The Coach
The town of Maplewood, New Hampshire, is like many small towns across America. Every year there is a parade down Main Street on Memorial Day and a fireworks display behind the municipal building on the Fourth of July. Each Easter there is an egg hunt in Washington Park, and on Halloween, the children go trick-or-treating at their neighbor' homes. A food drive is held during the week before Thanksgiving, and at the official start of every Christmas season the townspeople, young and old alike, gather on the town common for the annual tree-lighting ceremony and holiday concert.
What sets Maplewood apart from most other small towns is its fanatical devotion to its high school football team. The townspeople have good reason to be proud of their team; the Patriots have gone undefeated for seven years. Their successful record can be directly attributed to one man: Michael "the Moose" Sharkey. Coach Sharkey is a former All-American college player and first-round draft pick of the San Francisco 49ers and would no doubt have been one of the NFL's star players. Unfortunately, an injury in his rookie year abruptly ended Sharkey's professional football career.
When the Moose accepted the job of coaching at Maplewood, the Patriots were the worst high school football team in all of New England, having won only a single game in its seventeen-year history, a victory that was due to most of the first-string players on the opposing team having been sick with the flu. In a surprisingly short period of time, the new coach turned the team around and thus became the most beloved man in town. If given the opportunity, the citizens of Maplewood would not only elect the football coach mayor, but they would canonize him for sainthood as well.
Yet even in a town that holds the high school gridiron in such lofty esteem, there are several boys who don't particularly care for the sport of football. Most of them never make their feelings known; they simply follow the crowds to the athletic field every Saturday to watch the game and pretend to cheer on the Patriots. A few brave individuals, however, make no pretense of being football fans. As a consequence, these young men are ostracized by their peers and doomed to the lowest level of the school's social hierarchy.
Kirby Landers was one such outcast. He was, in schoolyard vernacular, a geek, a nerd, a dweeb. Such derogatory monikers didn't overly upset the young man, though, for he was a straight-A student who foresaw a promising future for himself. To get to that future, however, he had to survive high school. To do so, he often found it necessary to turn a deaf ear to the insults and ignore the mocking gestures of his classmates.
When Coach Sharkey greeted Kirby in the hall one day, the young student was dumbfounded.
"How are you doing, Landers?" the coach asked and put his arm around the boy's shoulder.
"I'm doing just fine, Coach."
"How come I never see you at any of the Patriots' games? Don't you have any school spirit in you? Why don't you come this Saturday? You might actually enjoy it."
"I-I can't m-make it on Saturday," the boy stammered nervously. "I have a b-book report due on Monday."
The coach patted the honor student on the back with one beefy hand and squeezed his upper arm with the other.
"Well, maybe next week then."
"Yeah, maybe next week."
The coach looked Kirby in the eye and smiled. The young student blushed with embarrassment and quickly lowered his head.
* * *
Unlike Kirby Landers, Mace Tully was no straight-A student. On the contrary, he was on the verge of failing two of his classes—algebra and chemistry—and was barely proficient in the others. What these young men did have in common was a mutual dislike of football. Kirby and Mace knew of one another but had never been friends until one afternoon when chance led them both to the boys' bathroom at the same time. They were washing their hands at the sink when the Moose walked in looking for his star running back.
"He's not in here," Kirby informed the football coach.
"I can see that, Landers."
Sharkey then walked over to Mace and began massaging the young man's shoulders.
"You're a well-built boy, Tully. Why is it you never tried out for the team?"
"I just never cared much for football."
The Moose pretended to be shocked.
"What's that? Why, son, it's un-American not to like football. Hell, I'll bet Landers here would give his eyeteeth to be one of my Patriots, to score a winning touchdown and be a hero—maybe even tackle one of our hot little cheerleaders. Am I right, Landers? How would you like to make it beneath the bleachers with Buffy or Mindy?"
The coach winked at the boys as though sharing a vulgar secret.
"Coach Sharkey," Kirby weakly protested, "I don't think this is an appropriate conversation for us to be having."
The coach's smile was mocking.
"Not appropriate? What do you say, Tully? Is my conduct inappropriate like this pathetic little wimp suggests?"
