Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite)

by Douglas Clegg

  He looked up at the night sky. It was clear and brilliant with stars against an indigo darkness.

  The moonlight cast a translucent sheen across the graves.

  The old mausoleum of the Gravesends, the family that built the original Harrow House, rose before him, its cast-iron gate open. Expecting his tormenters to be standing there around him, he glanced around quickly, his back and head aching as if he’d been drunk.

  He stood, after a few moments of trying, on wobbly feet. The lamps on either side of the mausoleum flickered; he glanced about, but no shadows lurked.

  Yet they might be watching him.

  Waiting to see his next move.

  He walked unsteadily toward the mausoleum. It was of the same white stone as the two residential houses. He had been out here dozens of times, generally trying to break in to the crypt. But this time the chain was down; the lock was open.

  They’ve done this, he thought. They’ve laid a trap. Or they want me to go down into the crypt.

  Or they’re watching. If I go down there, they’ll lock me in for the night. If I don’t go down, I’ll have failed the test.

  Yep, my choices suck.

  “Face everything,” he whispered to himself. It was one of their sayings. Christ, who are they? Who the hell are they? Why didn’t they want him to see them? What the hell was going on? Part of him wanted to cry like a little kid; part of him wanted to kick the Honor Council, Kelleher, and these Invisibles in the balls.

  Then he repeated this more clearly, loud, into the night: “Face everything. All right. I’m going. You kicked me in the butt, but I’m going to go. If that’s the test.”

  He spun around, hoping to catch a glimpse of one of them.

  He stood for a moment, facing the scraggly woods and the graves, and said as loud as he could, “I don’t want to be kicked out. I have to stay here. I’ll do this. Okay? I’ll do it.”

  Then, Jim Hook went to the entrance of the mausoleum. It was pitch black inside. Waiting for him on the steps: a large flashlight.

  The steps down were worn and slippery; damp scum of some kind covered them. Jim took them slowly, one at a time, until he reached the fifth step down, and then he was in the crypt.

  He shined the flashlight around—various names were on the graves, and two table graves rose at the center of the marble floor.

  Jim made sure that no one was lurking in any corner of the crypt. Then he went to the great slabs that lay on top of the two graves in the middle of the small, square room. He shined the light upon one.

  It read:

  Genevieve Campion Gravesend. Born to grace and to beauty, daughter of Claude and Rachel Campion, wife of Justin Gravesend III, mother to Alan Gravesend. Died at her beloved Balmoral Cottage, Fenwick, Connecticut, during the year of our Lord 1891.

  A bas-relief rose at the foot of the crypt, of a curious but beautiful angel, with wings that seemed to come from its scalp and sweep along its shoulders.

  The angel’s face was distinct—not a generic carving of the divine, but a specific face, with a sharp but not unpleasant nose, eyes like almonds, and a weak chin that did nothing to detract from the beauty of the face as a whole. Even more curious, some kind of ring was on the wedding finger of the statue.

  Jim guessed that the sculptor had created a marble angel from a portrait of Genevieve Gravesend.

  Jim turned the light on the other sarcophagus. It was perfectly smooth alabaster. He touched the stone, and felt its ice. There was no name, no image, nothing upon it. He set the flashlight on Genevieve’s crypt, its light aimed for the edge of the other’s lid. Lid? That’s what it seemed to him.

  It was the doorway to Death, and he had to open it.

  Okay. I can do that.

  He pressed his fingers beneath the slab, but it didn’t budge. His wrist ached from the effort.

  He lifted the flashlight again, and directed the beam to the walls. There were a few graves on the wall, but someone had written across the wall in what might’ve been blood:

  WAIT FOR WHAT WILL COME.

  He shined the light along the other walls, but there were no other messages left for him.

  “Wait for what will come,” he said aloud. Journey with Us into Enlightenment, and Wait for What Will Come. The school motto. Not too friggin’ original.

  He went over to the wall and touched the wet paint of the writing. Instinctively, he brought his fingers to his nose to sniff the paint. Briefly, he let the tip of his tongue taste his fingertip.

