The Devil Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

giddy.
    “Let’s do it,” he said.
    Taking the scalpel, he slit open the frog’s belly like it was something he’d done a thousand times. While Lisa turned an amusing shade of green, he pinned back the frog’s skin with tiny dissection needles and got to work.
    And waited for the shit to hit the fan.
    He did not wait long.
    Mr. Cummings went into the supply room and came out with his Thermos, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He made it all the way to his desk before he took his first gulp. Like he always contended, he was nothing without his caffeine and today was the day when he would finally get his fill. He raised the cup to his lips, scanning the lab teams with disinterest, and swallowed a big gulp.
    No one was really paying any attention to him at that moment.
    No one but Billy Swanson.
    Cummings drew the cup away from his lips with dawning horror. What was at first a scowl of distaste soon became a twisted rictus of agony. The coffee cup slid from his trembling fingers and shattered at his feet.
    And then everyone was suddenly paying attention.
    Cummings was staggering around and shuddering, clawing at his throat as gouts of steam wafted from his mouth like cigarette smoke. No one said a word in that split second of realization that something was very wrong with him. His glasses flew off, his eyes bulging, his face the color of Wisconsin cherries. Rivers of sweat coursed down his brow.
    “What’s he doing?” Tommy Sidel said.
    Cummings fell back against his desk, overturning a stack of graded test papers. His fingers were hooked into claws, thrashing and tearing at himself and everything in sight. “Ggggghhhhlll,” he gagged, blood running from his mouth in dark ribbons.
    “Mr. Cummings?” Tommy Sidel said, the first one on his feet. “Mr. Cummings! Are you all…right…”
    Cummings collapsed to the floor, his fingers tearing open his shirt, cutting deep red welts in his corded throat. A high, inhuman wailing came from him. He thrashed around, thumping his fists and moaning just moments before he began to vomit out great clots of steaming, bloody tissue.
    “Mr. Cummings,” Tommy said, at first trying to get a hold of him, but now backing away in disgust as gore sprayed in the air. “Mr. Cummings! Goddammit, somebody get an ambulance, a fucking doctor! He’s dying or something…”
    And he was.
    His mouth opened in a terrible continuous scream, his teeth snapping and gnashing, tearing his lips to shreds. His face was a contorted red fright mask, his tongue dangling from his lips until his teeth literally bit it in half. All the students were gathered now in a tight circle to watch his agony. He was like some nightmare cartoon run in fast motion. An evil caricature of someone possessed by a demon, hopping and flopping and moving with epileptic speed and at such impossible angles that they could hear his tendons popping and bones dislocating.
    Nobody rushed out for help.
    Not a one.
    Something was happening to them, something they did not understand or really even question. It passed from one to the other like cold germs and when it was done, the students of 5 th hour Biolab were not who they had been a few moments before. They were altered, changed. They looked down at Mr. Cummings and there was not a single twinge of remorse or sympathy in them. What they felt was rage, a stupid and insane rage that consumed them. And one that needed to be voided on something, someone.
    Billy stood behind them with Lisa Korn at his side. “Watch, Lisa,” he said. “Now you’re going to see what they really are down deep.”
    Lisa just stood there, speechless, her eyes unblinking, her mouth pulled into a straight colorless line.
    Billy was smiling, smelling the raw stink of atavism coming from the crowd.
    It was delicious.
    For maybe twenty or thirty seconds, the students ringed around Cummings did not move. They stood in mock surprise at what had happened, at the dying thing at their feet. Then they began to move.