“I’m sure,” Rory finally said.
But she wasn’t. Hearing the story of Westmont Prep had set loose a soft whisper that echoed in her mind. Within the reverberations was the suspicion that those victims who had gone back to kill themselves had a story to tell.
She took another sip of Dark Lord but couldn’t stop thinking about the words Lane had just spoken.
Something was going on with those kids last year, and it’s carried over to today.
Westmont Prep
Summer 2019
Session 2
Journal Entry: THE KEYHOLE
THERE WAS A KEYHOLE IN MY BEDROOM DOOR. IT WAS A PORTAL THROUGH which I spied on a world I hated. The things I saw through that keyhole were never discussed. I was supposed to believe they never happened. But they did. Even if my mother and I never discussed them, those things existed. I saw them, and I’m certain my mother knew I watched through that hole. I always wondered if the things that took place within the tunneled view of my bedroom door took place in that exact location for a reason. Was she asking for my help?
I looked up from the journal. My voice had cracked while I read the last sentence, and it took me a moment to gather myself.
“I’m sorry.”
The woman sat in the chair across from me and waited. I inhaled deeply, looked back to the leather-bound journal, and began reading again.
The things I saw through that keyhole changed my life. It was the terrible things that happened in that narrow scope of my vision that made me who I am. I wish I could say that I charged through that door and stopped my father. If I had—if I had at least tried—maybe things would be different. Maybe I’d be dead, because to confront my father during his moments of rage was to confront a wild animal. But I never opened that door to protect her. I cowered in my room like the weak and feeble child I was, and left that protected sanctuary only after the carnage was over. I would bring my mother a bag of ice for her eye, or a towel for her broken lip. Sometimes I even helped her apply makeup to hide her bruises. But I never left my room to protect her. Leaving my room during the onslaught would have been deadly, but dying would have been preferred to what actually happened.
I heard my mother’s scream, and I was up and out of my bed immediately. On my knees, I stuck my face to my bedroom door and peered through the keyhole. A short hallway lead to the dining room, where I saw my mother run to the far side of the table, trying to put an obstacle between her and my father. But there was nothing that would stop him. Certainly not a dining table. His shape entered the tiny world of my keyhole. He stood with his back to my bedroom door, facing my mother. His body obscured my vision so that I could no longer see my mother. I was relieved to no longer see her panicked face. As if not seeing her terror somehow made it go away.
“Stop,” my mother said. “I’ll fix it.”
My father’s jaw was clenched; I heard it in his voice. “Who. Broke. It?”
I knew immediately what they were talking about. The lamppost out front. It had shattered earlier in the day when I was playing catch with a kid from the neighborhood. I had made an errant throw that collided squarely with the glass panel, shattering it and sprinkling glass all over the driveway. My mother hid the damage as best she could, sweeping up the glass and hoping that the missing pane would go unnoticed until she could replace it. It had been our plan. It was obvious now that the plan had failed.
“I don’t know who broke it, Raymond. But I will fix it tomorrow.”
“You’ll fix it?”
“I’ll call someone to fix it.”
“And who’s going to pay for that?”
My father swiped his arm across the dining room table, sending everything that was on its surface to the floor. To my deranged father, wreaking havoc inside the house and racking up hundreds of dollars of damage was a proper response to the financial hardship of having to replace a broken pane of glass.
I should have opened my bedroom door then. I should have walked into the hallway and taken responsibility for what I’d done. But I didn’t. I stayed on my knees and stared through the keyhole as my father reached across the table, grabbed my mother by the hair, and dragged her over the top of it. He beat her that night. I watched him through the keyhole. I watched the man I hated beat the woman I loved.
The next day, my father was dead.
I pulled the tassel up and laid it carefully in the crease of the journal before closing it. My hands shook slightly. When I finally looked up at the woman across from me, I recognized sympathy in her eyes. At least, that’s what I took her stare to mean. My hands settled and my shoulders relaxed. The therapy sessions always brought me peace, even though I bared my soul and revealed my innermost secrets during them. Or, perhaps, because of it.
“I’ve been reluctant to talk about him. I know you’re curious. Can I tell you about my father now?”
The woman blinked her eyes a few times. Was it not sympathy after all but pity I saw in them? Or was it something closer to terror. Either way, these were the rules. I would come to confess my innermost secrets and exorcise my demons. She would be bound by confidentiality, forever kept silent by my sins. If this scared her, it was an unfortunate side effect of our relationship. Because I couldn’t stop confessing to her now, even if I wanted to. And I didn’t.
“I want to tell you how he died. The police declared his death a suicide, but it wasn’t. Can I tell you about it? Would that be too much to discuss during a session?”
“Not at all,” the woman said.
I nodded. “Perfect. I’ll see you next week.”
I stood with my journal and headed back to campus.