  The bitter taste of copper.

  “Holy shit,” he gasped. It may have been his imagination, but it reminded him of the taste of blood.

  He almost dropped the flashlight; its beam hit an object on the floor.

  It looked like a human finger.

  He had to pick it up.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Jim was sure it was a trick, just like the blood on the wall. After all, it might be someone’s blood. Someone very much alive and cutting themselves just so they could put some blood up on the wall.

  “All right, a lot of blood,” he admitted aloud.

  He crouched down, and grabbed the finger. A school signet ring was attached to it. It felt like a mushy worm.

  He put the light up against it. It had to be a fake.

  It had to.

  But no, in fact, it had that squishiness of human flesh and bone, and perhaps worst of all:

  It seemed fresh.

  The words they’d said came back to him:

  We are one hand. A hand needs all its fingers.

  If you find something that seems unusual, keep it to yourself.

  It’s from us. A small gift.

  When he got back to his room in the Trenches that night, he quickly stuck the finger behind his underwear in the bottom drawer of the slim dresser that stood at the foot of his bed.

  He slipped beneath the sheets, too stunned to even take his jacket off, and fell asleep.

  That’s when the scratching began, and he heard the wood of the attic door splintering.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Jim was on his way to the showers, his towel around his waist, Ivory soap bar in one hand, shampoo bottle tucked underneath his armpit, when he noticed the small square of paper.

  Someone had slipped a pink piece of paper under Jim’s door—it was a message from the veterinary clinic in town telling him his puppy was ready to be picked up.

  “It ain’t mine,” he said, balling the slip of paper up and dropping it in the trash after he’d showered up and shaved what little facial stubble had grown in the past twenty-four hours.

  Then, as he dressed, he even felt guilty about the puppy, and, remembering his promise to Lark, tried to call the vet’s office, only he got put on hold too long and it was almost 7:30 a.m., so he had less than twenty minutes to get to the dining hall and grab something. He was starving.

  Jim ate too much at breakfast—it was as if his appetite were bigger than ever, and he even went back for seconds on eggs and toast, and when he felt completely filled to bursting, he went and spewed it all up in the toilet. Looking at himself in the bathroom mirror, his lips cracked with dryness, his hair all screwed up and all over the place and sticking out from the sides of his scalp like a deranged mad scientist, he tried not to remember that his life was just about over at Harrow.

  He tried not to see Stephen in his face.

  Stephen, taller, handsomer, smarter, less likely to get thrown out on an honor violation.

  Jim splashed cold water on his face and swore that he was going to make it all work somehow. “Do not let the bastards get you down,” he said aloud to his reflection of bloodshot eyes and bloodshot soul.

  The headmaster called Jim into his office just before the bell rang for first period.

  The headmaster, Mr. Trimalchio, was tall and thick and looked like he had once played rugby and squash and all the rich boy sports before turning to the life of the mind. He was in his late forties, in the kind of physical condition some
of the boys envied. His mustache was pepper gray, his eyes wise orbs, and his manner very nearly kind.

  The assumption was that Trimalchio had once been quite handsome and lively, for there were photos from past yearbooks that could be hunted down in the library’s stack room—and in all of them, Jay Trimalchio was the golden boy of the football team and a prize wrestler and head of the yearbook staff as well as Honor Student four years running. He had gone to Dartmouth, but had graduated from a lesser known college on Long Island, New York; his master’s came via Rutgers; and then, within a few years, he was back at Harrow.

  Then, the boys assumed, something had happened.

  For how, after all, would a handsome, rich graduate of Harrow end up back in the ‘Row as if it were as impossible to escape this place as Alcatraz and Sing Sing combined? There was nothing about Trimalchio that seemed dumb, and yet he had never really left the building.

  Trimalchio had remained at the school since his late twenties, and now, in his forties, he seemed as entrenched as St. George-and-Dragon in the front drive. Thus, most of the boys had dubbed him a loser, and Bilge had gone so far as to declare during study hall— when the proctor was gone for a minute—that Trimalchio was a queer. Or a pervert. Or he was one of those old men who chase girls all their lives. Or he got off on watching boys in the locker room, or someone had cut his balls off.

