Hazel Petti was the bane of our existence.
By “ours”, I don’t just mean the students at Clara Perkins Elementary School. Everyone in town had a poor opinion of Ms. Petti, presuming they had the unfortunate luck to meet her. Opinions that ranged from mild annoyance to deep-seated hatred.
If you ran a nearby business, no matter what kind, you could bet on Ms. Petti paying a visit now and again. Usually for no other reason than to search for a product or practice to get upset about.
When the town fair advertised a ’50s theme, complete with a kissing booth, quite a few teenagers were anticipating the opportunity to… donate and support the local book drive, of course. However, the second the booth’s sign went up, there was Ms. Petti to shut it down for being “inappropriate”.
She always wore an ankle-length, black coat with oversized, silver buttons. With a hood, it would’ve made an excellent Grim Reaper robe. She wore hair pins, the sharp kind, and was known to use them if she managed to push someone to the point of physical intimidation.
Back in the day, I had exactly one run-in with her. I lived within walking distance of my school, which was a boon for my parents and a burden for me. On one unusually chilly morning, while I ran along the sidewalk, head down and counting cracks, I nearly bumped straight into Ms. Petti as she stood, defiantly, in the absolute center of the path.
There was no way she hadn’t seen me coming. Looking back, the way her feet were planted should’ve told me everything. She was looking for a reason to be angry, as always, even if it meant being toppled by an oblivious fat kid. Luckily, I looked up just in time to see my own young life flash in front of my eyes before stumbling and spilling safely into the grass.
That was when I learned what a lot of others already knew – Avoid Hazel Petti at all costs.
Speaking of the book drive I mentioned earlier, it was a mild success despite her various interventions. My school library had a small variety of dusty, outdated books that had been half-ruined by numerous past students. It was hard to find one that wasn’t either missing pages or filled with scribbles. Reading was never much of a priority for local folk, but as we were dragged kicking-and-screaming into the 21st century, it was clear things would have to change. At least in some small, non-threatening ways.
So, an influx of new books hit the library and each class had an hour scheduled just to get us acquainted with the idea of actually wanting to check them out. The time was allotted for searching through the stacks and finding out exactly what fair-based charity had provided.
Kids ran around like maniacs.
Instantly forgetting any directions to keep quiet, their shoes squeaked and slapped the floor in frantic loops and sprawling paths, as wild and boisterous as any game of tag. I stood near the entrance, half-hiding beside a rolling cart that had been used to bring the books in.
The school librarian, Ms. Kinsk (also the school nurse) stood nearby as well, chatting and laughing with my teacher, Mrs. Abbott. There was no point in trying to control the mob unless something really got out of hand.
Students were pulling books off the shelves and opening them up in mid-run. They’d stop, flip through a few pages, then toss it aside and bolt to the next aisle. Putting everything back in place after each class tore through must’ve been Hell… then again, Ms. Kinsk probably just put things back randomly. There was no real reason to re-sort the books until all the chaos ended.
Sue, a girl my age with a ponytail tied with rubber bands, slid to a stop near me and opened a thick book of comic strips. She turned it toward me, pointed to a drawing of a round, chubby little bear cub, and said “That’s you.”
She took off again without another word.
“Go find a book.” I heard Mrs. Abbott at my back. I was the only one she could’ve been talking to. “You don’t want to miss out, do you?”
I gave an over-dramatic sigh and merged into the seething mass of shouts and boogers. It honestly felt like there were more children pushing and tripping around than had previously been in the class.
One of my friends, a weird kid named David, was sitting on the floor at the end of one of the aisles, back to the wall. He was the only kid I knew who had black hair, so he stuck out immediately. I made my way over and sat down in front of him, confidant that we could strike up a conversation about cartoons or video games to pass the time.
David was stock still, his legs out straight and his arms crossed over his chest, holding a book tightly in his grasp.
“What book is that?” I asked, not at all interested in the answer.
No response.
I looked David in the face, in the eyes. He was staring forward. Not only did he not acknowledge my arrival, but he wasn’t even looking at me. He was gritting his teeth like I’d seen zoo monkeys do to each other.
“David? Earth to Dave?” I asked, waving my hand in front of his face and snapping my fingers, mimicking any given evening sitcom.
He was motionless. Still staring, Not blinking.
Playing some weird game or prank, obviously.
My attention turned to the book he was clasped onto, his knuckles white. It was a small, thin, innocuous-looking one with a blank black cover. I couldn’t see any cover art, no title, nothing. It looked like a plain, unbranded hardcover diary.
“Okay, I’ll just check for myself, then.” I snapped.
As soon as I pulled at the book, trying to take it from David’s grip, he screamed.
It was an ear-splitting shriek of pain or fear that immediately silenced the room. For the first time that day, the library was whisper quiet as everyone – everyone – stopped and turned toward us.
