The Harrowing

CHAPTER FIVE

The wide main staircase descended into the murky gloom of the bottom floor, lighted only by red neon EXIT signs.

Robin stood at the top of the stairs with Waverly’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, the bottle of pills in the other, looking down into the abyss.

She’d cracked the bottle in her room, even swallowed the first pill, washed down with whiskey—and immediately realized that not under any circumstances was she going to have Waverly be the one to find her. She could just hear the shrill screaming, the exaggerated hysteria. In the lounge, she could abandon herself to the infinitely more acceptable kindness of the first returning stranger.

She swayed slightly, brushing against the banister, but she didn’t feel drunk at all. A dreaminess had come over her. Now that she’d decided, everything seemed so easy, and simple. Not that she hadn’t thought of it before, but thinking wasn’t the same as deciding. Deciding was freedom.

She started down the stairs.

The shining floor below reflected the dark red lights, creating the strange impression that she was descending into a lake. In fact, she felt as if she were moving through water, a trancelike, not unpleasant feeling, a bit like having no body at all. There was a distant roaring in her ears, like a vacuum, like the sea. Down she went, and down. The roaring became more distinct, whispering, like a million formless voices overlapping. She wasn’t alone, she realized with crystal clarity. But the thought wasn’t frightening, not at all. They wanted her, the voices…They were welcoming, beckoning…

She stepped off the last stair—was jolted back to reality as her foot hit the floor. It was solid after all. And the voices were gone. She stood for a moment, then moved across the red streaks of light into the dark main hall, toward the high arched doorway of the lounge.

It was empty, a long, deep room with faded Victorian elegance; once a grand parlor, it was now used as a common living area. Robin paused in the archway and felt the heaviness of time emanating from the room. It was like a stage set waiting for the players, dark walnut paneling and tall arched windows, on one end a cluster of heavy scarred tables etched with decades of graffiti, in front of a wall of built-in bookshelves, on the other end a separate cluster of battered, sagging couches in front of an ornate fireplace, creating distinct lounging areas for studying and for TV. A dusty chandelier hung from the molded ceiling; a cloudy mirror cast rippled reflections over the hearth. A few lamps at the periphery of the room were on very low, lamps with hideous gold-painted plaster bases. They always seemed to be on, like night-lights, perhaps an attempt to keep drunk students from falling over themselves when they stumbled in late at night.

Robin walked unsteadily the length of the lounge, her shoes sinking deeply into the worn plum-colored carpet with cabbage roses. The room seemed immense to her, the walls distant shadows. She finally reached the other side and lowered herself into an overstuffed chair near the fireplace. The chair swallowed her, a comfortable paralysis.

The rain pounded outside; the wet night shone blue through the arched windows.

Robin stared into the gloomy depths of the unlighted hearth, uncapped the bottle of Jack, and took a deep slug. The whiskey raced through her like amber fire, a fierce, tingling burn. She blinked back tears and drank again.

She sank deeper into the chair, her body heavy and loose. She turned over her palm dreamily to look at the bottle of pills. They rattled dryly inside the orange plastic, a good few dozen. Freedom.

Robin took another slug of whiskey. The room swam, and through the pleasant spinning she noticed hazily a quality of anticipation in the room itself, a curiosity. The room seemed to be waiting for her, almost holding its breath.

The distant roaring was back in her ears…like the sound inside a seashell…..

Robin set the whiskey down beside the chair and pushed down on the childproof cap of the medicine bottle. It felt like a great effort to twist it open. She poured the entire bottle of pills into her palm.

She took a breath, then sat up, leaned over the pills in her hand. A line floated into her head, a fragment of Sappho from the margins of her Ancient Worlds textbook: “I love, I burn, and only love require, and nothing less can quench the raging fire…”

She swallowed through the ache in her throat, lifted her hand.

In the back of the room, someone coughed.

Robin jumped from the chair, twisted around.

In the darkness at the back of the long room, a slight, pale young man in glasses sat hunched over several piles of books spread out on one of the heavy tables.

The pure shock of it sobered her instantly. Through her confusion, she recognized the face: the White Rabbit, from her psych class. A name popped into her head that she hadn’t known she knew: Martin.

Her hand curled around the pills in her palm, hiding them. She eased that hand behind her back. “I thought…I was the only one here.”

Martin looked at her without speaking. Robin was flustered. Had he seen what she was about to do? Had he—the thought turned her crimson—coughed on purpose? To alert her, or stop her?

