The Harrowing

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

The clock radio buzzed her awake. She had been dreaming of Zachary: she’d been running in the halls, trying to find him, hearing him call her name…

She settled back on her pillow, thinking back on the dream. It hadn’t been scary, she decided. In fact, it wasn’t an unpleasant feeling at all.

The clock buzzed again and she remembered with dismay that her Ancient Civilizations midterm was that morning.

She threw on clothes she’d left on the floor the night before and grabbed a portable plastic coffee mug along with her backpack.

She left her floor and hurried down a dark set of back stairs that led toward the second-floor kitchenette. Near the bottom of the narrow stairs, she heard feminine voices from below, raised in a fight. One was shrill, with an unmistakable Southern accent.

“I know y’all were up to something while I was gone….”

Robin halted in the stairway door. In the kitchenette, Waverly held the brimming Pyrex coffeepot. Her pert features were twisted in a lethal fury; she advanced on Lisa, who leaned against the counter, looking sleepless and drugged. “You cross me, you bitch, and I’ll rip your cocksucking tongue out.”

Lisa laughed; her voice had a dangerous edge. “And get blood on that little ensemble? Not in this lifetime—”

Robin watched in fascination. She could almost feel the animosity rolling off them in waves. Waverly noticed Robin standing in the doorway, and her voice jumped up an octave. “And what are you looking at?

Simultaneously, Lisa turned away, sick of it. “Do the world a favor and drop dead—”

And as their voices crossed in mutual malice, the coffeepot shattered in Waverly’s hand.

Waverly jumped back to avoid the splash of scalding liquid, but too late. Her silky pink sweater was drenched. She stood speechless, with just the brown plastic handle of the pot clutched in her fingers. All three girls were frozen. Robin’s eyes locked with Lisa’s. Zachary’s name hovered in the air, unspoken between them.

Then Waverly started to screech, holding out her coffee-stained sweater. “Goddamn it. This is Nicole Farhi. It’s ruined!”

Lisa started to laugh, but there was an edge of hysteria underneath. She bolted from the kitchen, running away down the hall, leaving Robin, wondering, and Waverly, wet and ranting, behind.

Robin’s mind kept returning to the incident as she sat taking her Ancient Civilizations midterm in an arena-seated lecture hall. She replayed it again and again: the coffeepot in Waverly’s hand, the tension in the room, the sharp cracking, and the sudden explosion of glass. The energy had been the same as in the séances, like static electricity between her and Lisa, before the pot shattered. And unnervingly reminiscent of her dream that night of her own body shattering.

She was certain it had been Zachary. He was still here.

She stole a look back at Patrick, who was sitting rows away from her in the sea of silent students, always bigger and blonder than she remembered. Ever since the midterm had been distributed, he had been sitting without writing, deathly pale, just staring down at the page of essay questions.

Robin felt her stomach twist in sympathy. She knew he needed this grade to keep his football scholarship. If only he had come to her, she could have helped him study, drilled him on the possible questions.

But there was nothing to be done now. She sent him a silent wish for inspiration and forced her attention back to her own test.

A little while later, she glanced up from an essay comparing and contrasting creation myths.

On the other side of the room, Patrick was bent over his blue book in the awkward curl of the left-hander, writing very quickly, his big hand almost flying across the page.

Robin watched him a beat, surprised. Patrick looked up suddenly, straight at her. His eyes were startlingly blank. He stared toward her, not seeming to see her, and Robin jolted. His hand was continuing to write, as if divorced from his body. Robin stared for a moment, then turned quickly away, chilled.

When she glanced back again, Patrick was bent over his blue book again, writing in a continuous, uninterrupted flow.

She found the Mendenhall lounge deserted; apparently the Hall’s residents were too freaked out by midterms even to zone out to TV. The shadowy groupings of furniture again reminded her of a stage set, waiting for the players.

Her gaze went to the fireplace. The hearth was clean; the shattered mirror had been replaced by a square modern thing that clashed with the ornate Victoriana of the room. Either the powers that be had attributed the breakage to the storm, or the Housing Office, out of long experience, had decided not to bother tracking down the vandals.

Robin stood in the drafty room on the cabbage-rose carpet and spoke aloud. “Zachary?”

She closed her eyes, held her breath.

The cold air enveloped her. She strained through the silence to hear, feel—anything.

Finally, she opened her eyes. The lounge seemed dreary, dusty, and perfectly, obtusely normal. Not a trace of whatever had been with them over their long, lost weekend.

So why was she shivering?

She looked toward the bookshelves, the yearbooks returned to a neat line. She remained looking at them for a long time.

Outside the door of her room, she listened for a good minute before she slid her key into the lock and twisted the doorknob cautiously.

The room was blessedly empty.

She turned toward her bed…and gasped.

The yearbook lay out in plain view on the rug beside her bed, open to the black-and-white photo of Zachary.

Fury at Waverly swept through Robin. How dare she?

She stooped to pick up the book.

Her hand brushed the leather cover and she gasped again, pulling the hand back, clutching her fingers closed. She’d been shocked—a crackle, like static electricity.

She was suddenly certain that Waverly had not moved the book at all.

She let herself remember for a moment the terror of that night—Zachary’s desperate and inexorable presence. Such fury and…despair. So tormented. Seemingly trapped for eternity in the agony of his death.

But when she looked down at the photo, she felt again the twist in her stomach, the ache of longing and companionship. The haunted young man…handsome, sensitive, diffident…there was no anger or violence there.

He was lost—as lost as the rest of them.

And he was reaching out to her.