Free Creepy Teacher: A Psychological Thriller by Mackie Malone Page B

thanks.”
    “Don’t tell Eric where you heard the rumor.”
    “He’s sure to ask.”
    “You can tell him Jany Fry,” Carla said.
    “No way, but I’ll figure it out,” Jackson said.
    “Don’t cheat me,” Carla reminded him.
    Stuart listened to the sound of Carla Cummings hoofing off toward the front of the barn.
    From the sound of it, Jackson began kicking rocks.
    For anyone to disparage Bailey Howard’s name wasn’t going to stand with Stuart Renly. He looked around in the darkness behind the barn for a pitchfork or a pipe or a rusty scythe, something—anything—which could be used to stop the rumor from even starting. The bit of light that filtered past the side of the barn’s north wall, the fellatio side, barely illuminated the tall weeds near the corner where he stood. But he didn’t see anything to be used as a dissuader lying in the weeds.
    Adapt and overcome, he remembered.
    He moved along the rear of the barn to the opposite corner.
    Earlier, from over here, he had watched through a crack in the splintery barn planks the young ruffians swinging on a rope inside the barn under flashing colored lights and strobes across a room full of hay, having lots of fun, some making the swing across, others falling off in mid-flight to plop down in the loose and dusty hay. A side-hinged window stood open just around that corner, where two or three beer cans had flown out.
    He saw no weapon in the grass along the southern side of the barn either. Just a thick hemp rope, with weeds growing through it, lay in a coil under the window. Careful not to be seen—using a sleuthing crouch—he dragged that back into the semi-darkness of the corner behind the barn.
    It was a long rope, and the end in his hand was double-knotted. He assumed it had been a swinging rope at one point in time. Hand over hand, he drew the rope toward him until it petered out at the opposite end. At the opposite end, another knot had been tied through a heavy steel pulley. Two of the four twisted lag bolts still jutted menacingly from their holes in the pulley’s rusted mounting bracket.
    The old swinging rope had finally torn loose, he assumed, and a new swinging rope had gone up in its place.
    Stuart Renly dragged the old rope through the darkness to the opposite corner where, hopefully, Jackson the Sackston—as he was called for tackling quarterbacks—would still be kicking rocks according to little miss Cummings’ five minute mongering plan.
    Yes, Stuart Renly heard. The reputation defiler still made random noises of impatience on the north side of the barn.
    Carefully, Stuart peeked around.
    It would be easier than he could have imagined.
    Jackson was leaning his massive left shoulder against the planked sidewall, facing west toward the barn’s entrance, where Carla Cummings had headed just a few minutes ago.
    Headed, Stuart thought. How appropriate, that word.
    And in more ways than one, he knew instantly.
    With the speakers blaring inside the barn, Stuart was able to sneak up behind Jackson, twirl the pulley-end of the rope, and smash it sideways into the pale right ear of the oversized boy.
    The oversized boy went down.
    *     *     *
    Dragging the lumpy body into the darkness behind the barn proved to be the strenuous part. By appearances, Jackson’s body probably weighted another third again to Stuart Renly’s own weight. Roughly two hundred and fifty pounds, he figured. To say the least, dragging a flaccid two hundred and fifty pounds over grass put a strain on the old spinal column. Flaccid, he thought, was another appropriate word—amusing how such perfect adjectives kept coming to mind. He hardly felt like popping a lumbar, though, so he heaved the body only far enough around the corner to get the oversized shoes out of sight.
    The bigger they are, the harder they fall.
    But Jackson wasn’t dead.
    He was breathing still.
    Jackson’s main problem was going to be the blood draining out his ear. It couldn’t bode