Echoes of Memory

by A. R. Kahler

  “That’s my thought too,” she said. She pulled on her coat, still mildly examining her painting. “Some people just can’t take the stress of this place. Makes ’em crack. Surprised it was a teacher, though. Maybe they had an affair with one of the dead girls.” She honestly sounded wistful. Like she wanted the gossip that it would bring.

  “Tamora,” Ethan said as he stepped beside me, “I say this as nicely as I can. Please shut the hell up. And never talk again. To me, or anyone else.”

  “Touchy, touchy,” she said. She smiled at the two of us. “Maybe someone had reason to be jealous? Hot for teacher, Ethan?” She winked and turned to the door. Ethan had his hands shoved into his pockets, but his jaw was tight. “Have a good night, boys. Don’t let the boogieman get you.” Then she was gone.

  “I never liked her,” Ethan muttered to me. “But I didn’t realize just how founded it was until now.”

  “She’s scared,” I said.

  “Or a bitch,” he responded. “I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive.” He sighed and shook his head, then looked at me. “You ready?”

  I knew he meant more than ready to go. I just didn’t quite know what. I nodded. I’d been ready to go the moment we stepped foot in here. I needed to talk to Kaira. I needed to know everything was going to be okay, that I wasn’t insane, that I hadn’t accidentally hurt someone. . . . You haven’t, the voice whispered, but you will.

  I tried to force it down to no avail.

  We left the classroom in silence, the halls just as quiet as when we’d entered. When we stepped outside, into the consuming night air, the stillness gave way to a distanced sort of chaos.

  The long building that housed the academic classrooms was crawling with cops and medics, the lights of ambulances and cop cars scratching over the snow in epileptic streaks. No sirens, no screams. Everything was as quiet as snowfall. No ravens in the trees and—for now, at least—no falcon, delighting in my demise. Ethan paused.

  “Shit,” he whispered, looking at me.

  There were students out there as well. A few lingered by the cop cars, holding hands and watching it all in silence, but most hurried past. Toward their dorms and the illusion that there was safety there, that the world was normal within those walls. Toward the lie that they would wake up and in the morning everything would be okay.

  But hell, maybe for them it would.

  I didn’t see anyone from before, but I still scanned the crowd as we neared, hoping to find a student staring at it all with a knowing look in their eyes. I needed to find someone who had seen what I’d seen. I needed to confirm I wasn’t insane. I needed to find Kaira. . . .

  Ethan took me by the arm and pulled me along, toward our dorm. It took all my self-control not to keep looking back, not to look too suspicious. Not to break free and run toward Kaira’s dorm.

  We signed ourselves in to the dorm and lingered in the foyer for a moment. The area was crowded with other guys from our dorm, and our RA, Todd, was behind the desk, fielding questions with half answers and saying on repeat, When I know, you’ll know. There was no way in hell I could go back to my room. I didn’t want to be alone with myself. I didn’t want to relive tonight. So I went to the common room behind the lobby. Some guys were watching TV on the sofa while others played cards. There wasn’t the same sort of fear that had lingered the last time we’d heard of a death. Maybe because this was a teacher and not a student. Maybe because we were all too used to this sort of thing to feel anything but dull resolve.

  At least, they were. I was buzzing.

  Ethan and I leaned against the wall and watched the TV. I couldn’t focus. My brain raced with my pulse as I tried to look nonchalant. As I tried to keep building up this fragile alibi. Any moment, a cop would come in and question me. Any moment, the shadows would bleed forth ravens.

  A few minutes in, Ethan’s phone rang.

  Oliver, he mouthed to me, then vanished down the hall to talk to his boyfriend.

  I considered leaving, but I still couldn’t force myself to move. I tried focusing on the TV. Some stupid game show with people running over moats of floating pods and climbing walls and dodging swinging punching bags. It couldn’t hold my attention, but the guys on the couch in front of me were into it. At least they were enjoying themselves. At least they weren’t worrying about a murder being pinned on them.

