Chapter 20

20

A sedate robotic recording asked him to leave a message. The tone pinged.

“Where are you,” he said, one hand tucked in his back pocket, and hung up.

It wasn’t the most politic of voicemails, but he’d sent West three texts already, waiting out front of the campus café for almost an hour. The sun stabbed at his insomnia-sanded eyes through his shades. In the mood for a fight but without a contender, he grumbled a mashed-up curse containing the skeleton of fuckinggoddamnasshole and went inside to order himself a drink. The barista grimaced sympathetically at his expression.

“Exams, or worse?” the barista said.

Their hair was cotton-candy pink streaked with silver, complemented by a tiny silver nose ring and a light smattering of blond stubble on their upper lip. Signals crossed in his brain between pretty and handsome as Andrew struggled through a distracted pause to say, “Worse than that. Triple-shot iced chai, please.”

As he reached for his card, they said, “Nah, on the house.”

They turned from the counter to snag a cup for his drink, and he noticed from behind how the apron ties cinched their oversized shirt in close to reveal a tantalizingly narrow waist—petite enough for larger hands to wrap most of the way around. Would he have paid attention to them at all, before Nashville? They tossed him another winsome smile as he moved down the counter line. The other barista at the end handed him the finished drink as he muddled through his irritation with West and with himself, jamming his untimely insecurity about noticing and being noticed by the cute stranger in the basement of his brain where it belonged.

He finished the sugar-bomb concoction at a corner table, phone unresponsive at his elbow. Class started in fifteen minutes; West had ghosted him. He strode outside and threw the cup of melting ice into a trash can so hard that a man walking past flinched. Instead of heading for the humanities building, he made for the garage, tired and furious and unfit for human consumption. As he squeezed the steering wheel of the Challenger, another connection to the man he needed to be to get through this, he got a text.

Riley had said, meet me at the carrel in ten?

fine

Riley was drumming his fingers on the desktop when Andrew opened the carrel’s door. Documents spread across both desks, with the loaner texts from Troth in a stack next to the crumpled tote bag. Post-It notes and placeholder tabs bristled from pages of composition books and hardcovers alike.

“Take a look,” Riley said, handing him an open notebook.

Andrew read in Eddie’s scrawl, Hard to tell if West is trying to help or poach my shit. There are questions and there are Questions. He asks too many fucking Questions. And that he said/she said with him and Troth over their Novel article isn’t confidence inspiring either. Keeping him away from the actual research for sure. He went on to discourse at length on a disappointing collection of Southern-themed horror short fiction.

“What the hell is that about?” Andrew asked.

“I think he’s referring to this.” Riley handed over his phone, which was logged into the university’s library database and open to an article. “Troubled Lineage: Curses in American Gothic Literature” was authored by Jane Troth, with a first-line acknowledgement to Thom West for his assistance. “The article reads like his work, but it’s got her name on it. That’s something to fight about, especially if she’s going to keep rejecting his diss revisions and diverting all her attention to a first-year. And uh, the optics, you know? Rich ol’ white Tennessee lady versus the Black student from up North, et cetera. I wouldn’t put it past her to have some secondary motivations for fucking him over, frankly. We’ve never been close enough for me to ask about that.”

“Seems petty to be a reason to lash out at Eddie though,” Andrew said.

Riley choked on a laugh and said, “When isn’t this academic shit petty?”

“Four rejected revisions,” he repeated.

He ran through his interactions with Troth and West in his head, the usual shades of deference and direction between student and professor taking on an entirely different tone under the light of a previous conflict. West’s efforts to connect the professor and Andrew took on a compulsive edge. Troth’s ghastly, undaunted appetite for Eddie’s research, even though she thought him to be a suicide, spoke for itself. And she had a real obvious, uncritical hard-on for her family histories, which even Andrew had an inkling might indicate some tension between her and a Black student from Massachusetts.

“Not a lot of recourse for a student with a fucked-up power dynamic under his advisor, especially an institution as, let’s say, traditional as this one,” Riley said with a sneer. “Plus he obviously didn’t succeed at calling her out before.”

Andrew handed him the notebook. His heel bounced frantically where he stood, jiggling his leg and redirecting the burgeoning swell of energy out of his body to keep from sprinting across campus to find his supposed mentor. “Troth said she approached Eddie first because of his name; her family knew his. He didn’t initiate contact with her.”

