Darkroom

by Graham Masterton

  She gave him an almost imperceptible nod. ‘Either him, or something that’s possessed him.’

  Jim arrived early the next morning so that he could park his car in the spare space marked Vice-Principal. The previous vice-principal, Dr Friendly, had left West Grove at the end of last semester, and Dr Ehrlichman still hadn’t been able to find a suitable successor. As far as Jim was concerned, anybody had to be friendlier than Dr Friendly. Jim had always called him the Grinch.

  He climbed out of the Lincoln, caught his foot in the seat belt, and dropped all of his books and files and papers on to the tarmac. Walter the janitor came across the parking lot, trying not to laugh, and helped him to pick them up.

  ‘Goddamn seat belt rewind thing,’ Jim complained.

  ‘You want to get that fixed. That’s the second day in a row I seen you go ass over apex. My young nephew, he’ll do it for you, for cost.’

  ‘Thanks, Walter. It is Walter, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right, sir, Mr Rook.’

  ‘Well, I’ll come by your office later today, and you can give me your nephew’s phone number. You can also fill me in on all the latest college gossip. I’ve been away for more than three years, and I’m not sure who’s doing the dirty on whom, and why.’

  ‘Mr Rook?’

  ‘Janitors know all the scuttlebutt, don’t they? Like, they know which teacher is having an affair with which teacher’s wife, and which teacher is trying to undermine which teacher’s career prospects. They know which students are pushing naughty salt and which students are snorting it. They know who’s straight and who’s acting shady. I like to keep up to speed with all that stuff.’

  ‘I’m not sure I can tell you anything like that, Mr Rook, but I can guarantee you a fine cup of coffee.’

  ‘OK, you’re on. That swill they serve in the staffroom – you can only tell it’s supposed to be coffee because it doesn’t taste like chocolate and it doesn’t taste like tea and it can’t be piss because it’s brown.’

  Jim pushed his way through the battered blue double doors into the main corridor. He was just passing Dr Ehrlichman’s office when a tall, broad-shouldered student approached him, wearing a West Grove football shirt in purple and yellow stripes. He was one of those young men who are so enormous that they made Jim feel like a squeaky-voiced midget. He knew from experience that most of them were gentle and shy, but he couldn’t stop himself from dropping his voice an octave and balancing on his toes.

  ‘Mr Rook, isn’t it? I’m Brad Moorcock.’

  ‘Hi, there! How are you doing, Brad? Anything I can help you with?’

  Brad nodded. He had tousled blond hair and a wide, bland, movie-handsome face, although it was given some character by the bump on his broken nose. His blue eyes looked so sincere that it was almost laughable.

  ‘Me and Sara Miller …’ Cough. ‘We were, like, an item.’

  ‘I see. You and Sara? I’m sorry.’

  ‘We’d been dating since Hallowe’en last year, but she dumped me the second week of college.’

  ‘I see. Well, I’m sorry.’

  ‘She said I was arrogant and all I cared about was myself and I never respected her.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘She said I treated her like I owned her and never considered her feelings, and it was true.’ He stopped, and swallowed hard, and there were tears glistening in his eyes. ‘How could I have been so selfish, you know? If only I’d known what was going to happen to her.’

  Jim dropped one of his books on the floor and had to bend down to pick it up. ‘You shouldn’t be so hard on yourself, Brad. It wasn’t your fault.’

  ‘I guess not.’ Brad wiped his eyes with his fingers and gave a loud, snotty sniff. ‘It’s just that I feel responsible. I mean, I should have been there to protect her.’

  ‘If you had been there, Brad, you’d be clinkers, too. Whoever killed her, there was no way of stopping him, believe me.’

  ‘She didn’t suffer, did she? I can’t bear to think that she suffered.’

  If Brad had been a regular-sized person, Jim would have put his arm around him to comfort him, but it was obvious that he wouldn’t be able to reach. Instead, he took hold of Brad’s hand, and gripped it tight, and said, ‘She didn’t suffer, Brad, believe me. It all happened in a flash.’

  ‘Thanks, Mr Rook. I appreciate it. I was going to try to get back with her, you know. I was planning to ask her yesterday morning.’

