Light Through the Window

by Cassandra Morphy

  "Usually. I'm trying not to be one though... I guess."

  "Maybe try harder?"

  "Or, maybe we could try paying attention to the professor. Maybe he's only hard if you're not paying attention."

  It still threw her, the idea that her father would be a hard professor. Whenever he talked about physics, he always seemed to light up. He'd go over and rehash the same points over and over again, waiting for Ellie to get the point he was trying to make. However, as she looked around at the large collection of people in the lecture hall, it started to make sense to her. Of course, whenever he was explaining something to her one on one, he could spend the time to explain it to her until she understood it. It used to take a while, back when she was ten and still had trouble understanding why magnets would come closer to each other at one point and push each other away at another. As she got older, though, she was understanding some of the more complicated topics much easier, often faster than her father could explain them. She had been tempted to major in Physics when it came down to choosing. But she had a feeling that would have made her father way too happy for him to be bearable. As it was, she was still undeclared, and that was annoying him just the right amount.

  Her father was actually in the middle of a lecture about Newton's three laws of motion, a subject she had covered with him on several occasions. Something she had known by heart back when she was twelve. Yet, as she looked around at the room, at her fellow classmates, it was clear that it was all going over their heads. She was certain that the topic should have been covered in any decent high school physics class; she had taken one of those back in her freshman year, back before heading off to boarding school. It took her by surprise that people were still having trouble understanding such a simple topic.

  She looked over at Eric next to her, who seemed similarly lost, and something within her started to melt.

  "Fine," she said. "I'll join your stupid study group. Someone in that group should know what's going on in the class."

  "Well, don't go doing me any favors," he said. "I wouldn't want to think you were a nice girl."

  "I am a nice girl. It's just been a while since I wasn't surrounded by people I couldn't trust."

  Chapter Six

  Not Just Her Imagination

  On her way out of class, her father called her over to the desk that was in front of the lecture hall. He was busy collecting his notes from where he had tossed them during the more animated parts of his lecture. Ellie tried not to laugh at the familiar sight as her classmates filed past her and into the hallway. It was bad enough for her to be standing in front of the professor, to be singled out on the first day of class. If she showed too much familiarity with their professor, it would quickly become common knowledge that they were related.

  "How did you like the lecture?" he asked.

  She looked around the room at those few remaining students, waiting for them to be alone before answering. He seemed to think that her delayed response had a different source entirely.

  "I know it's not like the classes you were having at that fancy school of yours, but I wouldn't think it was that bad. I had hoped you would have taken a more prominent seat in the room. It took me half the class to spot you up there at the top. Was that a blossoming friendship I saw up there?"

  "What?" she asked, once the room was clear. "Who? With Eric? No, he's... well he seemed harmless anyway. He was just trying to get a study group together. There's a rumor going around that you're a hard professor. I don't know what they were talking about, though. You've never seemed all that challenging to me."

  "Oh, ha ha, smarty pants. No, I'm well aware of the rumors about me. Trust me, they are quite well deserved. I try my best to scare all my students into studying hard for every test. I've had several of them come back to me and thank me when they graduate. If they're prepared for my tests, they'll be more than prepared for anything else they run into in their time here. Just wait until the first test. You'll see what they're talking about."

  "So, I should take him up on the offer for a study group? I'd hate to think that you were forced to fail your own daughter." She whispered the word daughter, looking around the empty lecture hall to make sure that no other students had come in while she wasn't looking. She wasn't sure when the next lecture class was set to start, though the coast seemed clear enough so far.

  "I do hope you don't think I'm going to go easy on you," he said, seeming oblivious to her awkwardness. Or, at least, he didn't seem to think it any more than the norm for her. "I'll be changing the tests this year, keeping all copies under lock and key. No answer keys out in the middle of nowhere, whether or not you spend any time at the house. I take my tests very seriously, and you should, too."

  "Dad, you don't need to change the tests. I've never seen any of the ones you've made so far. If I had, I might have been expecting the rumors more. I wouldn't worry too much about that."

  "Oh, I'm not. Besides, I actually change the tests every year. It's fun for me, especially when I read some of the answers the students hand in. It becomes pretty clear which of them had gotten ahold of an old exam and tried to cheat. It's the only downside to my reputation."

  "The only downside? I would have thought students trying to avoid your classes would be another one."

  "They can try. I’m one of the only two professors that teach entry level physics, and the other one works off of my tests and schedule. Hadn't you noticed that it was a packed house in here? Standing room only."

  "There were a few empty chairs in the back, actually."

  He laughed at that as he tapped the pile of papers he had collected against the desk. They didn't seem the least bit interested in straightening up into a single pile, with several of the pages sticking out at odd angles. He fiddled around with the pile, trying to get them all to line up. "Yes, there should have been exactly five empty seats in the entire room. Not quite standing room only, I'll give you. I think a few of your classmates had heard of my reputation and had decided to forgo it for this semester, hoping another professor would be available next semester. It's not going to happen. It's never going to happen. It’s just the two of us, me and Professor Blackwell. We’re all they have." He laughed maniacally, letting the pile of papers slip through his fingers and slide across the desk again.

