried out and scattered. One slipped in the panic. A boy tripped over a backpack, hit the floor, and kept crawling. Somewhere, someone sobbed Jeremy’s name. Another just shrieked over and over.

But Beatrice’s eyes stayed locked on him.

He was swaying.

Unstable. Loose. About to fall sideways.

And if he did, he’d crack his head wide open on the tile.

She didn’t think. She didn’t plan. She moved—diving like a ballplayer stealing home, terrified she’d be too late.

She caught him just as he pitched sideways out of the chair.

His body collapsed into her arms—boneless, cold, and too light. His head lolled back, blood smearing across her blouse.

“Jeremy,” she gasped, arms trembling as she cradled him. “I got you, sweetheart. I got you.”