  This is just like when you were hit. Except it isn’t you who was killed, and Jonathan isn’t being brought back to life. Your sister was a sacrifice. Like Jonathan. Like the rest . . .

  I ran a hand through my hair as my thoughts shot backward, as the afternoon I was hit played over in my mind. The sensation of the vehicle slamming my chest and my ribs exploding, ripping into my lungs as my legs buckled and cracked through my skin. Deep breath. Deep breath. But I couldn’t stop seeing the blood. The blood that should have spilled when I should have hit concrete, when my body should have splayed on the road like a scarecrow.

  My head throbbed at the thought. At the feeling of what never happened. My skull cracking on cement. Arms twisting. And my sister screaming my name.

  Get ahold of yourself.

  Except when I opened my eyes, the calling didn’t stop.

  I looked to the TV, to the sound of my name being yelled. The show contestants were screaming now. They ran down the obstacle course, trying to dodge the flames and spears that stabbed from the ground like porcupine quills. I blinked, rubbed my eyes. The carnage didn’t stop. Blood spilled across the track, turned the water that other contestants swam in dark. The camera panned up, showing the audience. Only the audience wasn’t sitting and watching—they were fighting each other. Flashes and explosions as guns fired, as heads exploded and stomachs ripped apart, as others beat their neighbors with sticks or swords, gouged eyes out with keys.

  And then it panned back down. To my sister, standing in the middle of the arena, with a hawk perched atop her head, its claws digging rivulets into her skull. Around her, a circle of bodies, of blood. She was screaming. Screaming my name.

  “I so hate this show,” Ethan said, slapping me on the shoulder.

  I jumped. When I glanced at him, he was staring at the screen in boredom. I looked to the TV. To the normal show of people running over low walls and dodging foam pillars.

  What the hell? What the hell was that?

  My heart raced in my chest. I’m going insane. I’m literally going insane.

  “You okay, trouper?” Ethan asked.

  “Yeah.” I looked from him to the TV and back again. I needed to get a grip. I needed to talk to Kaira. “I think I just need . . . Actually, I don’t know what.”

  “You should probably just go try to relax,” Ethan said, like he wasn’t consoling someone he had—a few hours ago—accused of murder. “Get some sleep. Make tea.”

  “Yeah,” I said, glancing back to the TV. The fact that it didn’t change almost made things worse. It’s just stress. “I think I will. Good night. And thanks for, you know, not . . . not doubting me.”

  Ethan shrugged. “The trouble with giving everyone the benefit of the doubt is that, eventually, you just start doubting everyone.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He tried to grin, but it slipped the moment it passed over his lips. “That shit’s fucked up. Go sleep. I’ll see you at breakfast.”

  Then he gave me a quick hug and walked off toward his room.

  I wasn’t tired. The last thing I wanted was to go to my room and studiously ignore my roommate. Because, as usual, Mike would be there on his computer, chatting with his family in Canada, acting like I didn’t exist. But it was better than staying here, staring at a wall because I couldn’t trust myself to watch the TV or look out the window for fear of what I’d see.

  And, shit. I still had pre-calc homework to finish.

  I trudged up the stairs to my room. Unlike the first time, when we’d had mandatory sign-in because of a death, there wasn’t any somberness in the halls. There were guys in the
upstairs lobby talking and playing chess while a lone musician sat in the corner, playing a bolero on his guitar. Another group of guys were studying on the floor in the hall to my room. I stepped over their legs and said a passing hello, but they didn’t really respond. I felt like a sleepwalker. Everyone else seemed unfazed by this death, but my world had shifted irreversibly. I didn’t fit in here anymore. The hall felt like something out of a horror movie, even though the lights weren’t flickering and the guys studying for a French quiz were far from intimidating. It was the simple fact that nothing else had changed. These guys would wake up in the morning and go through their days and not feel like the world was ending. They didn’t know that gods were real, that people could be brought back from the dead.

  They got to live the story they’d been told since birth.

  I was a character in something completely different.