Riley whistled and said, “Like, I feel bad for the dude, but if I’m West and I’m already having a rough time with this lady, trouble getting independent research off the ground, then this fucking legacy asshole shows up and she loses interest in me—”

“Petty as fuck,” he repeated again.

“She’s kept him here years longer than he needed, and his job prospects are dwindling. People have done worse for a whole lot less,” Riley said.

“West missed our meeting this afternoon, but it’s the first one he’s missed. Otherwise, he’s worked real hard to get friendly with me,” Andrew said.

Riley chewed his thumbnail, spinning the chair in quarter circles back and forth. Andrew shifted his weight to his other foot and raked his gaze over the pile of materials again. Compared to the red-line tachometer at two in the morning and a snarling smile, the filtered murmur of a university library held less obvious danger. None of this academic shit seemed worth killing someone over, but nothing ultimately did, in the grand scheme of things. If he put his mind to it, the death he’d expect for himself and Eddie would be an accident, a collision or flare-up, never purposeful violence. Both of them were spoiled enough to assume they’d be their own undoing, he guessed, but Eddie had paid the price.

His phone vibrated and he checked it, said, “Speak of the devil, it’s West,” and answered with a curt “Hey.”

“I’m sorry, Andrew, a meeting with Troth ran long. I didn’t mean to miss you. Are you in class?”

“No, I skipped it,” he said.

Riley steepled his fingers, grimacing as he listened.

“All right. Is it too early in the afternoon to meet me for a drink?” West asked.

“I’m fine with a drink. Where?” he asked, stilted.

West’s harried tone wasn’t any less short when he said, “How about the Red Door?”

“Be there in fifteen,” he said and hung up.

“Is that a good idea?” Riley asked.

“Best idea I’ve had all day.”

“Peace then.” Riley flashed him a quick V sign as he left.

If Eddie had died for some goddamn research into haunted houses and family histories, if that was the stupid reason Eddie’s life had been cut short, he didn’t know what he’d do. Nothing West had shown him indicated the temperament to harm someone else, but none of his other leads had gone anywhere. Tightness sang up his arms, and he realized he was clenching his fists hard enough to make his fingers go numb. The last time he’d had a second to relax was probably—the long drive and the companionable solitude after the faculty gathering, before the incident with the deer carcass.

Crossing campus, he texted Sam.

chill later?

Sorry princess, got work tonight

Unless you just need to get free then the key’s under the rock next to the steps crash on the couch.

The relief that clawed from toes to sternum paused him on the threshold of the bar, hand on the door, staring at his phone. Country woods weren’t his favorite place to be, but Sam’s offer meant something; depending on how the conversation went with West, he’d need to have a breather outside of the rooms Eddie had left behind, and Sam was giving him somewhere to be. No one would fuck with him out at Sam’s, and there would be room to think through whatever he learned. He hated that it sounded so good.

“Andrew,” called his mentor from across the bar.

He slipped his phone into his pocket. Tinted bar windows completed the time dilation that haunted his afternoon, plunging the table into an almost-twilight as he sat across from West. The other man looked severe and troubled, divots pinching at the sides of his mouth and a crease wrinkling his brow. One of his wrists crossed the other loosely on the tabletop, but his fingers were tense. Foam rings crept down the interior of the almost-empty pint glass in front of him.

“What was your long-ass meeting about?” Andrew asked.

“Everything, nothing. You’ll get it when you’re six years in. What do you want to drink? On me,” West offered.

“PBR is fine,” he said.

West got up and approached the dead bar, one other patron at the far side of the space their only company. Andrew heard West add his beer to the tab as clearly as the speaker quietly piping in The Ataris overhead. Not the most private space to have a harsh conversation, but not the least either. How much, exactly, did Eddie fuck up your life. He took the tallboy he was handed as West scooted his chair close to the table once again. Dim tinted bar-glow brought out the russet undertones of his skin, in handsome contrast to his silver rings and thin, short necklace. Once again, Andrew caught himself seeing.

“I’ve got to apologize one more time,” West said. He lifted his own glass in salute. “I’m usually punctual, but when she calls, I come running. I’m buried in diss work, and her schedule is tight, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“I don’t know, she’s made a lot of time for me. She’s real interested in Eddie’s work,” Andrew said.

