The Substitute
Mildred Swift had been teaching in Puritan Falls High School since God was a boy—well, almost. One of her former students liked to joke that she ought to teach history rather than English since she had obviously been teaching ever since Lincoln was in office. The only argument his classmate offered was to suggest that the teacher's tenure went back to Washington, not Lincoln.
To say that the elderly educator was unpopular with her students was a gross understatement: they loathed her. In all fairness, some of the enmity they felt was due to the subject she taught. Most high school students were more interested in music and sports than in reading Shakespeare, conjugating verbs and writing expository essays. In fact, the only language arts exercise they took delight in was increasing their vocabularies by discovering new words to describe the teacher who had a disposition that was more sour than lemon Warheads.
For instance, Stu Casey, the class jock, came up with battle-axe; Tom Fletcher, who was heavily into video games, liked harpy, dragon and ogress; and Kyle Proctor, Puritan Falls' resident rapper, composed rhyming lyrics using the words old biddy, shrew, nag and vixen. Megan O'Hara, a card-carrying Wiccan, added hell cat and she-devil, while Lawrence Cabot, the class genius who scored an eight hundred on the verbal portion of the SAT, tossed about words like harridan, hellion, termagant and virago—all without having to resort to a dictionary or a thesaurus. Meanwhile, Buddy Mercer, the class clown and practical joker, just called her a witch and left it at that (although sometimes he spelled it with a B instead of a W).
Words were not Buddy's weapon of choice. He preferred more direct methods of attack such as putting toilet paper in the teacher's trees, soaping the windows of her house, egging her car and gluing her pencils to the desk. And that was only the beginning!
When Buddy ran into the black-clad Megan O'Hara outside the Bell, Book and Candle one summer day, the two began talking about their upcoming senior year.
"I can't believe we'll be graduating next June," Megan exclaimed.
"Me either."
For the first time in his life, he was actually looking forward to the start of school since he had devised several new torments for the unsuspecting English teacher.
"I sure hope I don't get Miss Swift again," the Wiccan said. "You and I have had her the last three years. Surely the goddess will take pity and let us be in Mr. Aubrey's class this year!"
However, when Megan and Buddy received their class schedules in the mail the last week of August, neither was surprised to learn that for the fourth straight year, they were assigned to Mildred Swift for English.
A week later, when Stu, Tom, Kyle, Lawrence, Buddy and Megan walked into Room 118 moments before the first-period bell rang, they spied Miss Swift sitting primly at her desk in front of the classroom. There was no welcoming smile, no questions about their summer vacation and no good-natured joke about this being their last year in high school. Instead, she sat stone-faced and silent, as though she were a fifth figure on Mount Rushmore.
Mildred looked at her watch, giving the students exactly three minutes to find a seat and get ready to work. As the second hand reached twelve on the third minute, she finally spoke.
"Open your books to page five," she instructed. "Now, who can tell me the significance of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales?"
Buddy rolled his eyes and wrote on the cover of his brand-new binder SEVENTY-THREE DAYS UNTIL CHRISTMAS BREAK.
* * *
The autumn went by slowly. The high point of the season, as far as Buddy was concerned, was the four-day Thanksgiving weekend. The low point was when he received his report card during the first week of November. When the final bell rang at the end of that day, he collected his jacket and books from his locker and headed toward Room 118, Miss Swift's lair. He remembered that in his freshman year, he had hung a sign above the door proclaiming ABANDON HOPE ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE.
The English teacher smirked when she saw it there and said, "At least someone in this school knows about Dante's Inferno."
Buddy paused on the threshold, summoning his courage before entering. When he spied the old bat sitting at her desk grading essays, his nerve faltered.
"What is it, Mr. Mercer?" she barked, not looking up from her papers.
"I w-wanted t-to t-talk to you about my g-grade," he stammered nervously.
Her hand stopped writing. She raised her head and looked at him over the rim of her trifocals, but she said nothing. Her silence intimidated the young man, who regretted his decision to speak to her.
"You gave me an F," he blurted out.
"I didn't give you anything," she corrected him. "You earned that F all by yourself."
"I don't think my work was that bad. I didn't fail all my tests; I got a D on a couple of them."
"Edward Robert Mercer," she said, using his full name—a sure sign he would not win the argument. "For the past three years, you barely managed to pass English by the skin of your teeth. Why? Because you don't apply yourself. You don't study. You turn in sloppy work. Your homework is always late. You disrupt the class. Need I go on?"
"I can do better," he said sheepishly, hanging his head.
Miss Swift removed her spectacles and stared at the boy, her eyes flashing with anger.
