The Clairvoyants(73)

But I believed I would see him again. This is what my curse allowed me—a correspondence remained, however uneasy.

*

THE FOLLOWING MONDAY classes began, and that afternoon I crossed the quad toward Tjaden Hall. The shadows lengthened on the snow. Students passed singly, their heads down against the wind. A group burst from the Green Dragon, clutching paper cups of coffee, laughing, clinging to one another, the girls in knitted scarves and hats. I felt something on my face and saw that it had once again begun to snow.

Inside the hall I had a reprieve from the wind. I went first to William’s office, drawn by a feeling that I might find him. I stood in the hallway, and something stirred behind the door—a rustling of papers, a movement, or breathing. I knocked, and the movement stilled. I pictured him behind the door, not wanting to be found. A man came out of the office next door and stopped beside me.

“He’s not scheduled to teach this semester,” he said.

“Oh, thank you,” I said. I wanted to say I was his wife and that he was missing, but all of these admissions seemed almost improbable in the real world. William had not been assigned any classes, and yet he had never told me. Everything he’d said, and not said, seemed suspect.

Later in the week I went by the class he usually taught, and it was true, someone else was teaching. It was as if William had simply been erased from my life. At night I had dreams of pushing him down the long stairs, of finding his body at the bottom. I’d awaken, sweat-drenched, and tell myself it was simply a dream. Still, I didn’t contact the authorities and report him missing. I thought of Detective Thomson, and I kept quiet.

One afternoon, two weeks after classes began, I took my film to the lab at school to develop the images and print contact sheets. These I poured over with my loupe. I had taken shots that day in the asylum, and in the photographs the day came back to me: the light crisp, the metal bedsteads flipped on end, the old wheelchairs with cane backs eaten through by vermin, There but for the grace of God go I, on a plaque and the paint coming off the walls in long, tender strips, like skin. The more frightening the objects, the more I could not stop looking—examining tables of cold rusted metal, instruments and wires and hoses and basins and tubs, all bathed in that tinted light. I imagined birds coming in and out through the broken windows, the sound of their beating wings amplified in the emptied rooms.

There was one image of a bed with covers kicked back, as if someone had just gotten up, the mattress ticking worn and stained, the blanket thin and gnawed on at the edges. I’d caught none of the dead in the frames. Then I reached the photograph I’d taken of William. He wore his corduroy jacket, his oxford shirt and sweater. I enlarged the negative and made the print, thinking the whole time that he may have surreptitiously taken one of me.

It was late afternoon. No one was around, and in the glow of the darkroom the image emerged clearly, eerily. He’d paused in the doorway, his expression filled with love and so unlike the memory of him I’d been entertaining that I felt disoriented. Who had I confronted in the asylum that day? I felt overwhelmed with guilt.

I debated destroying the print, and then Charles Wu came into the darkroom, and I shoved it into my bag. He gave me a little wave, a tentative smile, and peered over my shoulder at my contact sheets.

“You went to Buffalo State,” he said, surprised.

He took my contact sheets and peered at them. I felt my face flush with irritation. Now I couldn’t deny I’d been there.

“Yes, yes I did,” I said. “It was incredible.”

Charles Wu seemed pleased I’d taken his advice. He’d dyed the white stripe in his hair, and he wore a pair of pressed khakis, as if he’d decided to give in to his parents and accompany them to the country club. Would I need to start a list of all the people who could implicate me in William’s death?

“You didn’t have trouble getting in, did you?” he said. “These are really cool. I might have to go out there myself.”

Charles could be the one to find William’s body. That would be apt after William’s accusations.

“You should definitely go,” I said. “It’s easy to get in.”

Then I found myself telling him all about the loading dock and the hole that allowed access to the underground corridors. I told him about those tunnels and the route to take to arrive at the upper level.

“Did you find the staircase?” He was excited by my story.

“I did,” I said. “It was dark by then, though. I only got a few shots. I’m not sure how they turned out.”

Charles handed my contact sheets back. “Best to go early. That’s what I’ve heard.”

Although I’d never cared to read a newspaper, I’d begun buying the local paper, scanning it for a report about the discovery of a body in an asylum. Now, it seemed possible that any number of urban spelunkers, artists, or paranormal investigators might have visited Buffalo State and uncovered William’s body. If the roll of film he’d pocketed had come free during the fall, and landed below the balustrades in some hidden niche, if William hadn’t properly captured me in a photograph developed by forensic officers, he might become one of the thousands of unclaimed bodies in the United States, remains discovered without any identification and no one stepping forward for them. Maybe there would be a line drawing of his face in the record, a description of his clothes. Perhaps there would be a mention of the discovery of his body in the Buffalo news. In the old Buffalo State Asylum for the Insane, soon to be refurbished to house an outpatient hospital, he might become a ghost who haunted the rooms.