  Something—anything—to explain why he’d stayed at Harrow throughout his life.

  But Jim forgot about anything regarding the headmaster other than the fact that his future was now in this man’s hands.

  Trimalchio thrummed the yellow pad on his desk, and watched Jim with some kind of care. Jim felt like he was in the presence of a priest. He had just recently gotten a haircut that made him look absolutely well tended. “You’re in luck, Mr. Hook,” the headmaster said.

  “Sir?” Jim shifted uncomfortably in his chair. His tie felt like a noose around his neck; his shirt felt overstarched, and itched when he moved. He was far too conscious of the tightness of his underwear and the jittery six-cups-of-coffee feeling in his head.

  “We can’t call the Honor Council. Sam DeGroot, Sergeant-at-Arms, came down with something yesterday. Food poisoning. Assuming he’ll be well enough, we’ll convene at two-fifteen on Friday in the Council Room in West. I advise you not to speak of this to anyone, nor are you to seek advice from your peers or instructors. Your lips should be sealed on this matter, as will all of ours. Do not compound the charge brought against you with another.”

  “Yes, sir.” Jim nodded. “And sir?”

  “Mr. Hook?”

  “I don’t want to leave Harrow.”

  “No one does, Mr. Hook. I won’t pass judgment on what I’ve been told. It is up to the Council of your peers. But I will say, given your brother’s record here, I would be ashamed were I you. I’m even sorry to have to say this to you. I have some confidence that the charge against you is inaccurate.”

  “Sir, I assure you that—”

  “Enough, Mr. Hook.” Trimalchio nodded. “You’ll need to keep to your room after classes. You are to discuss this case with no one, not even Matthew Meloni. Clear?”

  “Yes, sir.” Jim managed to rise from the chair without toppling it over in shame and embarrassment. But still, he felt relief. He looked at the brass plaque above Trimalchio’s ornate desk.

  On it, a list of the top students from each class for the past twenty years.

  He imagined he could make out his brother’s name near the bottom.

  He looked at the other students differently.

  Bilge, with his overly obnoxious farts and the way he laughed over all the wrong things and then acted as if he were everyone’s victim, and hated anything that involved physical activity. Fricker—sure, Trey Fricker was pretty close to being his best friend at school, but maybe that’s why he got picked at all.

  Yeah, that was it.

  Fricker was inducting him into this warped group of liars, cheaters, and stealers. Fricker always kept things to himself. Of course it was Fricker.

  Naw, not Fricker. Yeah, maybe Fricker. Who knows?

  Michael-the-Good. Now, there was a guy with something to hide. Nobody was that saintly, not at fifteen. Nobody never got in trouble that much. Who else but a saint to have the best cover for midnight activities like this shadow group?

  Or Shrike—Shrike was an asshole from the word go. But he was too stupid for this kind of thing. He got disqualified right there. Shrike wasn’t smart enough to know how to create some kind of secret society.

  Tippy Tipton? Wimpy, but smart. Maybe that’s what it took.

  Griff. Maybe? No. Well, perhaps.

  What if it were Kip French?

  Bryn.

  McNally.

  Hardass and Bleeder both.

  Even Mojo. Any one of them could be part of the group of thugs who had ambushed him. Their faces spun in his mind as he tried to figure out which ones might be part of this . . . this . . . cabal.

  Who? Which ones? He tried to listen for their voices; tried to identify them in some way. Whom had he sensed, there in the dark? Who was most likely to be part of this group?

  Even the seventh grader, Miles, little Mole that he was—the one he’d only just met at gym glass the morning of his disgrace. Even that kid seemed different now. Jim passed him as the mad hall rush began after Bio, and the corridor in East was a sea of middle-schoolers as Jim made his way around the building to get out to the courtyard for free period.

