What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  Professor Liu raised his voice, “Ladies in the back, is there something you’d like to share with the class?”

  Alessa flushed. She hated being reprimanded. She shrunk back into her chair and mouthed a sheepish, “Sorry.”

  The professor returned to his lesson plan, but as had been the case of late, Alessa just couldn’t focus on what he was saying. She unfolded the little desktop from its storage space under her armrest and took out her laptop. Opening a blank document, she angled the screen toward Janie, intending to write a short note explaining what she’d learned at the library. Luckily, there was no one sitting directly behind them, so she didn’t have to worry about anyone reading over their shoulders.

  “I found the librarian from that article – she pointed me towards some old books of property records and I was able to find the house in there.”

  Feigning attention to the lecture as she scribbled in her notebook, Janie quickly shifted her eyes to Alessa and raised an eyebrow, encouraging her to continue.

  Alessa cleared what she had written and started a fresh sentence. “There was a Mason family who built the house in the 1870s, and they had two sons, Albert & William. Then Albert took ownership of the house about 30 years later and had a son named Isaac. I think it might be one of those three.”

  Janie nodded and wrote something in her notebook. She slid it quietly towards Alessa. Alessa saw something scrawled in the margin in Janie’s signature tiny capital letters. She leaned closer for a better look. “ALBERT? SEXY.” Janie had underlined the last word for emphasis. It was amazing how Janie’s voice rang clear in Alessa’s head, even just from her writing. Alessa could hear the sarcasm dripping from those two syllables.

  Alessa rolled her eyes playfully. She turned back to the keyboard and typed, “Isaac?”

  “DEFINITELY BETTER.”

  Alessa laughed silently and shook her head at Janie’s antics. Albert, William, Isaac… She didn’t care what the ghost’s name was, only who he was.

  She was opening the file with her physics notes as Janie pushed her notebook in Alessa’s direction once again. “SO WHAT’S THE PLAN?”

  Alessa looked at Janie and shrugged. She typed, “Going to see if I can find death records for these people. Beyond that, not sure.”

  Janie acknowledged the response with a nod and went back to her notes. Alessa did the same.

  An hour and fifteen minutes later, Professor Liu was reminding the class to check the syllabus for the reading due next session. Alessa was surprised at how much she had absorbed once she started paying attention. With what she picked up in class today she thought she should be able to skim through the reading, which might give her enough time to continue her research about the ghost between now and Thursday’s class.

  Janie turned to Alessa as she was packing her notebook into her messenger bag. “Did you eat lunch yet?”

  Alessa was surprised to find that she actually had an appetite for once. “Nope. Did you want to grab something? I’ve got a half hour until my next class.”

  “Let’s go to the cafeteria.”

  Alessa nodded her assent.

  Janie led the way down from the back of the lecture hall, following the tide of students to the door. As they passed the front podium, Alessa was startled to hear someone other than Janie call her name.

  “Ms. Khole?” Alessa and Janie stopped in their tracks and turned around. Professor Liu was looking directly at Alessa.

  “Yes, Professor?”

  “Yours was one of the few exams I had time to grade before class today.” Alessa felt a twang of trepidation; this couldn’t be good news. She braced herself.

  The professor continued. “I was quite impressed with your performance.”

  “Oh, uh, thanks,” Alessa stammered. That was not what she was expecting. She reminded herself to smile.

  “I haven’t finished the curve yet, but I think you can expect at least an A-minus. Keep up the good work.”

  Alessa perked up. “Thanks, Professor.” She turned towards the door and caught a surprised look on Janie’s face.

  As they exited into the hallway, Janie said, “He knows your name?”

  Alessa was just as puzzled. Besides his brief chiding in the beginning of class, Alessa had never had any direct interaction with her physics professor. “I guess so… He probably looked up my photo in the student directory or something.”

  “You must have really done well on that test.”

