Icon #28 The Tall Man

Timmy settled down into his desk and glared at the chalkboard.  The class was silent.  They were always silent in Greenborough’s History Class, even the ones who couldn’t keep their mouths shut anywhere else.  There was no reason for it that Timmy could see – no one had been hit with rulers or sent to visit the principal.  No one had been suspended, and though few were pulling an “A” – mostly the grades were fair.  It was just that face – those eyes.  At that moment, they were waiting for the grand entrance.

Being nearly six feet tall, even in junior high school, Timmy felt compressed in the tiny desk chair.  It hadn’t been designed for someone his size to use comfortably.  In other classes they had found him something else – a table, a bigger desk.  Greenborough never even considered it.  It was like being compressed into a tiny space and held there.  it made Timmy think of a movie his dad had watched with him – Phantasm, or something like that – where they compressed people into barrels until they became dwarves.

Greenborough entered, the top of his graying hair nearly brushing the frame of the door, and Timmy flashed on the movie again. He didn’t see the teacher, in that second, he saw  The Tall Man – and at that moment Greenborough turned, looked right at him, and smiled.  Timmy met that gaze for just an instant, and then dropped his eyes, suddenly terrified. The desk pressed in around him, and he squirmed against the restraint.

In the distance, he’d have sworn he heard the music of an Ice Cream truck.