The School of Revenge Read online

  The School of Revenge

  By Michael Richan

  By the author:

  The Downwinders series:

  Blood Oath, Blood River

  The Impossible Coin

  The Graves of Plague Canyon

  The Blackham Mansion Haunting

  The Massacre Mechanism

  The Nightmares of Quiet Grove

  The River series:

  The Bank of the River

  Residual

  A Haunting in Oregon

  Ghosts of Our Fathers

  Eximere

  The Suicide Forest

  Devil’s Throat

  The Diablo Horror

  The Haunting at Grays Harbor

  It Walks At Night

  The Cycle of the Shen

  A Christmas Haunting at Point No Point

  The Port of Missing Souls

  The Dark River series:

  A

  The Blood Gardener

  Other titles:

  The Haunting of Pitmon House

  The Haunting of Waverly Hall

  The School of Revenge

  All series are part of The River Universe, and there is crossover of some characters and plots. For a suggested reading order, see the Author’s Website.

  Copyright 2016 by Michael Richan

  All Rights Reserved.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  www.michaelrichan.com

  A print version of this book is available at most online retailers.

  ASIN: B01I2C7V5E

  Published by Dantull (149917048)

  Become a Patron of Michael

  —

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

  — Confucius

  Chapter One

  Aaron felt the air go out of him as the heat of the twelfth-grader’s breath hit his face. What just happened? Suddenly he couldn’t breathe, and pain just under his ribcage spread rapidly to the rest of his torso. He felt panic rise as he tried to suck in air, but couldn’t.

  There was a smirk on the senior’s face as he withdrew his balled fist. Aaron didn’t know him at all. Yet, for some unknown reason, the guy had just walked up to him and punched him. Why would such an arbitrary act of violence happen to him? He couldn’t speak to ask why…the air was still expelled from his lungs, and he was having trouble taking in a new breath. It hurt — a lot.

  He heard snickers from people around him, and the kid who had just assaulted him turned to them, congratulating himself. Aaron bent over in response to the pain, his books falling from his arms, landing on the floor in a heap. People walking by on their way to the next class stepped around the mess on the floor, but no one stopped to help.

  He heard his assailant moving down the hall away from him with his group of friends, and he knelt down to recover his books. The pain in his chest was still acute and strong, disorienting him. His brain seemed to be in a cloud.

  Why? he wondered. What did I do? I don’t even know that guy! Even as he asked himself the question, he knew the reason: I’m a freshman. That’s all it takes.

  “You OK?” he heard. His friend Phillip was now on the floor with him, helping him corral his books.

  Aaron tried to speak, but he was still having trouble breathing. Solar plexus, he thought, having just learned about the body part in a biology class. He hit me in the solar plexus. That’s why I can’t breathe.

  “What’s wrong?” Phillip asked.

  Aaron held up a finger, a signal to wait, while he tried to take in new air. Finally his chest relaxed enough that he could inhale.

  “He hit me out of the blue,” Aaron said.

  “What, he just came up to you and punched you for no reason?” Phillip asked.

  “Yeah,” Aaron replied. “I don’t even know the guy.” Aaron felt his eyes watering from the pain, and turned away from Phillip so his friend wouldn’t think he was crying.

  “Whoa,” Phillip replied, looking down the hallway as other students milled around them. “What a prick!”

  Arriving as ninth graders at Anderson High School in West Seattle hadn’t been easy. Last year, at Patterson Middle School, they’d been rulers — eighth graders, dominating the grades under them. Here, at high school, they were lowly freshmen, seemingly inconsequential compared to the juniors and seniors.

  And if that adjustment hadn’t been hard enough, it was made worse by the cruelty of some twelfth graders who took it upon themselves to make life unbearable for the newly arriving members of the ninth grade.

  Both Aaron and Phillip had discussed how to skate around the senior threat during the first month of the school year, but they’d only been marginally successful.

  Aaron knew he needed to stand up and make it look as though he wasn’t defeated. He finished collecting his books and rose from the floor, feeling more pain in his stomach.

  “You should turn him in,” Phillip said. “I’ll go with you to the office. I can be a witness.”

  “You can’t be a witness. You didn’t see it happen.”

  “I’ll tell them I did.”

  “I don’t even know his name,” Aaron said, beginning to walk. “I don’t think he knew me, either. I think it was just a show for his friends.”

  “Still,” Phillip said, following him. “He shouldn’t get away with it. It’s not fair.”

  “Lots of things aren’t fair,” Aaron said. “See you at practice?”

  Phillip looked at him skeptically. “I guess.”

  “Come on!” Aaron replied. “We agreed trying out for the football team was a good way to avoid being targeted.”

  “It kinda backfired,” Phillip said. “You know, your name and all.”

  Aaron knew what Phillip meant. In the football practices they’d attended, he’d endured constant ribbing because of his last name: Rogers.

