The Night Parade(61)

“Hey, Sandy,” another guy in the class said to him. “Drop your ass, yo.”

This comment elicited a few chuckles from the peanut gallery.

David came around his desk and stood at the front of the class. “Mr. Udell,” he said, more sternly now. “Sandy. Hello, hello.” He snapped his fingers.

The white mask gradually turned until the jagged eyeholes faced David. The plate was not a perfect circle, pulled in at the sides by the bit of elastic that held it to Udell’s face, giving it a warped, oblong look. David was suddenly struck by the impression that, behind that mask, Sandy Udell’s face was actually squished out of proportion, too. He imagined a narrow fishface with eyes bulging on either side of a narrow, bladed head, and lips so distorted that they couldn’t close all the way.

Udell pointed toward the wall of windows. “You see that?” he said, his voice muffled behind the mask.

Again, David looked out the windows. The other students did, too.

“I don’t see anything,” David said.

“Storm’s coming,” said one girl.

“Please sit down,” David said to Udell.

“We a party to it,” Udell said. Those blank eyeholes gazed at David. “All of us.”

David said, “What?”

“It’s right there, if you all want to see it,” Udell went on. He still had his arm up, his finger pointing out the windows. “Just have to open your eyes.”

“What is it?” David said.

“An angel,” said Udell. He turned back to face out the windows. “Angel coming down from heaven, right through them black clouds. Has a key in one hand, big chain in the other.”

The students closest to Udell scooted their desks away from him, the sound of the chair legs squealing across the floor like trumpet bleats. A girl in a plastic Barbie mask got up and, clutching her books to her chest, moved quickly to the opposite side of the room. Others started to get up from their desks, too.

“Everybody just stay calm,” David told them.

“He’s sick,” someone said.

“It’s the key to the abyss,” Udell said, his voice rising as if to compete with the din of his classmates. “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock!”

“Holy shit,” someone groaned.

The students began their evacuation, filing quickly out the door at the back of the classroom and into the hallway. A girl fell over a desk and someone else stepped right on top of her to get out the door. The girl cried out, then managed to hoist herself to her feet and flood out into the hallway with the others.

“Look at it,” Udell said. He walked slowly toward the wall of windows. On the horizon, dark storm clouds crept closer and closer to the campus. But what was Sandy Udell seeing? When he reached the windows, Udell placed both palms flat against the glass.

Someone called David’s name. He turned and saw Burt Langstrom standing in the doorway behind him, his face pale and stricken. Burt looked over at Udell, who appeared to be mumbling a prayer.

And then Udell screamed.

It was the bloodcurdling scream of someone in physical pain. Udell’s hands balled into fists. He began pounding them against the glass.

“What do you want from me?” Udell shouted. “Tell me! Tell me!”

“Come on,” Burt said, snatching ahold of David’s arm and yanking him toward the door.

But David’s feet felt glued to the floor. He couldn’t pull his eyes from Udell, his pounding fists against the windowpanes like the thrum of a heartbeat.

“There is a monster coming out of the sky!” Udell screamed. Then he slammed his face against the glass. Again. Again.

David jerked his arm free of Burt’s grasp and rushed over to the boy. He grabbed Udell around the waist and yanked him back, but the kid was too big and too determined. David slipped a hand around to the front of Udell’s head and tried to prevent any subsequent blows to the glass, which had already begun to fracture, but the kid threw an elbow into David’s ribs, knocking the wind from him. David buckled and dropped to the floor.

Someone out in the hallway screamed. Burt rushed over to David, scooped him up under both armpits, and dragged him toward the door. The heels of David’s shoes left black streaks on the linoleum.

Udell rammed his head against the window a final time, shattering the glass. Jagged spears of glass rained down on the wall-mounted heater and the floor in a dazzling, reflective array. David gasped and managed to grab some air. Before Burt could drag him out into the hallway, he climbed to his feet and once again shrugged Burt off of him.

He shouted Udell’s name, but it was too late: The kid had managed to hop up onto the heater, and without hesitation, leapt through the ragged hole in the window.

A wave of shrieks rose up from out in the hall. David was crying out, too, although he wouldn’t realize this until later, as he sat speaking with police and contemplated why his throat was so hoarse.

David turned and shoved through the crowd of students that had gathered in the hallway just outside the classroom. Burt followed him down the stairwell and out into the courtyard, where a sizeable crowd had already gathered. Shock registered on every face. Someone kept muttering, over and over again, “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God . . .”

It was only a two-story drop, but Sandy Udell had swan-dived onto the stamped concrete walkway. His paper mask had come off in the fall, revealing a lacerated and glistening pulp that looked more like raw hamburger meat than someone’s face. The impact with the pavement had flattened one side of Udell’s skull while the glass from the window had sliced the kid’s nylon jacket to ribbons.