  ‘I see. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I lost her because I was such a total dork. I was the Duke of Dork. But I saw the light. Bam! Don’t ask me how it happened, but I suddenly looked around and saw that I’d been behaving like an asshole. Not just to her, to everybody. My friends, my parents, my teammates. But it was too late, wasn’t it? Too late to save Sara, anyhow.’

  ‘Like I say, Brad, don’t take it too hard.’

  Brad wiped his eyes on his sleeve, and sniffed again. Jim rummaged through his coat for a Kleenex. He felt something soft and papery in his breast pocket and held it out. ‘You want to blow your nose?’ he asked, but when Brad stared at him he realized that he was holding out a crumpled five-dollar bill.

  ‘Well, ah … I guess Mrs Frogg will probably have some tissue.’

  Brad nodded. ‘You’re helping the police, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘I just want you to know that if there’s anything I can do to help you – anything at all …’

  ‘Thanks, Brad. I really appreciate it.’

  ‘Anything at all, OK? If I can make up for the way I treated Sara … even just a little bit.’

  ‘Sure.’

  He gave Brad a slap on the back and continued on his way to Special Class II. For some reason, though, he felt as if he had been told something very important. He stopped halfway along the corridor, frowning and thinking, but he couldn’t work out what it was.

  I saw the light. That’s what Brad had told him. I saw the light. Just like Saul in the Bible, on his way to Damascus. ‘And suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him,’ and he was converted to Christianity.

  Jim thought of the light that he had seen flashing in his living room. He thought of the naked statue in the hallway of the Benandanti Building – LIGHT SNARETH THE SOUL – and he thought of the picture of Bobby and Sara that had been imprinted on the wall of the beach house, like a photograph. A flash. A photograph. A flash photograph.

  He was being told something so loudly that it reminded him of the time that he had gone white-water rafting, with his instructor yelling in his ear. The trouble was – now as then – he still couldn’t understand what it all meant, and what he was supposed to do next.

  Sue-Marie Cassidy was waiting outside the classroom, wearing the shortest denim skirt Jim had ever seen in his life, with a broad white leather belt and white leather boots. She was even more heavily made-up than usual, and her lips looked as shiny and sweet and red as glacé cherries. She was chewing a massive wad of Doublemint gum.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Rook!’ She winked. ‘I just adore your necktie!’

  Jim looked down. He was wearing a bronze-and-silver affair that he had borrowed from his Greek friend Bill Babouris after an end-of-semester drinking party, about five years ago, and never returned. It had pictures of the Acropolis on it, and the Venus de Milo, and other assorted Greek marbles.

  ‘You really like it?’ he asked.

  Sue-Marie took hold of it and lifted it up. ‘It’s like you, Mr Rook. It’s a classic.’

  ‘That’s very complimentary of you, Sue-Marie. But the fact is that I detest this necktie.’

  ‘Oh. Then why did you wear it?’

  ‘Because my favorite necktie, which is based on a painting by Georges Braque, who exhibited a cubist painting even before Picasso did, and who was one of the finest of the early abstract painters, has spaghetti sauce splattered all over it.’

  There was a very long pause. Sue-Marie blinked once, and then again. At last, she asked him, ‘Who would know?’

  Ji
m entered the classroom, raising one hand to quell the usual bustle of basketball-bouncing and hair-spraying and rap singing. ‘OK, settle down now … Quieten down. I want you to know that there will be a joint funeral service for Bobby and Sara on Wednesday morning at the Rolling Hills cemetery and all of their classmates are invited to attend. I have spoken to Dr Ehrlichman and he has agreed to arrange for a bus so that we can all go to the service together.

  ‘I didn’t know Bobby and Sara but I’m very well aware how popular they both were, and I’m sure you’ll all want to come along. Dress: optional, but respectful. So, Freddy, I don’t want to see you in that T-shirt you wore yesterday.’

  ‘That’s a perfectly innocent T-shirt,’ Freddy protested. ‘All it says is “Beer in the lobby, gambling in the parlor.”’

  ‘You think I was born yesterday?’ said Jim. ‘When I was at college, that translated as “Liquor in the front, poker in the rear.” I presume it still does.’