  “My name isn’t spelled the same as his,” Aaron replied. He was referring to Aaron Rodgers, quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, who was not a popular figure in Seahawks-crazy Seattle.

  “It sounds exactly the same,” Phillip replied. “They’re morons. Pointing out the D just confuses them.”

  “Dropping out now would be worse,” Aaron said. “Come on, you said you’d see it through with me.”

  “I will, I will. Just not looking forward to the abuse.”

  “I gotta go,” Aaron said. “See you then.”

  “Yeah. Later.”

  They parted in the hallway and merged with the flow of students weaving their way to the next class. Aaron was relieved that it was long enough after lunch that the force of the blow hadn’t caused him to upchuck onto the hallway floor. That would have taken the embarrassment to unbearable levels.

  —

  “I told you not to show up here again,” the voice said in his ear. It was Curtis, standing behind him as he sat on the locker room bench, changing his clothes.

  “I want to try out,” Aaron replied, slipping on his shoes.

  “Well, we don’t want you to,” Curtis replied. “None of us want Aaron Rodgers on our team.”

  “My name isn’t spelled the same!” Aaron replied.

  �
�We don’t care,” Curtis replied. “You suck anyway. There’s no way coach will pick you. Stop coming, stop trying out, and go home, or it’ll just get worse.”

  Aaron could feel the anger building in him, but he knew taking on Curtis would be a bad idea. Curtis was a senior who had played on the JV team the previous year. In the short time Aaron had been at the high school, he’d discovered Curtis had a group of friends who would do whatever Curtis wanted, such as Dirk, who was even bigger and meaner than Curtis. When you added Bob and Matt to the mix, it was not a group you wanted to tangle with.

  Curtis pushed him in the back, sending him flying onto the floor. When Aaron got back up, Curtis was already leaving the locker room, on his way out to the field.

  What an ass, Aaron thought. He considered following Curtis’ advice and reversing course — he could just take off his practice gear and get back into his regular clothes. He could go home and get in an extra hour of Grand Theft Auto or Fallout. He didn’t have to stay after school for football, and maybe he shouldn’t if he wasn’t wanted.

  No, he thought. I don’t care what he thinks.

  He closed his locker door and headed for the field. On the way he met Phillip.

  “Ready for another afternoon of insults?” Phillip asked.

  “Don’t look at it that way,” Aaron replied.

  “Hard not to,” Phillip said. “And I hate that the coaches just watch it happen. They don’t even try to stop it.”

  “They think it’s some kind of test,” Aaron said. “Like, if you can’t handle Curtis or Dirk, how are you going to handle Bellevue?”

  “My goal in doing this with you was to try and avoid being picked on by the seniors and juniors. It’s a total fail. It’s like we’ve put ourselves right in the crosshairs.”

  Aaron stopped as he looked around the field. He saw Curtis and Dirk stretching. They both looked up at him, and he saw Dirk raise his middle finger to flip him off.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Aaron replied.

  —

  “Here,” Aaron’s mom said, putting a plate of cookies down next to them. “T-minus fifteen.”

  Aaron moaned.

  “No moaning,” his mom said. “The hour’s up in fifteen, and I expect the Xbox off and the books open.” She walked to the window and raised it. “There, this room needs a little fresh air.”

  “Thanks for the cookies, Mrs. Rogers,” Phillip said, reaching for the plate.

  “You’re welcome,” she smiled, leaving the room and pulling the door closed.

  “Your mom is awesome,” Phillip said.

  “She’s a Nazi about homework though,” Aaron replied, driving his virtual car through the streets of Los Santos.

  “My dad never makes cookies,” Phillip replied through a mouthful of food.

  “Your dad is health-food crazy,” Aaron said. “He makes you eat kale chips.”

  “Yeah,” Phillip replied. “They’re not too bad if you add a lot of salt.”

  “Uhhhhh!” Aaron shuddered, imagining the horrible taste.

  They played for another fifteen minutes until a firm rapping on the door meant it was time to switch to homework. Aaron shut down the Xbox, knowing that any other response to the knock would result in a two-week video game moratorium.

  “I like your mom’s approach,” Phillip said. “Most parents won’t let you play until after the homework. This way you can get it out of your system.”

  “Yeah,” Aaron replied, lying down on his bed. His ribs still hurt a little from the punch he’d taken earlier, and the football practice.

  Phillip noticed Aaron’s pain. “God, I hate those guys, Curtis and Dirk and all of them. They’re such dicks.”

  Aaron felt targeted by Curtis all during the practice, hearing him instruct Dirk to “take him out” when they were scrimmaging. He’d spent a good amount of the practice trying to stay out of Dirk’s way. His body already felt banged up from the punch in the hallway; the couple of additional blows Dirk had been able to land just made it worse.

  “Yeah, me too,” Aaron said. “I wish they weren’t at our school. It’d be so much easier.”

  “Maybe their families will move, or something.”

  “That would be fantastic,” Aaron replied, “but I’m not holding my breath.”