"Then there's the matter of those foolish pranks you've been playing these past three years. Don't look so stupid. You know what I'm talking about. The eggs tossed at my car, the burning bag of feces on my front steps, the vinegar you put in my tea and the laxative you slipped in my hot cocoa. Oh, I'm sure your other teachers will take pity on you and pass you with a D, but not me. I don't care if it is your senior year and you don't get to graduate with your friends. Unless you shape up, I'll fail you. Is that clear?"
When Buddy was too stunned to answer, she repeated in a Marine drill sergeant voice, "IS THAT CLEAR?"
"Y-yes, M-miss, Swift."
"Good. Then run along. I have to finish grading these essays."
What a bitch! he thought as he skulked out of her classroom, wishing he could remember some of Lawrence's five-dollar crossword puzzle words from The New York Times.
* * *
In the weeks between Thanksgiving weekend and Christmas break, Buddy knuckled down and worked as he had never done before. Every night he took his book home and did his homework. He not only turned his assignments in on time, but he also double-checked them for errors. Yet for more than eleven years, he had slacked off, and there were so many things he should have learned but didn't. Still, he had high hopes. Surely Miss Swift would notice he was making an effort and would see it in her heart to give him a C or D rather than an F on his next report card.
Like most students, Buddy slowed down around the holidays, but at the beginning of the new year, he turned his concentration back to studying English. The focus of Miss Swift's class switched from learning to write a good five-paragraph essay to reading Of Mice and Men. While he was relieved his teacher did not select another play by Shakespeare, he did not care much for John Steinbeck either. Getting through The Grapes of Wrath in his sophomore year had been sheer torture!
In hopes of getting a passing grade on the test, Buddy suggested he and his friends form a study group—an idea he got from watching Dead Poets Society. Stu Casey was too involved with basketball to participate, Megan was taking a course in palm reading at the Bell, Book and Candle and Lawrence—well, he was not about to learn anything from his less-gifted classmates. That left Tom, the video game geek, and Kyle, the poor man's Eminem, to help him understand Steinbeck's novella.
"It's about two migrant fieldworkers," Tom summed up the book in one sentence.
"You see, it's like this," Kyle added and composed a quick verse. "George, who's smart, wants to own his own land; but things don't go quite as he planned. Lennie, who's slow, kills Curley's wife; and George takes a gun and ends Lennie's life."
"Thank you, P. Diddy Proctor, for the hip hop Cliffs Notes," Tom laughed.
In spite of his unfortunate choice of study partners, Buddy felt confident when he entered Room 118 to take the test. It was the first and only time he had read a book from cover to cover. He had even taken notes, more than four pages of them. Unfortunately, in his optimism, he had forgotten how tough Miss Swift's examinations could be. He had been expecting the usual multiple-choice questions that had been on previous years' tests, but the teacher believed that as seniors the students should be able to answer essay questions. This type of test put the practical-joking student at a disadvantage since he had a poor knowledge of mechanics and organization. Thus, despite his knowledge of the characters and events in the book, he only got a D on the test.
"This isn't the way to raise your grade, Mr. Mercer," Miss Swift remarked as she handed him back his test.
Notwithstanding what the student considered a monumental effort on his part, when report cards were issued at the end of January, Buddy again got an F in English.
* * *
On the first school day of February, there was a significant snowfall, enough to close schools in most of northeastern Massachusetts. The following morning when the students entered Room 118 at the sound of the bell, Miss Swift was not sitting at her desk.
"Alert the media! This is a catastrophic event!" Stu declared. "The old battle-axe is late."
"I hope she has a hall pass," Tom joked.
"Where do you think she is?" Megan asked when the teacher did not appear within the next few minutes.
"Who knows?" Kyle replied. "Who cares?"
"In more than three years, I've never known her to be late," Megan insisted.
"It's only been four minutes," Thomas argued, even though four minutes was a long time for a woman who was as punctual as Miss Swift.
"I think one of us should go to the office and ...," Lawrence began, but he was silenced when a strange adult walked through the door.
The jaws of several teenage boys literally dropped, and the eyes of teenage girls widened. One could hear the proverbial pin drop as the statuesque, shapely blonde walked to the front of the room and sat down at Miss Swift's desk.
"My name is Miss Dansbury," the young woman announced. "I'll be teaching you today."
A substitute was nothing new. Nearly every teacher in the Puritan Falls school district called in sick from time to time, but not Mildred Swift. If someone bothered to review her attendance record, he would see that she had never missed a day of work and had never even been tardy.
"According to Miss Swift's lesson plan, you're to begin reading Shakespeare's Hamlet."
There was no collective groan from the students that usually accompanied mention of the bard of Stratford-on-Avon since they were too stunned by the absence of their teacher to object to having to read about the tragic Danish prince.
During lunch, the talk in the cafeteria centered on the absence of everyone's least favorite teacher. Several students speculated about what had become of her.
"She probably had a heart attack."