The coach punctuated his question with a not-too-gentle pat on Kirby's derrière.
"I don't know, Coach," Mace replied uneasily. "Maybe."
"You boys would never cut it on my team. Neither of you has the balls."
The coach chuckled, shook his head and walked out of the boys' bathroom.
"Don't pay any attention to him," Mace told the smaller boy with compassion. "Moose Sharkey is nothing but a big, dumb jock. He couldn't make it in the NFL, so he comes to New Hampshire to push around a bunch of high school kids. You know what? I'd sooner have your smarts than his athletic ability any day."
"Thanks, Mace," Kirby replied, managing a shy smile.
"How long has the coach been on your case, anyway?"
"Last week was the first time he ever spoke to me. Before that, I honestly don't think he even knew who I was."
"Oh, he knows who you are, all right! He knows everyone who doesn't fall down and worship him like he was a cross between Joe Montana and Jesus Christ."
"What about you? Does he ever give you a hard time?"
"Once in a while."
"How long has it been going on?"
"It started about six months into my freshman year."
"Why didn't you tell anybody?"
Mace laughed humorlessly.
"Who would I tell? Everyone here at school looks up to him and down on people like you and me. Even my own parents would side with him."
"Do you suppose he picks on the other kids who don't like football?"
"Yeah, I do. Remember that Gothic kid who killed himself last spring?"
Kirby nodded.
"He was bipolar, wasn't he?"
"I don't anything know about that," Mace answered, "but I do know he was scared to death of the coach. Whenever he saw the Moose in the hallway, he'd turn around and walk the other way."
* * *
Several days later Coach Sharkey filled in for the boys' regular physical education teacher, whose wife had gone into labor early that morning. It was raining hard, so the coach agreed to let the class play basketball in the gym rather than outside on the blacktop. During the game, the coach's eyes kept darting to Kirby Landers.
After forty agonizing minutes, Sharkey shouted, "That's it, boys. Hit the showers."
Kirby wanted to run to the comparative sanctuary of the locker room, but the coach was not about to let him off so easily.
"Landers! I want to talk to you in the equipment room."
The other boys in the class sniggered as Kirby hung his head and obediently followed the coach into the small storage area.
After several moments of uncomfortable silence, Sharkey laughingly declared, "Son, I've seen trained chimps play basketball with more skill. Listen, I know you're a brainy kid, but good grades aren't everything. Don't you want to build up your muscles? I can help you if you do."
Kirby noticed that several of his classmates had already showered and dressed and were waiting by the gym door for the bell to sound. He looked up at the clock; it was less than two minutes before the end of the period.
"It's getting late," Coach Sharkey announced. "We'll talk about this again some other time. Go take your shower now."
"I don't have time for a shower. I'll be late for my next class."
"You're all sweated up. You've got to take a shower. I'll write a note for your next teacher."
"But ...."
"I said hit the showers, Landers."
The boys' locker room had emptied out by the time Kirby began to undress, and the bell rang as he entered the shower stall. He quickly soaped his body, closed his eyes and stepped under the steady stream of hot water to rinse off. When he opened his eyes again, he saw Coach Sharkey standing in the doorway watching him.
* * *
"I heard through the grapevine that the Moose kept you after class yesterday," Mace said when he saw Kirby at lunch the next day.
"I don't want to discuss it."
The young honor student was clearly upset over the encounter.
"Why? What's wrong?"
"Nothing. Just drop it. Okay?"
"No. That dumb jock said something to you, didn't he? Kirby, you've gotta tell me. You and I have to stick together. You don't want to end up like that poor Gothic kid, do you?"
"He watched me."
It was an agonizingly humiliating admission for Kirby to make.
"What do you mean watched you?"
"In the shower."
Mace paled when he heard Kirby's confession.
"That pervert! Where was everybody else at the time?"
"The bell had already rung. I was the only one there—just me and him!"
"Did he—you know—touch you?"
"No. The kids from the next period class began arriving."
"Goddamn! I always knew that Coach Sharkey was an asshole, but I never dreamed was a child molester."
"Hey, he didn't molest me. He just looked; he didn't touch."
Kirby didn't want any false rumors spreading through the school.
