Button, Button: Uncanny Stories by Richard Matheson

school?"
    The needles stopped and were lowered to her lap. Cora stared at them.
    "I don't know," she said, "it's just that-" A sigh emptied from her. "I don't know," she said.
    "He'll start on Monday," Harry said.
    "But he's frightened," she said.
    "Sure he's frightened. You'd be frightened too if you couldn't talk and everybody around you was talking. He needs education, that's all."
    "But he's not ignorant, Harry. I-I swear he understands me sometimes. Without talking." "How?"
    "I don't know. But-well, the Nielsens weren't stupid people. They wouldn't just refuse to teach him."
    "Well, whatever they taught him," Harry said, picking up his paper, "it sure doesn't show."
    When they asked Miss Edna Frank over that afternoon to meet the boy she was determined to be impartial.
    That Paal Nielsen had been reared in miserable fashion was beyond cavil, but the maiden teacher had decided not to allow the knowledge to affect her attitude. The boy needed understanding. The cruel mistreatment of his parents had to be undone and Miss Frank had elected herself to the office.
    Striding with a resolute quickness down German Corners' main artery, she recalled that scene in the Nielsen house when she and Sheriff Wheeler had tried to persuade them to
    enter Paal in school.
    And such a smugness in their faces, thought Miss Frank, remembering. Such a polite disdain. We do not wish our boy in school, she heard Professor Nielsen's words again. Just like that, Miss Frank recalled. Arrogant as you please. We do not wish-Disgusting attitude.
    Well, at least the boy was out of it now. That fire was probably the blessing of his life, she thought.
    "We wrote to them four, five weeks ago," the sheriff explained, "and we haven't gotten an answer yet. We can't just let the boy go on the way he is. He needs schooling."
    "He most certainly does," agreed Miss Frank, her pale features drawn into their usual sum of unyielding dogmatism. There was a wisp of mustache on her upper lip, her chin came almost to a point. On Halloween the children of German Corners watched the sky above her house.
    "He's very shy," Cora said, sensing that harshness in the middle-aged teacher. "He'll be terribly frightened. He'll need a lot of understanding."
    "He shall receive it," Miss Frank declared. "But let's see the boy."
    Cora led Paal down the steps, speaking to him softly. "Don't be afraid, darling. There's nothing to be afraid of."
    Paal entered the room and looked into the eyes of Miss Edna Frank.
    Only Cora felt the stiffening of his body-as though, instead of the gaunt virgin, he had looked into the petrifying gaze of the Medusa. Miss Frank and the sheriff did not catch the flare of iris in his bright, green eyes, the minute twitching at one corner of his mouth. None of them could sense the leap of panic in his mind.
    Miss Frank sat smiling, holding out her hand.
    "Come here, child," she said and, for a moment, the gates slammed shut and hid away the writhing shimmer.
    "Come on, darling," Cora said, "Miss Frank is here to help you." She led him forward, feeling beneath her fingers the shuddering of terror in him.
    Silence again. And, in the moment of it, Paal felt as though he were walking into a century-sealed tomb. Dead winds gushed out upon him, creatures of frustration slithered on his heart, strange flying jealousies and hates rushed by-all obscured by clouds of twisted memory. It was the purgatory that his father had pictured to him once in telling him of myth and legend. This was no legend though.
    Her touch was cool and dry. Dark wrenching terrors ran down her veins and poured into him. Inaudibly, the fragment of a scream tightened his throat. Their eyes met again and Paal saw that, for a second, the woman seemed to know that he was looking at her brain.
    Then she spoke and he was free again, limp and staring.
    "I think we'll get along just fine," she said.
    Maelstrom!
    He lurched back on his heels and fell against the sheriffs wife.
    All the way across the