CHAPTER 13
TUCKED QUIETLY INTO THE NORTHEAST CORNER OF INDIANA, ON THE banks of Lake Michigan in the sleepy town of Peppermill, Westmont Preparatory High School was an elite boarding school with a reputation of preparing its students for the rigors of college. Its practices were strict, its expectations high, and its track record impeccable. One hundred percent of students who enrolled at Westmont Prep went on to graduate from a four-year university. No small feat considering the kids who made up the student body. In addition to the snobby rich kids, the gifted academics, and the overachievers, the strict disciplines found inside the walls of Westmont Prep also drew troubled and rebellious teens who had found themselves at life’s crossroads. There were the teens whose parents had recognized the trajectory early on and had been sent to Westmont Prep to straighten out before it was too late. There were also those kids whose parents had realized too late the seriousness of their child’s predicament and had found Westmont Prep only after some series of events had landed them in the sort of trouble that required planning and bargaining and concessions in order to prevent lifelong consequences. Those burned-out parents shipped their kids off to Westmont Prep because they feared if it wasn’t a boarding school they were losing their kids to, it might be prison. Still, despite this mixed bag of students, the practices and principles of Westmont Prep brought them all into line. Isolate and educate, a tried-and-true practice of boarding schools across the country.
The campus architecture mimicked the elite prep schools of the East Coast, with buildings made from Bedford limestone and covered in ivy that wrapped around the windows and climbed up to the eaves, where cornices stood like sentries keeping watch over campus. The pediment of the library—the first building visible when one walked through the front gates—was a massive triangular gable supported by thick, sturdy columns. Stenciled into the stone was the school’s logo: Veniam solum, relinquatis et. Arrive alone, leave together.
Gavin Harms and Gwen Montgomery walked past the building now. The night was thick with humidity, and even though it was approaching ten o’clock, the long summer day still offered the last efforts of the sun—a soft burn on the horizon that streaked the sky with brushstrokes of salmon. Their friends, Theo and Danielle, walked next to them. The four had been close since Gate Day, the ceremonious moment when students reported to campus at the s
tart of each school year. As soon as students arrived at the front gates, whether they were incoming freshman or seasoned upperclassmen, they were on their own. Parents were not allowed on campus during Gate Day. Once a student walked through the wrought iron doors, they were responsible for themselves. Independence was a theme at Westmont Prep. Students were expected to find their way and develop a new support system inside the walls of the school. Arrive alone, leave together.
Many kids landed at Westmont Prep as defiant teenagers longing to be free from the reins of their parents. But for a few, the ceremonial closing of the entryway on Gate Day brought reality clearly into focus. As the students stood on one side of the wrought iron, their parents on the other, an array of reactions followed. Some cried. Others clung to the iron bars like felons in their cells and begged to come home. A few laughed at the dramatic symbolism before heading to their dorm rooms. The smart ones made friends and stuck together. Gavin Harms, Gwen Montgomery, Theo Compton, and Danielle Landry had been together since the beginning, and now they were entering the summer before junior year.
As they approached Margery Hall, they cut to the right to avoid the front entrance, where the house mom would certainly question where they had been that caused them to arrive back to the dorm so close to curfew. From there, the conversation would turn to Gavin’s backpack, which was thick and swollen with cans of Budweiser. So instead, they walked to the rear entrance. Before they could reach for the door, it burst open and startled them all. Tanner Landing was standing in the doorway.
“Got my beer, bitches?”
Westmont Prep produced an interesting dichotomy of friendships. Some were organic, built from common interests and natural affection. Others were forced, created by the confines of campus and dorm assignments. Tanner Landing had been part of this group since just after freshman year, when most students went home for summer except for a handful of kids whose parents forced them to stay for the summer session. During the school year, Tanner could be avoided. In summer, Gavin and his friends were stuck with him.
“You scared the hell out of me,” Gwen said as she pushed past Tanner and into the back hallway of the dorm.
Tanner’s girlfriend, Bridget, apologized for his stupidity. “He’s a Neanderthal,” she said.
Gavin and Theo shared a dorm room, and they filed inside and locked the door. They pulled the window shades closed. Gavin unzipped his backpack and passed the beers around.
“I’ll read it,” Tanner said. He took three quick swallows of beer and belched. He pulled up his phone and read the text.
The Man in the Mirror requests your presence
13:3:5
Saturday night at 10:00PM
“That’s the old boarding house, right?” Gwen asked.
“Yeah,” Gavin said. “It’s the back way. Off Route 77. We’ll have to cut through the woods and then around campus. Who else got invited?”
“Just the six of us,” Tanner said.
Gwen looked around. “Are we really doing this?”
“We’re juniors,” Tanner said before he chugged the rest of his beer and belched again. “Goddamn right we are! It’s a rite of passage.”
CHAPTER 14
MARC MCEVOY WALKED INTO HIS BASEMENT. THE AIR-CONDITIONING kept the first and second floors forcibly cool, but during the summer months Marc preferred the basement. The cold earth radiated through the walls of the home’s foundation and kept the basement a few degrees cooler than the rest of the house. He loved the basement for more than just the temperature, though. It was where he hid his secret.
