The Harrowing

CHAPTER TWENTY

On the north edge of campus, just before the woods, lay the overgrown ruins of sunken gardens. Low walls rimmed a crumbling stone plaza; dead vines crawled up the twisted columns of an arbor. In daylight, it was a haunted forest, in moonlight a dryads’ circle, a place of ghosts and broken hearts and fever dreams.

Being of no obvious practical use, in comparison to a sports facility, for example, the Columns had long ago fallen into disrepair. The regents saw no reason to funnel money into rebuilding the structure. But students knew and loved the Columns for their desolate privacy, and found any number of illicit uses for the spot, as evidenced by the glitter of broken glass, the wrinkled ends of smoked-out joints, the pale deflated balloons of used condoms.

As if by some mutual unstated agreement, the five of them had all gone over separately. Patrick was there alone when Robin arrived. She stood in the dark of the arches, watching him sip from a flask as he tended a small fire he’d built in the middle of the flagstones.

She stayed back, hidden by a tangle of vines, and watched as the others appeared, materializing one by one in the arches of the arbor, pale in the darkness, like ghosts themselves. She knew their shadows instantly: Lisa, with her wild mane of hair; Martin’s small stooped silhouette; Cain, moving between the weathered stones with lanky, catlike grace.

Then Patrick looked up the wide, low steps as if he’d known all along Robin was there. She stepped forward with a surge of excitement and anticipation.

None of them spoke as they gathered in the dancing light of the fire. But their eyes met and held, a silence more intimate than words.

Patrick looked around at them in the ruined courtyard. His voice was flat. “Things are still happening, right?”

“Yes.” Robin spoke first, and Lisa echoed her.

“Oh yeah.”

Martin nodded once, and Robin frowned toward him. He’d said nothing had happened to him. Had he lied to her? Or was he just going along to encourage the others to talk?

A cold breath of wind gusted through the courtyard. Robin shoved her hands deep in her pockets and shivered.

Cain turned toward Robin with that direct gaze of his. “What happened with you?”

Robin thought of the grove, the feeling of being touched.

She knew she was blushing and looked toward Lisa, who was crouched beside a granite column, smoking. “Yesterday we were in the kitchen…with my roommate…”

Patrick looked quickly across at her in the firelight.

Cain shot an oblique look at him. “His girlfriend.”

Patrick bristled at Cain’s accusing tone. “Yeah, so?”

Robin continued hastily, hoping to defuse them. “Waverly was arguing with Lisa—and the coffeepot shattered in her hand.” She looked at Lisa, who leaned back against the granite pillar and smoked without speaking, veiled and withdrawn.

Something’s wrong, Robin thought. What?

Cain sounded skeptical, as usual. “I’ve seen glass break on hot plates before.”

“Hell of a lot of stuff breaking,” Patrick retorted.

Cain ignored him, turned back to Robin in the shadows. “Anything else?”

Robin thought of the grove again, the intimate touch of the wind, the overwhelming sense of presence. But how could she explain it? She knew only that she hadn’t imagined it.

“It’s just…a feeling,” she began.

“Someone watching. All the fucking time,” Lisa said vehemently from the steps. She took a shaky drag from her cigarette, then ground it out on the flagstones. She wouldn’t meet Robin’s eyes.

Martin looked from Lisa to Robin, eyes intent behind the glimmer of his glasses.

Robin watched Lisa, wondering. “Yes…” she said, slowly. “Tonight I swear I felt someone in the grove. Really…like a presence.” She blushed again in the dark.

Cain studied her in the firelight, frowning. “Maybe there was someone in the grove.” He looked pointedly at Patrick. Patrick flipped him off.

“But it felt real,” Robin protested. “I mean, not real. Not…human. But there…” She trailed off lamely.

Patrick stepped forward. “Well, this is real.” He tossed a blue book down on the rough stone of a low wall.

Robin recognized the Ancient Civ test. “Rupert’s midterm.”

Patrick opened the book toward the light of the fire to show her the inside cover. A big A+ was marked in red, followed by several exclamation points and a paragraph of glowing comments. Robin looked up at Patrick.

“That’s great.”

“Yeah, great. Only I didn’t write it.” His face was pale. “I thought I fell asleep. When Rupert called time, I totally freaked. Then I looked down and—” He flipped through the pages of the blue book. Robin stared, startled.