  ‘I never realized that,’ said Freddy. ‘I’m shocked.’

  ‘Can I wear white?’ asked Ruby. ‘White, that’s the Chinese color for mourning.’

  ‘What do you want to do that for?’ George demanded. ‘You’re not Chinese, are you?’

  ‘How do you know I don’t have Chinese ancestry?’

  ‘Because you’re one hundred per cent Puerto Rican. You couldn’t even pass for Chinese if you walked around with a wok on your head.’

  Jim took off his coat and hung it over the back of his chair. ‘Now then, how far did you get with our daguerrotypist, Robert H. Vane? Anybody find out anything interesting?’

  Silence. You could almost hear the surf on Malibu Beach, eight miles away.

  ‘You do remember our daguerrotypist, Robert H. Vane?’

  Jim waited. The class stared back at him as if he had asked them to remember what they were doing at 3:23 P.M. on August 27, 1996.

  ‘Anybody? No?’

  At the very back of the classroom, Philip Genio’s cellphone started to play the theme tune from Bewitched. He hurriedly tugged it out of his pocket and switched it off, but not before four or five of his classmates had started singing along.

  ‘Da-da! Ta-ra! Da-da-da-da ta-ra!’

  Jim looked down at the floor. ‘Don’t tell me that out of a class of sixteen, not one single one of you turned up any information whatsoever about Robert H. Vane?’

  Special Class II shuffled their feet and frowned and scratched the backs of their necks and pulled a variety of extraordinary faces. Jim paced from one side of the classroom to the other, and then back again,

  ‘If I had never met you guys before – if I had walked into this classroom this morning for the very first time, I would have looked at your faces now and thought that you were right on the verge of opening your mouths and saying something really intelligent.’

  He approached Roosevelt, and stood directly in front of his desk, staring at him intently.

  ‘But you’re not going to say anything intelligent, are you?’ said Jim. ‘In fact, you’re not even going to say anything stupid. Because not one of you could be bothered. You didn’t really understand what I was asking you to do, or why, and so you thought, nyah, so what? Well, if that’s the way you feel, then I don’t care either. Nyah, so what? I came back here hoping that you might teach me something, and what have you taught me? “Why bother?” That’s what you’ve taught me. “Who gives a damn?” Life’s a waste of time and then you die.’

  He paused and looked around the classroom. ‘Obviously you don’t care about yourselves but I had hoped that you might care about me. But, you don’t, do you? So my suggestion is that you go back to whatever you were doing – texting your friends, polishing your nails, reading comics, bouncing basketballs – and that’s what we’ll do every day until you’re ready to leave college and go out into the world as fully qualified texters, manicurists, comic-readers and basketball-bouncers, and may the Lord have mercy on your stupid souls.’

  Randy slowly put up his hand. ‘Please, sir.’

  ‘Yes, Randy. If you want to go to the bathroom and eat two Krispy Kreme donuts on the way there and back, be my guest.’

  ‘I don’t need to go to the bathroom, sir.’ He frowned at a torn-off sheet of notepaper on the desk in front of him. ‘I just wanted to say that Robert Henry Vane was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on August 4th, 1827.’

  Jim stared at him. The classroom had fallen utterly silent. At last Jim walked around to his desk and stood close beside him. ‘Carry on,’ he said quietly.

  Randy hesitated for a moment, wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and then continued to read out his notes, gabbling some sentences, stumbling over others.

  ‘Robert Henry Vane’s parents were well known and respected in Boston, which led to his birth being recorded in The Boston News-Letter. It says in the paper that he was born with a caul on his head. I looked that up, sir – caul. It’s a piece of membrane which some babies have on their heads when they’re born. It’s supposed to mean that the baby is always going to have good luck.’

  ‘Where did you get all this?’ Jim asked him.

  ‘Right here, sir. In the college library, sir. I never realized how many books they have in there. And I mean they have books about everything. Even how porcupines have sex.’

  ‘Did you find out any more?’

  ‘Yes, sir. Although he was born with a lucky caul, young Robert Henry Vane had very little good luck in his formative years. His father was a wealthy maker of gunpowder and fireworks. His mother was Italian, and contemporary portraits show that she was very beautiful. But his father was killed in an explosion at his own factory in 1834 and after that his mother became so ill with grief that she sent young Robert to her parents to be taken care of, and they in turn sent him to an orphanage.’

