Feeding Frenzy (Watty Award Winner)

Hairs and Homework: Chapter Fourteen

The fire proved Aunt Helene was in trouble. Were there more skeletons in the closet, to go with the pickled hand? Tonya pondered where her parents might be. What she wouldn't give to speak to them on the phone!

Lynette drove silently, and fast, to the hospital. They didn't speak again until they reached Reception, in the front foyer. It was a relief when Tonya recognized Donna, seated behind the glassed-in desk. She was a middle-aged brunette, Tonya knew as a member of her mother's choir.

"We're here to visit my Aunt Helene," Tonya was bent over to speak through the window in Donna's Plexiglas cage.

Donna typed a few words into her computer, and announced that Aunt Helene was gone. She had checked herself out.

Lynette nudged Tonya aside. "What about Roberto La Bega?"

"Not here either," she said without checking.

"Are you sure?"

Lynette spelled his name and provided information, as Donna checked her computer six different ways. "He was never admitted."

Tonya stooped to speak through the wicket again. "What about Professor Rudolph? I know he was here."

"Full name?" Donna asked.

"That is his name. And I know he was here. Me and my friends called him an ambulance because he sleepwalked off campus, all the way through the cemetery, and then lay down at the base of the Three-Century Ash.

Donna's carefully made-up eyes widened. "Did your Aunt know about that?" Donna tented her red, manicured fingers together.

"I haven't been able to reach my Aunt, or my parents, for days."

"That is a problem." Donna worked her crimson lips, pressing them together in thought. "What are you going to do?"

"I have to see the professor. Are you sure you can't find him?"

"I probably shouldn't tell you, since you're not family, but he checked out this morning." She beckoned Tonya to lean in closer and whispered: "Against doctor's orders." She shook her head. "His colour was terrible, and he walked like a robot, but he still came around the partition and stole the cookie tin off my desk."

Lynnette inhaled sharply.

Tonya said: "That must be him. Know where he was headed?"

Donna had no idea. She only knew he checked out alone.

Lynette turned to Tonya. "We still have to find Roberto."

"Try his phone, he could be home by now."

Tonya checked her phone while Lynette checked hers. Still no reply from Priya.

As they walked back to the car, Tonya said: "We should go back to campus. Somebody must have seen him."

"I hope so. It isn't like him not to answer his phone."

Lynette had known him a short time, so how could she be sure? Tonya wondered if that was love talking, but kept her ideas to herself. In the car on the way back, Lynette fell quiet again. Tonya tried to distract her with chit chat, but the conversation died every time.

"At least you know Roberto is okay."

"He's been acting funny," said Lynette.

"Maybe he lost his phone in the fire," Tonya said. "I'm sure he'll call as soon as he can." She tried to sound hopeful, but she suspected the reason for his silence. He had spent too much time in the cemetery, and had caught the same disease as Professor Rudolph.

They turned off the highway onto the service road that encircled the university campus. As they slowed down, Tonya noticed a telephone pole papered with flyers for the Halloween Bonfire and Art Exhibition. Thinking Priya might have missed stripping one pole, Tonya didn't worry until a few poles further on, when she found another, covered in flyers.

"Let me out in front of the dorm?" Lynette could keep searching for Roberto on her own.

Tonya went inside where large full-colour posters on the bulletin board advertised the art installation. There were also plenty of flyers posted on people's doors. Tonight, the cemetery would be full of people.

She had to stop them! Tonya ran up the stairs to Priya's room, but there was no answer. She didn't have a mobile number for Ducky or Zain, but guessed where to find them. She rushed down the stairs and headed for the cemetery at a run.

She was out of breath by the time she reached the path leading off campus, but she didn't dare slow down. She had to stop this catastrophe. The bonfire would draw the biggest crowd and put the largest number of people in danger. She had to convince them to move it somewhere safe.

Her feet pounded the cement path and her laboured breaths were white in the chilly air. Hitting a patch of ice, her legs flew up from under her, and she landed on her backside. She sat there, for a few minutes, waiting for the pain to ease.

She got up and started to run again, until she got a stitch in her side. Slowing to a fast jog, Tonya pondered over arguments to convince the 'cool kids' to move their party. It was a small campus, with few Halloween parties advertised. Most of the student body could be there. How could she, one lowly freshman, oppose the will of the majority?

Fatigue forced her to a panting walk, by the time she reached the cemetery. From the entrance, she detected hairy things, hiding in the trees. Priya had never shown Tonya more than a few sketches, but these animals looked like the work of years.

Priya's vision was a nightmare, in which animals lay in wait beside the forest path. Priya might just be a genius, with a horrific theme park mentality. From now on, every time she walked this path, Tonya would expect to be ambushed by Toyota-sized tarantulas.

She was so impressed with the giant rabbit with sad eyes, and blood on its chin, that she wanted to forget why she was there. She had to keep everyone away from this masterpiece. Somehow. At once her confidence collapsed. If she were going to stop mass infection, she was going to need more than circumstantial evidence. She needed proof that the cemetery could kill.

Marta's near-miss aside, she was only really sure the feeding frenzy was caused by magic, probably cast by the same person who burned her Aunt's shop. A nasty magic user was at work here, one who had probably hurt her parents, or forced them into hiding. She suspected that his spells caused irrational binge eating, and the mindless stagger of Professor Rudolph, but how to prove it?

And what was so bad about a little binge eating? Could she be sure the effect didn't wear off? How could she know Professor Rudolph wasn't home right now, doing a crossword and drinking tea?

Tonya followed the path through the whole cemetery. At the end, she hopped the fence to reach the Three-Century Ash.

Wow. Somehow Priya had turned the tree into a mythological monster, with subtle slits for eyes, and a mouth that looked like a slash in the bark, but which revealed the tips of fangs. At its base, the clean-picked skeletons of its prey were piled in a jumble, as if the tree had eaten them whole, and spit out the pellets like a giant owl.

Tonya went around the back of the tree as usual, to make sure her forbidden ladder had not yet been absorbed by the growing tree. The moment she came around, she saw Professor Rudolph, lying at the base of the roots. Up through the ground, hair like roots were growing into the unconscious man's ears, nose, and mouth. A few more were growing upward and around the side of his face, straining to enter through his eyeballs.

"Professor!" Tonya tugged at his arms, slapped his face. When nothing else would rouse him, she even poked a toe at his foot. Slowly, being careful not to disturb or touch any of the white tendrils, she put a hand on his chest. He was cold. His chest was still, without a heartbeat. His wrist had no pulse. He was dead.

Tonya, have you done your homework? His voice demanded inside her head. When his unseeing eyes opened, she ran.

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