I hadn’t pulled hard, and the book hadn’t even moved an inch. There was no danger of a paper cut, much less any real injury. Still, David screamed and he kept screaming, over and over with short breaths between, repeating like a skipping record.
“Aaa! Aaa! Aaa! Aaa! Aaa!”
The nurse-librarian was on the case in seconds. She gripped David by the shoulders and laid him on his side quickly as he continued to shriek.
“He’s rigid!” She shouted as Mrs. Abbott hauled me to my feet and pulled me back, “It’s a seizure!”
The rest of the children, including me, were ushered out of the library and back to class. As we quietly plodded down the hall, we could hear Ms. Kinsk using a walkie-talkie and frantically telling the principal to get emergency responders on-scene.
When we got back to the classroom, Mrs. Abbott quickly told us to put our heads on our desks. She got on the phone, cupping her mouth with her hand and turning her back to the class. I’m not sure who she called, or what she was quietly mumbling, but the tremble in her voice was obvious. I assume she called David’s parents, but who knows.
After ten to fifteen minutes of listening very closely to our desks, we heard the siren just outside. Not long after that, Ms. Kinsk quietly came into the room and made a bee-line for the teacher’s desk.
She was holding the book. Thin, dark, featureless.
Mrs. Abbott leafed through the book carefully as Ms. Kinsk whispered in her ear. Seeing that they were both distracted, a good number of us lifted our heads and craned our necks to see if we could figure out what she was looking at.
The paper within was a glimmering red with dark text, but beyond that, I couldn’t make anything out.
Mrs. Abbott shrugged, snapped the book shut, and handed it back.
“Place it aside and we’ll talk to the Principal this evening.” she noted.
Honest to God, I do not know what happened to David after that day. Never saw him again. Of course, there was no way to know that would be the outcome back then.
The next time I thought about the library was when another student froze up only days later.
This kid wasn’t in my class, so I heard about it through gossip during lunch. Another child, at the back of the library, holding onto a thin black book and unable to move… a paralyzed look of sheer terror on her face.
That was when the paranoia and blame began.
“I told her to put that book aside.” Mrs. Abbott explained.
She may have been out in the hall at the time, but she was upset and loud enough to hear through the door.
“Oh, don’t do that.” Ms. Kinsk replied angrily, “I did put it away. You know I did. We are talking about an entirely different copy. I still have the first one in my desk, we can go right now and look!”
“I know it doesn’t make any sense, correlation and causation and all that, but at this point it should be obvious.” Mrs. Abbott ranted, “There’s mold or mites or what have you. We probably need to get rid of all the books now. It may have already spread.”
Principal Moswick’s baritone voice rumbled, but I couldn’t make out any of his responses.
Ms. Kinsk must’ve either quit or she was fired. I saw her working the register at the grocery store shortly after. Thankfully, my mother picked a different check-out lane.
Two more children were found in the library.
Frozen. Staring. Gnashing their teeth. Grasping thin black books.
We got a half-day out of that.
Most of the following was told to me in bits and pieces across actual years.
As it turned out, that afternoon, an assembled group of twelve teachers in paper masks and kitchen gloves collected five total copies of the book from various library shelves. A couple volunteer firefighters helped out, and a doctor was on hand in case anything went wrong, though he was a pediatrist.
Don’t get me wrong, there had been plenty of tests. After the two additional cases, the room was chained and the only other people who went in or out were county officials with very specific certifications. However, nothing came back positive. Mold? No. Mites? Nope.
Nothing but black, unmarked books with red pages. Ones no one remembered buying. Principal Moswick and Mrs. Abbott no doubt shared a heaping bowl of humble pie when Ms. Kinsk was asked to kindly come back in and help figure out where the books had even come from.
At the height of the drama, with nerves on edge and fingers quietly being pointed around at random targets, the time had finally come…
Cue Hazel Petti. Dressed in full horseman-of-the-apocalypse regalia, striding through the school as if she owned the property. Staff were relieved to find out she wasn’t a vampire, because after all, no one had invited her in.
She didn’t even have any children because, as she had once put it, “I simply do not have time in my day for all the hassle that comes with owning a husband.”
“Show me the book.” Ms. Petti demanded, her words quick and her tone authoritative.
“Hazel,” Principal Moswick started.
“It’s Ms. Petti. I’m not one of your children. I’ll be referred to with a modicum of respect.” she scolded.
“Ms. Petti, you don’t need to be here. We’re handling it.”
“Handling this like you handled your marriage, sir?”
“Now, Ms. Petti, let’s not start speaking out of turn.”
“I am speaking, so this is my turn. I’ll let you know when it’s yours.”
After that, Moswick closed his mouth. He should’ve thrown her out a window, to be honest, and he’d have every right to.
