A Hideous Beauty (4 page)

My first sensation was cold tile against my cheek and the pungent odor of industrial floor detergent. It took several painful blinks before my eyes focused. I heard a moan. I think it came from me.

Memories like lost hitchhikers came straggling back. The high school assembly. The classroom. Myles Shepherd seated behind his desk, then morphing into a whirlwind. The shadow creatures, straining to get at me, clawing onto me.

I cried out and raised an arm to defend myself. But there was nothing in the corner. My hand flew to my chest. They weren't there either. My heart hammered. I was alone in the room.

I moved slowly, working my way into a sitting position. My head swam with the effort. I glanced around. Everything was in its place. The towers of books. Stacks of papers. The trophy. The file cabinet was yellow. All the books had their titles.

I turned toward the doorway. The classroom was as dark as the office. It was night.

Somehow I managed to get to my knees, then to my feet. I had to steady myself on the edge of the desk.

When I felt I could trust my legs again, I navigated a short distance away. My hand brushed my coat and tie. It hit something unexpected. I looked down.

Pinned to my tie was a square piece of pink notepad paper. I removed the pin. There wasn't enough light to read it, so I found the light switch and flipped it on. Fluorescents flickered, then burst to life. Light poked me rudely in the eyes. After several moments I gave the note another try—

Grant,

Let yourself out. Don't forget to lock up.

          M.S.

Staggering between rows of chairs, I made my way out the classroom door and stumbled into the night air.

The world smelled disgusting. Rancid. Like a pair of dirty gym socks. Wrinkling my nose, I glanced around. The spring grass was muddy green. The stars were depressingly dim. The air tasted greasy. It was all I could do to keep from retching.

An annoying
squeak, squeak, squeak
pricked my ears as a potbellied janitor appeared pushing a mop pail. When he saw me, he started. “Hey! What's goin' on here?” he cried.

He looked repulsive. Flesh hung from his jowls and arms like algae on a shipwreck. His voice was a parrot's squawk.

“It's all right,” I croaked, my throat as dry as parchment. “I was here earlier. Just came back for my car.” I motioned feebly toward the parking lot.

“Are you drunk?”

Without answering him, I started toward the parking lot.
The janitor watched my unsteady progress with a suspicious squint.

I was relieved to find my rental car still in the lot. As I unlocked the door I pacified myself with the thought that while Myles Shepherd may have won the battle, I had landed the last blow.

I didn't lock up.

CHAPTER
2

T
he grass crunched like sour milk cartons beneath my feet. Imagine traversing a landfill that stretches from horizon to horizon, where everything you touch is filthy, with a slimy film to it, and you have an idea of what it was like for me to get to my car.

Climbing into the rental—a luxury-edition sedan with barely thirty-seven miles on the odometer—was like crawling into a garbage Dumpster. Windows up. Windows down. It didn't matter. The odors were suffocating.

I contributed to the stench. My flesh reeked. Not from lack of hygiene, mind you. I shower daily. My body had the odor of a carnivore. My skin was permeated with the stench of the dead flesh I'd consumed earlier—prime rib the night before, sausage for breakfast. Every time my hands came close to my face I winced. Each nauseating waft of decayed meat reminded me how pure, clear, and clean was the radiant presence in Shepherd's office.

But I couldn't think of that now. I had to warn the president
about whatever or whoever attacked me in Myles Shepherd's office. Though I still hadn't figured out what I was going to say—“Hello, Mr. President? Be on the lookout for a high school teacher who can dazzle you, then suck the life from you”—I felt an urgency to warn him. Whatever it was in that office, the power was incredible.

Another word came to mind. I didn't want to use it. It wasn't a word you used around educated folk, the kind who walked the halls of Washington, D.C. But something
supernatural
had taken place in that office. Whether I wanted to admit it or not.

Two a.m. I made my first call to Chief of Staff Harold Ingraham's direct line while sitting in the car in the parking lot. With the three-hour time difference, it was five o'clock in Washington. Ingraham should have answered. He didn't.

It didn't make sense. I knew he was there. The man was always in his office at five. He was proverbially punctual. The joke on the Hill was that the Naval Observatory set their atomic clocks by him.

Three a.m. After an hour of failed attempts to reach Ingraham, I called Christina. As I waited for her to pick up I could see her in my mind's eye frantically pulling on clothes and shoes while juggling the phone and working her way to the front door of her apartment.

Frantic. It's the only mode Christina knows. Here is a woman who was born multitasking. She places phone calls between bites of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She doesn't sleep, she catnaps. And if rapid eye movement beneath closed lids is any clue, even then she's planning, arranging, prioritizing.

On the fourth ring Christina's answering service kicked in. I left a message.

At 3:10 a.m. I initiated a second round of calls with identical results. Ingraham, no answer. Christina, left message. This cycle continued every ten minutes.

At four a.m. I decided it was time for the big gun. Reaching into the inside pocket of my suit coat, which was draped over the back of the passenger seat, I located the number the president gave me at Camp David. He told me it was his family cell phone number. Fewer than a dozen people in the world had it. I was the only nonrelative.

How does one store the personal cell phone number of the president of the United States? I didn't want to risk keying it into my cell phone directory. Cell phones get lost and misplaced. I had visions of an insurance salesman finding my phone on an airplane and trying to sell the president a whole life policy. Neither did I feel comfortable recording his name and number in my scheduler, at least not under his own name. I resorted to using a code name.