  Mike didn’t fail in playing his part. The moment I opened the door, I was struck by the humid scent of stale leftovers and sweat. Somehow, that helped push away the images of Kaira bursting into ravens, or my sister begging me to help her on the TV screen. Mike was Mike. The room smelled like it always did, and he was at his computer like he always was—headphones in, some rank herbal tea cooling by his laptop while he chatted away with whatever relative was still awake at this hour on one screen and drafted some essay on another. I threw my coat on the bed and sat down at my desk.

  My side of the room was pretty barren—some paintings I’d done or collected, a mandatory photo of my parents and me on some vacation I barely remembered. I looked over each one. Trying to find some sort of emotional response. They were all images I’d cultivated, ones to make me remember home—however screwed up “home” was. Pictures of me and friends rafting last summer. Postcards from the few friends who stayed in touch over the years. Concert stubs and movie tickets and a boarding pass for a flight to Paris. But now, when I looked at my side, I felt like I was looking into someone else’s photo album. Staring into someone else’s life. Those pictures weren’t of the Chris who saw his friends turn into ravens. That smiling boy by the Christmas tree with his family wasn’t the same one who was killed and reborn. Those were a different life. A normal life. It wasn’t mine.

  On their own accord, my eyes shifted to my desk. To the only photo of my sister. Just her. Posed for a school portrait, smiling in her blue dress. I could never bring myself to frame a photo of the two of us, even though there were many. It felt like an affront to her memory. I was the reason she was dead.

  I tore my eyes away from the photo. I wanted to convince myself what I’d always tried to convince myself—that that was the past, and that it couldn’t touch me anymore. I was building a new life. I was honoring my sister’s memory by living the best I could.

  Only now, I knew that was all a lie. The past could reach me here. And it was reaching out with iron claws and blood.

  That was a perk of boarding school, though: There was always work to be done. If for nothing more than the distraction, I grabbed my pre-calc work and opened to tonight’s equations. Then I pulled my phone from my pocket and did what I’d been wanting to do all night. I texted Kaira.

  Are you okay?

  The words seemed so damned trite that I wanted to vomit, but I couldn’t write anything else. Not if Elisa might answer. Or if someone was watching my line or whatever the cops did when you’re a suspect. Because I was definitely a suspect.

  Minutes ticked by. Mike shifted in his seat, then hocked a loogie and spit it into his mug. I stared at the equations and stared at the dark phone screen. Neither changed. There was no way to focus on my homework, not when my brain was preoccupied with birds and blood and Kaira’s plea for help. I couldn’t just sit there and wait, even if Ethan said she was safe in her room. I couldn’t let myself believe I’d imagined everything. Worse, I couldn’t sit here if she was actually in trouble.

  “Screw it,” I muttered. I grabbed the room phone and dialed Kaira’s extension.

  Two rings.

  “Hello?” Elisa asked in a whisper.

  “Elisa,” I said. I kept my voice down, but I knew Mike wasn’t listening in. “Hi. It’s me. Chris.”

  “Hey, what’s up?”

  “Is Kaira there?”

  “Yeah. She’s asleep.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding. Not that I thought Ethan was lying . . . I just couldn’t believe anything until I knew it for myself.

  “Did you need something?” she asked.

  I glanced to Mike. Still occupied. But I lowered my voice anyway.

  “Is she okay? I mean, did she act strange or something?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Thinking fast wasn’t my forte. Even less so on the phone.

  “I just . . . with everything going on. I know she and Jonathan were close.”

  “Honestly, I don’t think she knows,” Elisa whispered. Sadly, like she was trying to protect a small child. “She was asleep when I got in.”

  “When was that?”

  A pause. Elisa had been in the car with us when Kaira had said she’d skip out on the movie because she had a meeting with Jonathan. I knew Elisa was doing the mental math—had Kaira been in the room when Jonathan had died? Or after? And what was the polite way of finding out?

  “I don’t know. A few hours ago. She was here when I got back.”

  “You came right back to the room?” It was difficult to keep the panic out of my voice.

  “No. Chris, what’s going on?”

