Don't Let Him In

Don't Let Him In! : Part 4

When J's alarm went off beeping the next morning, and smells of bacon & toast wafted upstairs, he felt light with relief that he hadn't had a dream about anyone new being traumatised by the mystery 'man'. Yet this was the puzzle, his chief suspect was the new Librarian, who was a woman. Was it possible that she wore a disguise when she took control of the minds of the children? J felt if only he could see a 'pattern' to those she chose as her victims, then maybe he could get a better handle on solving the mystery. He made sure he had the hypnotism printouts tucked in his rucksack before heading out of the door to meet Alex.

Lulu waved goodbye to him from the back-seat of his Mum's car, she was beaming from ear to ear with excitement, her party invitations clutched in her hand, twinkling with the holographic stickers she'd added to them the night before. Sometimes, when he looked at his sister, he yearned for the simplicity of his days at primary school, but most of the time he was glad he'd left the claustrophobia of that tiny school and its mostly spinster teachers behind.

He joined the steady stream of red blazers and black suits heading out of Cranberry Gardens towards St Ethelred's, but was pleased to see Alex ready and waiting for him outside his house. They fell into step with one another and Alex was keen for an up-date, quizzing J as to whether he'd had one of his dreams the previous night.

"No, thank goodness! So maybe no new zombies today! I did learn a lot about hypnotism though," and with that he passed Alex the pages which he'd recently downloaded from Google. Although impatient to discuss it, J needed to give his friend time to read and absorb the information, so he stayed quiet and Alex tried to read as he walked.

J put forward his theory that perhaps the Librarian wore a disguise, which could be why the kids hypnotised so far kept talking about letting 'him' in.

"Vampire!" Alex butted in excitedly. "A vampire can't come into your home unless you invite them!"

This seemed to be an undisputed part of vampire folklore, mentioned in all the vampire films the boys had ever watched. They thrashed this idea around all the way down to the school gate, but somehow the idea of a vampire existing in their home town seemed too far fetched, surely they weren't real?

"See you at lunch," Alex called over his shoulder, as he headed off to English class, while J made his way to the language block and a double lesson of German.

When lunchtime rolled around, they picked up their conversation where they'd left off. The vampire theory was losing ground but J wanted to pursue the Librarian for more clues.

"Hey! What if she's a dude disguised as a woman? Y'know, like in Mrs Doubtfire?! She is pretty old and caked in powdery make-up. That hair could easily be a wig!" Alex was warming to his theme and J couldn't help laughing at the idea. The laughter, however, died in his throat as Laurie walked past their table, looking pale and haggard. The shadows under his eyes were pronounced and his movements were robotic, on his tray he carried an unopened carton of milk and a shrink wrapped pork pie, which he sat down alone with, at a remote, empty table.

The two friends watched him in silence, as he stared into space, making no move to eat the food he had purchased.

"That's seriously weird," remarked Alex, who was always hungry due to the amount of sports he played.

"Yeah," nodded J, feeling somehow guilty that he couldn't think of a way to help. "We've got to get to the bottom of this. You still want to investigate the Coach?"

He and Alex dumped their plates and trays at the hatch and spent the rest of their lunch break hanging round the pavilion trying to see in through the windows in case there were clues amongst the stored sports equipment; they didn't have much success. Alex had Rugby practice after school, so he intended to try to get into the building on some sort of pretext later, offering to untangle the bibs or some such helpful nonsense.

J made his way across the quad , heading for his next lesson, and that's when he spied Laurie again. He was pulling open the heavy double doors into the main school building which housed Reception, the assembly hall and Drama, because they liked to utilise the stage. The Music block was accessible from here too, several practice rooms and a couple of classrooms ran down the outside wall of the building. J was curious as to where Laurie was going, because as far as he knew Laurie studied neither music nor drama. He didn't have time to investigate, but his mind was churning with facts all afternoon looking for the pattern. He really didn't want to acknowledge that the common factor linking the trance-like children was him!