by C. M McCoy
“I’ll be heading that way too,” he told her with raised eyebrows. “Leech-check.”
“Leeches?” She tried not to think of slimly little worms crawling all over her. “How was your landing?” she asked quickly to get her mind off Alaska’s creepy-crawlies.
“Rough. But that’s normal. The pilots are a lot gentler with the women,” he said. “Most of the men ended up in the lake this time—hence the leeches. Thankfully everyone splashed down near shore, so no drownings this year.”
Hailey’s mouth fell open. “Students have died?”
“Yeah,” he said indifferently, “but only temporarily.”
Hailey opened her mouth to ask what the heck ‘only temporarily’ meant, but Fin cut her off. “Chinook Hall.” He pointed to a giant log building in a clearing up ahead, and Hailey’s bladder coaxed a sprint.
She had her shoes and socks off before she opened the door to the mud room. Snatching a pair of booties from a rack next to the door, she zipped inside, passed by a four-story stone fireplace, ran under seven wrought-iron chandeliers, down the central hallway and all the way to the back, where the restroom doors were marked with moose silhouettes—one with antlers and one without.
She picked the one without antlers, crossed her fingers and opened the door, finding (much to her relief) two female . . .humans, she guessed—parked in front of the mirror.
“I guess the parafreaks are here,” one said after Hailey closed her stall door.
Hailey wondered what a parafreak was and if that was a bad thing.
“Let’s get out of here before they muddy the place up,” the other answered, and Hailey listened to the bathroom door shut behind them. When she stepped up to the sink to wash her hands, she recoiled at her reflection in the mirror.
“Good lord,” she whispered as she turned on the water. “Definitely a bad thing,” she murmured.
With the exception of her booties, every part of her was covered in dirt, bugs, and other unidentifiable ick. The whites of her eyes really stood out. She looked like a mud monster.
Did I really meet Asher looking like this? Hanging her head and squeezing her eyes shut, she gripped the sink, torturing herself by rethinking every word she’d said to him.
Oh, it’s no wonder he didn’t kiss me again, she whimpered inside. At least she could wash her hands and face now. If only Tomas were around to put her hair in order.
She tapped her finger on the sink.
“I wonder . . .” she said out loud as she peered into the mirror. “Tomas,” she called softly. She peeked over her shoulder to make sure no one was watching her speak to her reflection.
“Tomas?” she said again, but the only supernatural thing in the glass was a crazy-haired mud monster. “Oh, if only you could come here, Tomas,” she begged quietly.
“HIER” came through in frosty letters on the mirror.
She perked up.
“Tomas? Is that you?”
“SCHMUTZIG” followed in bigger letters and a familiar set of hands shot out of the glass and shoved Hailey’s head into the sink.
“Gently,” she told him, and he actually handled her with a little more finesse as he rinsed her hair. It took several minutes and a whole bottle of ghost shampoo, but when Tomas was done, Hailey had a neat, clean, delightfully perfumed and trendy bun.
“Thanks,” she said, and Tomas frantically waved his hands at her through the glass.
“What is it?”
“D.O.P.P.L.E.R.” frosted across the mirror.
“What about them?”
“Gefahr”
Hailey mouthed the word, but she didn’t know what it meant and shook her head, adding “Gefahr” to “Schatz” on her mental list of Tomas-words to look up. She was pretty sure they were German.
“Tomas, I’m sorry, that’s way beyond the German I know. I have to look it up. Is there anything else?”
“bin entwichen” appeared briefly but long enough for Hailey to take a mental picture of it, and then Tomas saluted and disappeared as another mud monster waddled through the ladies room door wrapped in a wet sleeping bag.
Hailey nodded to her and exited.
Other ParaScience students were shuffling into Chinook Hall from the porch. Falling in step behind them, she entered a large banquet room opposite the fireplace, finding inside no fewer than fifty round tables, each set for fifteen people. Near the door, she found one occupied by only five students, all soggy and dirty.
“May I join you?” she asked with her most friendly smile.
Nobody answered.
Instead, they all stiffened and stared, either at random objects around the room or at their place setting. One whispered something sharply to the student on his left. That student looked over his shoulder and whispered to the student sitting on his left. Then without a word, without even glancing at Hailey, all five of them slid their chairs back, got up, walked away, and sat down at another table, leaving Hailey, shoulders drooped and sitting alone at the giant table for fifteen.
A sudden pang for her big sister pushed a lump into her throat. This was not how she’d envisioned her college experience.
Drumming her fingers on the table, she looked around. It was easy to see the students had divided themselves up. The filthy ones sat together, as did the clean, yet scruffy-looking ones in tattered flannel shirts and denim overalls. In one corner of the room, a large group of very attractive, very clean, very well put together students in name-brand outdoor wear sat with their noses in the air. She guessed those to be the Pre-Med students.
Except for the filthy freshmen, she couldn’t tell the difference between the students of geology and ParaScience.
In the back of the room and also at a table by herself sat a clean student with long gray hair. Her head was bowed, and it looked like she was reading something. The other students gave the gray-haired girl a wide berth.
