Z 2134

going?” Adam asked again.
    “To Schoolmaster Barnum’s. You’re in big trouble. She shook her head and said, “I didn’t expect this from you, Lovecraft.”
    The elevator dinged, the doors parted, and Miss Abby pulled him roughly into the box and pressed the button for the ground floor — the schoolmaster’s floor. They rode in a terrifying silence as the elevator creaked and shook its way down, Adam terrified and wondering what he was in trouble for. Sure, he knew what he had done, but how could they? And if they did, why hadn’t they grabbed up any of his cohorts?
    The elevator was taking forever, making his first trip to the schoolmaster’s office all the more horrifying as the minutes stretched, teasing him with a dozen different scenarios, each of them worse than the prior.
    The elevator doors opened and Miss Abby dragged him forward, past several closed classroom doors to a large red wooden door at the end of the hall that read, “Schoolmaster Barnum.”
    Miss Abby opened the door and pointed to an empty wooden chair sitting by itself in front of an impossibly large desk — black as midnight and twice as scary. Beside the large desk, two bookcases stretched across the walls, stuffed with books.
    Adam marveled at the sheer number of real books, more than he’d ever seen in his life, all from before the Walling. But he didn’t want Miss Abby to think he was enjoying his visit, so he hid his excitement.
    “Sit there,” Miss Abby said. “The schoolmaster will be with you shortly.” A faint note of compassion crept into her voice as she added, “Good luck, Lovecraft,” then quietly closed the door behind her.
    Adam wasn’t sure if she had left him in the room all alone so he would feel especially guilty when the schoolmaster arrived, but that was definitely how he was feeling.
    Adam’s heart pounded as he waited. He whispered to himself, “It’s OK, it’s OK, it’s OK,” over and over, just how Michael had taught him.
    Adam had heard more scary stories than he could count since arriving at Chimney Rock, and many of the worst were set inside this very room. He had no idea which were true and which were false. Tales of torture ran from simple spankings with wooden paddles, like the neat dozen hanging in a long row over a short black cabinet in the rear of the room, to beatings and assorted abuses administered in a small cell on the other side of the red door at the back of the schoolmaster’s office.
    While Adam had never given the stories much weight beyond the kinds of things that kids said to scare one another, the stories suddenly felt all too real.
    He stared at the freshly painted red door, remembering one of the worst stories and wondering if it was true. Behind the red door, so said the story, was a black one. Behind the black one was a narrow closet’s worth of space, about the size of a coffin. Guilty kids were forced to stand upright for anywhere from one to three days, depending on their infraction. Some had even died of fright inside, so legend went.
    The longer Adam stared at the red door, the deeper he fell into full-blown panic. As he was about to lose his composure, the schoolmaster’s office door flew open, and someone who wasn’t Barnum stepped inside.
    It was City Watch Chief Keller.
    Adam had expected a scowling Schoolmaster Barnum, ready to beat him to within an inch of his life, or maybe take it from him, starting with three days inside the standing coffin. He certainly hadn’t expected his father’s old boss — smiling as if he had found a cure for the zombie virus and was mere weeks from tearing down The Wall.
    “Hello, Adam, I’m Chief Keller. You remember me, right?” the chief said, holding out his hand for Adam to shake.
    Adam did so, nodding shyly. “Yes, Mr. Chief Keller.”
    “Just call me Keller,” he said, smiling broadly. “Wow, you’ve grown so much. I remember when you were three and your dad brought you to the office. Wow, time sure does fly.”
    Adam nodded, feeling a bit of relief that Keller mentioned his father, but also feeling a bit sad.
    “Are you OK?” Keller asked, taking a seat behind the giant desk, his voice softer than Adam had thought it would be, and kinder than anything he’d heard from any grownup at Chimney Rock, including Miss Abby on her best day.
    Adam nodded.
    “That’s excellent,” Keller said. “You’ve had a rough few months.” His smile was thin, but his words at least sounded sincere. “My heart bleeds