  Randy looked up. He was breathing hard from the effort of reading. ‘There’s more in the library but my ball pen ran out of ink. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You’re sorry? That was excellent, Randy. That was exactly the kind of information I was looking for. Why didn’t you say anything before?’

  Randy’s cheeks flushed. ‘When nobody else said nothing … I thought that maybe I was the only one who had done any work.’

  ‘And you didn’t want the rest of the class to accuse you of ass-licking, is that it?’

  Randy nodded, and stared down at his desk in embarrassment. But to Jim’s surprise, there was no jeering, not even from Shadow. He looked around the class and suddenly realized that almost all of his students were bright-eyed with bottled-up excitement, as if they were all bursting to tell him something.

  ‘So … did anybody else look up any facts on Robert H. Vane?’ he asked them. ‘Sally, what about you?’

  Sally was chewing a large mouthful of her own frizzy hair, and she almost choked. It was a habit of hers: she spent most lessons twisting her hair around her fingers or sucking it.

  ‘I found out a little bit,’ she said, spitting out hair.

  ‘Even a little bit’s better than nothing. Are you going to share it with us?’

  She opened her workbook and recited in a sing-song voice. ‘Robert H. Vane toured California between 1852 and 1857, from Yosemite in the north to Mission Viejo in the south, taking dagger-type pictures of scenery and pioneer communities and gold diggings. He sent the pictures back to New York in order to encourage people to come settle out west. His most famous dagger-types, however, were those of the indig—indigans?’

  Jim looked over her shoulder. ‘Indigens … it means the people who originally live in a place before anybody else gets there. In this case, rather confusingly, the indigens happened to be the people we used to call Indians. Go on, Sally.’

  ‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘Then my brother came in and said it was his turn to use the computer.’

  ‘OK, Sally,’ said Jim. ‘That’s very good, as far as it goes. And, by the way, it’s pronounced da-gair-oh-types. Anybody else?’

  Delilah put her hand up. ‘I found
this old story in True Crimes magazine about a man who was arrested in San Diego in October of 1857, for murder. His name was spelled different, Robert V-a-i-n, but he was a photographer, too, so I guessed that he was probably the same guy.’

  ‘That’s very interesting. Who was he supposed to have killed?’

  Delilah read from her computer printout. ‘He was accused of murdering John Philip Stebbings, a wealthy department-store owner from Chicago, and Mr Stebbings’ wife, Veronica. They were both burned to death when their house caught fire on the night of September 9th, 1857. Actually, they were almost cremated, because there was nothing left of them except their bones and their engraved wedding rings.’

  ‘Go on,’ said Jim.

  He thought this sounds horribly like the way that Bobby and Sara were killed, but he didn’t say anything. It could be nothing more than coincidence, and in any case the class didn’t yet know the full grisly details of Bobby and Sara’s incineration. Hardly anybody knew, because they hadn’t been released to the media.

  Delilah momentarily lost her place, but then she found it again. ‘Oh, yes! Mr Vain was arrested and charged because two stable hands said they had seen him running away from the scene of the fire. Then one of the Stebbings’ chambermaids came forward to say that Mr Vain had been “paying calls” on Mrs Stebbings during the summer of 1857, while Mr Stebbings was away on business in Chicago. I guess “paying calls” is 1857-speak for having an affair.’

  Jim nodded. ‘They might have been having an affair, yes. But even if they weren’t actually going to bed together, it wasn’t considered proper in those days for a married woman to receive gentleman callers, not on her own, anyhow.’

  ‘You hear that, Shadow?’ called out Vanilla. ‘So don’t you go calling me on my cellphone no more, it ain’t proper.’

  Delilah hesitated, but then she went back to her reading. ‘The chambermaid said that Mr Stebbings had found out about his wife’s friendship with Mr Vain and ordered her to stop seeing him. Mr Vain was very angry about this, and the chambermaid thought that he might have burned the house down, with Mr and Mrs Stebbings in it, out of revenge.’

  ‘Was Vain ever tried?’