Bedbugs by Rick Hautala

he did . . . to me . . . to you and me . . . before he . . . killed me. . . .”
    “No! Nothing happened!” Pete blubbered through his tears as he started backing up the stairs. “I don’t remember seeing anything! ”
    “. . . yes you do. . . and you . . . got away. . . .”
    Something snagged Pete’s shirt sleeve and pulled. Without looking, he knew that it was a hand . . . the bone-white hand of his long-dead friend.
    Please let this be a dream! Pete pleaded desperately inside his mind. Please let me wake up now!
    But every sensation, every feeling was much too vivid, too real to be a dream.
    Pete pulled back and heard the soft hiss of tearing cloth as his shirt sleeve ripped. Nearly blind with panic, he turned and ran up the stairs, taking them three at a time. He waved his arms wildly, trying to keep his balance, but he slammed into the wall. The impact knocked the wind out of him, but he kept going. Once he reached the landing, he gripped the handrail—sure that it was real wood, now, and not dead bone—and pivoted himself around. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a rapid shifting of motion at the top of the stairs and lurched to a stop so fast his legs collapsed underneath him, and his shins banged painfully against the steps. Pure, perfect terror gripped his heart when he looked up and saw Mrs. Doyle, standing with her hands planted on her hips as she stared down at him and scowled.
    “. . . You’d better hurry up, Mister Garvey. . . you’ll be late for class . . . as usual. . . .”
    Mrs. Doyle folded her arms across her massive bosom, squirting the pale flab of her underarms out from the tight-fitting short sleeves of her faded dress. Her face was expressionless except for her eyes, which blazed like red, angry coals. Her thin, colorless lips looked like an ancient bloodless wound that hadn’t healed.
    Pete was transfixed by her fiery stare until he sensed a rush of motion behind him. Cold air washed over him like the murky sweep of water. He knew that Ray Makki or whoever or what ever was down there in the basement was gathering its strength to come up the stairs after him. He almost fainted, but then a small portion of his brain told him that, if this wasn’t a dream, then the apparition at the top of the stairs was just that—
    An apparition.
    It couldn’t stop him.
    “I’m comin’ right now, Mrs. Doyle,” he shouted in a high-pitched, trembling voice.
    Clinging to the wall and shying away from her, he darted up the stairs to the second-floor landing. He looked down to the far end of the hallway and could see the door to the outside, glowing with a bright, surreal blaze of afternoon sunlight. The sunlit, living greens of the maple leaves and their shadows vibrated with an impossible intensity. He started walking toward it, but no matter how much he wanted to break into a run for the door, something weighed him down, puffing him back and slowing his steps to a sludgy, dragging crawl.
    He was halfway down the corridor when all of the doors leading into classrooms on both sides of him suddenly opened wide.
    From inside each room there came the harsh scraping of chairs and the soft scuff of shoes on old floorboards. Papers and books rustled as desktops creaked open and slammed shut with dull, hollow reverberations.
    Muffled voices and faint laughter drifted like heavy currents in the hot air. As Pete moved slowly past the classroom doors, looking in amazement left and right, he saw pale, transparent figures of children, some of whom he recognized, shifting against the deep brown shadows that filled the rooms.
    “. . . you should have . . . told someone, Petey . . . you shouldn’t have . . . left me . . . all alone . . . to die . . . all alone. . . .”
    Ray’s voice seemed to surround Pete as it echoed with a soft rustle that never quite seemed to stop. It filled Pete’s head like a racing, muffled heartbeat that sounded almost like . . .
    —Running feet—
    “Jesus Christ , Ray! Honest