Still, Ms. Petti proceeded with her death march. Through the halls, to the library door, and into the library after snapping her fingers until someone unlocked the chain. She may not have been a vampire, but she had all the makings of a witch.
“So this is the book?” Ms. Petti asked, turning one over in her hand. “It’s blank.”
“We know that.” barked the science teacher, Mr. Gladsbury, “They all are.”
“All?” Ms. Petti replied.
Mrs. Abbott stepped in front of Ms. Petti and gestured with a sweep of her arm. Most every spot on every shelf displayed a copy of the thin black book with no title.
Hundreds of them.
The few remaining outliers, collections of poetry, pop-up books, a couple random encyclopedias, they were the ones that now looked out of place in row after row of darkness.
“Every copy they’ve gotten rid of,” Ms. Kinsk added, “is replaced by at least two more. We don’t know where the old books are going.”
“A prank.” Ms. Petti sneered, “A childish, stupid prank perpetrated by an out-of-control student body. You get those children in the auditorium. You let me speak to them. I’ll set this whole building straight as straw in a matter of moments.”
Mr. Gladsbury pointed to the door.
“Lady, the door was chained!”
Ms. Petti cast a glare his way.
“I surely am a lady, but I am not ‘lady’. You’d do well to watch your tongue, sodomite.”
Mr. Gladsbury decided the best course of action at that point was to separate himself from the situation, lest things go downhill fast.
“Well…” Ms. Petti dropped her arms to her sides as if she were exhausted by the circus around her, then shook her head slowly. “Looks like we’re in for a good, old-fashioned book burning.”
This is where I come back in.
The air was crisp. It was autumn. The best time for a bonfire, I guess?
Every book from the library, every last one, was now a thin black tome with nothing on its front or back cover. Each copy in pristine condition as if brand new. They sat in a pile in the middle of the school parking lot, haphazardly dumped out of countless cardboard boxes, which had been flattened around the base, as if there were any need for kindling.
It was impressive, if nothing else. A small, hardcover hill spilling over itself.
A few books had fallen open, the red pages catching moonlight… almost metallic in their shine, black letters incomprehensible due to the dark of the evening, especially when viewed from a safe distance from what was about to be a raging inferno.
Most of the people there were school staff, but a few parents had come by. At the forefront were the moms and dads of the children who had locked up and were now off in some mysterious other place where I hoped they would get better soon.
My parents had come to see the spectacle, bringing me along in some weird attempt at giving me closure for events I in no way understood. I recognized Sue and a couple other kids, but most students were strangers to me despite inhabiting the same building every day of the week.
“Allllright.” Ms. Petti stepped in front of the accelerant-doused heap, “My. It’s been a while since I’ve been to one of these. I think the last time was for that awful trash with the sharing elephants.”
She turned and, taking a silver lighter out of her coat pocket, she raised one arm to the sky as if showing God himself what she was about to do. It seemed like she expected him to be proud of her in that moment.
“Did you know she smoked?” Mrs. Abbott quietly asked Mr. Gladsbury.
“It’s probably for torturing small animals.” he reasoned.
As the lighter’s flame flickered in the dusk, Ms. Petti picked up a single book from between her shoes, lit it carefully, and then threw it in with the rest.
Fire burst forth with a hot belch as Ms. Petti turned away from it and walked back to the group, taking special note of Principal Moswick.
“Now was that so chicken-plucking hard?” she chided.
Smoke rose from the pile as children began cheering and laughing with little idea of what was actually taking place or why. It was just a fun and interesting night out, watching stuff burn. The cloud swelled and spiraled into the night sky, swirling like the mini-cyclones I had seen in that same parking lot so many times before.
However, the spinning only grew faster as fire engulfed the books.
Faster, and faster still, until it was dizzying to look at.
“Have you got the hose ready?” Principal Mosbeck asked absently, still staring into the light of the flames.
“Yeah, like I told you before. Everything’s taken care of.” Mr. Gladsbury replied, eyes also fixed on the glowing embers, “It shouldn’t get out of hand.”
The tower of smoke spun.
It danced.
It contorted.
It bent over, folded at the middle, as if caught in a strong wind that definitely didn’t exist.
It swept down suddenly, an uncomfortable dragon’s breath that burned the eyes of the onlookers. Not even the glow of the moon or the school lights pierced the obscuring veil that washed down over us.
I put my hands over my face to keep the smoke out, and I could feel my mom’s grip on my shoulder as she did the same with her free hand.
I shouted out, “Mom! Mooom!” but the roaring sound of an impossible vacuum overtook my ears. I imagine everyone else was just as deafened by the deep, booming roar.
I blinked a few times as the din continued.
The smoke was clearing, moving through the air in thick ribbons like serpents after prey.