  Alessa thought she had done okay. She must have gotten more right on those last few questions than she expected. “I didn’t think I did that good.” After a second, she added, “Guess we have to be more careful not to get caught talking from now on.”

  Janie chuckled. “Guess you need to be more careful. He still has no idea who I am.”

  Alessa laughed. “True.”

  After a short walk, they arrived at the cafeteria. As it was almost 1:00, most of the lunch rush had died down and there were only a few stragglers remaining inside. This was always the best time to come. With 20,000 hungry students and only one main dining hall, the ESU cafeteria was not Alessa’s preferred dining venue between noon and one o’clock. If she ate lunch, she usually grabbed something quick from one of the smaller vendors elsewhere on campus, like the Van Husen café.

  The dining hall was one of the few modern buildings on campus. With that many mouths to feed every day, the original cafeteria – which was built back in the 40s to accommodate one tenth the number of students – just wasn’t going to cut it. A few years ago the university had used a large grant to build the enormous structure, with a huge kitchen and serving area on the main floor and three floors of seating above.

  Alessa and Janie swiped their meal cards then diverged to opposite ends of the cafeteria. Janie, as usual, went to the salad bar. Alessa scanned the hot food entrees. It was a chilly day and after her earlier incident with the ghost, she could use some comfort food.

  Bingo. Macaroni and cheese, her favorite. Alessa scooped herself a modestly sized portion, then added a spoonful of steamed broccoli to her plate as well. She didn’t want to hear Janie’s nagging to eat her vegetables.

  Sure enough, the moment they sat down across from one another, Janie eyed Alessa’s plate. “You really shouldn’t eat that junk.” Janie’s plate was piled literally eight inches high with fresh raw vegetables and nuts. For someone who was so health-conscious, she had a voracious appetite.

  “I got some broccoli,” Alessa offered. She watched as Janie dug a fork into her mound of produce and shoveled it towards her mouth. “I really don’t know where you put all of that.”

  Janie swallowed. “It’s low calorie and healthy fats.”

  “No, I mean, physically. How can you fit that much volume in your stomach?”

  Through a mouthful of food, Janie replied, “Practice.”

  Alessa smiled and started in on her own plate. The mac and cheese was definitely hitting the spot. It reminded her of her mom’s homemade recipe, creamy and buttery with a thick layer of crisp breadcrumbs across the top. Heaven. It felt like forever since she’d eaten something so rich.

  Janie looked up from her tray and took a deep chug from her glass of milk. “So, how are you feeling? You look better than when you walked into class.”

  Alessa definitely felt better. “Yeah, I’m okay now. Thanks for asking.” She took a sip of water. “I forgot how –” she searched for the right word, “– distressing it is to see the ghost. I mean, beyond the expected scared-out-of-my-mind reaction, for some reason he stirs up all these other emotions in me. I know I’ve told you that I can see that he’s distraught, but it’s more than just empathy. I feel it. It’s like a whole bucket of emotions are dumped on me in the span of a few seconds, and it just leaves me feeling like a wreck.”

  “Is that normal for ghosts?”

  “Is what normal?”

  “Making you feel things, like maybe what they’re feeling.”

  Alessa hadn’t thought of that. She
certainly couldn’t explain how she felt in his presence, and at least some of it did seem to match his expression. “You know, I’m not sure. It kind of makes sense, and it would help to explain why these encounters keep affecting me like they do.”

  Janie thought for a moment. “Was it always like that? I don’t remember you being such a mess at first.”

  Alessa reflected back over her history with the ghost. At first the encounters were much briefer, lasting only a second or two. In fact, she may even have had incidents that were shorter. In the beginning of the school year, sometimes she would see something out of the corner of her eye, but when she looked nothing was there. So she wasn’t even sure at first that anything had happened.

