by E. E. Holmes
I laughed weakly. “This whole conversation sounds nuts.”
Tia laughed too. “I know. But I’ve been thinking about it, and I think it might be worth a shot.”
“But how do I do it? I never tried to see him any of the other times he showed up. I don’t think it’s something I can control.”
“Maybe not, but I’ve been doing a little research ….”
“Of course you have.”
Tia went on as though I hadn’t spoken, “I think maybe you should go to the spot where he died. People who study ghosts believe that spirits are tied to the places they died. I think you might have a better chance of seeing him there than anywhere else.”
I scraped the purple polish from my thumbnail, considering. “What if it doesn’t work?”
“Then we can add it to the list of all the other stuff we’ve tried,” Tia said. “What’s the worst that could happen?”
I glared at her.
“Okay, I withdraw the question. But just think about it.”
I did think about it. For the next three days, every time I walked by the narrow alleyway between the quad and MacCleary Hall, my gaze lingered on the base of the rock wall where Evan had died. Finally I decided Tia was right. Evan had asked me for help. I had to find a way to give it to him, even if it scared the hell out of me.
The Thursday night following the party at 2 AM, I pulled on five layers of warm clothes and stuffed a blanket, a flashlight, and my copy of Hamlet into my bag. Tia, already in bed, offered one last time to go with me, but I shook my head.
“He reached out to me for a reason. I think I need to go alone.”
“Well, take your phone. If you aren’t back in an hour, I’m coming to get you. I know you want to see him, but it isn’t worth freezing to ….” she stopped abruptly, horrified with herself.
“Death,” I finished quietly. I pocketed my phone and walked out the door.
The campus was icy and still under a steely mass of clouds that threatened snow at any moment. Here and there, a light glowed from a dorm window. A raucous laugh echoed faintly in the otherwise silent darkness. I kept my eyes on my feet as they crunched through the dirty snow.
The alley next to MacCleary Hall was darker than I’d hoped. The nearest lamppost’s bulb was out, and I wondered if it had been like that since Evan’s death, and that was why no one had found him that night. For a moment I pictured him, a huddled mass at the base of the wall, and then closed my eyes and forced the image to recede.
I ducked into the alley and pulled the blanket from my bag, bunching it into a makeshift cushion to sit on with my back to the wall. I clutched the flashlight in one hand and the book in the other. Then I closed my eyes and took a deep unsteady breath.
Evan?
At first I called to him quietly even in my head. A slight breeze rustled by me, but there was no other answer. I thought his name again, louder.
Evan?
Nothing. I called for him silently over and over again as the minutes ticked by and I shivered in the cold. This was stupid, this was so stupid. The only thing I was going to find out here was a raging case of pneumonia.
I pulled my glove off with my chattering teeth and rifled with stiff clumsy fingers to the page Evan had written on. I placed my numb fingertips to his message and tried again, this time out loud.
“Evan?” I called, my voice a hoarse whisper.
“Jess? What are you doing out here?”
My shriek should have woken half the campus, but the cold froze it in my throat. The voice came from the darkest corner of the alleyway. As I watched, the shadows materialized into a form strolling casually toward me, clarifying and congealing until I recognized him.
Evan’s face looked genuinely alarmed as he approached me. He was wearing the same sweatshirt and jeans he’d worn when I saw him in the library. He looked as real as anyone I’d ever seen, but no clouds of frozen breath wafted around him as he drew closer.
“You came!” I said.
“I was walking by and I saw you here! You shouldn’t be out here by yourself in the middle of the night. It’s freezing.” He crouched down next to me.
“I know,” I replied. His nearness drove the cold even deeper into my bones, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t believe I was looking into his face again.
“What are you doing out here?” he asked again.
“I was looking for you,” I answered. I felt fear fluttering through me, but it was a wild, detached thing. I was afraid of something, but it wasn’t him, it couldn’t be him.
He looked puzzled. “For me? Out here? Why?”