“She has been since day one,” West said with an unsmiling quirk to the side of his mouth.

Andrew took the risk and said, “To use for herself, so far as I can tell. Which I guess you’re familiar with.”

West took one long gulp of his beer, maintaining eye contact, before responding, “Was that a question, or a statement?”

“I think it could be a question, if you have an answer. Or a story,” he said.

“Sounds like you’ve heard some gossip about her and me, the whole ugly situation.”

“Clear it up for me,” Andrew said without confirming or explaining.

The song overhead switched to a Top 40 pop jangle. West reclined in his chair. Fine wrinkles edged his narrowed eyes. “I handed her the material for her Novel article as part of my first dissertation proposal. To be direct, she stole that research. When I brought it up, she threatened to accuse me of plagiarism in turn; the department swept it under the rug, with a strong hint that it’d be best if I stopped rocking the boat, lest I find myself dumped overboard. All implicit, of course. That answer your question?”

“But you’re still working with her,” he said. “Doesn’t that piss you off?”

“Who else would I work with?” The pint glass clunked against the table as West scoffed at him. “After selecting my committee and working with the same advisor for years, it’s a bad look to suddenly request a change. And, furthermore, if an accusation I had evidence for was dismissed, how do you expect they’d receive my request to change advisors? You’ve got the same stroke of luck with her Eddie did. She’s interested right now, but I’d advise you finish quick before she gets distracted.”

“Like she got distracted from you when Eddie showed up?” Andrew asked, frowning.

“Exactly. Use her interest while it lasts, or you’ll be fighting for every inch of cooperation,” he said, brittle and warning as he cast Andrew a pointed look. “Or maybe you won’t. Both of you have something else in common with her that I don’t benefit from, if you get my drift.”

“Guess the meeting didn’t go well,” Andrew ventured, pushing another inch.

“No, funnily enough it was mostly about you,” West snapped—the crack he’d been hoping for. “You and Eddie. She had pointed questions about his missing notes, as if I’m the one with a history of stealing research. Frankly, I’d have thought she had them.”

“So you didn’t take it on yourself to keep his notes, instead of her,” Andrew said. The tips of West’s ears flushed a deep mauve-red as he stared Andrew down over the table, then pushed his almost finished pint to the side.

“No, I didn’t. Thanks for asking as if I weren’t aware of the implications of the question. I’m getting out of here. Sorry again for missing our meeting—I’m sure Doctor Troth can catch you up better than me.”

He stood with a shriek of his chair on the tile.

“Wait,” Andrew said.

West strode with purpose toward the door and straight out of it, bell jingling merrily overhead. In profile, obscured by the tinted window, he snarled something inaudible and took off, away from the campus.

The bartender said, “He didn’t close the tab.”

“I’ll sign for it,” Andrew said.

He left his unfinished beer on the table and a seventy-five percent tip on West’s dime. Trekking from the bar through campus to the garage took him past the entrance to the humanities building. He considered the lit windows on the top floor, unable to pinpoint which might be Troth’s. Instead of going upstairs, he dropped his backpack on the lawn and sprawled next to it, breathing in the living smell of crushed grass. He typed a quick email to the professor on his phone to summarize his conversation with Masterson and his plans to continue pursuing the list over the course of the week. To close, he added, Would it be productive for me to share my findings with Thom as I retrace these steps? I understand that his research area is similar to Ed’s and mine but am unfamiliar with his work. Baiting a trap or sticking his fingers in one, he wasn’t sure which he was doing.

Phone on his chest and limbs splayed on the grass, Andrew observed the endless blue sky streaked with wisps of shredded clouds. The spread was so cavernously wide it compressed his lungs. The anger that had fueled him through the afternoon crackled, derailing his attempts to find his center and reorganize his thoughts. What could a person do out of desperation, driven to the brink out of fear for their career and their future—backed into a shitty corner by the whole system? He heard West’s voice: everything, nothing. Eddie had spent time alone with him. Eddie had bought him drinks and listened to him complain about their advisor, but his trust hadn’t run so far as to share the details of his work. Andrew rolled onto his side, scooping his bag strap over his shoulder as he stood.