"I didn't know the old crone had a heart."
"I'll bet she died of old age."
"Nah, I think she saw herself in the mirror and died laughing."
"Or died of fright."
It was Brittany McMurtry, the daughter of Puritan Falls police officer Shawn McMurtry, who first alerted them to the mystery.
"No one knows what happened to her," she said. "Her neighbor called the police when he noticed no one had shoveled Miss Swift's driveway."
There were no more jokes, no snide comments. The teenagers of Puritan Falls celebrated their victory against their arch-nemesis in silence.
That night at dinner tables across Puritan Falls the conversation mirrored that in the high school cafeteria earlier that day.
"Mildred Swift is missing?" one lifelong resident asked. "I didn't know she was still alive. I thought she died years ago."
While the elderly teacher had not taught all the pupils at Puritan Falls High School during her tenure, she had taught roughly eighty percent of them. But whether one had her as a teacher or not, one thing was certain: everyone in Puritan Falls knew Mildred Swift's reputation as a pedantic martinet.
On Wednesday morning Buddy and his classmates hurried from homeroom to Room 118, eager to see if their teacher had returned. None of them was disappointed when they saw the beautiful blonde sitting behind the desk. The police, according to Brittany McMurtry, had yet to find the missing woman.
The students in Miss Swift's first-period English class were so intrigued by the ongoing drama that they failed to notice the change that had come over one of their own. Buddy Mercer, usually the most vocal student in the class, was unusually quiet. In fact, the only one who took notice of him at all during that first week of February was Miss Dansbury, the substitute.
Thursday and Friday passed, and there was still no sign of Mildred Swift. The police conducted a more thorough search of the teacher's house, but no clues to her disappearance were uncovered. Even more disturbing, the police could not find any paper trail for the missing teacher: no driver's license, no birth certificate, no voter's registration card—not even a social security number. When detectives contacted the high school, they learned that the school district could not locate the teacher's employment records.
"She's been teaching in the school for decades," Shawn McMurtry exclaimed. "You would think someone in town would know something about her."
Even as these words left his mouth, Shawn realized the sad truth. No one had wanted to get to know the cantankerous old woman: not her neighbors, her students or her fellow faculty members.
* * *
Saturday was a clear day, one that at forty degrees was unusually warm for February.
Megan O'Hara woke up early, and after finishing her chores, put on her black hat and coat and headed toward the center of town. Her first stop was The Quill and Dagger where she had a café mocha and chocolate chip biscotti at the coffee bar. After leaving the bookstore, she crossed the street and headed toward the Bell, Book and Candle.
As she entered the New Age shop, the bell above the door rang. A woman, who had been examining a collection of bottled herbs, looked up. Megan was surprised to see it was Miss Dansbury, the substitute teacher.
"Hello, Megan," the attractive blonde said.
The student was flattered that the substitute remembered her name.
"I'm surprised to see a teacher in here."
"I confess I've always had an interest in the occult," Miss Dansbury admitted. "But then most of the young people in Salem dabbled in witchcraft at one time or another."
"You're from Salem?"
"I lived there for a while."
"And you still shop in places like the Bell, Book and Candle?"
The blonde smiled, displaying a set of perfectly white, dazzling teeth.
"Practicing the craft is like having a muscle. Every once in a while, you need to exercise it."
Wait until the other kids hear about this! Megan thought as she headed toward the shelf of spell books, surreptitiously keeping her eye on the substitute teacher.
* * *
All morning Buddy Mercer paced the floor of his room. What had possessed him to go to Miss Swift's house after getting that second F? Did anyone see him? What if the police already found her body and were keeping the discovery a secret while they searched for her killer? By late afternoon, he could not stand it anymore. He had to know if the teacher's body was still where he hid it.
"Where are you going?" Mrs. Mercer asked as her son opened the front door.
"To Stu Casey's house to play Wii," he lied.
"Be back by nine o'clock."
There was no answer since Buddy was already halfway across the front lawn and headed toward Danvers Street.
It was dark by the time he got to Miss Swift's home. After looking around and seeing no one, he quickly ran to the back of the house. He put on a pair of his father's heavy work gloves, picked up a rock and smashed a ground-floor window. Careful of the broken glass, Buddy entered the house and turned on his flashlight.
A vivid memory of his crime assaulted him. He had to swallow to keep from vomiting. Summoning what little courage he could muster, he walked across the kitchen floor toward the door to the basement stairs. With each step he took, he prayed the body was still in the underground cellar.
The basement was damp and cold, just as Buddy remembered it. Of course, at the time, he had not been too interested in his surroundings. His hand shaking, he located the old highboy. After hiding the body, he had been careful to wipe his fingerprints off, but now he realized that the absence of dust made the piece of furniture stand out among the other items in the basement.