  Elisa was the one who suspected our friends were being murdered. When the rest of us were content to hope it was all coincidence, her suspicion was raised. So trying to pull this over on her right now was feeling impossible.

  “Can you just . . . Please answer the question. When did you get back to the room?”

  She sighed. “I don’t know. I hung out with Cassie for a bit once I got back. Wandered around. Grabbed frozen yogurt and talked. Then I came back. Some time after seven, I guess.”

  In theory, that would check out. It meant Kaira would still have had time to be in the classroom with Jonathan and the circle and me. Then she . . . what? Flew back to her room? It didn’t make sense. How had she ended up there, when something darker had taken hold? But I would figure that out later. At least the timing worked out. At least that helped assuage the fear that I was losing my mind. Kaira had been there. Or could have been there. Right now, that had to be enough.

  “Can I talk to her?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  “Please. It’s important.”

  Another big sigh. “Fine. But don’t mention anything about Jonathan. She’s actually sleeping soundly right now. I don’t want her having any more nightmares.”

  Nightmares?

  Not a question to ask Elisa. And really, what were nightmares in comparison to what I’d seen tonight?

  There was a rustle of movement, and then I heard Elisa trying to wake Kaira. “Kaira. Hey, sorry. It’s Chris.”

  “Chris?” I heard Kaira ask. Then another rustle as she took the phone.

  “Chris?” she asked again, her voice laced with grogginess. My heart leaped into my throat. With relief? Or fear of what she might say next?

  “Hey, it’s me.” Another glance to Mike, who was still studiously ignoring me. “Are you okay?”

  “I was sleeping.” She sounded confused, her voice coming out slowly. My thoughts were spinning. No, no. You have to remember. You can’t leave me alone in this.

  “I know you were,” I said, trying to keep the panic from my voice, trying not to ask a leading question. “But, I mean. Earlier. Are you okay?”

  God, it was impossible to try to talk like this, knowing we were both being listened in on. It would be so much easier if this were just normal life and we could meet outside or drive around the block or something. Not that anything about this night was normal.

  “Earlier?” she asked. Again, that somersault in my chest. She sounded confused. Not c
onspiratorial.

  “Yeah. Earlier. You know. When I last saw you.”

  She mumbled something I couldn’t catch.

  “What was that?” I asked.

  When she spoke again, her voice was different. Flatter. Colder.

  “I’m tired, Chris. So tired. Tomorrow.”

  Then she hung up.

  I sat there, the phone pressed to my ear while the dial tone drowned out the noises in my head. Because I think I understood what she muttered. The barest hint of a word. A breath of a plea.

  Help.

  I didn’t want sleep to come.

  I wanted to leap out the window, rush over to Kaira’s dorm. I wanted to keep calling her, to force her awake, to make her stay with me on the phone until the sun came up. But I couldn’t do any of those things, and every second that dragged by raised my anxiety another notch. Kaira needed me. She needed me. And that meant I wasn’t going crazy. It meant I had seen something. It meant that even if I was a suspect, I wasn’t the cause, and that was enough to make me feel less insane. Kaira had been there. Kaira had turned into ravens.

  Kaira had proven that the impossible had happened. But now I could do nothing about any of it but wait.

  If I leaped from the window, Mike would call security. If I snuck out while he was asleep, I’d no doubt run across a guard before I made it to Kaira’s dorm. If I called her cell, she would ignore it. If I called her room phone, Elisa would answer. And if I did make it to her room, if I did get her on the phone, Elisa would ask questions. Elisa would suspect the worst. And whatever little facade we had of normal, whatever chance I had at helping Kaira through, would fly out the window the moment I was caught.

  I sprawled out on the bed, facing the lines of light scratched across the ceiling, waiting for Mike’s nightly routine to finish. It annoyed the shit out of me, and tonight I focused on it with every brain cell I had. Because I couldn’t let myself think. I couldn’t let myself wonder what was going on with Kaira, what sort of battle she was losing. Something was trying to steal her away from me. And if it was anything like the falcon that had haunted me since my sister’s death, it wasn’t something that should be allowed control.