“Mom…?” I whimpered, feeling sick to my stomach as I turned to see it…
Ms. Petti.
Her mouth agape, jaw all but unhinged. Her eyes wide with sheer terror, tears welling up at the corners. The smoke invading her throat, her nostrils, filling her up despite all logic, like a horror movie played in reverse.
The awful noise, the roar, was the smoke itself being inhaled, or rather pushing itself in.
In moments, the smoke was gone and she immediately fell to her knees, head down.
“Ms. Petti?!” Principal Moswick shouted as he and and Ms. Kinsk approached her from either side.
“Someone call 911!” Ms. Kinsk shouted as she lifted Ms. Petti’s limp wrist to check her pulse, “We need a… a… a chemical wash kit, I think.”
Suddenly, Ms. Petti let out a shriek.
“Get away from me!” she belted out, her vocal cords audibly straining.
Ms. Kinsk and Principal Moswick stepped back, but only a few inches, unsure of what exactly the best course of action would be.
Meanwhile, the books continued to burn.
“Aaahh…” Ms. Petti let out a painful groan, “Ooohh…”
“You may need to lie down.” Ms. Kinsk suggested.
As if taking her advice, Ms. Petti fell face-first onto the pavement with a crack, breaking the very nose she had poked into the business of so many hapless people.
“Ooohhh…” she groaned…
Before anyone could approach again, Ms. Petti started spasming, her limbs shaking and whipping around her with no coordination, like they were tentacles without a skeletal structure beneath.
The sickening sound of flesh slapping hard on pavement echoed over the crackle of the fire with each inhuman movement.
“It’s another seizure.” Ms. Kinsk explained, turning back to the group with a look of dread on her face.
She didn’t see it.
Behind her, Ms. Petti’s limbs, first her arms, then her legs, began to dislocate… to lengthen. Taut, red and purple skin stretched thin over ever-elongating contents. A few of the people witnessing this screamed and retched in a mix of horror and disgust.
Ms. Kinsk turned back around in time to see Ms. Petti’s face, her head now bobbing on the end of an impossibly long, veiny, pulsating neck. All the while, disgusting, guttural noises rose from her gullet.
“Ulk… uchh…”
Her eyes had rolled up, almost into the back of her skull, her bloodied nose leaking out over a wicked grin of cracked dentures set behind wormy, soot-blackened lips.
Ms. Kinsk could only let out a light gasp before the thing that was Ms. Petti whirled around loosely, gripped her by the head, and thrust her backward, clear off of her feet.
Parents, staff, and students watched as the creature smashed Ms. Kinsk’s head open on the black top, all in one smooth motion.
“Holy shit!” Principal Mosbeck shouted, “Holy fucking shit!!”
Children scattered into the night. Some of the adults ran, as well. I want to think they were chasing down their kids, to get them to safety, but deep down I know they just ran. Ran for the sake of running.
Others, like myself, were frozen in place, thrown for a loop by the hideous display only a few feet before us.
The creature, Ms. Petti, looped one arm and one leg around Mosbeck’s neck and pressed him to the ground. I could hear him gulping for air as she squeezed, popping his head fully off his shoulders and sending it rolling with a jet of bloody viscera.
My father swept me up with one arm and linked the other arm with my mother’s as we turned in what seemed like slow motion before sprinting away from the carnage.
From my position, clasped to dad’s chest, head on his shoulder, I looked back as the creature rose in front of the fire, a starfish silhouette. An ink blot on the white flame.
“Jesus…” Mr. Gladsbury called out as we left him behind, where he had fallen into a sitting position. “I didn’t think the bitch could get any worse…”
She dragged him, along with whoever else was at hand, toward the fire. I shut my eyes tight as a chorus of frantic screams rose up.
There were ten town meetings after the fact.
Ms. Petti was gone. Vanished into the ether like a scurrying insect. The volunteer firefighters had to put out the books, leaving nothing behind but burnt, soggy scraps of paper. The school was closed down, and no one could agree on a course of action beyond that.
Ten town meetings. Hours upon hours each.
The adults came nowhere close to any conclusions, and eventually life just had to go on. Parents had to work, teachers had to change districts, students had to be shipped around until someone came up with a solution.
Mrs. Abbott took up in-home tutoring, which helped a lot of kids stay on track.
In the end, all they could think of was to brick up the empty library, paint it over as if nothing had been there, and re-open the school while crossing their fingers and hoping for the best.
I guess it worked, so there’s nothing to really complain about, there.
Part of me wonders what was in those books.
What sort of dangerous knowledge was written on those shiny red pages?
Who wrote them? Maybe they wrote themselves.
I don’t fucking know.
All I do know is that I teach my children the same lesson I learned on that sidewalk all those years ago.
In the event you happen to see her – avoid Hazel Petti at all costs.