  Miles looked at him in a funny way, the kid’s eyes widening slightly. Miles’s eyes flashed something—understanding? Collusion? What?

  For a second, Jim had the distinct feeling that Miles didn’t expect to see him at all this particular day.

  He’s heard, Jim thought as he watched Miles glance back at him one more time before being swallowed up in the tide headed for the classrooms.

  Christ, it could be anyone. My best friend. Some kid.

  He almost stopped in his tracks when he felt a shiver run up his spine. Someone was staring at him. He was almost to the double doors of East, almost out to the Courtyard, and he felt someone watching him.

  Turn around. Face him. Whoever it is. It doesn’t matter. Don’t be scared.

  Face everything.

  He turned quickly, but the hall was empty of all but a few stragglers.

  Jim Hook felt utterly alone.

  “You are screwed like the Queen of England is screwed, boy: Royally.” Trey Fricker shook his head slowly, the trickle of a laugh in his words. “Damn.”

  He was out back behind the arches, leaning against one of the numerous rubbles of stone, weeds growing all around him as if he’d been planted there, cigarette between his lips.

  “Thanks.”

  Fricker laughed so hard he almost spat out the cigarette. “No, don’t take it the wrong way. This kind of crap happens here. What are you gonna do?”

  “I guess get kicked out. Christ.” Jim swiped his hand over his scalp, imagining that his hair came out in his fingers. “All last night, I barely slept. This is bad. It’s just bad. Why did I even look at your paper?”

  Fricker drew the cigarette from his mouth, tapping it against a rock. “You actually looked at my paper?”

  “You were there. You know I did. You let me see it,” Jim said.

  Fricker waved his cig around like it was a pointer. “You think I would do that? No. Nope. I did not. I didn’t even know you were looking. You looked at my paper? Jimmy Jimmy Jimmy.” Fricker took another whooping inhale of smoke and coughed it out. “Well, rules is rules, as they say.”

  “Who makes those rules?”

  Fricker looked at him as if he were crazy. “It’s the rule. You cheated. They caught you. The Honor Code is important here. I know it seems old-fashioned, but hey, even I sort of believe it.”

  “You didn’t catch me. Christ, who did? And anyway, you’ve broken the rules, too.”

  “How?”

  “You’re talking about it with
me. That’s violating the code, too.”

  “Uh, Hook, that may be true, but you don’t get kicked out for that.”

  “I’m screwed,” Jim sighed. He put his hand out. “Gimme a cig, will ya?”

  “One last smoke for the condemned man.” Fricker grinned. He brought the pack of Winston's from his pocket and tossed it to him. “You can have the rest. Jesus, that Carrington.”

  “Hugh?” Jim began puffing on the cigarette like it was pure oxygen and he’d been smothering. Then the coughing fit came. “Christ, why does anyone smoke?”

  “Keep smoking and you’ll find out. And yeah, Hugh Pukin’ Carrington was the squealer. I heard his voice loud and clear. He’ll be the one giving testimony, no doubt. You know what? You should get to him.”

  “What do you mean, get to him?”

  “Get to him. You know. Get to him,” Fricker grinned, stubbing out the last of his cigarette. He glanced at his wristwatch. “I got Latin in five. What’s up for you?” “Study hall.”

  “Think about it,” Fricker said, rising, brushing his slacks off. “If I was in your shoes, I’d try to get Carrington. And damn, Hook, don’t keep talking about this. You’ll fuck it up.” Jim could not stop staring at the fourth ringer of Fricker’s right hand, with Fricker’s class ring wrapped around it. Fricker noticed, and lifted his hand up. “You like? My dad ordered it for me. It’s squirrelly, but hell, it gives me a little pride in the ‘Row to have it.”

  Jim had not managed to put the finger out of his mind. He rolled it around in his head, and could practically see the finger rolling. Whose finger was it? Was it some kind of trick? Was it a fake finger that just felt real?

  Once the school day was over, he went back to his room and drew it out. It had bled a little, which surprised him, on his Fruit of the Looms. Just a few drops of bright red blood.