Ambient light from a streetlamp outside glimmered off his glasses. She couldn’t see his eyes to know for sure. Desperate to break the silence, she cast around for something to say. Her eyes fell on the books stacked in front of him and she recognized the titles. Totem and Taboo. Psychoanalysis and the Occult. Dreams and Telepathy. All Freud. Not required reading for class, either. He must really be into it.

She groped for words to make the situation seem more normal, spoke carefully so as not to slur her words. “Is that for Psych 128? I’ve seen you in class.”

He stared at her, pale-eyed behind glasses. “Behavioral or developmental?”

She blinked, then realized what he was asking. “Oh, I’m not a major. I’m just…there.”

Martin looked at her blankly, returned to his book without comment.

Robin stood for a moment, feeling dismissed. She turned her back to him, carefully opened her fist, and poured the pills, warm from her clenched hand, back into the bottle. She capped it and slid it into her skirt pocket with a feeling of relief at accomplishing the maneuver.

She glanced back at Martin. He was bent over the shadowed table, completely absorbed in his bode. She wanted to flee, but the arch of the doorway seemed too far away to negotiate; she didn’t trust her legs.

At a loss, she looked around the room and focused on the dark fireplace. Well, a fire, maybe. I could do that.

She put a hand on the arm of the chair and lowered herself to kneel on the smoke-stained stone base of the hearth. Carefully, she pulled logs from the wood box and piled them onto the andirons.

She stole a glance back at Martin. He seemed to have forgotten her entirely.

Invisible again, she thought bleakly. The Forgotten.

The dreamlike languor had returned, but the motions of building the fire, wadding and packing newspaper between the logs, kept her awake. She sat back on her heels, looked around on the flagstone hearth and in the wood box for matches.

A voice spoke right behind her, at ear level. ‘Try this.”

Robin twisted on her knees in startled disbelief.

A slim, edgy young man lay stretched out on his back on a sagging faux-leather couch the size of a small barge. A Rolling Stone magazine lay open on his chest. He looked at her, a cool gray gaze, extended a lighter without sitting up.

Robin breathed out. “God. I didn’t see you.”

His face was expressionless. “You weren’t looking.”

Robin forced herself to reach and take the lighter from him. She flicked it and held it to several edges of the newspaper with a trembling hand. To her relief, flames blazed up obligingly, catching and spreading.

Willing herself to act normal, she turned to the young man and handed the lighter back. He kept it in his hand, pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, and offered it to Robin with a slight, silent gesture. She shook her head. He lighted up and smoked, all interest in her abruptly withdrawn, like a door being shut.

Robin turned back to the fire, watching the rolling flames. The pleasant, drowsy lull she had been experiencing, the presence, almost support, of the house was gone, and she felt anxious and wary of these strangers, vaguely ashamed. Her silent, womblike room had turned out to be crawling with people, and now she was stuck pretending she had not been here to—

Her mind flinched away from the thought, though she could feel the pill bottle digging into her thigh. She glanced carefully at the whiskey bottle, mercifully concealed by the side of the couch. She didn’t think either of the boys had seen. Not that they’d care.

She sneaked a look at the one on the couch.

He was staring ahead of him with an abstracted look, off in his own world. Looks like a musician, she thought, and decided it was his hands that made her think so, even more than the long limbs, scruffy hair, and Rolling Stone on his chest. His hands were alive, deliberate—precise and graceful with the cigarette he held, even though they seemed huge, almost the wrong size for the litheness of his body.

As she looked up from his hands, she realized he was watching her watch him. She blushed deeply, instantly, and he looked at her, unsmiling.

But before either could speak, if either was going to, a voice called from the doorway of the lounge, big and hearty and familiar. “Hello, orphans. Happy Turkey Day.”

Robin turned, caught her breath as she saw Patrick roll through the archway into the lounge, dressed in a Green Bay jersey and sweats, pulling a massive beer cooler on creaking wheels behind him.

Her heart leapt with sudden life, hope knocking against her chest. The young man on the couch shook his head slightly and returned to his magazine. In the back, Martin stiffened, hunched lower over his Freud.

Patrick navigated a little unsteadily toward the big old TV. “Let the games begin.”

He stopped, finally noticing Robin kneeling on the floor. A strange look crossed his face; he looked almost as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “Hey, Robin. You stayed, too, huh?”

The look on his face was almost guilty. Robin thought of the duffel he’d been carrying yesterday, the show he’d made of leaving with Waverly. He doesn’t want her to know he stayed, she realized.

