Red Flow

A shiny, late-model Volvo quietly pulled into the deserted high school parking lot. A cold winter’s wind blew heaps of late October’s curled and crinkly red, yellow and brown leaves across the frosty asphalt. Torn fragments danced hither and yon like dark minions.

Sybil Carter got out of her car quickly. She’d been a teacher for over fifteen years, was in her early forties and no more than five-three in her high heels. She had streaks of gray running through her thick and curly brunette hair, making her look considerably older than she was.

She’d been teaching for the past two years here at the Greenville Academy for Girls, though this was her week off from teaching. She hastened along the sidewalk, which ran the length of several classrooms. She noticed that all the drapes on the windows were shut. The school looked abandoned—but it should be; after all, the students were supposed to be home helping their parents with the monthly harvest of the extremely rare and valuable mushrooms that grew in the nearby moist and dreary caves, located in the meandering Northern Sierra Nevada mountains. Hundreds of these nocturnal fungi ripen every month, and are carefully collected by the families of Greenville. The mushrooms are cleaned, sorted, weighed, and boxed. Many countries’ most expensive restaurants paid a handsome price to have these indescribably tasteful pancake-sized mushrooms added to their most gourmet cuisine.

Sybil knew she was taking a chance coming here; the school board had expressly forbidden her from entering the school grounds during the third week of every month, harvest time. Since this was the townspeople’s major source of income, besides a little tourism money that trickled in from time to time, all the students were expected to participate in the lucrative trade.

            Sybil quietly opened the frosted-glass front door with her master key, and then peered around its edge to see if anyone were watching. Confident no one was there, she slipped sideways through the opening. Once inside, she quickly tiptoed toward her office passing the Academy girls’ large glass trophy case. Often she wondered how such a small school could have so many gold medals and first place ribbons in sports, especially baseball.  She pulled a large set of keys from her purse, being careful not to make any noise. She struggled to insert a shiny brass key into her deadbolt lock. It had trouble going in; a week before she’d bent the key opening a can of paint with it.

Suddenly she heard a young girl's moaning voice coming from the assembly room down the hall. Sybil jerked the key from the lock, then crept toward the eerie noise. The school board had told her that the girls didn't attend school when she was gone; they were supposed to be home helping with the harvest, so she naturally wondered what was going on.  She had witnessed many strange things about these students of hers. She chronicled them in a personal diary that she had hidden away.  Soon all her suspicions would make perfect sense.

            She walked up to the double doors of the assembly hall, and gently put her hand on the left door handle. She opened it just enough to see inside. On the stage was a young girl propped up with overstuffed pillows on a portable hospital bed. Seated next to her on a short stool was the school board chairwoman Grace Stone, and to her left was her daughter, Rebecca.

The entire student body was sitting in the well-cushioned orange-colored theater-style seats that faced the stage. Everyone was wearing some kind of full-length see-through red chiffon gown. Sybil recognized the student on display, Veronica Allen; she had graduated a year ago. She wasn't wearing a dress like everyone else. Instead she had on a pink-flowered hospital gown that ended just short of her bare knees. She was obviously pregnant and her legs were spread apart.

Grace Stone spoke to the girls in the audience, her voice strong with authority. “As you girls can see, Veronica has twins inside her, as all the women in our clan do when they conceive. Soon you’ll see the blessed absorption ritual, which is the moment the female fetus absorbs the male in its first feeding. But to begin with, we must feed as well.”

A woman emerged from the floor through a lift in the middle of the stage, the kind actors use to rise triumphantly into the spotlight. She was bound and gagged, dressed like one of the seasonal backpackers that frequented the area. She wore bright yellow, thick knee-high socks gathered at the bottom, and stuffed into lightweight green hiking boots, and the standard Gortex camouflage climbing shorts with a tan and green and yellow-ochre matching top. A beaded Indian headband wrapped around her short hair. She was very tan, very thin and very short. Ms. Carter thought her to be around thirty years old. The woman was confined by an old-fashioned and frayed straightjacket. Her feet were secured to the floor with metal straps. She struggled in vain to free herself. Even though the young woman was twenty yards away on stage, Sybil could see the panic in her eyes.