Buddy put the flashlight down, and with all his strength, he pushed the highboy about three feet to the right. He heard the metallic ping of the latch on the trapdoor.
I don't want to open it, he thought. I don't want to see the sightless, staring eyes or the large gash on her forehead. I don't WANT to see her, but I HAVE to know if she's still down there.
He bent over, put his index finger in the ring and pulled. He gasped. The small root cellar was empty!
* * *
Buddy Mercer stayed home from school on Monday and Tuesday. It was only when his mother insisted on phoning the doctor that he got out of bed and went to school on Wednesday. Everyone in Room 118 turned and stared when he walked into his first-period English class.
"What happened to you?" Kyle asked.
"I had a virus or something," he said and quickly took his seat.
"Welcome back, Mr. Mercer," Miss Dansbury said.
It was as though the entire starting lineup of the Puritan Falls Patriots had tackled Buddy. He looked at his classmates. Hadn't anyone else recognized that voice? Apparently not.
He looked into the substitute's eyes and saw the same malevolent glare that he had seen when Miss Swift promised him she would fail him for the year regardless of his efforts to bring up his grade.
"Mr. Mercer? MR. MERCER?"
He heard the other students giggling.
"I said are you with us, Mr. Mercer?"
He looked up from his book and noticed that the class had come to an end.
"Y-yes," he stammered in reply, wondering where the time had gone.
Then he got up from his desk and hurried out of the classroom.
That afternoon when the ninth-period classes came to an end and students began heading home, Buddy hid behind Mr. Aubrey's minivan in the faculty parking lot, waiting for the substitute to appear. Ten minutes later he saw Miss Dansbury exit the building, her blond hair blowing in the cold February wind.
"I know you're there," she said as she neared the minivan.
"How could you see me?" he asked, stepping out from his hiding spot.
"I don't need to see you with my eyes to know you're there."
"You're her, aren't you?" he asked.
"If by her you mean Mildred Swift, then, yes, I am."
Buddy was taken aback; he had not expected her to admit the truth so readily.
"Did you have a facelift or Botox or something?"
The young woman laughed.
"Do you really think I could change my looks so drastically by natural means?"
"You really ARE a witch!" he said with horror.
"Ironic, isn't it? Although with your limited intelligence, I doubt you know what irony is."
"But I killed you. I saw your dead body."
"You saw what I wanted you to see. How does it feel to be on the other end of a prank, Mr. Mercer?"
"It's not funny," he said angrily.
"Most pranks aren't. But this is more than a simple practical joke. This is major payback. For centuries I've had to endure the cruelties of my fellow man: being tortured as a heretic during the Inquisition, imprisoned for witchcraft in Salem and then verbally abused by my students since becoming a teacher."
"You're going to kill us all because we made fun of you?"
"No, I won't punish all of my students, just you. And I won't kill you."
"Then what will you do to me?"
There was no reply. The centuries-old witch simply reached into her pocket for her car keys and drove away in her Subaru.
* * *
The first person Buddy told about his encounter was Megan, thinking she of all people, as a practicing Wiccan, would believe in witches.
"I know Miss Dansbury is a witch," she said. "I saw her in the Bell, Book and Candle, but there's no way I can believe Miss Swift and Miss Dansbury are the same person. It's preposterous."
Stu, Tom, Kyle and Lawrence felt the same way. The next person he told was Brittany McMurtry. She laughed, thinking it was another of Buddy's jokes. In short, no one believed him.
* * *
It started low in his throat as a chuckle; then it grew in strength and volume. Finally, Buddy Mercer was laughing so hard his eyes watered and the muscles in his abdomen ached.
"What's so funny, Mr. Mercer?" the woman behind him asked.
"It was a joke. Don't you get it? I thought I killed her," Buddy explained, "but she was indestructible. She simply changed into someone else. No one would believe me; they all thought I was insane."
"Don't trouble yourself, Mr. Mercer," the nurse said and signaled to the hulk-like orderly. "It will be time for your medication soon."
As the orderly advanced, Buddy grew more agitated.
"That's why I'm in here. There's nothing wrong with me. Miss Swift—or Miss Dansbury—really is a witch."
"Come on, Mr. Mercer," the orderly said and took him by the arm, "it's your bedtime."
"I'm not crazy! Don't you get it? I don't belong in here."
Buddy felt a pinch in his arm. While he was arguing with the hulk, the nurse had given him a sedative. It calmed him immediately.
As the burly orderly took him back to his room, the redheaded nurse smiled.
"This time the joke is on you, Mr. Mercer," she said, tossing the disposable hypodermic needle into the hazardous medical waste receptacle.
Then Mildred Swift put on her coat, walked out to the parking lot, got into her Subaru and drove away.
If only Miss Swift could teach Salem to stay off those online gaming sites!
