Will Lavender - Obedience

Troy Hardings.

He was dressed in a suit. It was silk, Mary saw: the light glinted off it when he moved. The facial hair was gone, the smirk had been replaced by a rigid smile. He looked completely professional, like a businessman-or perhaps someone acting like a businessman, Mary reminded herself.

“This is Dr. Troy Hardings,” Elizabeth Orman said. “He was my faculty adviser for this project.”

“To register the impact of this study, we have to remember Kitty Genovese,” Hardings said. “We have to remember the so-called bystander effect. What the Polly Experiment proves is that human beings are more apt to help a potential victim, an assumed victim, than they are if they, say, saw a woman being stabbed below their window at night.”

“Deanna,” Mary said weakly.

“Yes,” Elizabeth Orman replied. “Deanna Ward was completely fabricated. A lot of things in the Polly Experiment were fabricated. Or ‘exaggerated,’ as Troy liked to say. The night Brian saw me beside the road, for example. That was a ruse to pull in Brian. We thought he might be straying, so we found the perfect method of bringing him back. And the day you found Troy in the office. That was all done on the fly-we had no idea that you were coming up. We had literally nailed Leonard’s name to the door five minutes earlier.”

“And these people?” Mary asked. She closed her eyes. She couldn’t look at them, couldn’t turn to face the crowd. It was not embarrassment that she felt, not shame or guilt. It was fear: fear that there was another twist in the game coming, another misdirection. Mary didn’t know if she could handle it. Not now.

“We hired them to play roles,” Elizabeth explained. “They all did a beautiful job. And of course you know who we hired to play the part of your professor.”

Leonard Williams stood up from his chair and nodded. “In real life he’s in a theater troupe here in DeLane. His stage name is Mike Williams. And he was often disguised, so there was no way you could have uncovered him.” Mary thought about the first time she’d seen him, of the acne pits on his face. Makeup, she knew now.

There was a pause, a moment where nobody spoke. Then Williams approached Mary. He was smiling, trying to disarm her with his charm. In an instant he was beside her, putting his hand on her shoulder. “Mary,” he said softly.

And then something happened.

Brian crept slowly onto the floor where Seminary East was. The door was open, and yellow light spilled out and bathed half the hallway. He heard a woman’s voice coming from inside, but because he was sliding along the wall he couldn’t see anyone in the room.

“In real life he’s in a theater troupe here in DeLane,” the woman said.

And then another voice. This second voice was very low and weak, barely discernible. “Mary,” it said. And he did discern it: it was Leonard Williams.

Brian moved faster down the hall, his hand on the gun in his pocket. He had turned it now so that his finger was on the trigger.

When he stepped inside his knees almost buckled. He almost pitched forward into the crowd, but somehow he maintained his balance and stood, staring at them.

They were all there. All the actors. Marco, the Collinses, the boy from the park named Paul. Bethany Cavendish from the high school. The waitresses they’d met in Bell City. Even Dean Orman, sitting toward the front and wearing his fedora. All of them were here, waiting for him.

And there, leaning against the back wall, was the girl from the kilns. She’d pulled her hair back. She looked very young, thirty or so, and she was staring at him in a way that was so sickening, so fucking sickening.

“Polly,” he said.

Ashamed, the girl looked down at the floor.

“Brian,” someone said to his left.

When he turned he saw not Elizabeth Orman, who had spoken to him, but Leonard Williams.

Williams’s hand was on Mary’s arm. He was-was he pulling on her? Pulling her toward him?

“Brian,” Elizabeth said again from the front of the class.

But he paid no attention. Williams was staring at Brian so oddly, so coldly that Brian knew he was trying to impart some information. The professor’s gaze said something, it spoke of something awful.

What? Brian mouthed.

But Williams still stared at him, his eyes hooded, his hand still tight on Mary’s shoulder. She looked shocked and terrified, as if she were in tremendous pain. Did Williams’s mouth move? Did he say some word, reveal something?

What the fuck do you want? Brian mouthed. Let her go!

“Brian, we want you to know that this began during your freshman years,” Elizabeth Orman said. But Brian already had the Thing out of his pocket and he was aiming it at Leonard Williams.

When Williams released his grip on Mary’s arm and fell backward onto the desk, coming to rest right in front of Edna Collins, everyone laughed. They thought it was part of the game, another trick. Another wrinkle thrown in the narrative.

But Mary knew better. She saw Brian’s hand, saw through the wispy smoke that he was holding a gun. A gun that had just been fired.

The atmosphere changed around her. It became charged; the whole room dimmed as if a fuse had blown somewhere. The dog tore away from the man he had been kneeling beside, the man in the baseball cap, and ran out of the room.

At that point everyone moved.

Dean Orman was the first to Williams. “Get an ambulance!” he shouted.

A couple of the other men collapsed on Williams. It was all moving fast, so fast. They were tearing off his shirt. They were slapping him, trying to keep him awake.

And to her right Brian was moving. He was not trying to escape, but rather he was coming into the room, toward the frantic throng of actors and actresses.

He was walking toward Elizabeth Orman with the gun.

“Brian,” Mary said softly.

Mary said his name, and he stopped.

That movement-the stopping, the turning around to face her-was what allowed the man in the Red Sox cap to reach him.

“Stop,” the man said. He was dressed strangely, Brian saw. His jacket had been zipped high and the cap had been pulled down low so that his face was obscured. The dog he’d had beside him, the black Lab, had run out of the room. The man held the snapped leash limply in his right hand.

“I couldn’t,” Brian said to this man, this stranger. “I just couldn’t let him continue hurting us.”

“I know, I know,” the man said. “But put the gun down and we’ll figure it all out.” His voice was soothing, familiar.

Suddenly, Brian knew who he was.

Brian reached up and unzipped the man’s jacket and revealed Dennis Flaherty.

Dennis took the gun away from Brian and put it on the table. Mary was so close to Dennis that he could hear her voice. “Why?” she said.

“Let’s talk about this later, Mary,” he said. He was holding Brian by the shoulders. Both boys looked vulnerable, weak, as if they had stepped into a nightmare that they couldn’t wake up from.

Dennis took a few steps toward where Williams lay, but he couldn’t get through to the man. Mary went around to the other side and found her way to him. They had him on the floor, and she could see by his pallor that he was dead. He was gray and still. She knelt and touched his hand, and he was unresponsive to her touch. “Professor,” she whispered. Nothing. The man who had played Marco was performing CPR, and all the actors and actresses were watching passively now. The air had been taken out of the room. They had finally reached the end.

Some time later, after Marco had stopped trying to save Williams, after some of the actors and actresses had left the room to retch in the hallway, Mary looked at Dennis. She didn’t have to say anything: he knew what she needed him to say.