Patrick flipped open the cooler and dipped into the ice for a beer, handed a dripping long-necked bottle to Robin with a gallant flourish. “Drink up,” he ordered. “I’m way ahead of ya.”

Robin gingerly shook icy water from the bottle and used the edge of her sweater to twist off the cap. Self-conscious, she drank too quickly, but the beer was instantly warming.

She sat back against the armchair and found, to her surprise, that her dark thoughts of before had retreated. The fire was a hot blaze; the room felt full of maleness and possibility.

Patrick found the remote on the top of the TV and clicked it on. The sound blasted in the room, preshow for the college game.

Martin looked up from his table, irritated.

Patrick instantly turned toward Martin. Eyes in the back of his head, Robin thought—not the first time she’d noticed.

“Not botherin’ you, are we, chief?” he asked Martin pleasantly enough, though everyone in the room knew that football was going to be the order of the day. Martin ignored him, hunched farther over his book in the yellow light of the gooseneck lamp. Ancient enmity, brains and jocks, Robin thought from her seat on the floor. She took another swallow of beer, grimaced at the yeasty bite of it.

Patrick raised his voice, apparently to include the young man on the couch. “Nebraska versus ‘Bama. Any bets?” He winked at Robin and she colored.

The young man on the couch barely looked up from his magazine. “Pass.” Robin noticed his hands again.

Patrick looked at him more closely, seemed to recognize him. “You’re in McConlan’s band, right?”

The young man looked over the top of his magazine. His voice was dry, flat. “No. He’s in mine.”

Patrick grinned easily. “Whatever, dude.” He pulled another bottle from the ice, tossed it toward the couch. The young man caught it expertly, one-handed. Robin was aware that the exchange was a test, some masculine jockeying, animal prowess, and found herself glad that the slim young man had passed.

Patrick glanced back toward Martin, waved a beer. “How ‘bout you back there, bud? Join the living?”

Martin sighed pointedly without looking up from his book.

Patrick lowered himself into a big armchair with a clear view of the TV. He looked at Robin on the floor by the fire and suddenly leaned down close to her for a moment. She caught a scent of beer and aftershave, was dizzy with the nearness of him. “Waverly doesn’t need to know about this, know what I’m sayin’? I just—didn’t feel like going home.” He looked at her, blue eyes serious and pleading.

Robin felt a rush of understanding and fierce protectiveness. Of course she understood. He didn’t want to get any nearer home than she did. She looked back at him and saw that he knew. A warm feeling of intimacy surged between them, secret and safe. She felt lightheaded with the sudden bond.

And then the moment was broken by a feminine drawl from the doorway behind. “Well, well, what have we here? Island of lost souls?”

Robin turned reluctantly. The girl from the bathroom—Lisa—stood slouched against the frame of the entry, an exaggeratedly sensual pose, cutoff sweater revealing miles of bare skin above a short skirt. Robin realized through a haze of Valium and beer that she was not surprised to see her. From the moment in the bathroom, she had somehow known that Lisa would be here.

Lisa pushed off the doorjamb and strolled into the room, yawning, raccoon-eyed. She leaned over Patrick’s chair and pointed to a beer. “Pop me?”

Patrick twisted the cap off a bottle, extended it, grinning lazily, as if he were in on some joke. Lisa touched his hand, let her fingers linger on his as she took the bottle from him.

Watching, Robin’s eyes clouded, her chest tight with the knowing that she had no chance at holding anyone’s attention with this girl in the room. She felt canceled out, banished again to oblivion.

She watched in despair as Lisa turned from Patrick to the young man on the brown couch, pointedly looking him over. He looked back, expressionless.

“Got a smoke?” she deadpanned.

The young man tossed the pack to her.

Patrick spoke up, sounding amused. “Anything else we can get you?”

Lisa smiled cryptically around the cigarette in her mouth. Her silver bracelets clinked against one another as she cupped her hands around the lighter, the red string dangled on her other wrist. She exhaled and theatrically removed a bit of tobacco from her lip, met Patrick’s eyes. “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

She tossed the pack back to the young man on the couch, then strolled around the room with a languor Robin was sure was drug-related.

First, she looked Martin over at his table in the corner, eyes gliding over him, then the titles of his books. Robin saw Martin tense under her scrutiny, bracing for some comment, but Lisa passed without a word.

She circled back around to Robin and stopped, looking her over for a long time, just smoking, taking her in. Robin blanched under the bluntness of her gaze.