"Well, if I were you, I'd make sure he never gets the chance to."
* * *
Kirby couldn't concentrate on his homework that night. His conversation with Mace kept replaying in his mind. Was Moose Sharkey an ephebophile? And what about the suicidal Gothic kid? Had the coach's behavior made the boy take his own life? If so, someone had to report the coach to the proper authorities. But it would take a mountain of evidence to convince the people of Maplewood that their golden idol had feet of clay.
As was his habit, Kirby turned to his computer for an answer. But after hours spent searching the Internet, he was no closer to discovering the truth. Most of what was written about Sharkey told of his college football career, his appointment to the All-American team and his appearance in the college bowl games. Although there were many references to a car accident that resulted in injuries that ended his professional career, there were few details given.
"I can't understand why none of the newspaper accounts describe his injuries," Kirby told Mace.
"Maybe he wasn't really hurt in the accident," Mace hypothesized.
"What do you mean?"
"Perhaps the accident was nothing more than a cover-up. What if someone in the 49ers organization learned of Sharkey's penchant for teenage boys? The team wouldn't want that kind of publicity, so they decide to say Sharkey is injured and can't play anymore."
Kirby considered this.
"I've seen him jogging around the track. He sure as hell didn't look as though he ever had a serious injury."
If they were correct in their assumptions, the boys might be able to prove the coach had a history of ephebophilia. But again, they were faced with the problem of finding proof.
"I don't suppose we can write to the 49ers. Do you?" Mace asked.
"Like they'd really tell us! We might as well just ask the coach himself."
Kirby's remark was only meant as sarcasm, but it gave Mace an idea.
* * *
"I watch this sort of thing on television all the time," Mace declared as he put two penlight batteries in a small micro-cassette recorder that his father used for dictating letters to his secretary. "I'll tuck this recorder in the pocket of my hoodie, ask Coach Sharkey about his car accident and tape our conversation."
"Are you sure you'll be safe?"
Mace reached into his jeans pocket and took out a stun gun.
"As safe as a baby in his mother's arms."
"Where did you get that?"
"My cousin went to college in New York, so my uncle bought her a stun gun for protection."
"Maybe you shouldn't ...."
Mace silenced his friend's objections with a wave of his hand.
"Just remember: if I don't show up at your house by five o'clock, send out the search and rescue team to come and get me."
When Mace had not arrived by 5:15, Kirby dialed the boy's cell phone number. There was no answer, so he called Mace's house.
"I'm sorry. Mace hasn't come home yet," the boy's mother informed him. "He said something about going to stop at a friend's house on the way back from school."
When Kirby told Mrs. Tully that he was the friend and that Mace had never shown up, the woman became worried. Shortly after nine o'clock, the police brought the tragic news to the anxious parents: their son had been found dead in the wooded area behind the Maplewood Mall.
* * *
"I've never seen anything like it," the medical examiner told the detective assigned to the Tully case. "There's not a mark on the body, yet the boy lost a great deal of blood."
"There was no blood at the scene," Detective Clarence Baylor said. "If it was murder, he must have been killed somewhere else and his body dumped behind the mall."
"There's no evidence of murder," the doctor said. "I can't with any certainty say what killed this young man."
With no suspicion of foul play, the police assumed Mace Tully died of natural causes and decided not to formally investigate his death. They preferred to leave the search for answers to the medical community. Kirby, however, strongly suspected his friend had been murdered by the high school football coach. Mace had planned on questioning Sharkey about his supposed injury. Perhaps his friend had inadvertently revealed his suspicions concerning the Gothic kid's suicide or the coach's unnatural attraction to post-pubescent males.
When Kirby returned to school after Mace's funeral, he tried to avoid contact with the Moose. For three days his luck held, but on the fourth day, he encountered Sharkey in the parking lot.
"I've been meaning to talk to you, Landers," the coach said. "The police came to see me the day after they found Tully's body. It seems someone told them he was coming to see me the day he died. Who do you suppose that was?"
Kirby tried to appear surprised, but he was not a very convincing actor.
"I don't suppose it really matters who gave the police that false information because I soon set them straight."
"What did you tell them?"