  Then one night, she’d woken up at three in the morning feeling that eerie sixth sense that she wasn’t alone. When she’d opened her eyes, she’d seen the silhouette of a man standing at the foot of her bed, near the fireplace. She had frozen out of fear and pretended she was still asleep, squinting in the darkness to try to figure out if what she was seeing was real. She could only faintly make out his shape and thought it might have been a trick of the light coupled with her sleepy eyes, but she just had that feeling that she wasn’t the only person in the room. Then all of a sudden the feeling had passed, and when she’d reached out to her nightstand to switch on the lamp, there was nothing there.

  When she finally did see the ghost for certain for the first time, she’d flown from the room. She’d been alone in the bathroom one evening brushing her teeth when she looked up from the sink and saw the ghost lurking behind her in the mirror. He didn’t seem to have noticed her, but Alessa hadn’t stayed long enough to look closely. She’d sprinted from the bathroom toothbrush in hand and locked herself behind her own door until she’d calmed down enough to go tell Janie what had happened.

  So she supposed in those early incidents it wasn’t quite the same. Today, she had been transfixed. She couldn’t seem to summon the will to flee, even as every instinct screamed at her to go. But those first few times, she had been able to take action.

  Alessa confirmed Janie’s suspicions. “You’re right. It didn’t used to be like this. I think the encounters are lasting longer and longer, and they’re getting more intense.”

  “That’s a little scary.”

  Alessa agreed. “I’ll look into it when I get home tonight. I’m sure there are plenty of ghost stories on the internet – I’ll see if I can find reports of anything similar.”

  “Good idea.”

  Alessa savored the last bite of her mac and cheese and put down her fork. “Okay, I think it’s time for me to head to my ethics seminar.”

  Janie still had a sizable pile of veggies in front of her. “Okay. I’m going to stay and finish up. See you back at the house tonight?”

  “Absolutely.”

  7. RESEARCH

  Alessa was flooded with relief as she climbed the steps to Zeta Epsilon Pi’s front porch. Between the exam that morning and her lunchtime rendezvous with the ghost, she was wiped. Her ethics seminar had dragged on interminably, and as she yawned and drooped in her chair, Alessa had found herself wishing she was back in one of those massive lecture halls so that she could sink into the crowd.

  Instead, she had spent the entire class struggling to keep her eyes open in full view of her ethics professor, who quickly took notice given that there were only twenty or so students in the room. Alessa had spent the better part of the last hour with the professor’s affronted expression boring through her and was glad to put the class behind her. It felt good to be home at last.

  As Alessa opened the front door, she noticed that there was a group of seven or so sorority sisters gathered around the coffee table in the living room. They alternated between nodding furiously and looking intently at Lizzie’s laptop as she spoke rapidly about something, gesticulating enthusiastically as she went. Alessa caught wind of the words “party” and “delegate” and quickly scurried up to her room before anyone noticed her presence.

  Alessa switched on the light and flopped onto the bed, letting out a deep sigh. It had been a long day. At least she could expect a little respite before her next encounter with the ghost, since he didn’t seem to drop in more than once every other week or so. With the way she was feeling at the moment, she thought she might need that much time to recover. She ached with exhaustion right down to her bones.

  Alessa rolled over facing the wall and pulled her knees toward her chest, her long hair strewn out behind her. She rested her head on her arm and closed her eyes. She still hadn’t fully processed everything that had happened earlier, the emotions that had tugged at her from seemingly every direction. She wondered if there was any validity to Janie’s theory that they were actually the ghost’s emotions being projected onto her.

  She didn’t want to think about it. It was bad enough that she was seeing the apparition. Did she really need to feel it too? She didn’t like the idea of some foreign entity hijacking her emotions, making her feel like someone she wasn’t. It was troubling to think how little control she had over her own faculties during those moments. And now it was hours later and she was still feeling the effects.

  She needed to get to the bottom of this. With a weary sigh, Alessa rolled back over and swung her legs to the floor, pushing herself out of bed and over to the desk. Sinking into the chair, she snatched up her backpack from the floor and slid out her laptop, dropping it onto the desk with a clunk. She popped the lid open and reattached the power supply while she waited for the system to boot up. Once the familiar startup chimes sounded, she opened her browser and navigated to a search engine.