  “I wish there was some way we could get back at them. Give them what they give us. You know, hold them down and punch them, or embarrass them in front of their girlfriends, or something like that.”

  “I know,” Aaron said, cracking open a book.

  He did know. He didn’t tell Phillip, but he’d fantasized many times as he lay in bed, worried about the next school day, thinking about how he’d like to see Curtis and Dirk repaid for their crimes. The fantasies usually involved Curtis and Dirk being tortured in some way until they cried and begged for forgiveness. It was a fantasy he knew he could never tell anyone, but it gave him some small sense of justice, since the world didn’t seem capable of delivering justice on its own.

  “Would you, if you could?” Phillip asked.

  “Would I what?”

  “You know, get back at them? Do something mean back to them?”

  “Oh yeah,” Aaron replied. “You know I would.”

  “Me too. I hate their guts.”

  Aaron tried to absorb the material in his book, but Phillip’s last statement hung in the air, almost reverberating, distracting him. It made him feel even more affinity with Phillip. Here was a friend who felt exactly the same as he did, and he was grateful he wasn’t the only one who wanted to right the scales of justice against Curtis and Dirk.

  I hate their guts too, he thought.

  Chapter Two

  After another hour of homework followed by an hour of video gaming, Aaron’s mom announced dinner, and Phillip took off for home, about five blocks away.

  At dinner, Aaron’s mother asked how the school day had gone, and he lied about all of the stress and embarrassment, saying things were going really good.

  “Well,” she corrected. “They’re going well.” She looked at him with concern. “You’d tell me if they weren’t, right?”

  “Sure, Mom,” he replied, forcing a smile and forking a green bean into his mouth, knowing there was no way he’d tell his mother what had happened to him. He knew if he did, she’d be down at the principal’s office the next morning, and all hell would break loose. It would make everything much worse.

  After dinner he helped her with the dishes and walked upstairs to his bedroom. When he opened the door, he was surprised to see a balled-up piece of paper lying just under the open window. It had obviously been thrown from the ground below.

  He walked to the window, looking out. No one was there. He stuck his head out the window so he could look up and down the street; aside from a couple walking a dog, things seemed quiet and normal, as they always did on his block.

  He pulled his head back inside and looked at the paper. He was worried about what it might say. Have Curtis and Dirk discovered where I live? he thought. Is it full of nasty notes, discouraging me from playing football? Making fun of my name?

  He slowly un-crunched the paper. As it unfolded, he noticed small granules of sand bouncing from the paper and falling to the carpet in his bedroom. He brushed at the paper, cleaning the remaining particles from it, and read:

  “Do the wheels of justice move too slowly for you? Do you need a way to make things right, and bring balance to your life? Join us!”

  He turned the paper over, wondering if it was a joke. He and Phillip had just been discussing the injustice of Curtis and Dirk, and now this paper arrives.

  Someone must have heard us talking through the window, he thought.

  But if they just heard us talking, how did they create this flyer so quickly? It appeared professionally printed, with multiple colors and a slick, glossy surface. He continued reading:

  “Learn how to fight back against those who oppress or belittle you! With our secret tools, you can make things right!”r />
  He sat down on his bed, intrigued. He kept reading:

  “Introductory meeting, 5614 Abraham Street, September 13, 8pm. This is your chance to experience your enemies defeat, live and in person! Don’t let this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity pass you by! Admission is absolutely free! Come see what we mean by, ‘Revenge is sweet and cold!’”

  Sweet and cold, he thought. Revenge.

  He knew Abraham Street, and he knew the address; it was the location of the old library. He’d been there many times when he was younger, before they opened the new library a couple of years ago.

  He considered going tomorrow. His mother sometimes checked on him during the evenings, but most of the time she’d watch television until around 10, when she’d come by and make sure he was shut down for the night.

  I’d have to leave here around 7:45, he thought. And I’d have to leave the library no later than 9:30 to be safe. That’s an hour and a half for whatever this thing is.

  He looked at the paper again, re-reading its promise of a solution to his problem. He imagined discovering the secret tools it mentioned, and using them against Curtis and Dirk. He began to become excited at the possibilities.

  I’ll talk to Phillip about it tomorrow, he thought. See if he wants to go, too.

  That night, as Aaron lay in bed waiting for sleep to come, he replayed the humiliating events of the day. It hurt to remember the embarrassment he felt in the hallway as he dropped his books in response to the punch.

  Why couldn’t I have held onto them? he thought. It was so much more embarrassing because I dropped the books. If I’d just doubled-over from the punch, that would have been bad enough, but so many more people saw me because I made a spectacle of it.

  He remembered their laughing at him. He remembered the smell of the kid’s breath in his face, just after he’d landed the punch. It smelled like a burrito.

  He felt anger rise in his body, a visceral reaction to the memory not unlike the doubling-over reaction to the blow. He wanted to strike out and avenge himself. He imagined punching the guy back, and sending him flying across the hallway.