In the garage, the Challenger welcomed him with the pungent, humid stink of leather and boy. He needed a change of clothes if he planned on crashing at Sam’s. That was as far as he let his skittish brain run before he pressed his thumb to the starter, waking its familiar purr. As he reached for the shifter, his hand passed into a patch of incongruous and impossible chill. He flinched out of it, startled. The same Misfits song that had been playing when he picked the car up from the impound lot burst from the speakers, crooning about skulls, and a casual stroke of fingernails scraped up his raised forearm before the spectral hand gripped his wrist. No time to escape, even less to scream, before the phantom settled on top of and through him, mimicking the posture of his slouch, bony knees spread on either side of the wheel in a mismatched fit—him inside the revenant inside him in terrible recursion. The garage wall pulsed and swam as his vision fogged; he arched forward to separate his chest from the ghost’s. His heart restarted as he escaped its rib cage, pounded hot and struggling and alive.

As he heaved a painful breath the specter disappeared, gone the instant it arrived, knocking him off his momentarily complacent pedestal. Based on the pattern of prior grim engagements, he’d drawn its attention somehow—but what had he done this time to tempt its casual and pervasive torment? The meeting with West, maybe, but what about it? He wiped his leaking nose with his forearm, panting through his mouth, then swallowed the fresh blood oozing down his throat from his sinuses in response to the traumatic visitation.

The campus garage in broad afternoon light didn’t seem like much of a locus point for the revenant’s manifestation. But—if he ignored the bedroom visitations, most of the haunt’s worst interference had occurred inside the Challenger. Someone had left it at the trailhead while dumping Eddie’s corpse—and he hadn’t put much thought into the logistical implications of that, of the car being found with the body, of the revenant’s attachment to the car being more than just a lingering affectation from life. Once his nose stopped bleeding onto his wadded shirt collar he shifted into gear, tires chirping as he passed the red light at the garage exit with unnecessary force. No one parked in the gravel alley behind Capitol except for him and Riley, and Riley wasn’t home when he arrived. Andrew set the brake, steeled himself for the possibilities, and pushed the button to pop the trunk. Why hadn’t he thought of that before, when searching for the phone the first time?

For an extended moment he loitered at the open driver’s door with an arm braced on the roof, convincing himself that he needed to push through his fear and look, one way or another. Breeze nipped around his ankles, scattering dried grass clippings from the yard. The abandoned alley held an eerie solitude. His haunting’s abrupt reminder that he had a constant shade dogging his heels left him on edge, but the sun drifting toward the horizon marked a time limit he wasn’t keen to test.

Gravel crunched as he rounded the tail end of the car. The trunk hung an inch open. He almost expected, when he slipped his fingers under the rim and lifted it, to find some gaping maw. Instead, the trunk contained a spare tire and a discarded spray bottle of Armor All with a greasy rag tied around it. Same as at the oak tree, Andrew wished he had a better option to get his answers, but—

Equally eager as it had been the first and last time he let it loose on purpose, the knotted spool of potential that pulsed in his veins responded with a vital, ugly spark the moment he nudged at it. He resisted the urge to push it back down as it unfurled beneath his bones. It was a leeching, corpse-cold thing; he wasn’t going to think of it as a real part of himself. It spread from its home in his belly through his veins, his teeth, his fingernails. The corpse of the neighbor’s house cat, buried three feet behind him in the yard under fresh-turned dirt, gave a homing pulse. Andrew jerked his attention from the welcoming rot and instead planted his hands against the trunk’s rough upholstery.

Barbs hooked through his palms on contact, echo calling to echo, blood answering blood. Slippery gore welled from the carpet as he crumpled over the trunk rim, sliding in the mess and struck stupid with borrowed agonies. His mouth filled with a taste that crossed old meat with the sick-sweet ooze of a cold sore. He gagged. If the vision at the tree had been hallucinatory, the trunk had no time for illusions. Images smashed through him, reeling like film stock and pulling like muscle memory.

A tarp filled the trunk and the slack, sluggishly bleeding body toppled into its plastic embrace. The remnant that had once been Eddie clung to its recent flesh, claws sunk into the inert matter of the corpse, unwilling to separate. One hand flopped loose over the rim of the trunk, the wound below gaping raw and wet; the ravaging memories of pain lanced through the remnant and the vision and Andrew. The dead hand was lifted and dropped on the corpse’s chest with distaste, like a marionette gone limp.

The sound of Andrew’s shoes sliding on gravel faded into the rush of his pulse in his ears as he lost consciousness.