  Alessa wasn’t even sure where to begin. She decided to start broad and entered “ghost stories.” 120 million results. Perhaps she was going to need to be more specific.

  This time she tried “real ghost stories.” That narrowed it down to 5 million results. She tested to see if adding “emotion” or “feeling” to her query would help, but scanning the results, she didn’t see anything that looked useful. Alessa backed up to the “real ghost stories” search and randomly opened the first few results.

  They were all stories from people who claimed to have experienced a ghost encounter, but the only emotions they reported feeling were the expected ones: that something was “not right,” like they weren’t alone, and of course terror, anxiety, panic. It sounded pretty similar to Alessa’s first few experiences.

  She tried entering “ghosts projecting feelings” which narrowed it down to 3 million results, but still nothing seemed quite right. One of the top results was a general information page about ghosts, so she decided to check there. Scanning the page, she noticed that the words “projecting” and “feelings” were there but nowhere near each other, which didn’t really answer her question. However, there was a list of alternative hypotheses attempting to explain the existence of ghosts, so she decided to read further.

  Of course there was all the usual theorizing about the existence of spirits on another dimension or plane, a soul caught between life on earth and the afterlife envisioned by most major religions. This was generally thought to be caused by “unfinished business” on the part of the deceased or a great trauma experienced at the time of death. Both scenarios seemed reasonable enough to explain her own experiences, though Alessa didn’t know enough about her ghost to guess what might have been his particular hang-up. And another issue, of course, was that this entire theory hinged on the premise of being willing to accept the existence of the soul, which Alessa also wasn’t sold on quite yet.

  As expected, there was also plenty of scientific skepticism. Carbon monoxide poisoning, air pressure changes, and mistakes interpreting peripheral vision were all cited as rational explanations behind what one might interpret as a ghost sighting, but none of these rationalizations seemed to hit the mark in Alessa’s case. Alessa remembered that she had cited many of these same arguments herself in debates with friends over the years, an irony that was not lost on her.

>   There was also some discussion of a phenomenon called infrasound, sound waves emanating at a low enough frequency that they’re inaudible to humans but still detectable in other ways. There were experiments where people reported seeing things and feeling uneasiness and even sorrow when exposed to sound at these frequencies. However, in those experiments 20% of the tested population was affected by the presence of infrasound, which meant that if there was some sort of infrasound source affecting her house, at least a handful of her housemates should have experienced something similar. As far as Alessa knew, no one else had, so that didn’t seem like the culprit.

  Other theories hypothesized that ghosts were projections of the viewer’s own emotions, some sort of low-level telepathy that resulted from stress. Alessa thought this theory might have some merit, especially given the recent loss of her parents and her difficulty coping with the experience. However, that didn’t explain why her emotions might take the form of a guy from the early 1900s. Shouldn’t it be her parents she was seeing if in fact her stress over their death was the root of all this?

  Yet another set of theories considered the possibility of a time warp. In these cases, by some unknown process the fabric of time was momentarily folded in such a way that someone in the present either got a glimpse of a person from the past, or – in the case of what was called a “time slip” – was fully transported into the past for a few moments. Besides the usual lost soul hypothesis, this theory seemed probably the closest of everything Alessa had read. However, in most reported instances, the person in the past had noticed the person from the present as well, which had not been the case with Alessa’s ghost. And even if this theory was correct, Alessa didn’t understand how it was possible or why it was happening to her, in this house, with this ghost.

  Alessa closed her laptop lid in frustration, snapping it a little harder than she’d meant to. All in all, she was disappointed with what she’d been able to turn up. There was practically nothing she came across that she didn’t already know, and none of the various theories seemed to quite match her experiences. Most of the information online seemed like it was written by either lunatics or dedicated skeptics, neither of whom she trusted for a reliable opinion.