Dead End High

‘Come on!’ Miss Crazy urged Adam, trying to get him to move faster.

‘Shouldn’t we help Morgan?’ Adam panted. ‘He can’t kill us, right?’

‘He can still hurt us. We have to get you out of here.’

They rushed down another flight of stairs.

’Why pretend to be my teacher?’ He nearly tripped over an old chair that lay at the foot of the stairwell on a lower level. ‘Why didn’t you just tell me the truth?’

‘I tried, but you couldn’t hear me.’ Miss Crazy breathed heavily as they hurried down the next flight. ‘It happens with the dead sometimes. Their mind becomes a mess when you try to tell them the truth…’ She nearly tripped due to a loose tile on the stair, but grabbed the old metal banister too keep upright. ’…so we had to try something different. Become your friend. Gain your trust. Reveal it gently. Come on!’

Suddenly there was a scream from higher up in the factory. Adam came to a halt. ‘That was a girl!’

‘Oh my God!’ Miss Crazy spun around. ‘She’s not supposed to be up there. She must have heard the gun shots.’

‘Who?’

‘Stay right here. I have to go back up.’ She turned and rushed back towards the staircase. Adam wasn’t about to stay around there, he wanted to help too. He charged after her and they made their way as quickly as they could, back up to the spot where they had left the men fighting.

‘Let me go!’ screamed a female voice and it was then that Adam saw who it was.

’Robyn!’

Morgan and Don both lay motionless on the floor of the factory. Hochstetler had his shotgun right up at Robyn’s face and an evil smile spread over his lips. ‘Thought you might come back.’

‘Let her go, Hochstetler,’ Miss Crazy demanded. ‘She’s an innocent.’

‘Nobody’s innocent here.’

Miss Crazy took a step forward, but Hochstetler shook the shotgun. ‘Don’t come any closer. I might not be able to kill her but I can make a mess of her and she’ll be suffering for weeks.’

Robyn’s face was white with terror. Adam didn’t like seeing that and wasn’t going to stand by and do nothing.

‘Let her go.’ Adam stepped forward. ‘If you want me, I’ll come quietly.’

‘No!’ Miss Crazy flinched.

Don hauled himself to his feet, bullet wounds in his chest, but no blood. ‘Don’t do it, Adam. He’ll make your life a misery.’

’Let her go!’ Adam felt bold. He didn’t know where it came from from. He could no longer see Robyn as a potential threat, but a lovely teenaged girl who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Hochstetler gave a snort. ‘Ah, ain’t that sweet. Looks like you’ve got yourself a hero there, girl.’

‘What are you gonna do, Hochstetler?’ Don asked. ‘You can’t turn him now. He already knows who you are. He won’t join you willingly.’

‘He already has,’ Hochstetler sniggered and continued holding Robyn in a tight grip. ‘And he will do exactly what I say, if he knows what’s good for him. Let’s face it, he’s only just a kid.’ He let out a raucous laugh.

‘I’ll go with you,’ Adam volunteered, still not believing he could be so assertive. ‘Just don’t hurt Robyn.’

‘Very good. But she stays with us. For now. Come on.’ He pushed Robyn forward, with the butt of the gun still at her face. ‘Move out of the way,’ he ordered Don and Miss Crazy.

Morgan stirred, but Hochstetler gave him a wide berth. ‘Come on, kid.’ The killer shoved Robyn towards him and trained his gun on both of them. ‘Don’t even think about running.’

He herded them towards the stairs.

Miss Crazy stood where she was, her face pale. ‘You’re crazy if you think you can get away with this, Hochstetler!’

Hochstetler jerked his head back to look at her. ’I can do anything I damn well please! Move it, you two!’

He hurried them both down the stairs, one flight after the next, until they reached the bottom. From there he nudged them toward the main entrance to the factory grounds where two cars stood; Miss Crazy’s Mitsubishi and a police car.

‘You won’t get far, Hochstetler!’ Miss Crazy appeared from the factory building, still following along. Don staggered out from the rear of her.

‘Get in the car!’ Hochstetler ignored her. ’Both of you!’

‘No!’ Adam stood firm. ‘You have to let her go.’

‘She comes with us!’

‘Why? What good is taking us both? What do you want us for?’

Hochstetler peered at Adam, a gleam in his eye. ‘You will be the first of many. You will both work for me and do my bidding...’

‘I’ll never do anything for you!’ Robyn blurted.

‘Oh yes you will. You’ll do exactly as I want. I will control the both of you, just like I will ultimately control everyone.’