“You’re on my floor. They stuck you in with that Southern cunt—”

Patrick instantly flared up from the easy chair. “Hey, hey, who’re you calling a cunt?”

Robin caught the glint of delight in Lisa’s eyes at the rise she was getting, suddenly understood it was a game. Like passing your hand over a lighted match.

The blond girl looked back at him with wide-eyed innocence. “Settle down, cowboy. I’m sure she’s a fine piece—of humanity.”

Patrick stood, facing Lisa belligerently. The young man on the couch reached for the TV remote, turned up the sound, an automatic coping gesture that seemed almost familial, hinting at long experience in drowning out fights.

Patrick was bristling, truculent. “Shouldn’t you be down at the Mainline makin’ your tuition?”

Robin flinched at the implication. The Mainline was a no-tell motel on the outskirts of town, heavily patronized by students who wanted privacy; the very name was a frisson of sexuality. Robin’s cheeks burned, but Lisa was unfazed by the reference. If anything, her slouch became more provocative; her eyes widened, and her voice dripped with a honey drawl.

“I just came from there. Saw your Miss Muffett dragging her tuffet past the football team.”

Robin saw Patrick’s neck tense, back muscles rippling under his Green Bay jersey. Too far, she thought, alarmed. She’d seen his temper before. He started toward Lisa. Robin stood, quickly stepped in between them, looked up into Patrick’s angry face. “She doesn’t know Waverly. She’s just amusing herself.”

The slim young man on the sofa glanced up from his magazine, looking at Robin with a hint of interest.

Lisa turned on Robin with exaggerated surprise. “The mouse roars. Didn’t think you and Wave were so tight.”

She stared at Robin, then at Patrick, calculating. Suddenly, she smiled broadly at Robin, as if to say she’d figured it out. She sidled closer to Patrick, drawled, “Ah’m just playin’, darlin’.” She reached a heavily braceleted hand to stroke his cheek, then ducked away before he could react.

At a safe distance, she pulled a small enamel box from her bodice, lifted it, querying brightly, “Vicodin, anyone?”

Patrick turned from her, disgusted but no longer ruffled. He flopped back down in front of the TV, reached for another beer, and drained it. Robin breathed slowly out in relief.

Lisa popped a pill in her mouth and dry-swallowed, then glanced around the room, in search of new prey. Her eyes fell on Martin, small and silent in the back, the light of the gooseneck lamp casting dark shadows under his eyes.

She circled back to him, eyes shining with anticipation. Robin stiffened, watching, feeling strangely protective.

Lisa stood over Martin, bare midriff at eye level. “Don’t want to join the party?” she asked brightly. Martin’s jaw clenched, but he continued reading. Robin felt a tug of something almost like affection.

Lisa leaned over him suggestively, pretending interest in what he was studying as she brushed her breasts against his ears. “Plenty of psychology going on over here, you know.”

Martin looked up at her, expressionless. She smiled down at him sweetly. “Might be time for some hands-on experience.”

The sky outside rolled with thunder. A crack of lightning illuminated the room in blue-white light. Another downpour.

“Oh fucking Christ,” Lisa muttered, with an agitation that was not feigned. She walked sharply, straight at the tall windows, staring out—and suddenly lunged. Robin flinched back, startled, as Lisa pounded her hands flat on the glass, shouting, “If this doesn’t stop, I’ll go out of my mind!”

From the couch behind her, Robin heard the slim young man say under his breath, “Go?”

But she felt a stab of sympathy for the girl, herself.

Another crack of thunder made them all jump, then the room was plunged into blackness as the lights and television went dead.

Lisa screamed shrilly. There was a heart-stopping beat—and then everyone broke up laughing. Even the young man on the couch and Martin were chuckling.

Robin looked around at the faces, shadowed by firelight. There was a new, warm intimacy in the room, a palpable relaxing of guard. The tight knot that had been in Robin’s chest for as long as she could remember miraculously loosened.

The laughter died down, and the five of them looked around at one another. The young man on the couch spoke. “See if the generator kicks in.”

Firelight played on their faces as they waited. The room remained dark, the TV silent. Patrick groaned suddenly. “Oh man—Alabama third and goal…”

“Out of luck, dude,” the slim young man informed him.

Lisa turned, smiled wickedly. “Here we all are, ladies and gentlemen. What shall we do in the dark?”

Patrick reached into a back pocket and pulled out a Baggie stuffed with pot. “Endure.” He removed a packet of Zig-Zag papers from the Baggie and got to work rolling.