The Harrowing

CHAPTER FOUR

The wind felt along the building outside… scratching for entry, whispering to get in.

Robin walked along the dark hall… past closed doors… moving inexorably toward a door at the end with brilliant light along the cracks of it. The whispering was all around her, growing as she approached… louder… louder—

The door crashed open, tearing from its hinges, unleashing a storm of formless swirling energies, howling with rage… rushing forth—

Robin woke to dim gray light, with her heart pounding crazily in her chest.

The shutters banged steadily against the window. The wind moaned as rain pelted down, icy, miserable.

She lay still, burrowed in bed, unnerved by her dream, the images of inchoate swirling things.

She’d fallen asleep while trying to read Jung’s explanation of archetypes; she could feel the heavy lump of book beside her in the bed. That’s where the swirling things had come from.

She reached for the book and looked down at the page.

Robin wasn’t sure she understood the concept, but there was something disturbing about it. A pre-existent form that could spontaneously manifest itself anywhere, at any time? Not exactly something she wanted to hear this weekend.

In fact, everything about Jung so far was unnerving…a man who’d begun his psychological studies back in the 1920s by going to séances—which, although cool, was somehow not what she’d expected to be studying in college.

She looked out the window at wind churning the trees, and shivered.

Then her stomach growled almost comically and she realized she was starving. She stared out at the storm in dismay.

She hadn’t thought about food, or that there would be too much of a gale outside for her to try for a convenience store or for The Lair on campus—which, she suddenly remembered, would be closed over the holiday anyway. She made a quick mental inventory of the stock on her closet shelf. It was as bleak as the day: a box of Triscuits, some packages of instant cocoa, and a stack of the student’s friend, Top Ramen—none of which was even remotely appealing. Waverly never ate, of course, though Robin knew there was an emergency bottle of Jack Daniel’s hidden behind her spare comforter on the top shelf of her closet, kept around to wash down the designer pain medication Waverly no doubt lifted from a mother as blond and petite and shrill as she was.

Robin’s only hope of food was a trip to the second floor, where a communal laundry room housed a Coke and candy machine, and there would surely be coffee and perhaps someone’s leftovers in the kitchenette.

But that meant going out into the hall.

She lay under the pile of comforters as long as she could, clinging to the warmth, until caffeine withdrawal forced her up. She dressed randomly, a skirt over wool leggings, a bulky sweater over a turtleneck, black on black, while rain pelted against the window behind her.

Her door creaked open into the corridor as she stepped carefully outside her room.

With all the doors closed, the hall was dim, spooky, far too reminiscent of her dream. She glanced toward the end of the hall…but of course there was only a wall, no door edged with brilliant light.

She stood uneasily in the doorway, listening for any sound.

Nothing but the wind scraping along the building outside.

A fragment from Lister’s lecture hovered in the back of her head:

…Jung believed there was a universal unconscious around us, populated by ancient forces that exist apart from us, yet interact with and act upon us.

She eased the door closed behind her, irrationally not wanting to disturb the silence, or draw attention to herself.

What are you afraid of, archetypes? She mocked herself. That’s mature.

She hurried down the carpeted hall, descended a flight of pitch-black stairs as quickly and silently as she could manage.

The second floor was as deserted as her own, a dark tube of locked doors. Blue light spilled from the open doorway of the laundry room. Robin swallowed and crossed the hall.

Inside, she reached along the wall and flicked on the light, grateful for the spluttering glare of the fluorescents. The washing machines were silent cubes, the dryers black, watching windows against the wall.

Robin walked past the line of washers to the lighted Coke machine, a cheery red in the monochromatic room. She reached into her skirt pocket, slid in quarters until a Coke can dropped into the tray with a sharp clunk.

Robin flinched, raw-nerved, at the sound.

Behind her there was a huge inhalation, like the rush of breath. Robin gasped, whirled—and stared at the generator, which had whooshed on behind her.

She ran all the way back to her room and slammed the door behind her, leaned against it, shaking, berating herself.

And wondered how she could possibly make it through three days.

The phone call came right after noon, just as she’d known it would.

When she picked up her phone, her mother was drunk, of course. Robin could almost smell it through the airwaves, sweet, stale whiskey. ‘Tis the season, though for Mom, any old season would do.

Robin had carefully explained, the last time she’d called and found her mother not too out of it, that she’d be staying at school over Thanksgiving. Her mother had seemed to absorb it at the time.

But somewhere along the line, something must have been lost, and her mother had missed the fact that Robin wasn’t going to be coming home. Now her voice was edged with hysteria.

Robin tried for calm. “I told you, Mom. I can’t leave. I have a huge exam next week. Practically everyone’s staying. We’ve having a big dinner here….”

She flinched and held the phone away from her face. Drunken rambling came from the earpiece.

She sank down on the window seat, looked down at a lone student, head bent against the rain as he crossed the deserted street. The wheedling and cajoling segued into recrimination, and then the crying jag. Robin rested her forehead against the cold glass. The words didn’t matter; she’d heard it before. It was all some dark, unfathomable mass, a vortex of chaos and confusion.

Her mother was screaming now—her father again, always her father. “You’re just like him. Lying, selfish bitch…”

Robin choked out, “I gotta go, Mom. I gotta go.” She punched off the phone and hurled it against the wall. It bounced under her desk and she backed away, swaying, sick.

Instantly, it began to ring again. She threw herself down on the floor, groped under her desk, found the phone next to the wallboard. She pushed down on the power button until the ringing stopped.

She sat back on her knees, hugging herself, feeling her mother’s energy like a bottomless whirlpool, taking her down, down.

It wasn’t him she was afraid of being like.

That was what she came from. That was what she was. Broken, defective, fatally abnormal. No wonder no one wanted to come near her.

It was all black, all nothingness.

The abyss.

Pure dark now. The rain gusted outside, the trees shivered in the wind. The Hall shuddered in its own kind of agony, impervious to the one human sound deep within it. But something in the dark corridors leaned forward…listening.

Robin was tightly curled in the window seat of her room, arms wrapped around her knees, sobs tearing through her. The blackness had descended again, leaving no room for anything else.

After a long while, she looked up, drew a shaky breath. Her chest hurt from crying, but now, suddenly, she was calm. Exhausted, but deeply calm.

She stood, swiped at her eyes with an overlong sleeve, and crossed unsteadily to Waverly’s bureau. She knelt on the brown carpet and opened the bottom drawer, pushing aside sweatshirts and petite tees in pastel colors—to find the bottle of Valium.

She shook it. More than enough.

And suddenly, she was clear.