’Everyone? You’re crazy!’

‘No. I’m smart. As time goes by, more and more people will enter this plane, ignorant of where they find themselves. I will be there to show them the way…’

Robyn shivered as she spoke, ‘And brainwash and manipulate them?’ Adam could see anger mixed with the fear in her eyes. ‘Turn them into your slaves?’

‘Whatever it takes.’

Adam stared incredulously. ‘What, do you think, you’re a god or something?’

‘I already am a god!’ Hochstetler snorted. ‘I just need people to serve me. Real people, not just illusions.’

‘And if we refuse to serve you?’

‘Then I’ll send you to hell, just like the other god would. You’ll…’ Suddenly he spun around and pointed his shotgun at Miss Crazy and Don who had advanced several metres on him. He took a sideways glance at Adam, ‘Nice try, kid.’ Then he turned back to the two adults. ‘You nearly managed to distract…’

Adam suddenly grabbed the butt of Hochstetler’s gun and shoved it upwards. At the same time, he pushed all his weight forward, sending the man back into the Mitsubishi. Don charged forward and sent a powerful blow to Hochstetler’s face, sending him crashing back into the car a second time, causing the side window to shatter. Adam yanked the gun free and turned it on the former murderer, sticking it right in his face. Hochstetler froze and stared, wide-eyed.

Miss Crazy took the terrified Robyn in her arms and comforted her as Don grappled with Hochstetler and dragged him down onto the ground.

‘I’ve got him.’

Slowly Adam backed off, the shotgun still pointing at the subdued man. Adam glanced back at Robyn who looked back at him with grateful eyes.

Miss Crazy stepped up and placed her hand on his shoulder. ‘Thank you, Adam. That was very brave of you.’

Morgan and Don tied Hochstetler up tightly and shoved him into the back compartment of Miss Crazy’s car. There wasn’t much room, but Adam figured he deserved to be cramped up.

Adam breathed a sigh of relief. ‘What happens to him now?’

Morgan nursed a badly wounded shoulder. ‘We’ll lock him up where he won’t be able to do any harm to anybody ever again.’

Don tried to cover his bullet wounds with his tattered shirt, looking in great pain. ‘It will be up to a jury of peers.’

‘Will… will those wounds heal?’ Adam rubbed his arm, thinking he already knew the answer to the question.

‘I’ll be fine.’ Don smiled. ‘You tend to heal pretty quickly in the afterlife.’

‘Broken bones too?’

‘Broken bones are nothing.’ Don winked.

Adam let his arm drop. ‘Why would Hochstetler become so crazy for power?’

‘He’s a sick, warped individual. I mean he was sick and warped when he died but when you go to the afterlife it can become ten times worse. If you don’t learn to cope with it, you can be driven mad. Hochstetler’s not the only one of his kind. There are others like him who want to ruin everything for everybody else. You know there’s an old saying and it’s very true in the afterlife, “Hell is other people”. Guys like Hochstetler fit that saying perfectly.’

Robyn looked a lot better now that Hochstetler was tied up. ‘People definitely aren’t all good here, but you can trust us, Adam. We’re the good guys. We just want to help.’

Adam couldn’t help but believe her.

Miss Crazy examined Morgan’s shoulder. ‘I must say, Adam, it was an interesting challenge, trying to become part of your world, especially knowing that you thought you had classmates. I imagine you must have thought I was awfully rude at times, ignoring them.’

‘Yeah, it did cross my mind.’

Morgan flinched as Miss Crazy tied some cloth from Morgan’s shirt around his wounded shoulder. ‘I think me coming along caused more harm than good.’

‘Why were you trying to find out where I lived?’ Adam asked. ‘Looking through my windows in the middle of the night?’

Don gave a wry smile. ’Sorry ‘bout that. But we had to find out where you were staying.’

‘Our plans didn’t go at all smoothly,’ Miss Crazy said. ’I had to come up with some wild stories, to explain things like the Collins not being in their house. It was risky coming up with something you’d believe without really knowing what was going through your mind. I’m afraid all I did was make you more suspicious. I don’t blame your subconscious for coming up with fantastic explanations to deal with us.’

Adam turned his eyes back at the factory, relieved to be out of there. There were no zombies; in fact, the entire place looked calm and peaceful. He supposed he would have to get used to that from now on.

He lturned back at Miss Crazy. ‘I don’t get it. I understand I created an illusion and that this world is like a shell of the world I once lived in. But why did everybody start disappearing? Doug Minnow, Dora Collins, my parents. I mean, it’s not like I wanted them gone.’