“I … thought you’d be here. I didn’t know where else to look.”
He was too bright in the darkness, illuminated from some unseen source. A disturbed shadow flitted across his features.
“Why didn’t you just try my room? I live right over ….” He pointed toward MacCleary Hall, but dropped his hand quickly, looking momentarily confused.
My heart, already beating frantically, sped up to a panicked flutter. A terrible thought crossed my mind. “Evan … don’t you know what’s happened?”
He scowled and opened his mouth to answer me, and flickered out of focus, like an image in an old movie. He blinked out of sight and appeared instantly ten paces away, his hands shoved into his pockets. “You really shouldn’t be out here. It’s late and we’ve got class tomorrow,” he said.
“No, Evan, we don’t,” I said slowly. “I have class tomorrow.”
He gave me the strangest look, like I’d suddenly started speaking in tongues, and shimmered out of sight again. He reappeared on the other side of the alleyway, leaning against the wall.
“How did you do on your paper?” he asked, almost desperately. The outline of his form was wavering, like a guttering candle losing its battle with the darkness.
“I ….” I was completely unprepared for this possibility. He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and I didn’t want to be the one to have to tell him. I swallowed hard. “I got a B-plus.”
His expression relaxed into a smile. “Not bad for a procrastinator!”
“Um, yeah, I guess so.” I tried to smile back, but my face wasn’t cooperating. “How about you?”
“I got a B. Not my best work, but I’ll take it. I’d better start earlier on the next one though. I’d hate to have to explain less than a B average to my mom.”
“She’s pretty strict, huh?”
“Let’s just say it will not be a pretty winter break for me,” he said.
His form seemed stronger now, brighter. It was almost as though, by pretending he was still alive, he was more likely to stick around and talk to me. But how was I ever going to find out about Hannah if we had to carry on this conversation as though he weren’t a ghost? I decided to take a chance.
“Hey, I have a bone to pick with you.”
His eyes widened. “Am I in trouble?”
“Yes, you are.” I thrust a cold-stiffened hand into my bag and fished out my copy of Hamlet, which I flourished in his face. “You said you wrote your phone number in here, but I can’t find it. Didn’t you wonder why I never called?”
He started at the copy of Hamlet as though trying to remember where he’d seen it before. “I….”
“You said you wrote it on your favorite page, but I’ve searched it cover to cover, and all I’ve found is this.” I clumsily thumbed to the message he’d left me and held it up so he could read it.
He just stared at it, dumbstruck.
“Who’s Hannah?” I asked.
His outline began to shiver again, threatening to blink out of existence. I tried again.
“Who’s Hannah, Evan? Who is she and how can she help you?”
He started fading dimmer and dimmer in the darkness as he shook his head frantically. “I … I can’t … I don’t want to ….”
“Please Evan! How can I help you if I don’t know who she is?”
His expression darkened. “Stop it! Just stop it, Jess!”
He shimmered out of view and reappeared so close to me that I gasped. The cold emanating from him washed over me like waves.
“Why are you crying? Why are you sad?” he asked, and reached out a hand toward my face.
“Because you’re here,” I said. “Because you’re here and you shouldn’t be. Because you’re dead.”
His hand hovered just an inch from my face. For the briefest of moments he stared into my eyes, his expression twisted with unimaginable pain. Then he was gone.
I sat in the absence of him for what felt like a very long time, letting the hot tears cool and freeze as they rolled down my face. Finally, I willed myself to stand and trudge stiffly back to Donnelly Hall and to Tia so that I could tell her the terrible truth: Evan didn’t understand what had happened to him. He didn’t even know he was dead, or at least, he didn’t want to face it. Evan might have answers, but he wasn’t going to give them up easily. In fact, he might never talk to me again.
§
The cold snap continued over the next couple of weeks. We had reached a total dead end in our search for more information about the elusive Hannah, but with the end of the term staring us in the face I tried to concentrate on the crushing onslaught of exams and final papers.
