A Beginning

Bemidji Normal School, later renamed Bemidji State University. 1920s. Room 310.


The Dean, a sniveling little waste of human being, blocked their path momentarily. “Before you go in,” he whined, “I’d like to warn you…” The police unceremoniously moved him to the side and proceeded into room 310.

“Christ in Heaven!”

Sergeant Francis Anderson ran a hand through his hair, knocking his hat to the ground without noticing. The three officers with him seemed equally shocked by the tableau before them. The other Anderson, Mark, looked like he was going to be sick.

The room was laid out like any of several dozen others at the new Bemidji Normal School. The entrance was on the lowest level, along with a sturdy wooden table and a wide blackboard. Seating for the students was arranged in ascending tiers, so one rose in elevation as one moved further from the front. There were six rows, and perhaps 50 wooden desks. The layout was thoroughly modern, and was often touted by the admissions department when recruiting in high schools. Of course, Anderson had often thought, most high school students had long ago realized the benefits of neither seeing, nor being seen by, a teacher; he knew he certainly had when he was that age. This new way? No privacy for the really interesting parts of education.

Also, this particular room would make a particularly poor advertisement for the school: the bodies of seven students were propped upright in their desks, looks of hideous concentration set in their faces and nearly impossible amounts of dried blood pouring in a frozen cascade from the edges of their desks. The room smelled of metal and chalk, but not yet of death. That would come soon enough.

The weedy little Dean broke the silence, “As you can see, officers…” God – was there a note of smugness in his voice?

Mark Anderson interrupted him quickly, his voice sounding unnaturally deep and hollow. “Where’s your bathroom? I.” He stopped after “I,” and simply stood quietly while waiting for a response.

“All the way to the end of the hall, on the left.” The Dean responded. Anderson fled the room. Normally, Sergeant Anderson would have gotten on his case about leaving without being dismissed, but decided to let it pass for now. There was no relation between the two men, and few enough personal characteristics shared. Yet, still, the rookie’s mistakes all too often reflected on the sergeant; people subconsciously assumed that because they shared a name, they should be judged together. The sergeant realized it, and normally rode the other man hard because of it. Still, today was different; Francis wanted to show no department weakness in front of the miserable little university man; and, besides, he would have already excused himself if he weren’t the highest-ranking man in the room.

“All right. Boys, I want you to split up and start looking for anything… unusual.” Anderson kicked himself mentally. Anything unusual. Right. “Sir, when we spoke on the phone, you said there were nine casualties. I see seven.”

The policemen looked at each other nervously, neither wanting to be the first to enter the raised desks. The chalkboard was reasonably well-lit with an overhead spotlight, but the desks fell into darkness quickly. Even the light seemed reluctant to have anything to do with the macabre scene above it.

“The eighth is in the top row, but he’s fallen from his desk. A boy. Matthew Cormic. Sophomore. You’ll see him when you go up. The ninth is, regrettably, Professor Tvin himself. He’s right behind you.”

Anderson turned and swore to himself. The corpse of a man in his early-50s was huddled in the corner, near the door. Apparently, they’d all been standing amongst evidence this whole time, and the Dean had gone to no trouble of letting them know. “Almost as if he wanted to surprise us, just like this,” Anderson thought, before dismissing the thought as beneath him. No one was that ghoulish.

Mark, the rookie, chose that moment to barrel through the door. He took one look around him, and fled the room again. “A weak stomach may be one thing,” the sergeant thought to himself, “but I’ll need to remind him about public professionalism again. Makes us all look bad.”

“Sir,” a small voice came from the darkened desks. “Sir, I’ve found the… Matthew. He’s like the rest.”

“Good work. Don’t touch him or move him in any way. The camera guys should be here in the next five minutes.” Anderson had no idea why they weren’t here already, but he’d be damned if he was going to show his annoyance to anyone. Unprofessional, that’s what they all were. Time was, the uniform alone would bring out the best in anyone who put it on.

“Yeah. I won’t, sir. Perhaps you should come take a look here.” The voice sounded even smaller, despite its unexpectedly insubordinate message. No one told Francis Anderson what to do on his own crime scene. Still, it was something he did need to do, and a part of this job that he suddenly realized he had been hoping would somehow pass him by.

There were only two girls, and one was sitting in the first row. Without conscious thought, Anderson positioned himself as firmly within the light as possible while he examined her body. Her skin was sickeningly white and strangely waxy, and she appeared to have shriveled from the inside, just like the others. Her arms showed deep gashes near the veins, and her desk was covered with blood. A small triangle was poking up towards the top of the desk; taking a deep breath, he grabbed it and lifted. As he suspected, it was the corner of a buried piece of paper. It held together only for a second, causing the gel that had covered it to roll sickeningly onto itself; then the saturated scrap fell apart in his hands. Careful work would be needed to see if anything useful was hidden there, but he doubted it. Whatever was on the paper would be irrecoverable by now.

Just that week, the police department had busted up a large bootlegging operation that was providing liquor to a few of the more notorious establishments in town. For the first time in his career on the force, Sergeant Anderson was tempted to misuse his position. Alcohol was the only logical response to seeing something like this; and the police station now had most of the town’s supply locked up as evidence.