  "Okay, I'm out," Ellie said, rolling her eyes. "Have fun making tests and all that."

  "Oh, I will. Do you have enough money for lunch?"

  "Dad," Ellie whined, as she made her way towards the door.

  "So, you're the professor's daughter."

  The voice came from behind her moments after she had passed through the door and into the hall. They felt like a fresh, solid punch to her stomach. Slowly, she turned around to face her accuser, trying to come up with an excuse. Some way of hiding the fact that she was related to her father. Right before coming to the conclusion that she shouldn't care if anyone knew, she recognized the speaker. It was one of the girls she had seen before, the ones with the empty eyes. She was standing there, leaning against the wall, with several other girls. They were the ones that she had seen walking with her the night before. They were all bathed in the fluorescent light that ran the entire length of the hallway, leaving no doubt in her mind when she saw those hollow eyes staring down at her. Every single one of those girls had eyes as black as pitch, glistening in the light.

  "It seems like such a coincidence that it would be you," she said. Her voice had a subtle echo to it, one of a low resonance that Ellie could only just hear beneath her normal soprano. It had just enough of a level of dissonance to grate on her nerves. As before, she was filled with a level of fear that she couldn't quite explain. "I mean, what are the chances? Huh, girls?"

  The rest of the group nodded their agreement, drawing Ellie's attention to each of them in turn. Every single one of them, to a girl, had the same dead, dark, empty eyes as the one that had spoken. Their eyes seemed to speak of the vacuum of space, sucking her into those dark abysses. Yet, at the sam
e time, they horrified and repelled her. She wanted to run away from them, screaming down the hallway. But the group blocked her exit, keeping her there in the doorway to the lecture hall. Other students walked by them, passing through the narrow path between the gaggle and the far wall. None of the passing students seemed the least bit interested in the conflict, in rescuing her or in screaming in horror at those eyes.

  "It is difficult just to know... how many there are out there," one of the other girls said. She eyed the students, similarly noticing them. Although instead of looking at them as a possible source of rescue, like Ellie was, she seemed to almost fear them as much as Ellie feared the group of girls.

  "I do hope that you'll join us on Friday," the first girl said. She seemed to pick up the cues from the other girl, as she simply pulled a flier out of the pile of books she was carrying and handed it to Ellie. "It really is a great idea for a group, given everything that had been happening these past few years."

  Ellie looked at the flier before tentatively taking it from her. The flier simply said "Death Survivor's Group", along with Friday's date and the time and place they were meeting. Ellie had no interest in actually going to the group, considerably less so once she knew that these girls were going to be there. However, she was too scared to say so, or to toss the flier like she had been planning to do. Instead, she just looked between the flier and the girls, wondering just when they were going to let her go.

  "We'll have a few... others there that we'll need to get rid of." Ellie wasn't sure what the girl meant by get rid of, along with quite a lot of things she was saying. But she didn't like the sound of it. "Or, maybe we'll have a more secret meeting afterwards."

  "I liked the idea of going out to dinner afterwards," another one of the girls said. "That way we don't have to be rude by excluding them."

  Ellie found it a bit odd for these girls, who seemed like nothing but bad news, to be worrying about being rude. It was already pretty rude of them to corner Ellie like they were. To refuse to let her pass, and to continue to talk about things as if Ellie actually knew what they were talking about. She held her tongue, though, too frightened to say anything that would get her in trouble with them. Or worse, get them to attack her.

  "What's all this?" Dave asked, finally following Ellie out the door. He was standing next to her, similarly blocked by the gaggle of girls. "Mind letting us past, please? I know my... student here might be a little too nice to butt past, but I am not."

  "It's alright that you're not a proper orphan," the girl said. "Not all of us have lost both of our parents just yet." She eyed Dave for a moment before leading the group onwards through the hallway.

  "Did... did you see them?"

  "Yes, Ellie. They were very much real. Really rude."

  "No, I mean... their eyes. Did you see their eyes?"

  "What about their eyes? They seemed normal enough to me. Or were you talking about that one girl? She had grey eyes, right? Or was that just a trick of the light?"

  "What?" Ellie asked, surprised. "No, I... Their eyes looked normal to you? Like completely normal?"

  "Well, yea. Why? Were you seeing something different? Did that school of yours teach you how to look through people's eyes to their soul? Or did you somehow gain x-ray vision in the past hour? I think that would be a first for me, having a lecture that gave someone x-ray vision."

  "No... You know what, never mind. I don't think it really matters." She looked down at the flier, which was still in her hands.

  "Are you going to that?" Dave asked. "I know it's been a while since we lost your mother, but... Well, with the discoveries you had two years ago, I'm sure the wound has been pretty fresh lately. It might be nice to talk it over with some people that had a similar experience growing up."

  "I am so not going to this," Ellie said. She crumpled up the flier into a tight ball and tossed it at the trash can down the hall. Before her time at the boarding school, there was no way she would have made that shot. It used to be that the ball would fall way short. Instead, it hit the brim, then the wall, before falling onto the floor. There was only so much they could teach her in two years.