“Course catalogue is out!” Tia called as she entered the room on the last full day of classes. It was miraculous that she could have opened the door at all; as usual, she looked like some sort of refugee forced to carry all of her worldly possessions with her wherever she went. One would think that someone so organized would realize that she didn’t need to bring six classes worth of books around with her when only two of those classes met that day.
“Ti, our room is the size of a closet. Why do you shout every time you come in?” I asked, half-exasperated, half-amused.
“Oh, I know, I’m sorry,” Tia shrugged, efficiently filing away her mountain of books and tossing the catalogue onto my bed before plopping down onto her own. “Force of habit, I guess. I always had to shout up the stairs when I got home- my mom’s office was on the third floor.”
“Why do we need a course catalogue?” I asked.
“To pick next semester’s courses, obviously. Did you think they were going to let you walk onto campus after break and just pull some out of a hat? They have to plan these things, you know.”
I pulled the catalogue towards me and was shocked at how heavy it was. “Whoa! How many courses are in here? I mean, how many classes can one person possibly take?”
Tia laughed as she pulled out her own catalogue. “At St. Matt’s? About a thousand.” She wasn’t exaggerating. “And see, they’ve got a detailed description of each one, so you know what you’re getting yourself into.” She had already pulled out a highlighter and was busily highlighting different course titles, adding little pink sticky notes beside possible options.
“So, do you have any idea what you’re going to take? How the hell are we supposed to pick?” I was already feeling daunted just looking at the choices; decision-making was not my strong suit. The little packet of course options they’d sent to incoming freshman over the summer had been bad enough.
“Well, there are restrictions. I mean, you can’t just take whatever you want. Lots of the courses have pre-recs and things like that. They’ll have an ‘O’ listed next to them if they’re open enrollment. That means anyone can take them without any prior required courses. And they list them in ascending order from there by department. The earlier they are on the list, the fewer pre-recs needed.”
I didn’t respond. I didn’t think this narrowed things down much.
“Haven’t you thought any more about a major yet?” Tia asked, somewhat sternly, I thought.
“Well, I haven’t definitely decided or anything. I was thinking maybe Art History, but I’m trying to leave my options open.”
“Well, then just get your common requirements out of the way; everyone has to take those. And check these out, too,” she suggested, plunking herself down next to me and flipping forward a few pages. “There are a whole bunch of art courses.”
We sat quietly contemplating our choices for a half an hour or so. I took Tia’s lead and borrowed a highlighter to mark my options. Tia didn’t have much trouble selecting her courses, having already declared her major and met with her advisor. Sometimes she was so productive that she gave me a complex. She tried to be helpful, even going so far as to suggest that I enroll in microbiology with her. “To fulfill your science requirement!” she trilled.
But one withering look from me obliterated that idea. Finally, after much grumbling and biting of my fingernails, I had decided: I would take Intro to Journalism, Art History II, Intro to 3D Drawing, Sociological Theory, and Poetry 101. Feeling satisfied, I was about to close the course catalogue when something caught my eye.
“Hey!”
Tia jumped and almost choked on her Skittles. “What is it?”
“There’s a course in parapsychology!” I shouted, my eyes hungrily scanning the page.
Tia scooted closer so that she could read over my shoulder. “You’re kidding! You mean they actually teach that stuff in schools?”
“Apparently. Listen to this! ‘Introduction to Parapsychology gives the student an overview of the field of parapsychology, including exploration and discussion of the phenomena of psychokinesis, extrasensory perception, and theories of survival of consciousness after death!’ I don’t believe it! There’s someone right here on campus who can help me!” The weight in my stomach was lifting already, I could feel it.
“Who teaches it?” Tia asked, snatching the catalogue so she could read it for herself. “Professor David Pierce. I wonder if … wait, Jess! It’s a senior seminar class, look.” Tia pointed to the course number, her face falling. I grabbed the catalogue back and felt my happiness extinguish as quickly as it had flared.