‘That may have been indirectly related to us.’ Miss Crazy rubbed Morgan’s shoulder, satisfied his wound was dressed. ‘Think back, Adam, to the day the first person disappeared in your world. What happened that day?’

‘I… that was the day I saw you.’

‘I thought so. You saw me – a being like you. Your subconscious had to compensate. Your subconscious started to remove people you thought existed and your mind had to cope with that by conjuring up crazy scenarios and conspiracies. People disappeared and then they returned, just like they do in dreams. And I’m sure you conjured up new people too, whom you’d never seen before.’

‘Like Mr Vennie.’

‘Oh yeah, I wondered about him. The only record I could find of the school principal there was a Mr Bryce.’

‘Yeah, well he was the principal, but I didn’t like him very much. I guess Mr Vennie didn’t try to steal his job after all. I guess it was me that replaced him.’

The perfect high school teacher. Mr Vennie was just too perfect - turning Pungaru High into Adam’s idea of the ideal school - video games classes, no Maths, no school uniforms. He had created his own little utopia. His creation had even tried to tell him that earlier in the factory office.

All his friends, no doubt, lived in that other plane of existence, continuing their lives without him. He had created duplicates - along with their assigned personalities. It explained why Scott and Darren started turning into characters out of a Douglas Adam’s novel. Fantasy mixing with reality. No wonder Daisy had developed a crush on him. The lotto winnings, getting the girl... what a joke. He should have known none of that stuff could have possibly happened in reality.

‘All the TV shows on TV…’ Adam thought. ‘I guess I was drawing memories of them from my subconscious. They were all repeats of shows I’d seen, or ones I had no interest in.’

‘I guess so…’ Miss Crazy smirked. ‘But how would one tell the difference?’

Adam couldn’t help but chuckle. So did the others. ‘So I can bring them back, right? My friends and family, like I brought my parents back earlier?’

‘If you want. But they won’t be real. You can stay if you want and be happy for a while. But eventually you’ll want to know the truth about your existence. That’s why we’re here - to show you the way.’

‘How do I know you’re not illusions too?’

‘Just try wishing us away. We are one and the same. Like you, we believed we were still alive until others like us revealed themselves. No one wants to believe it. And like you, we fought against it. But we all must realise the truth somewhere along the line.’

‘But thousands of people die everyday. Why isn’t this place full of people like you?’

‘There are millions of reality planes. Who knows? Maybe an infinite number. It’s very rare for somebody new to appear here. We travel around looking for people. That’s our job.’

‘I… I saw the ghost of a classmate. At least she seemed like a ghost. Was that an illusion too?’

‘Maybe, maybe not. You know that people believe they see ghosts sometimes, right? Well, that’s when there is a break in the fabric of time. The planes of existence merge for a short time and it’s possible to see those on the other side.’

‘What about things? Like buildings? There was a pavilion being built, the foundations were there when I returned to school. Then one day the whole pavilion appeared, miraculously and the next day it was gone again and only the foundations were there.’

‘Yes, it’s the same thing. What you saw was a break in time. In the other dimension, the pavilion is built now, no doubt. You saw it only temporarily.’

‘And my friends… my illusionary friends acted like nothing had changed.’

‘That’s your subconscious dealing with the changes and trying to correct them.’

‘But I don’t get it. The pavilion was real, right? But Dora was a ghost?’

Miss Crazy laughed. ’No. You’re the one who was the ghost, not her. You may have experienced a real connection with one of the living.

‘She tried to say something to me, but then my hearing went all funny, like it did with you guys… and Hochstetler.’

‘You’re subconscious probably didn’t want to hear what she said.’

‘She must have known I was dead. She was trying to tell me.’

’Very possible. Some people exist on their own for years before we find them, living in their own little world – which is why you hear about ghosts hanging around certain places. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are many people we haven’t yet discovered, living in places we never go. We only found you so quickly because I used to live in this area. I like to come back to visit occasionally. I sometimes even will the people back, so it’s just like it used to be.’

Adam thought about Miss Crazy’s house in Opanake. ‘What about your house? If you’re dead, why did I come across your house with your stuff in it? Do you live there sometimes? Or did I imagine that?’

‘No, you didn’t and yes, I did live there. Last time I went there, I even picked up a book to take away with me. What you saw is part of my world - the shell of what I lived in before I died. When you came here, our worlds overlapped and merged to form one. It’s like mixing two drinks together to get a different drink. No doubt in the other dimension there is someone else living in my house now. But here, now, it’s simply the place I once lived in, now deserted.’

