Free The Darkness Inside Us (A Detective King Suspense Thriller) (A Detective King Novel Book 3) by Jeremy Laszlo Page A

red nose. I look at him, wanting to tell him everything. I want to tell him how it was a demon inside of Alice that made her kill herself, that it’s done this hundreds, if not thousands, of times before already. I want to inform him that it’s now lost somewhere in his school and while they’re wasting time with me, it’s out there somewhere, finding someone else to infect.
    But before I can tell him any of that, we all hear the scream.

 
     
    VII
    “Miss Beasly has gone insane!” someone screams down the hall. It sounds like a young man who has yet to experience the full power and might of puberty. I feel bad for the squeaky-voiced youth, who is no doubt experiencing something horrible. I look past the principal who is also looking over his shoulder down to where the young man is standing outside of his classroom door, waving his arms and screaming for help. Soon, there’s another silhouette next to him and another appears after that. I look at the principal, waiting for some kind of action here. Clearly there’s something happening down there. He looks back at me.
    “If we don’t go down there,” I tell him in a calm, determined tone of voice, “those kids are going to panic and they’re going to flee the classroom, and there’s going to be no way of knowing who is in trouble next.”
    “What do you mean?” He lifts an eyebrow, looking at me suspiciously. I wonder what it was that possessed him to grow a mustache. I keep seeing them everywhere. Someone out there convinced the world that mustaches are badass, just like they convinced the world that real men have beards. No, they’re just as dumb as they’ve always been. I think facial hair is for men who are trying to hide something, most likely their flaccid, limp dicks. I look at him and want to rip that mustache off of his smug, ignorant face. I don’t have time to explain everything to him. I need him to get the fuck out of my way and let me do my job.
    “There’s a man using a neurotoxin,” I lie to him. I can’t think of a better excuse. So far, I’m only operating under the assumption that after this, Mendez is going to run with the neurotoxin idea, that it’s being transmitted from victim to victim, thanks to the killer. Hopefully no one starts to ask questions like: why is it only one victim? Why aren’t people just dropping dead before infecting others? Do you even know how neurotoxins work ? So far, all I have is this and I’m sticking with it. “He’s selecting, targeting, or whatever you want to call it, his victims by using a neurotoxin that the victims transfer to the preceding victim without ever knowing it. He’s created a chain reaction, killing the last people that come in contact with his last victim. So I’m promising you, whoever Alice touched last is in that classroom and they’re about to give someone else, if not the entire class, the neurotoxin. So I need you and your rent-a-cops to get your asses in gear, put on your serious, big boy pants, and get down there and quarantine that class before more people start dying.”
    He looks at me with fully justifiably suspicious eyes. I mean, I hardly believe that story myself and I was trying to convince myself that it was a thing before Lola and I watched those three precious frames of pure horror. I look at the officer and feel something rolling in my gut. Maybe the next victim isn’t in that room. Maybe whoever Alice touched already touched someone else, throwing us off, wanting us to quarantine just the classroom while it got away scot-free. Shit. If the demon is on to me, then I’m totally fucked. I have to hope right now that the demon doesn’t know that I’m completely aware of what it truly is, or how it’s doing all of this. If I’m lucky, it’ll still be in the classroom and I can partition off the kids one by one.
    Another scream followed by dozens more roll down the hallway. I stop looking at the stupid principal and stare down the hallway where more and