Edith Harcourt

 was a teacher at Brideport Elementary School. She had worked at the school for 48 years and apparently "never lost control of the class" until one day in 1962. After showing the class a film on what to do during a nuclear explosion, two of her students, Tommy and Stevie, started a fight. Edith tried to break the fight up, but heard a "soothing" voice in her head saying that the two children needed to be disciplined. Later, when Ryan Sinclair was investigating, he entered her classroom to find that everybody in there, except for Edith herself, was sitting at their desks without mouths. When Edith saw Ryan, she ordered him to a seat in the room, to which he took also without a mouth. (The Piggybackers (comic story)