  "Why not?" Dave asked. He seemed surprised by how dismissive she was, despite the fact that she had never been that social of a person. She didn't want to tell him her new reason for not wanting to go, fear of those girls. So, she simply shrugged it off.

  "I think we are doing the study group then," she said, after a while. But it was long enough of a delay for even her father to pick up on it. "Anyway, I'm going to head off to an early lunch. I have a class at 12:30."

  Chapter Seven

  The Study Group

  Ellie spent much of that week avoiding the group of girls. Unfortunately, seeing as how they were all freshmen, she ended up having at least one of them in all of her classes. She was quick to learn how best to get in and out of the classrooms, so as to leave no opportunities for them to corner her again. It was mostly just watching the clock when it came near the end of class and bolting as soon as the teacher said they could leave. She was convinced that all of her teachers thought her quite rude, though she was more worried about what the girls would do if they ever got her alone.

  Eric didn't take much convincing to set the first meeting of the study group to that Friday. He insisted that they would wrap up early enough for him to make the parties. With the Death Survivors Group meeting happening at six, that worked well enough for Ellie. Between the two lecture periods they had that first week, Eric was able to scare up a sizable portion of the students in the class, so they had a packed table near the back of the library.

  Unfortunately, one of those students was Becky. Ellie had been considerably less successful at avoiding her. She had even thought to go so far as to try to move to a different room. But that would have left her stuck with someone else, someone new. With how many of these strange girls seemed to be in the school, she just had a sinking feeling that she would get stuck with one of them. So, she decided to settle with the slightly annoying, snobbish girl rather than one of the creepy, probably dangerous ones.

  Eric was the last to show up to the group. He had insisted that he led the discussion for that first night, so the rest of them spent about ten minutes just staring at each other. Ellie had gotten there first, so she was stuck in the back corner of their little section and would need to climb over half the students just to go to the bathroom. She hadn't planned to get there so early, but she ended up sprinting across the campus to avoid the strange girls as they continued to try to get her to come to their group. With so many students cramped into that small section of the library, Ellie doubted that the strange girls had anyone come to their group besides themselves. As she looked around at the assembled crowd, she even spotted one of them on the far side of the table. When their eyes met each other, the girl nodded at her. That startling, dark abyss was no less scary when separated by the large table.

  Ellie was starting to wonder what it was about her that they had recognized. Had they known that she was coming to that school before she had shown up? Did they all know her well enough to recognize her on sight? With all the uncertainty that still remained behind her mother's death, her best explanation for what was going on with that group was that they were connected to whomever it was that her mother had been working for in the last few years of her life. Those were the people that had gotten her killed.

  "Sorry I'm late," Eric said, jarring Ellie out of her internal worry session. "I wanted to print some of these out before we started." He was coming over to the table, carrying a large pile of papers in both hands. When he tried to get to the table, around the cluster of people on that side of it, he tripped over someone's foot. The papers went flying, landing on the table in a much messier pile than they had arrived in. Several of the sheets slid across it in all directions, with a few of them landing in front of Ellie. "Sorry," he muttered towards the person he tripped over.

  Ellie scooped up one of the pieces of paper that had landed
in front of her. The paper looked readily familiar, and more so than just the fact that it looked like any other test paper that she had seen over the years. The test had been filled out, with Red Feldman's name on the Name line. Big red X's were marked across each of the answers, though none of them had blocked out the questions. The zero grade in the corner did not bode well for Red's chances in the class.

  "This test was from last year, so it's the most likely to be reused this year," Eric said. He held up another copy of Red's failure, for those of the group that hadn't seen one of the ones that had gone flying.

  "I hate to break it to you, but the tests are going to be completely different this year," Ellie said, before she could think not to. "Er... I, uh, heard that he changes the tests every year."

  Eric's face turned to complete white. His mouth popped open and closed several times, making him look like a fish. Ellie wasn't certain if he was trying to talk or just not to throw up. After a few moments of that, he pulled a folded-up sheet of paper out of his pocket, looking between that and the printouts a few times before starting to crumple it up.

  "That doesn't mean we can't study off of this one," Becky said. She quickly rescued the folded-up piece of paper, spreading it out on the table where she was able to find some free space from the mess that had claimed it. "And it looks like you've already figured out a few of the answers, certainly better than this Red person had done."

  "Yea, who is this idiot?" the girl with the abyssal eyes asked.

  "He's my brother," Eric managed to say. "He was the valedictorian in high school, the year before I graduated. It was a bit hard growing up in his shadow, but I figured we'd be able to learn from his one and only failure in life."

  "We still can," Becky said. "At the very least, we can start to get used to the level of questions that he's going to be asking on these tests."

  "My god, these questions... It takes a sick, twisted mind to come up with a test like this," said the boy next to Ellie. At first, she felt offended, defensive over her father. But she quickly remembered that the only people there that knew the professor was her father was Becky and the girl with the abyssal eyes. Then, it occurred to her that she didn't know any of the names of the people there, other than Becky and Eric.