My first thought was HH, for Head Honcho, but I settled on Doogie. It had been the president's nickname in elementary school. There weren't many people who knew that.

I punched the digits into my phone. My thumb paused over the send button.

What was I going to say when he answered?

I gave it a practice run.

Ummm . . . Mr. President? Grant Austin here. Sorry to bother you, but I'm out in California and I was chatting with a former high school buddy . . . well, he's not exactly a buddy, more like a rival . . . but anyway, he happened to mention that there was going to be an attempt to assassinate you and . . . well . . . sir . . . he says you know about it. Do you?

For several indecisive moments I stared at the send button trying desperately to think of nonlunatic phrases.

A moment of clarity dawned. This wasn't about me. Whether or not I came across as a lunatic wasn't the issue. The issue was national security. The issue was alerting the president regarding a threat to his life.

Immersed in a wave of patriotism, I pressed the send button. The connection was made. I heard ringing at the other end of the line without knowing where the other end of the line was. The residence? The Oval Office? Air Force One? Poolside for the president's morning swim?

Keep it simple and straightforward, I told myself. Alert the president to the facts. Save the details—the unbelievable details—for the Secret Service to laugh at.

Three sharp tones sounded. A recorded message kicked in informing me that the number I'd dialed had been disconnected or was no longer in service.

I was certain I'd dialed correctly. I checked the display against the number in my scheduler. They were identical.

Myles Shepherd's voice haunted me.
“And that cell phone number the president gave you at Camp David? Disconnected.”

How had he known?

Seven a.m. The first students began arriving at the high school. Through tired eyes I watched as they drove into the senior parking lot. I recognized their kind. Overachievers. I could see it in their stride. School couldn't start early enough for them. A new day was another chance to shine, another day to add more flowery kudos to their already burgeoning bouquet. They were the student government leaders, the newspaper editors, the club presidents. The elite.

I never counted myself among them, though I associated with them. Even now I continue to work with them. Washington, D.C., is populated by a national roll call of valedictorians, every one of them determined to prove themselves.

Christina is one of them. Graduated top of her class at Midland High in Odessa, Texas, with a repeat performance at the University of Texas as a political science major.

Why hadn't she returned my calls?

I dialed again, having lost track of the number of messages I'd left on her answering machines, both cell and office.

“You've reached the desk of Christina Kraft, aide to Chief of Staff Ingraham. Leave a brief message and a number where you can be reached. I'll return your call at the earliest opportunity.”

Straining to keep the frustration from my voice I left another message. “Christina . . . Grant. What's going on? I can't stress how urgent it is I talk to you. This isn't a personal call. Call me back . . . please.”

A motorcycle blasted past me with an earsplitting roar, drowning out the last of my message. I repeated it.

As the sun broke over the mountains, I squinted against its glare. The flow of arriving students was increasing. I watched as broods of them—looking like Eloi marching blandly to their doom—filtered between rows of cars heading for their homerooms. That is, if they still had homerooms like we did in my day.

A breeze swept through the car. It didn't stink. I was acclimating to the odor of this world. In exchange, the memory of my brush with glory was dimming.

What hadn't dimmed yet was the terror I felt when I was curled up on the floor.

I am Semyaza. Tremble before me.

Reaching for the door latch, I got out of the car. Like it or not, I had to face the fear. I had to go back to that classroom. I had to know if what I'd experienced was real.

I waited ten minutes after the buzzer for the hallways to clear, wanting to avoid the stir of odors of so many bodies, some of them pungent under normal circumstances. The reason for my delay was more than just personal comfort. I didn't want to risk
retching in front of the entire student body. The run-in with the pole yesterday was enough embarrassment for one visit.

Passing open classroom doors, I heard the familiar sounds of another school day—attendance-taking, calls for reports and homework assignments to be passed to the front of the room, chatter across the aisles.

The door to Myles Shepherd's classroom was closed. I risked peeking inside the window.

At the front of the class a middle-aged woman with premature streaks of gray clutched her hands and attempted to get the students' attention. She looked like someone's mother. “Class? Class?” Her voice had a cartoon quality to it, not quite Marge Simpson, but similar. It was obvious she didn't make her living teaching high school students.

“Class? If I could have your attention, please . . . please, your attention . . . your teacher, Mr. Shepherd, has been delayed. Due to an accident on the freeway, traffic is backed up. Many teachers have called in. They'll get here as soon as they can. In the meantime, I've been instructed to tell you that you are to read the next chapter in your . . .”

None of the students was listening to her. As soon as they heard Shepherd was delayed, the room exploded with conversation.

High school classrooms are jungles. Survival depends on strength, cunning, speed, and wit. This poor woman had none of these qualities. They were eating her alive.

Leaving her to her fate, I made my way toward the administration building. The backed-up line out the door resembled a morning commute. Most of the kids clutched blue slips of paper, but not all of them.

“You don't have a blue slip?” I heard one of them say as I passed. “You have to have a blue slip to get back into class, dude. They won't let you back into class without a blue slip.”

Cutting through the line, I stepped inside.

A squat man in gray slacks, a white short-sleeved shirt, and with close-cropped salt-and-pepper hair spied an unauthorized movement out of the corner of his eye. His head snapped up to challenge me.

I remembered him from yesterday. Vice Principal Benton, or Benson. It took him a moment to recognize me. When he did, his scowl transformed into a public relations grin. “Austin! Didn't expect to see you again so soon! To what do we owe the honor of this encore appearance?”