School by Nathaniel Hardman (top reads .TXT) 📕

Jeff put his hands on the windowsill and leaned in. They all listened. Suzy could hear a distant rustling, like dry leaves. Jeff made to jump up, but Suzy said, “Hold on.” She walked to the front door and pounded on it, long and hard. She looked at Jeff. “Just to be sure.”

After a short wait, they went back to the window, and Jeff climbed in. Suzy looked at Ushegg, who motioned for her to go ahead. He was fidgeting, uncharacteristically nervous. Suzy felt the sudden cold of a raindrop on her head, then another. She climbed in.

The dark house had a few scattered chairs and a bench, all covered in dust and draped in spider webs. Suzy noticed tiny tracks in the dust, and in the corner, near a golfball-sized hole in the wall, there was a scattering of dark pellets like raisins.

The layout of the house was such that if Suzy had walked in the front door and continued in a straight line, she would have passed through the entry hall, past a staircase leading up, past hallways to either side, and into a little kitchen. While the dust and general signs of neglect were everywhere, Suzy could see one recent-ish path from the front door up the stairs, and another to the kitchen in the back.

“I think this house must have been empty for a long time, and someone has been using just a part of it.”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, “Like maybe they didn’t live here, but they came here to do their secret magic stuff.”

Something skittered in the corner of Suzy’s eye, and she jumped. So did Ushegg. The alien boy pulled out his wand and muttered a short spell. His wand glowed the pinkish blue of the neon butterflies, lighting up the room.

More things scurried at the edges of the shadows. Suzy fought the urge to cozy up to the bright wand. Or run outside.

“Jushu,” she said, waving Ushegg to follow her into the kitchen. It was covered in dust, and the path on the floor led straight through to the back door. Suzy stepped hurriedly to the latch and after a bit of fumbling, she threw open the door.

Light from the outside poured into the house, and Suzy felt so relieved she almost laughed.

“Is that...? Hey Jeff!” Suzy called. She stepped out into the drizzling rain to get a clear view, and Jeff joined her.

All around the edges of the yard, weeds grew thick, wild, and tall. Farther from the walls, the weeds grew thinner and shorter, until in the very center of the yard, there was a circle maybe twenty feet in diameter where the ground was completely bare – just dirt. It looked like someone had dropped a Roundup bomb.

One corner of the backyard was fenced off, and a little stable sat in the very back. Poking out of the stable was their mom’s car.

“Wow,” said Jeff. “Well, I’m glad it has some room to graze.”

They looked around at the yard, at the odd pattern of the growth. “What happened here?” Jeff asked. Suzy shook her head.

“It was a wand tree,” Ushegg said from the doorway. “They gey the busz.” Once he said it, the tree was obvious in its absence. Suzy could picture it growing there in the place of honor, the place of greatest sun, sucking up the life from everything around it.

“I bet it was a lot bigger than the ones at the school,” Jeff said. “They’re only, what, eight or ten feet apart? If this one had been at the school, it probably would have killed off all the others.”

They stared at the scene longer than necessary, not wanting to go back into the dark house with its dark scurrying and its dusty path up the dark stairs. But they were getting wet, and at last, they turned to finish their job.

Up the creaking stairs.

It was indeed very dark in the upstairs hall, but also hot and stuffy, and now Suzy could see eyes shining back from the darkness, dozens of points reflecting Ushegg’s weak light. She shielded her eyes from the wand to see better, and she could just make out the forms of lizards, rat-sized, packed together in restless, stirring groups in the shadowed corners of the hall.

The path in the dust led to a door at the end, which they hurried toward, sensing as much as hearing the lizards growing bolder, following them ever more closely. It was a solid-looking door, heavy, with a bolt four inches thick across the outside. Jeff started to swing the bolt up, but Suzy put a hand on his arm.

“Why would this door be barred from the OUTSIDE? And why would it need a board that thick?”

Jeff glanced uneasily over his shoulder at the lizards. They were getting close, maybe five feet away, still holding back but pushing each other into the light.

Ushegg tried to squirm between the humans and the door, shielding himself from the lizards. Jeff and Suzy both looked at him in surprise. “Those are the gers that zxerc,” he said.

“Zxerc, zxerc,” Jeff muttered, trying to remember. “Wait,” he said, and then a lizard broke from the crowd, running in a straight line toward their feet.

Ushegg grabbed the bar and threw it up. Suzy didn’t try to stop him. They all yanked the door open and fell over themselves getting through it.

When they moved, it was like a dam had broken, and now the lizards boiled forward, a wave of scaly, writhing bodies and evil, beady eyes.

As they swung the door, Suzy felt a sting, a pulse of pain almost paralyzing in its sudden intensity. Her leg spasmed out, and she felt the weight of a little body tugging at, then releasing, her leg.

The door slammed shut.

Suzy checked