A Lesson in Vengeance(3)

I retrieve my book and flip through the pages to find my lost place. I’ve never been afraid of being alone, and I’m not about to start now.

Thump.

This time I’m half expecting it, tension having drawn my spine straight and my free hand into a fist. I put the book aside and slip out of my chair with an unsteady drum beating in my chest. Surely Dean Marriott wouldn’t have let anyone else in the house, right? Unless…It’s probably maintenance. They must have someone coming by to clean out the mothballs and change the air filters.

In fact, that makes a lot of sense. The semester will commence at the end of the weekend; now should be peak cleaning time. No doubt I can expect a significant amount of traffic in and out of Godwin, staff scrubbing the floors and throwing open windows.

Only the house was already clean when I arrived.

As I creep up the stairs, I realize the air has gone frigid, a cold that curls in the marrow of my bones. A slow dread rises in my blood. And I know without having to guess where that sound came from.

Alex’s bedroom was the third door down on the right, second floor—directly below my room. I used to stomp on the floor when she played her music too loud. She’d rap back with the handle of a broom.

Four raps: Shut. The. Hell. Up.

This is stupid. This is…ridiculous, and irrational, but knowing that does little to quell the seasick feeling beneath my ribs.

I stand in front of the closed door, one hand braced against the wood.

Open it. I should open it.

The wood is cold, cold, cold. A white noise buzzes between my ears, and suddenly I can’t stop envisioning Alex on the other side: decayed and gray, with filmy eyes staring out from a desiccated skull.

Open it.

I can’t open it.

I spin on my heel and dart back down the hall and all the way to the common room. I drag the armchair closer to the tall window and huddle there on its cushion, with Sayers clutched in both hands, staring at the doorway I came through and waiting for a slim figure to drift in from the stairs, dragging dusk like a cloak in her wake.

Nothing comes. Of course it doesn’t. I’m just—

It’s paranoia. It’s the same strain of fear that used to send me lurching awake in the middle of the night with my throat torn raw. It’s guilt reaching long fingers into the soft underbelly of my mind and letting the guts spill out.

I don’t know how long it is before I can open my book again and turn my gaze away from the door and to the words instead. No doubt reading murder books alone in an old house is half my problem. Impossible not to startle at every creak and bump when you’re half buried in a story that heavily features library crimes.

The afternoon slips toward evening; I have to turn on more lights and refill my tea in the kitchen, but I finish the book.

I’ve just turned the final page when it happens again:

Thump.

And then, almost immediately after, the slow drag of something heavy across the floor above my head.

This time I don’t hesitate.

I take the stairs up to the second floor two at a time, and I’m halfway down the hall when I realize Alex’s bedroom door is open. Bile surges up my throat, and no…no—

But when I come to a stop in front of Alex’s room, there’s no ghost.

A girl sits at Alex’s desk, slim and black-haired with fountain pen in hand. She’s wearing an oversized glen check blazer and silver cuff links. I’ve never seen her before in my life.

She glances up from her writing, and our eyes meet. Hers are gray, the color of the sky at midwinter.

“Who are you?” The words tumble out of me all at once, sharp and aggressive. “What are you doing here?”

The room isn’t empty. The bed has sheets on it. There are houseplants on the windowsill. Books pile atop the dresser.

This girl isn’t Alex, but she’s in Alex’s room. She’s in Alex’s room, and looking at me like I just walked in off the street dripping with garbage.

She sets down her pen and says, “I live here.” Her voice is low, accent like molasses.

For a moment we stare at each other, static humming in my chest. The girl is as calm and motionless as lake water. It’s unnerving. I keep expecting her to ask Why are you here?—to turn the question back around on me, the intruder—but she never does.

She’s waiting for me to speak. All the niceties are close at hand: introductions, small talk, polite questions about origin and interests. But my jaw is wired shut, and I say nothing.

At last she rises from her seat, chair legs scraping against the hardwood, and shuts the door in my face.





The girl in Alex’s room isn’t a ghost, but she might as well be.

A day passes without us speaking again; the door to Alex’s room remains shut, the only sign of the new occupant’s presence the occasional creak of a floorboard or a dirty coffee cup left out on the kitchen counter. At noon I spot her out on the porch, sitting in a rocking chair with a cigarette in one hand and Oryx and Crake in the other, dressed in a seersucker suit.

I split my time between my bedroom and the common room, venturing once to the faculty dining hall to load up a box of food and abscond with it back to Godwin House; nothing seems worse to me than the prospect of trying to eat while all the English faculty wander up to me to remind me how sorry they are, how difficult it must be, how brave I am to come back here after everything.