The whole book was filled with dense, small, perfect writing, even the back cover.

Patrick lifted uneasy blue eyes to Robin’s. “It’s my writing—but it’s not.”

They all crowded around to read:

It went on and on, pages and pages, incomprehensible. “What does it mean?” Robin said finally.

“Fuck if I know.” Patrick spat on the stones. Martin bent over the booklet on the granite, flipping through the pages.

Robin looked at Patrick, spoke slowly. “I saw you writing. Really fast. I only filled half the blue book.”

Cain turned from the wall to stare at Patrick. “What kind of moron do you take me for?”

Before Patrick could respond, Cain looked around at the others in the moving firelight. “Haven’t you ever wondered why this guy’s not in a frat, where he belongs? Because he got kicked out. For a prank. He and that girlfriend of his broke into the Beta house and sawed through the legs of the dining room chairs. So the brothers would sit down for breakfast and all fall down. Cute, right? Only one kid almost lost an eye.”

Patrick glared at Cain, truculent but silent. Robin felt as if she’d been struck, but she knew instantly Cain was telling the truth; she’d had a vague idea that Waverly had been kicked out of her sorority for some escapade with Patrick.

Cain wasn’t finished. He spoke softly, his eyes never leaving Patrick’s face, his jaw tight with cold. “I talked to the janitor, frat boy. Seems the pipes in Mendenhall have a tendency to bang if the boiler overheats. He said the thermostat was turned way up over the Thanksgiving weekend. So I went poking around the basement. I found this on the floor by the boiler.”

He reached into his jacket pocket, flipped a pack of Zig-Zag rolling papers onto the wall. “He faked this. He faked all of it. Another frat boy prank.”

Patrick muttered, a low growl. “Okay. So I turned the boiler up.”

Robin stared at him in stunned betrayal. Lisa and Martin looked shocked. Patrick spread his arms, turning on the flagstones in their midst. “But that’s all I did. I didn’t move the furniture. The mirror—you all saw it. How could I have done that?”

Cain shook his head. “I rest my case.” He started for the crumbling stone steps leading out to campus.

Lisa whirled on him. “Wait a minute. Wait just a goddamn minute.” The fury in her voice halted Cain. He paused on the step, glanced back.

Lisa advanced on him, looking up the stairs, trembling with tension. “Something’s been in my room. Watching. I can feel it.” She jerked her head toward Patrick. “No way is he doing that.”

Cain looked her over, unbending. “Any witnesses?”

Lisa’s eyes blazed at him. “Fuck you. I know what I felt.”

Cain pointed to Patrick. “Or maybe you’re in on this with him.”

“Bull fucking shit.” Patrick’s face was ominous now. He towered behind Lisa, gestured at the blue book as he glared up at Cain on the steps. “I never heard of the crap I wrote in there.”

Cain took a step down. “You found it somewhere and copied it. That’s what the Net is for.”

Robin moved across the grassy stones, closer to Patrick, alarmed by the escalating fight. But Martin spoke from the wall, his calm voice interrupting.

“You’ve heard of it. Your conscious mind—such as it is—didn’t register it.” Patrick stopped his advance on Cain almost obediently, and Robin thought again, admiringly, how easily Martin was able to defuse Patrick’s temper. Even Martin’s little barb about Patrick’s conscious mind didn’t seem to bother him.

Martin moved out on the plaza into the circle cast by the fire, looked around at all of them. “My theory is that the séance dissolved subconscious blocks. Gave us access to knowledge—and power—we don’t usually have.” He lifted the blue book.

Patrick nodded slowly, considering.

Robin took a breath. “But what if it’s not psychological?” She opened her backpack, took out the oversized book of newspaper articles, and laid it open on the wall. Patrick and Lisa crowded in to look at the book in the firelight. Martin stood apart, watching, as she spoke, nervously.

“The year Zachary Prince died, there was a fire in the Mendenhall attic. Zachary and four other students were killed. He died in the dorm.”