They had constructed a small bar the previous year when they finished the basement. It was where he and his wife liked to entertain friends on weekends. He and his friends had bellied up to the slab of epoxy-glazed oak many times over the past winter to watch Colts games. He walked to the cabinet behind the bar now and opened the doors. Inside was his baseball card collection. He’d had it since he was a kid, adding to it each year. His collection spanned from the 1970s and ’80s, featuring Johnny Bench and the Big Red Machine, to the ’90s and early 2000s, when steroids had taken over the game, to the current generation of players defined by statistics that never existed before a few years ago. The collection was legitimate—old Topps cards that came with brittle chewing gum, as well as Goudy Gum Company and Sporting News cards. They were worth something today if he ever dared bring his precious cards to an auction. But Marc had no plans to sell his collection. Tonight, as he pulled the first box off the shelf, he was interested in something other than his cards. It was his other obsession, something on which he had been fixated since his high school days at Westmont Prep, that he was interested in tonight.
He laid the binder on the bar, unlocked the cover, and opened the two hatches to gain access to his collection. Inside, the baseball cards were organized in tight rows. On top were several sheets of plastic laminate with slots for the cards he kept in mint condition. On top of those protected pages were his notes and research. He had always kept his research hidden there. His wife had no interest in his card collection, and Marc was sure the secret he kept stashed there was safe. The first article he pulled was from the Peppermill Gazette, a local paper that had a small readership back when he was at Westmont Prep but that had since gone bankrupt. He found the article at the library when he was a freshman. It had originally been published in 1982. He read it now.
Inside Westmont Prep’s Secret Society
If you ask the headmaster of Westmont Preparatory High School, or any faculty member for that matter, if there is truth to the rumor that a secret society exists inside Westmont Prep, you’ll hear a resounding and forceful “No.” But if you ask the students, they’ll tell you that such a society not only exists but is thriving. Ask for details, however, and you’ll get very few. Mostly, you’ll hear conjecture and rumors about the misadventures of this secret club that hazes its new initiates and pulls raucous pranks on unsuspecting students and faculty. Concrete facts or first-person experiences are impossible to come by since there are no students who admit to active membership. The headmaster explains this lack of firsthand knowledge of the club by stating that the idea of such a society exists only in the minds of the students and stays alive through folklore and rumor. It is, the headmaster notes, a figment of the student body’s imagination. Or, it could be argued, the reason you’ll hear so little about the group is because its members are sworn to secrecy.
Marc put the article to the side and turned to a more recent piece published in the Indianapolis Star. Written by a true-crime journalist name Ryder Hillier, the lengthy article chronicled the history of secret societies in American high schools, touched briefly on the most famous collegiate societies of East Coast ivy league schools, and then settled down to examine the organization inside the walls of Indiana’s most prestigious boarding school.
Westmont Prep was known for its strict discipline and rigid academics. The school was frequently ranked among the top preparatory schools and boasted a 100 percent conversion rate to a four-year university. Ryder Hillier had made more headway into the secret group that existed inside the walls of Westmont Prep than any other journalist Marc had come across. She had even, somehow, unearthed its name—The Man in the Mirror—and the location of the meetings, a cryptic spot marked only by three numbers. 13:3:5. Numbers that Marc knew to be the location of the entrance to the forest off Route 77 that led to the old boarding house.
From there, though, Ryder Hillier’s facts ran dry. The article ended with a quote she managed to obtain from the current dean, Dr. Gabriella Hanover, who denied the existence of such a society, claiming that Westmont Prep did not permit exclusive clubs that promote elitism and secrecy, nor would the school allow a student association to run itself outside the supervision of the faculty.
But Marc had attended Westmont Prep, and as an alumnus he knew damn well that the club existed. He had waited through his freshman and sophomore years to get his chance to become part of the society, knowing that it w
as made up of only upperclassmen. But when his junior year came, he was passed over. The rejection had sent him into a fit of depression. A few of his close friends had been tapped, and after they had made it through initiation, they left him behind. He spent his junior year alone and isolated, and when he eventually became the target of the group’s pranks, Marc McEvoy decided that he’d had enough of Westmont Prep. He transferred to a public school for his senior year. It had been a miserable end to his high school experience, and his senior year was blackened with thoughts of suicide. Only after finding a new support system during college had he snapped out of his depression. He met his wife, he graduated, he launched his career, and he started a family. But he never forgot about the secret society at Westmont Prep. The one he wanted so badly to be part of. The one that had rejected him. Marc McEvoy had not only been unable to forget about The Man in the Mirror, he had become obsessed with it. He had worked over the years to find out everything he could about the group and its rituals.
Tonight, with his family sleeping upstairs, he retrieved the articles he kept hidden with his baseball card collection and laid them across the bar. Then he opened his laptop and typed The Man in the Mirror into the search engine. It was June. He knew that initiation of new members took place on the summer solstice. He scrolled through the web pages. He’d read most of them a hundred times, but every now and then he’d come across something new.
He was no longer a teenager. Things like this should not interest him, and rejection from so long ago should no longer hurt. But his mind still dripped with curiosity, and his ego still ached from having been denied. A strange question came to him, like it did at the start of every summer: What was stopping him from going to the abandoned house in the woods?
The Suicide House Page 6