The Final Bell

A horror legend is born.

Charlotte Duncan threw up all over my desk. Her regurgitated lunch was the last on a long list of grievances attached to the second graders at Bird Elementary. Most entries on that list were related to bodily functions. Peter Matthews wet himself after recess, twice, and Mila Martinez perpetually had a runny nose and cough. Those are select accountings of year six.

Parents exacerbated the problem with strict instructions about seating arrangements, food allergies, friendships and generalized anxieties. None cared enough about their kid’s education to teach them respect and resilience, examples that could have outshined the dirty, dulled students who spread their germs all over my classroom. Those children were tainted long before I got a hold of them. A molder of young minds? Not a chance. An over educated, underpaid, burdened by college debt, babysitter, is all I am.

Not that I could expect much from an unincorporated dump called Bird. That’s right, the name of this locale is Bird, just like the elementary school, Bird Church, Bird Grocer and Bird Bank. Just Bird. The founders couldn’t be bothered to pick a more elegant name from the Aves class, a pattern of banality forever connected to the townspeople and their offspring. That’s how you end up with the Charlottes, Peters and Milas, congregating and propagating averageness throughout the generations.

There’s yet another caste, falling at the very bottom, or more so, out of the bottom of Bird — the McCallisters. Grace McCallister was in my class. If Charlotte became the final gale force wind that blew me over the edge, then Grace was the passerby who gawked at my misfortune, wide-eyed but indifferent, watching from the roadside cliff with morbid curiosity.

McCallister men were well known in our normally sleepy existence, a group of poor, other-side-of-the-tracks folks who were always in trouble with the law or their neighbors. Mishaps were a common occurrence; drunken brawls, car crashes, hunting accidents, you name it, and the McCallisters were involved. Our local paper’s police blotter became famous for highlighting the latest catastrophe associated with their family name.

McCallister women were like Grace — lost souls, walking this earth aimless, and eventually barefoot and pregnant. Grace: the daughter of non-existent, nameless parents, great-granddaughter to the famously deceased Mary, who died at the hands of the local sheriff and his trigger-happy deputy. Mary: single mother, a young lover scorned, falsely accused of murdering her secret boyfriend who she later found to be married with a family. When the authorities arrived, she stepped out onto the dilapidated porch of their broken home, shotgun in hand, and fired a warning shot. The deputy offered no such warning.

Nobody knows the lineage of the man she killed, a citizen of the more well to do neighboring city of Hanover Grove, whose leaders are capable of wiping away scandals with a single broad stroke in order to uphold a spotless reputation. Hanover Grove is my birthplace, and like the McCallisters, our family line has our share of exploits, dirty secrets we’re better at hiding. Rumor has it the man in question is my great-grandfather. Me and Grace are blood relatives.

When the students uncovered Grace’s secret, no doubt from their own parent’s sullied conversations, they were sure to remind her of the pecking order in Bird. While the boys would trip her, pull at her hair or target her in dodge ball, the girls relentlessly pursued emotional avenues of attack, trying to break her glassy-eyed resolve. I should have stood up for her and stopped the bullying, but my short tenure at Bird left me little support or leeway. McCallisters were beyond help. One day I kept her in for recess.

“Grace, you should defend yourself,” I said.

“I know you,” Grace said.

“So you do. I’m your teacher. Even so, I might turn a blind eye if you decided to show those girls what McCallister women are made of.”

“No, I knoooow you,” Grace said, drawing out the word in a hushed whisper. It took me by surprise. Her steady glare fixated on me, penetrating and deep. The sounds of the other children’s laughter outside broke our connection, and I left her alone to join them.

In the week’s ahead, the teasing intensified, and a legend was born out of Grace’s misery, embedded into the psyche of the children through a nursery rhyme spoken by the older kids. It echoed through the halls first in whispers, then unabashedly repeated louder in unison, instilling fear in the youngest grades.

Bloody Mary, in the mirror,

Filling children, full of dread.

In the darkness, turn three times,

Recite her name, turn up dead.

I thought Grace might finally be crushed under the weight of her namesake. Instead, an electric, invisible energy surrounded her, and she walked the halls with a sense of pride, head held higher than any McCallister I ever knew. When a few of the girls begrudged her resilience, they cornered her in the bathroom. Empowered, she dared them, go ahead and call on great-grandma, and see if any of you survive.

Charlotte did, an attempt at rising back up the ranks since vomiting in class. The other girls weren’t so brave, ducking out and leaving her and Grace behind. Nobody knows what happened behind the large wooden swinging doors, but Charlotte ran out screaming, little chubby face pale white. Her stepmother arrived a few hours later. Nobody heard from Charlotte Duncan again.

Grace donned a broad smile in the days that followed. She found her place and it bothered me more than the bullying. A McCallister should never try to climb the social ladder in Bird and I aimed to wipe the expression off her face. I held her after school since she walked home, and I waited for the other children to leave. She kept her eyes glued to my figure while I worked on papers. I expected her to break, to surrender to my will and I only spoke when the silence crept under my skin.

“The Bloody Mary nonsense stops today,” I said.

“Your great-grandpa did an awful thing,” Grace said.

“And yet all anybody ever speaks of is Mary McCallister,” I said.

She ignored my retort, and continued, “Great-grandma was only defending herself. He came to her. Tried to silence her. She did right by our family.”

“And died,” I said.

“She waits for you. The last in your line. Are you afraid to call her name?” Grace asked.

I walked over, snatched her out of the chair, and dragged her by the arm out of the class and down to the girl’s bathroom. Children her age would be terrified of an authority figure handling them with such force, but the countenance on Grace’s face told me with assured confidence she expected it to happen. She anticipated Bloody Mary showing up in the mirror, filled with a murderous rage, to defend her great-granddaughter. I obliged Grace’s fanciful notion and would slather her realization with a healthy coating of shame when the old bag didn’t show.

Once.

Bloody Mary.

Twice.

Bloody Mary.

Three times.

Bloody Mary.

Grace waited, as did I, her smile fading slowly to a frown and then to an angry, ominous glare. I got you Grace McCallister, and your family will always be the same, never rising above the filth smeared across the bottom of the Bird cage.

The fluorescent lights above flickered. A fly ticked at the glass tubes, danced around them and then a shock flung it downward. I could smell the electricity in the air. Another flew onto the counter and then another, both buzzing up toward the light, which flashed and shocked the insects. The air turned rotten, the sweet pungent odors of sulfur and death permeating the atmosphere. The lights extinguished, bathing me in darkness, and in the quiet stillness my ears rang until the silence was pierced by a low moan coming from the direction of the mirror. Above me the lights brightened to an impossibly brilliant white, covering the room in a phosphorescent glow. Several bulbs exploded, leaving only one to dimly light an unspeakable horror.

McCallisters, all of them dead, encircled me, a soul forever trapped in a nightmare that crossed an ungodly ethereal plain. Their flesh decayed, some with missing limbs, eyes, ears and appendages, a testimony to the generations of Bird’s unkindness. It pecked away at the last of the McCallister humanity, the result of an unforgivable sin committed by my ancestors. Grace could not be found. But Mary, I recognized her in a faded nightgown, imprints of blood covering the whole front, as well as her hands and arms. She reached out, the first, and the others did the same, tearing me apart for all eternity.