Lisa glanced at her quickly, her eyes dark. Someone moved by Robin’s side and she realized Cain had come down from the steps. He and Patrick kept on opposite sides of her as they looked over the article. Robin studied their faces, saw the jolt in their eyes as they read…heard Patrick murmur, “Fuck me…”

Patrick and Cain looked up, glancing around at the others in the orange firelight. Wind rustled the brush between the arches. Everyone pulled their coats closer around them.

Patrick turned to Martin. “So what’s the story? We’ve been subconsciously picking up a ghost?”

Martin stepped forward. “Whatever it is, there’s one way to find out.” The firelight turned the lenses of his glasses to flame. “Let’s try it again.”

The others looked to him, jolted. The night seemed to darken around them.

Robin was impatient suddenly, tired of Martin’s academic posturing, tired of Cain’s hard-nosed skepticism. There had been a real Zachary, and he had lived in the dorm and died brutally there. None of them had known those things when they contacted him. What more of an explanation did they need? And he had reached out to them—no, not to them, to her—for a reason. Zachary had reached out to her, and she felt a responsibility to help him. Her mind pushed back the terror of Thanksgiving. Instead, she deliberately focused on the softness of the presence she’d felt in the woods.

She looked around at the circle, finding their faces in the dark, appealing. “Maybe Zachary’s been doing these things because he wants something. Maybe he needs our help.”

The others stood in the silent courtyard, silent, considering. Emboldened, Robin ventured, “We could do the séance in the attic, where they all died.”

Four pairs of startled eyes jumped to hers. ‘To ask Zachary…what he wants,” she finished.

She saw Lisa go still, intent. A breeze ruffled her hair and Lisa flinched. Robin caught it again: the strong sense that something was wrong. And then Lisa nodded tightly.

“You’re right. We need to find out what’s going on.”

Patrick backed up, staring around at all of them. “Whoa, hold the phone. Y’all have some short memories. That motherfucker is one pissed-off ghost. We all pretty much lost our shit that second night.”

Patrick’s blue eyes fixed on Robin’s. For a moment, she was back in the terror of the night—the shape rushing forward in the mirror, the paralyzing cold.

And the rapping.

She pushed it all down. “Think of the way he died,” she urged Patrick. “Of course he’s tormented…but maybe we can help—release him or something.” She was aware of Cain shaking his head, disgusted.

Martin was studying Patrick. Now he said almost pleasantly, “Are you afraid? That’s interesting.”

Cornered, Patrick blustered. “Hell no. I’m down. I got two more midterms to take before Christmas break. Bring it on.”

“Friday night,” Martin said. “It has to be all of us. It doesn’t work otherwise.” He looked at Cain pointedly.

Cain smiled without humor. “Oh, I’ll be there. I’m not missing this little show.”

They looked around at one another in the dying firelight, a silent bond of agreement.

“Friday night,” Martin said again, sealing it.

Patrick kicked at the remnants of the small fire, scattering ashes and extinguishing the embers. The others turned to leave the courtyard. Cain remained standing by the wall.

Patrick, Martin, and Lisa kept moving toward the stone stairs, but Robin hesitated, looked back at Cain in the dark.

“So nothing’s happened to you at all?”

He paused a beat too long and she stared at him, realizing.

He shrugged almost angrily. “I’ve been writing songs. A lot of them. They’re good.”

Robin suddenly remembered the searing, unearthly music she’d heard in the hallway outside his door, and the hair on the back of her neck rose. Before she could say anything, he began to rationalize, defensive. “Look, I wrote them. A ghost didn’t. Martin had a point—we freaked ourselves out and jarred something loose—subconsciously. A by-product of O’Connor’s little show.”

As ever protective of Patrick, Robin retorted with some heat. “If you think Patrick did it all, why did you even show up tonight?”

Cain’s grin twisted at her. “You got me.” He shrugged. “I’m hooked. Who what when where how? I mean, what the hell? I need to know.”

They looked at one another in the dark. The wind picked up, whispering along the stones, and Robin shivered.

Cain nodded at the book of newspapers under her arm. “Can I take a look at those?”

Patrick’s voice called behind her. “Robin. You comin’?”

She turned and saw the others waiting for her at the top of the worn stone stairs. She stepped forward and handed the book to Cain. Their eyes held for a moment as he took it.

Robin turned and walked across the dark courtyard for the steps. But before she climbed, she turned and looked back.

He was watching her—as she’d known he would be.