The other Anderson burst through the door a second time, interrupting his thoughts and causing him to jump back from the blood-smeared desk. This time, he couldn’t hold himself in check: “Damnit, rookie! Show some common sense when you enter a crime scene!” He had more to say on the matter, or at least his nervous tension was capable of coming up with more to say, but the look on the younger man’s face stopped him. Mark looked completely and utterly stunned, more confused than any man Francis had seen before in his life. He stared at the younger man for nearly ten full seconds before Mark began speaking.

“Sorry, Sergeant. I got. I got turned around looking for the bathroom. I got… I’m sorry, Sergeant. I got turned around.” He was actually turning green, something that Francis had thought was just an expression. “I’m sorry. I’ll be right back. End of the hall, right? To the left?” When the Dean nodded, Mark backed out of the room very slowly and disappeared around the corner.

“So this is how the men in blue are trained, then?”

Curse that man! “These are strange circumstances, sir. I would appreciate it if you remained silent while we investigate.”

“Of course, officer.” The whining tone had vanished from his voice; now it was almost more like a malevolent purr. His calmness was his source of superiority over the other men; now that he had found it, his enjoyment apparently superseded the horror of the situation. “If I am no longer needed, I will take my leave.”

Another voice came from above. “Sir, I think you should see this, too.”

There was no avoiding it, now. It was time to enter the darkness and investigate the higher levels of the room. At least the police were alone, now. Whatever emotions they showed would be kept in trust; it was part of the code of the men of the force.

Just as Anderson drew level with the second voice, the first police officer appeared to join them. The three of them were like an island of life in this cursed room. One of them swore quietly, and it inexplicably seemed to pick up an echo.

The student in front of them was a boy who had probably been of average physical appearance and below-average stature. He was chalk-white and grotesquely wrinkled with desiccation, like the rest. The chief difference was that there was only one gash in his arm, and it was terribly wide. He had died quickly, and the carpet below him had generously opened wide to accept his life’s blood. It squished horribly as the men moved closer. “My God, do you think they all..?”

This boy’s desk, instead of being a pool like the rest, was covered in fine lines of blood, forming a spider’s lattice of thin red marks. Anderson swallowed hard before trying to speak, but he couldn’t tell if he actually spoke the words or merely heard them in his head: “He was taking notes.” With an internal twisting and a surge of bile, Anderson found himself watching the whole scene before him. A roomful of students diligently focused on… something… by the chalkboard. With rapt attention, they each dipped their quills into their arms, pulling up thick, ropey strands of red ink. Soundlessly, they took line after line of careful notes, moving to their desks when they ran out of paper; and, when they ran out of desk, moving back to the top of the desk and beginning again until their writing ran together and became an unreadable mess. They wrote up until the end, dropping dead one by one until only a few students remained, moving their quills uselessly in the sticky red sheet in front of them.

Anderson tried to focus in on the chalkboard, but his eyes kept slipping away until they settled on the door. The rookie Anderson entered again, breaking the illusion and returning Francis to the moment. Mark looked around, seemingly oblivious to the three men standing above him. Then, he vomited.

“Jesus, Mark,” one of the other policemen started to say, but Mark looked up with dark, glassy eyes. He held his gaze for a few moments, then slowly walked out of the room.

“Sergeant?” someone said. It sounded far away.

“Okay, a few things come to mind. First, he’s getting a desk job.” One man laughed weakly. The other remained silent. “Right now, our priority is to get a full class list. This room would not be used for an archaeology class of nine. We need to figure out where the other students are, if they’re okay, and if they know anything.”

Mark walked in the room again, briefly, then turned and left. Anderson chose to ignore him.

“When that’s done, we need to figure out what they were doing here. The wounds seem self-inflicted, and – well – it looks like they were writing something.” His ears felt hot. His words sounded stupid in his head. This whole thing was impossible. Someone interrupted him before he could say anything else crazy.

“Yeah, I guess this could be some kind of writing, but I don’t…”

“You can’t read it because there’s four, maybe five lines written in the same place. We’ll need to tease out individual letters; there’s a cryptologist I know who might be able to help.” And where the hell, he thought, was his camera crew?

A silence fell over the room. Anderson found himself looking around at the bodies surrounding him, almost as if he expected one to turn around and politely let him know what to do. He knew he had more to say to his men, but his thoughts were scattered. He suddenly found it very hard to focus.

“Okay, Sergeant. I can see writing here, now. But there’s almost no letters. It’s more like algebra. Some huge algebra problem. What kind of class did you say this was, again?”

Mark had entered again, and he looked like death. This thought struck Anderson as very funny; here he was, surrounded by the metal-stink of blood, and one of the four living humans here reminded him of death? That was funny. He realized he’d just said something out loud, but couldn’t remember what it was. Now Mark was saying something, and he might be crying. Unprofessional. The men next to him were shouting now; he wished they’d stop.

“No, no, no!” Mark was yelling. “Just listen! I have been through every – single – door in this hallway!”

That was stupid. Sergeant Anderson began to fall backwards, dimly aware that he was likely to crash into something hard – maybe a student. Before his head hit the desk, he wondered if other towns had to put up with this kind of crap.