"The truth, naturally. I told them I saw the boy a few times in the hallway, but other than that I never had any contact with him."
"So, you didn't see Mace Tully the day he died?" Kirby asked.
"No," the coach insisted. "As a matter of fact, I left school early that day because I wasn't feeling well. Nurse Fanshawe suggested I go home and get some sleep."
Had his suspicions been unfounded? Kirby wondered. Was Sharkey innocent of complicity in Mace's death? Perhaps he'd been wrong about the coach all along. Maybe the Gothic kid had been depressed when committed suicide as everyone else believed. Maybe Mace had died of some rare blood disease. And maybe an injury, and not a sexual scandal, had led to the end of the coach's football career. Those things were all possible—but Kirby still had strong doubts.
* * *
The weeks passed, and the end of the school year was rapidly approaching. Moose Sharkey was busy getting his team in shape for the following season, eager to remain undefeated. Kirby, meanwhile, got his driver's license and began working part-time at a local computer store. Thankfully, his path rarely crossed the coach's.
Then on the day before summer vacation was to begin Kirby was helping the information technology teacher, Miss Warfield, upgrade the operating systems of all the school's computers. They had just finished with those in the computer lab and library, but there were a dozen more computers scattered throughout the building.
"I'll upgrade the ones in the main office, the guidance office and the principal's and vice principal's private offices," Miss Warfield instructed. "You take care of the ones in the science lab and Coach Sharkey's office."
Kirby paled.
"Do you really think the coach needs an upgrade? I mean it's not imperative the athletic department have the most recent technology, is it?"
"The school board wants all the computers upgraded. That includes Coach Sharkey's."
Kirby left the coach's computer until last, hoping that Sharkey would have already left by the time he was ready to perform the upgrade. As he headed toward the Moose's office, Kirby passed the Patriots' trophies gleaming in a glass case for all students, faculty and visitors to see.
I can't understand why all this importance is placed on winning a football game, he thought. Isn't the purpose of a school to educate?
He knocked on the office door, but there was no answer, so he opened it and went inside.
"Coach Sharkey?" he called and was relieved when there was no reply.
He quickly walked to the computer, turned it on and inserted the upgrade CD into the disk drive. As the software was installing new components onto the hard drive, Kirby's eyes scanned the coach's office. On the walls, there were a number of framed photographs of Sharkey in his college days and at the 49ers training camp.
The temptation to learn more about the coach proved too great to ignore. He opened the top desk drawer. There was nothing inside but a few pencils, an Ace bandage and a bottle of aspirins. The top side drawer contained playbooks, newspaper clippings and student-athlete performance reports.
Just what you would expect to find in a coach's desk, Kirby realized with disappointment.
Nevertheless, he opened the last drawer. There, beneath back issues of Sports Illustrated, were Mace's micro-cassette recorder and stun gun.
"Landers! What the hell are you doing in here?"
Kirby jumped at the sound of Sharkey's voice. He hadn't heard the coach come into the office.
"I'm upgrading your computer, as per Miss Warfield's instructions," he said, surreptitiously shutting the bottom desk drawer with his foot. "I should be done in a few minutes."
"I may not be a computer whiz like you, Landers," Sharkey said with a mocking laugh, "but I do know an upgrade CD goes into the CD drive and not into the desk drawer."
"I was just looking for a pen."
"Don't you lie to me, boy," the coach warned menacingly. "You were going through my desk drawers, you little sneak. I let you get away with telling the police your friend was going to meet me the day he died, but I can't overlook this."
"You said you went home early that day, that you never saw Mace," Kirby bravely accused the coach. "How did you get his tape recorder and stun gun then?"
"So, you were in on your friend's plan to trap me into a confession. I thought as much."
"What did you do to Mace and to that Gothic kid who supposedly committed suicide?"
"Ah, yes. The Gothic boy, the pride of Maplewood High. All I did was give him exactly what he was looking for. He used to mope around pretending he was one of the undead; I simply showed him how to become one. I took him to the city where we killed a homeless man and drank his blood. It turns out the kid didn't have the guts for that sort of thing after all, so he killed himself."
