Mr Lane was our Math teacher in high school. He didn’t
stand out in any way, and his lessons weren’t particularly interesting. He was
just—always there. Always there in his usual button-down shirt and pants, earnest
in his hope to interest us in algebra and isosceles triangles and whatnot. Seldom
was he successful though.
But we all knew he was a kind man. Mel went to him
when she found out, at fifteen, that she was pregnant. She didn’t want to have
an abortion, so he helped to arrange for the baby to be put up for adoption after
it was born. He helped out Brandon when his deadbeat dad just upped and left
him without a word, letting him stay at his place for a while until the county
found him foster parents in our town.
From what we knew of him, he was unmarried and had no
family to speak of—his parents were dead and the one sibling he had, a brother,
had moved to Canada years ago and not bothered to stay in contact.
He had a dog though, and the day it died was the only
day any of us could ever recall him calling in sick. That was just the sort of
man he was.
So imagine our surprise when the police arrested Mr
Lane in our final year. Apparently it was only us kids who had no idea that was
coming. Suspicion among the adults had been mounting for some time, especially
after the disappearance of Evelyn, the fifth kid in two years to go missing
without any explanation, and without eventually being found. They were all from
our school, but in different classes.
The one thing they all had in common? They had Mr Lane
as their Math teacher.
When interrogated, he confessed. He brought them to
the wooded area near the school where four bodies were found buried. For some
reason or another, he refused to reveal where Evelyn's body was hidden, though
he admitted to killing her.
All the same, the prosecution had more than enough
evidence to proceed to trial. It made the news, of course, but it wasn’t really
considered sensational enough to be featured on the front page. There were no
lurid details to be savoured by the public, much to their annoyance. The voices
in his head had told him to do it, he said. He was sentenced to a hundred and
twenty years without any possibility of parole.
Justice so done, the convicted murderer faded from the
public consciousness. Evelyn’s body was never found, and Mr Lane died in prison
barely a year into his imprisonment, beaten to a pulp by a fellow inmate whose
niece had been one of his victims.
But some things just refuse to stay buried in the
past. Around a decade after the death of Mr Lane, teens started disappearing
again, but at a brisker pace. “Ten Gone in Two Months!” the headlines of the
local paper screamed. Even the national newspapers took an interest this time,
for there were dark whisperings of how evil never really dies; old Mrs Graham in
fact swore she saw the spectre of the long-dead teacher-turned-murderer—in the
very same woods where he had previously hidden the evidence of his crimes.
The hard-nosed detectives at the police department
weren’t as inclined to believe that the missing persons were being spirited
away by a—well, spirit—though, and they investigated every case thoroughly and
tirelessly, and soon enough they got a lucky break.
Late one evening, a state trooper pulled a car over
for a busted tail light. He was just about to let off the driver with a warning
when the tiniest cry could be heard wafting from the boot. The driver must have
heard it too, for he floored it immediately, hurling the officer to the side. The
ensuing high-speed chase involved at least five patrol cars and a helicopter,
and it wasn’t long before the suspect was apprehended.
Name of suspect? Brandon Hicks. The very same Brandon
taken in by Mr Lane after his dad had abandoned him. In the boot of his car the
police found his latest victim, Brenna Taylor, thankfully still alive. When
pressed on his victim count, he proudly declared: Sixteen.
Eleven in the recent two months, not counting Ms
Taylor. One of them had not been reported as a missing persons case due to her
history of running away from home.
And five more from
a decade ago. Including Evelyn, whose body was never found.
The police was sceptical at first, seeing it as a
deliberate ploy to throw them off balance. But when they found the skeleton of
Evelyn Burrows in a remote spot at the local quarry—just as Brandon said they
would—they began to sit up and take notice.
The truth shook the town to the core. Ten years back,
Mr Lane confronted his young charge after he had found one of Brandon’s shirts,
bloodied and muddied. The youth broke down and confessed, and begged his
teacher not to give him up to the police. For some reason, he agreed. And when
things came to a head and he was arrested, something in him made him decide to be
the willing scapegoat for his student.
The townsfolk all shook their heads in disbelief at
the revelation. No one could understand why Mr Lane would do anything like
that. Brandon himself offered no explanation.
Brandon Hicks eventually was shut away for a long,
long time. And after a while, the whole incident faded from memory, an ugly
stain on an otherwise clean history the town was eager to forget.
But I still think about it sometimes. The man who had
never called in sick his entire life doing so for the first time when his dog
died. The one living thing he had as a friend.
I think Mr Lane was a lonely man. A very lonely man.