In a strange way it all made sense. What she was saying felt right and as he studied her face, all he could see was kindness. ‘You had a son there. I saw a photograph.’

‘Yes…’ She sighed and her face dropped. ‘I miss him. He must be in high school now. Who knows? You may have even met him once. At an interschool event or something.’

‘Perhaps. What was his name?’

‘Damien Reynolds.’ She looked at him hopefully.

But he had never heard the name before. ‘Sorry.’

She sighed again. ‘I stay around this part of the country hoping that maybe our dimensions will link and that I might get to see him again. But so far, it hasn’t happened.’

There was silence for a few moments before Adam spoke again. ‘It all makes sense now. Your strange behaviour... everything. I can’t believe I didn’t realise it.’ He looked at Miss Crazy. No, not Miss Crazy… Miss Casey. After all, she wasn’t the crazy one. He was. Or at least he had been.

‘Illusion is a powerful thing,’ Miss Casey said. ‘Just look at religious folk and how they get so tied up in their religions delusions and even when faced with reality, they remain in denial and just block it all out, holding on to their religious fantasy world. It’s human nature. When you are so secure in something you don’t want to face something that will shake the cores of your faith… your existence. In this dimension, Adam, you just need to learn how to control your mind and not let it take total control over your life… or should I say - afterlife.’

‘I guess.’ He thought about how his fantasies had taken over his life in the last few weeks and the potential for it to get out of control like it had. It scared him a little to think that it could become like that again. But no, he wouldn’t let it. He understood now and he could learn to control his mind, make the world the place he wanted to live in, but without the disembodied voices calling to him at night and without the alien zombies stalking him. Yes, with his new friends’ help, he could do it.

Miss Casey gave a big smile. ‘I think you could do with a hug.’ She reached out her arms.

Adam hesitated, but then moved forward to be embraced. He then moved to Robyn and held her too. She felt so good in his arms and she didn’t pull away. She seemed to enjoy it as much as he did.

Tears began to fill his eyes as he thought about his friends and his family. They still seemed so fresh in his mind. ‘Will my parents be ok?’ He wondered how they would cope, knowing their only son had passed away. Would they ever get to take that trip to Magic Mountain like the one they’d always wanted? He had to trust they would. He had to believe that they would be alright.

‘They’ll be fine. People move on you know. They won’t grieve for ever.’

‘Will I ever see them again?’

‘There’s always a chance. I hope that I will see my son again one day too. Maybe when he finally passes on. I know it’s hard, but from now on, you’ll have a new family. Us… that’s if you’ll accept us. There are others like us here too. Good people. We’d like you to come and meet them. And after that, you can decide what you want to do. You can live out any fantasy you have and when you want a dose of reality, you can return to the community. You’re always welcome there.’

‘Sounds good.’

‘It is.’ Don smiled. ‘Believe us.’

Adam turned his eyes to Robyn. ‘You must think I’m a complete nutter.’ He gazed into her beautiful eyes. She was far superior in every way to Daisy, even the one he’d conjured up with his imagination. Why hadn’t he seen it before?

‘No,’ she said. ‘Everybody is like that at the beginning. My world was pretty crazy too when I first came here. I’d died in a car accident, but I thought I had survived it. Things got really weird when Tania and her friends turned up.’

‘Tell me about it.’

‘But I must admit, there were times when you freaked me out a bit – like the time you got angry at some invisible bully... Todd was it?’

‘Yeah.’ Adam felt like a real pillock, but at least he could laugh about it now. ‘Todd Spencer.’

She smiled. ‘It’s ok. I hope you’ll come back with us though and I hope that we can continue to be friends. There aren’t many people our age in the community.’ She giggled. ‘They’re mainly oldies.’

‘What do you say, Adam?’ Miss Casey asked. ‘Will you come back with us and join the others?’

He peered across the fields to the small town of Pungaru in the distance. He had many fond memories tied up there. ‘What about this town? Will it always be here?’

Miss Casey nodded. ‘It’s the same world, Adam. It won’t be going anywhere. It will always be like this.’ She paused to let he words sink in. ’So are you ready to go? We can stop by your place and pick up anything of sentimental value you might want to take with you.

Adam took a deep breath and smiled at them. ‘I’m ready. It’s time to start a new life.’

Adam knew deep down everything would be fine.