Kirby stared at the coach in horror. Was the Moose mad or was he deliberately trying to mess with the young student's head?
"You drank someone's blood? What are you, a vampire?"
"That's a rather archaic word, but it's essentially correct."
"But you can't be. You go out in the daylight. You don't have fangs. You ...."
"Come now, Landers. You're a bright boy. You should know not to believe everything you see in the movies."
"And Mace?"
"I had to kill him for my own protection."
"You drank his blood, too, didn't you?"
"Yes, but I didn't bite him. I didn't want to leave any suspicious marks on his neck, so I put him under a trance and used a syringe to drain blood from his body."
As the coach spoke, he drew nearer to the frightened young man. Kirby shivered and his eyes darted over the items on the desk. Suddenly, he reached out and grabbed the only thing that he could use as a weapon. With amazing strength and agility, he thrust a letter opener into Sharkey's muscular chest. No blood spurted out; none even discolored the coach's white T-shirt.
"You fool!" the Moose growled. "Did you honestly believe you could kill me? How? I'm already dead."
"The car accident ... your injury ...."
"Was a near-fatal one. I was taken to the hospital where I underwent seven hours of surgery. During the operation, I was given several pints of blood from the hospital's blood bank. Funny! Some people have contracted AIDS from transfusions. Lucky me, I got the blood of someone bitten by a vampire. Naturally, the doctors assumed my constant need for more blood was in some way related to hemophilia, so I was told to give up my dream of playing football since even a minor injury such as a scrape or a bruise would most likely have proved deadly."
The coach's bitter laughter terrified Kirby.
"After all the doctors' valiant efforts to save my life, I no longer wanted to live. Football was all I ever cared about. If I couldn't play, I would just as soon die. After leaving San Francisco, I slit my wrists. As I felt myself passing out from loss of blood, I hoped never to wake up. But I did. Sadly, I came back as one of the undead."
"What are you going to do to me?"
"I have no choice but to kill you," the coach replied as he grabbed him by the arms and pulled him close.
"Aren't you even the least bit afraid that people will become suspicious? Especially if I die so soon after Mace did."
"I suppose I'll just have to take that chance."
Kirby thought the end had come, but a savior in the guise of the information technology teacher appeared.
"Kirby?" Miss Warfield called as she opened the door to the coach's office. "Have you finished the upgrade yet? It's getting late, and I'd like to head home. Come on, I'll drop you off at your house on the way."
The boy breathed a sigh of relief as Sharkey let go of him.
"I'm coming now," he cried as he fled the clutches of the vampire coach.
* * *
Later that evening Kirby found the courage to tell his parents the awful truth about Coach Sharkey. Naturally, they didn't believe a word he said, nor did the members of the school board, the Maplewood Police Department or the editor of the local newspaper. Everyone he spoke to disregarded Kirby's wild ravings as the product of an overactive imagination fueled by horror movies, video games and possibly even illegal drugs.
"That kid's an outcast and a weirdo," the principal told the police in strict confidence. "You know the type: spends a lot of time reading books and surfing the Internet."
The police did know the type, and they usually kept a close eye on such students.
Coach Sharkey was more magnanimous.
"I feel sorry for kids like that," he lied. "Landers in particular. He probably resents all the attention my boys on the team get. I offered to help him out, to build some muscles on him, but he turned me down. And then, of course, his only friend recently died. Such a tragedy!"
Ironically, by accusing the coach of being a vampire, Kirby made him an even bigger hero in Maplewood. The students, faculty and parents sympathized with a man who did his best to help a confused, misguided teenager, only to be verbally attacked by the same boy he had tried to help.
As for Kirby himself, he somehow managed to get through his senior year, despite the ridicule he received from his classmates and the silent disdain he got from his teachers. He graduated at the top of his class and gave the shortest valedictorian speech in the history of Maplewood High School. After graduation, he chose to attend a college that was more than two thousand miles away. And even after earning his degree, he never returned to his hometown, where to this day the Maplewood Patriots are still undefeated, and Coach Michael "the Moose" Sharkey is revered by all.
Salem never showered at obedience school. In fact, the closest he ever got to taking a shower was when I cast a spell that turned him into a shower curtain.
