The Hand on the Wall(16)
THERE IS DARK, AND THEN THERE IS DARK. UP ON THE MOUNTAIN, IT was the second kind.
This was something Stevie had to wrap her head around as fall turned to winter at Ellingham. In Pittsburgh, there was always some ambient light somewhere—a streetlight, cars, televisions in other houses. But when you are on top of a rock that is close to the sky, surrounded by woods, the dark wraps around you. This was one of the reasons Ellingham supplied everyone with high-powered flashlights. When you walked around at night, it could get intense. Tonight, the clouds were rolling in, so there were only a few visible stars; there was nothing between Stevie and oblivion as she walked to the art barn. She stayed on the paths, generally, and even felt a little thankful for the eerie blue glow from the security cameras and outposts that Edward King had installed around the place.
It had been a slightly uncomfortable ride back to campus. She had ridden to town with Mark Parsons, the head of grounds and maintenance. Mark was a big, serious man with a square head and a John Deere tractor jacket. He drove an SUV with one of those phone mounts on the dash so he could monitor and reply to a seemingly endless stream of texts about pipes and materials and people coming and going from work. Her lateness had screwed up his day, and she tried to make herself very small and apologetic in the passenger seat.
Stevie got around the lateness by saying that she had to take an emotional moment and walk around Dr. Fenton’s neighborhood. Lying like that was gross and weird, but again, these were not normal times. She had to do what was necessary. Much like Rose and Jack at the end of the movie Titanic. The door was not a great raft, but when your choices are a door or the deep, cold ocean—you take the door. (Stevie’s other big interest, outside of crime, was disaster, so she had seen Titanic many times. It was clear to her that there was plenty of room on that door for two people. Jack was murdered.)
So, for the whole twenty-minute trip, Stevie tried to act sad until Mark couldn’t take the palpable awkwardness in the car anymore and turned on the radio. There were reports of snow coming. Lots of snow. Blizzards and whiteouts.
“The storm that’s coming in a few days is going to be huge,” he said as they turned up the steep, winding path through the woods to the school. “One of the biggest in twenty years.”
“What happens up here in giant storms?” Stevie said.
“Sometimes the power goes out for a little while,” he said, “but that’s why we have fireplaces and snowshoes. And that’s why I had to go to town for some extra supplies and why I need to get back.”
There was an implied “And now I am late” at the end of that.
Mark deposited Stevie on the drive, and from there Stevie began her walk to the art barn, where she was due to watch Janelle’s test run. She crunched along the path in the dark, walking past the statue heads. There were the night sounds that Stevie had still not come to grips with—the rustling on the ground and above, the hooting of owls—things that suggested that far more happened here at night than during the day. (And yet, Stevie had yet to see the one creature that had been promised in sign after sign along the highway, the ones that read MOOSE. One moose. That’s all she wanted. Was that so much to ask? Instead, there were these suggestions of owls, and all Stevie ever heard about the owls was that they liked shiny things and would eat your eyes given half a chance.)
She was so caught up in her swirling thoughts about Ellie and walls and owls and moose that she didn’t notice someone coming up behind her on the path.
“Hey,” said a voice.
Stevie lurched off the path and spun, half raising her arms in defense. Behind her was a person who looked like they might be part owl—wide, wondering eyes and a sharp, tight expression.
“So,” Germaine said, “your adviser died.”
Germaine Batt didn’t mess around with niceties. Stevie had a case to solve; Germaine had stories to follow. She got into Ellingham because of her journalism, and her site, The Batt Report. The Batt Report had gone from a small blog to a medium-sized one on the strength of Germaine’s inside stories about the deaths of Hayes Major and Element Walker, and the general bad luck at Ellingham Academy. She, like the owl, hunted in the dark and the shadows, looking for something new that would get her more clicks.
“It was an accident,” Stevie said.
“That’s what they said about Hayes until you said differently. Lots of stuff happens around you, huh?”
“Around us,” Stevie said. “And yeah. Stuff happens.”
She continued toward the art barn, and Germaine fell in alongside. Even though she didn’t really feel like being pummeled by Germaine’s questions, she had to admit, if only to herself, that it was good having company through the woods.
“I heard you’re getting a housemate,” Germaine said.
“You heard that? Where?”
Germaine shrugged to indicate that sometimes we will simply never know where knowledge comes from. Perhaps the wind.
“Not a student. Some guy.”
“His name is Hunter. He was Fenton’s nephew.”
“Fenton?” Germaine asked.
“That was her name. Dr. Fenton.”
“So why is this guy who isn’t a student getting to live here?”
“Because the school feels bad,” Stevie said.
“Schools feel bad?”
“This school does,” Stevie said. “Dr. Fenton wrote a book about this place. And I guess it looks good for us to support the community or something after . . .”