Bryan Smith - Soultaker

Lamia left the backstage area, passed through a small hallway and began to walk across the mostly bare stage. She reveled in the growing roar of the crowd as she strode toward the narrow gap between the drawn curtains. The curtains began to part and the crowd noise reached a crescendo. There was applause punctuated by whoops and whistles. Students stamped their feet on the floor. It really did feel like the buildup to a rock-and-roll show. But the excitement gave way to a growing confusion as the lack of drums and guitars became obvious.

Lamia approached a podium at the front of the stage and waited for the murmurs of discontent to abate. Then she leaned toward a microphone and said, “I realize most of you were expecting something else. Something fun.” She giggled. “But there will be no more fun for any of you.”

A few members of the audience shouted insults. Most of these emanated from the burnout contingent in the back rows.

Lamia raised her hands and signaled for silence. She didn’t get it, but the noise tapered off enough to again address the students. “Please direct your attention to the doors at the back of the auditorium and those to the left and right of the stage.”

The students twisted in their seats and craned their necks. Lamia grinned at the sea of confused faces as men wearing hoods linked door handles with heavy chains and secured them with big iron padlocks. The tone of the murmurs began to change. Lamia felt a sudden arousal as she detected the first inklings of fear. It was delicious. Intoxicating. And it was only an appetizer. She felt stronger now than she had in a long time. Very soon she would be stronger than she’d ever been. This would be the most bountiful Harvest since medieval times.

Her laughter boomed over the auditorium’s speaker system.

“It’s all over, children. No more studying for exams. No more trying to dodge that bully in the hallway. No more fretting about not living up to your parents’ expectations. These earthly concerns are beyond you now. I know you’ll all be grateful to be relieved of these burdens.”

Someone screamed, “Fuck you, slut!”

There was a bit of nervous laughter, but it was a token thing. The eyes of most were glued to her, and the expressions of those staring at her were nearly identical.

They were afraid.

So delightfully afraid.

A group of football jocks got up and strode purposefully toward one of the chained entrances. The boy in the lead pointed a finger at one of the hooded men and said, “Get out of my way, motherfucker!”

The hooded man did not flinch.

Lamia said, “The time has come. This is the Harvest of Souls. Time to die, boys and girls!”

The hooded guard produced a handgun and shot the lead jock between the eyes.

Shocked silence. Maybe a full second of it.

Then came the screams.

Lamia smiled and spread her arms wide as she walked to the edge of the stage.

Students surged out of their seats. The auditorium erupted in pandemonium. The kids fought and crawled over each other in a blind rush to get to the exits.

More screams.

More gunfire.

Energy flowed from the ends of Lamia’s outstretched fingertips. The air crackled and a dazzling light filled the auditorium. Sizzling strands of blue-white electricity arced out of her fingers to form a glowing, pulsing web on the ceiling.

Lamia threw back her head, exulting in the glory of it all.

The Harvest had begun.

It was starting already.

Raymond could feel it in his bones and at the back of his mouth like the sting of a poison. Even here, hunched down in the floor of Patricia’s Jaguar, the atmospheric shift was palpable. The air felt charged the way it did before a storm. There was that same pregnant stillness in the last moments before that first furious clap of thunder. And yet a glance through the Jaguar’s windows revealed only a clear blue sky.

Raymond crawled out of the floor and stared at the back of the school.

The rear entrance-which opened to a hallway directly adjacent to the backstage area of the auditorium-stood open. Ten minutes ago there’d been two men there, standing guard, admitting a steady stream of local luminaries, as well as a handful of people he didn’t recognize. The mayor was here. So were the chief of police and a couple of city commissioners. A number of heavy hitters in the local business community were also present. Many of them wore formal attire, as if they were arriving for the opening night of an opera or play. They parked their cars in the lot of the nearby public library and walked across a short expanse of green lawn, looking almost regal in the brilliant sunlight. You would never guess these respectable-looking people had gathered to revel in the deaths of so many of Rockville’s young.

Raymond had wedged the Jag into a narrow space at the end of a row in the student parking lot. He’d had to run the driver side tires up over the curb to fit the Jag in the space. More than an hour had passed since he’d had to shoot Carter Brown. The Jag’s interior was thick with the sickly sweet stench of recent death. He yearned to be out of the car and away from the corpse, but he hadn’t dared to make a move with the guards around. But now they were gone, presumably to grab a ringside seat for the slaughter.

The slaughter…

The full weight of the situation fell upon him again and his breath caught in his throat. It was happening. People were dying in that building right now. Kids. Hundreds of them.

He was terrified.

Yet he knew he couldn’t wait another second.

He sucked in a big breath and expelled it fast.

“Go,” he told himself.

He reached for the driver side door handle, pulled it, and kicked the door open wide. He stepped out and stood erect. He checked the Glock. Safety off. The pockets of his black trench coat were heavy with the weight of spare clips and shotgun shells. He reached back into the car to retrieve the Moss-berg. Then, with the Mossberg pointed at the ground in one hand and the Glock in the other, he began to move toward the rear entrance.

He was halfway there when one of the guards stepped back through the door and noticed him. The man gaped at him for a moment, obviously not believing what he was seeing. Raymond thought of how he must look-like a heavily armed outlaw approaching the OK Corral at high noon-and a grim smile curved the corners of his mouth.

He increased his stride and cut the remaining distance in half.

The guard snapped out of it and reached for his weapon, but by then it was too late. Raymond squeezed the Glock’s trigger. The gun boomed and a bright patch of red bloomed at the center of the man’s gray uniform shirt. He fell dead to the ground with his weapon still in its holster. Raymond was close enough to the open door now to hear the screams, high and keening, aural testimony to intense agony and horrible death.

Raymond started running.

In another moment he was past the dead guard and through the open entrance. He was in a hallway now, with rows of gray metal lockers to either side of him. There was an open door on the left, some ten yards ahead. It also stood open, like an invitation to hell. Come on in, it seemed to say. We’ve been waiting for you. Raymond shivered and started toward the door. The screams were louder now. It was the most awful sound he’d ever heard, like something from the worst nightmares of a madman come to life. And there was another sound, something like the whine of a large generator working at peak capacity.

He stepped through the door and went up a short set of stairs to another door. This one was closed. He tucked the Mossberg under his arm and turned the knob. He threw open the door and waited a beat. No one came to investigate. There were no shots. But the terrible screams were louder still. That, more than anything else, got him moving again. He went through the open door and moved down a short hallway past a dressing room.