Slow Dance in Purgatory(14)

He had watched her often since. This time, Johnny had been watching her dance down the hallway. She was caught up in the music he played just for her, and she had obviously forgotten that she was supposed to be mopping floors. She moved effortlessly, almost as if she too could float above the floor or transport herself to other places with a thought. He could do those things, but what he wouldn’t give just to dance with her. He had never admitted it to his friends, but he liked to dance. He had swung his momma around the house to Jerry Lee Lewis more times than he could count. But that was before. Now he wasn’t sure he still could.

“Is someone there?” Margaret had called out, and he had realized suddenly that she was talking to him. She had started walking toward him, and he had panicked. His control slipped, making the music blare loudly, and Margaret had screamed and run down the hallway away from him. She had seen him! Euphoria had quickly replaced the panic. Johnny hoped he hadn’t scared her away for good. He had tried to make it up to her by finishing her floors for her. He hadn’t actually mopped. He didn’t have to. He just instructed the floor to be clean. And it was.

It had taken some practice over the years, but eventually Johnny had figured it out. Anything that was physically connected to the school he could control easily - the floors, the ceilings, the wiring, the walls, the lockers, all of it. He could have maintained the school all on his own, but then the school board wouldn’t have needed to employ Gus. He needed Gus. Gus was the only one who knew he existed. So he left enough work for Gus to do. Plus, he didn’t want people getting scared. Scared people didn’t hang around. Scared people might board up the school or worse, tear it down. So he was careful not to be too obvious.

Now it was Gus, Margaret, and that funny kid Shad, who reminded Johnny a little of Billy, cleaning his school. He had heard Margaret groaning about scraping gum off the desks. He could take care of that. It wasn’t as easy as cleaning the floors and walls; objects that hadn’t always been a part of the school were harder. After a while though, they seemed to absorb the energy that hummed through the school, and he could work his magic. And those desks had been in the school for years. He would make sure she didn't have to scrape off another piece of gum.

With just a little highly focused thought, Johnny could turn on the lights, control the sound system, pull all the books off the library shelves, and return them neatly in no order at all. Mrs. Chase, the pretty librarian, hadn’t liked that last skill very much. She had just thought it was mischievous school kids. Johnny decided pranks weren’t much fun if you couldn’t get credit for your brilliance. The next time, he had arranged the books to spell out Johnny Kinross, using the first letter of the title to correspond with each letter in his name, over and over again. The unused books he had stacked neatly in towering piles on Mrs. Chase’s desk. Mrs. Chase hadn’t seen the pattern. But she had quit. He felt bad after that; he had liked Mrs. Chase. From then on, he had always returned his experiments back to normal when he was finished.

On another occasion, he had failed to notice that his thoughts messed up the computers. He hadn’t had to deal with computers in the early years, and it hadn’t really been a problem until the thing called the Internet was invented. He blew out a dozen computer screens the first year the school got Internet access, and the hard drives were completely cooked. Whatever frequencies of energy and sound made up the Internet seemed to be the source that gave him power as well. It was the hum of energy that surrounded all living things - the heat, the life force, which someone, somehow, had harnessed. He didn’t know how the Internet worked anymore than he could explain his own abilities to call on that same source of electrical interconnectivity to do his bidding. It was beyond sight, but it existed, just as he did – beyond sight.

***

The school was quiet and dark as Maggie pushed her bike up to the side entrance closest to the dance room. Gus had given her her very own key and told her to take good care of it. Giving keys to students was frowned upon. Gus had said that she was a “member of the maintenance team” so it was okay, although she highly doubted Shad had the same privilege. Maggie loved arriving before anybody else and having the dance floor all to herself. At least she had loved it before she knew about Johnny Kinross.

She chained her bike around the light pole closest to the side entrance and unlocked the door, telling herself she had nothing to be afraid of. But she was afraid. Last night she had dreamed of long hallways that led to nowhere, like an endless maze lined with gaping black classrooms that, when entered, led to still more hallways. In the dream she had kept on walking and turning and ending up where she’d started, all the while being taunted by the same song from decades ago, a song called “Oh Johnny.”

She never thought the song was creepy before; but the way it had echoed down the never-ending hallways in her dream was so haunting and mournful. Oh Johnny, My Johnny.… Gus’s words reverberated in her head, “Oh Miss Margaret, I think you’ve met Johnny.” Maggie’s hands shook, and she dropped the key, banging her head on the door frame as she bent to retrieve it.

“Get a grip, Maggie,” she told herself sternly, walking into the school. “Johnny Kinross is not real!” Maggie told the hallway defiantly. "He is a boy that lived fifty-three years ago, and I am NOT going to be scared off!” Her voice sounded awfully loud bouncing off the empty walls and floors, and it did nothing to make her feel better, but she pulled the door firmly shut behind her and walked quickly to the dance room at the end of the corridor. She looked neither right nor left, and she kept telling herself she was not afraid of the big, bad ghost.