“But maybe you could still go talk to him! Even if you can’t take the class, at least you could tell him what’s going on,” Tia suggested, keeping her voice low even though there was no one else in the room.
“No way. I have no idea who this guy is! What am I supposed to do, walk into his office and say, ‘Hi, I’m Jess. I see dead people’? That’s the last thing I need: another professor thinking I’m crazy. One is enough for this semester, don’t you think?”
“But Jess, he teaches paranormal psychology! He obviously believes in that sort of thing, why else would he ….”
But I was already shaking my head. “No, Tia. I’m not telling anyone about this, not unless I know I can trust them! I’m not going to parade this around like I’m some sort of freakshow!”
Tia’s face blushed pink. “I didn’t say you were a—”
“—I know!” I said, instantly ashamed that I’d snapped at her. “I know you were just trying to help, but I’m already unsure whether I believe myself. I just need some information—something that might help me figure this out. I need to get into that class.”
Tia nodded her understanding and slid off the bed and over to her desk, where she got ready to tackle her biology exam review. “Well,” she said, as she flipped open the enormous textbook, “the only thing to do is go visit Professor Pierce and see if he’ll sign you in. Worst he can say is no.”
I agreed, but I wasn’t about to accept no for an answer, not after everything that I’d seen. I was determined about that, at least.
§
Despite my conviction to get into the parapsychology class, as much as I talked about it for the next two weeks, it still took me until the very last day of finals to get up the nerve to go see the professor.
David Pierce’s office was tucked away in a remote corner of the fourth floor of Wiltshire Hall, the oldest and most imposing of the brick buildings on the sprawling campus. The rumor was that Dr. Pierce had requested to work out of Wiltshire because it
was the most likely building on the campus to be haunted, though what process of deduction he had used to reach that conclusion was a complete mystery. It seemed unlikely that a professor hoping to be taken seriously as an academic and a scientist would demand an office based solely on this criterion; after all, the entire science department was housed in that building. But the student body swore up and down that this was how Dr. Pierce came to be holed up in that particular spot.
In fact, there were many stories about ghosts that supposedly resided in Wiltshire, frightening the wits out of wayward students and unsuspecting custodial staff. I had even heard a story on my campus tour earlier that spring, when the overly-perky student tour guide had recounted, in what she obviously thought to be a spooky voice, the tale of a Jesuit monk who haunted the bell tower and performed Gregorian chants on stormy nights. I supposed it was as likely as not that many of these stories had only surfaced because Professor Pierce’s presence there suggested them, but nevertheless, recent events had given them the faint ring of truth—or at least the taint of possibility.
The determination that had carried me out of my dorm and across the length of the campus had faded considerably by the time I reached Wiltshire Hall, and had all but disappeared as I climbed the final flight of stairs. I had convinced myself the night before that it would be very simple. I would just go up there, knock on the door, and ask to be signed in to the class, citing my fervent interest in all things paranormal, and a deeply-held ambition to become a ghost hunter. If that line of bullshit failed, I would simply have to beg and plead. But as I drew nearer and nearer his door, I began to feel that my plan was a feeble one. I didn’t know the first thing about parapsychology; I hadn’t even believed in ghosts until a few weeks ago!
I reached the office door and stood staring mutely at the name “Prof. David E. Pierce, PhD” as though hoping that the letters themselves would give me permission and save me the trouble of having to confront their namesake. Beside the door was a corkboard on which a number of newspaper and magazine clippings were pinned. There was a photocopy of a review of Pierce’s latest book, “Science or Science Fiction? The Paradox of Parapsychology.” Besides that, was an article torn from a magazine, entitled “Parapsychology and Christian Philosophy.” And below that, someone had added a local paper’s profile of a woman who claimed to be a medium. I’d just started reading it in spite of myself when a sudden clearing of a throat from inside the room confirmed that the professor was indeed there. With a deep breath that I couldn’t quite get to fill my lungs, I knocked on the door.