At least I’m not the only outcast, Hailey thought as a murmur ran through the crowd. A few of the students began to chant, which grew into a roar with some of the larger men standing and clapping in time.
“O-SHEA-O-SHEA-O-SHEA,” they cheered, and they all looked toward the door. Hailey glanced over her shoulder to see what the hubbub was, and her jaw dropped.
Swaggering into the room, freshly showered and wearing a victorious smile, Fin high-fived almost everyone he passed, and the hall erupted.
Chapter Eighteen
Welcome to Bear Towne
Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.
- John Milton, Lycidas
Fin joined the group of large men, who took turns clapping him on the back and hugging him.
Trying hard not to stare, Hailey wondered what else she didn’t know about her favorite bartender. Clearly he’d left more than a few things out of their conversations in Pittsburgh.
A microphone crackled through the hall.
“Is this on now?” a man with a bow tie said as he stood at the front of the hall. “Uh, I see the last of our ParaScience freshmen have finally sloshed inside.”
The Pre-Med group tsk’ed and shook their heads while the flannels chuckled.
“Let’s all extend to them a warm welcome, I’m sure they’d appreciate it. By the looks of them, it was a lake landing again this year, am I right?” The man looked at Fin, who pressed his lips together and nodded. “Well,” the man said, “no drownings, then?”
Fin shook his head. The man clapped his hands together.
“Wonderful. The food will be out shortly. Welcome to the Terquasquigenary anniversary of Bear Towne University’s move to Alaska. Freshmen—be sure to pick up your welcome package from the tables on the west wall. Inside you will find your room assignment and orientation schedule for the week ahead as well as a campus map, a can of Yeti spray, some tree repellant, and a canister of fuel for your dormitory room ghost trap
.”
Hailey hoped there’d be a written explanation of all this inside her welcome package as well.
“And here’s dinner,” said the man, as a troop of uniformed ladies carried tray after silver tray of delicious-smelling fare to the buffet table.
It was then Hailey noticed Asher standing next to the man with the bow tie, leaning toward him and speaking. The man with the bow tie nodded, and Asher stepped away as the man picked up the mike.
“Uh . . . Please help yourselves, everyone, and if I could just see Miss Hailey Hartley up here quickly, please . . .” Her face flushing yet again, Hailey dipped her head.
Oh crap, why is he singling me out?
As Hailey tentatively stood, Asher spoke to the man again, watching Hailey’s every move, which only made her more self-conscious. Thankfully everyone else was far more interested in the food than they were in her, and none of the students seemed to notice when she stubbed her toe on an empty chair and doubled over. When she righted herself, Asher was gone again.
“Ah, Miss Hartley,” said the man with a bow tie, holding his hand out as she approached.
Hailey extended hers expecting a handshake, but like a gentleman of old, he bowed and kissed her hand.
“I’m Professor Simeon Woodfork, and it is a delight to meet you.”
“Likewise, Professor.”
“Well,” he said, stepping back, “let’s see your flail-beat.”
Hailey blinked.
“I’m sorry, sir. My what?”
“Your flail-beat. Didn’t you read my instructions?”
“I read your letter, sir, but there was no mention of a flail-beat in it.”
“Hartley received a tampered package,” Fin said through a mouthful of fried chicken as he made his way to Woodfork.
“Really,” said Woodfork with great interest. “What was in it?”
“Two letters,” Hailey told him. “One signed by you and the other was . . .” She shook her head. “The other was one sentence long.”
“One sentence?” Woodfork wrinkled his forehead and looked at Fin then back to Hailey. “How was it written?”
“It looked like scribble. Like a five-year-old wrote it.”
“Thick letters?”
Hailey nodded.
“I believe you’ve attracted a poltergeist, Miss Hartley.”
“Oh.” She already knew she had a poltergeist and wondered if that little trouble-maker, Tomas, was responsible for sabotaging her silver envelope.
“In any case,” the professor said, clapping his hands together, “Pádraig here will find you a handbook, and everything else you need is in your welcome package. But before you leave this hall, I must advise you, Miss Hartley, to ready your flail-beat.”
“Okay . . .”
“You see, due to the random breaks in the veil here at Bear Towne, we recommend all students practice their extraction technique should they stumble upon an unmarked in-between and become accidentally trapped there.”
Pinching her face together thoughtfully, she replayed Woodfork’s sentence in her head, but she literally had no idea what he was talking about.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t understand one word of that.”
Woodfork smiled brightly at Fin who gnawed the last sliver of meat off a chicken leg then left to fetch another.
“Ah, what a delight you are indeed,” said the professor. “Most students would try to bamboozle me. Nobody admits when they don’t know something anymore—this is so refreshing.” He drew a breath and continued. “The veil is a barrier that separates Earth from the two other realms—the Aether and the Heavens. An in-between is a partial opening through the veil—not large enough to travel completely through, you see, but still sufficient in size to pull one partially across. It leaves one trapped and somewhat vulnerable—it’s a bit like stepping into deep, sticky mud.”
That, Hailey understood.
“Every in-between is fraught with danger. One never knows what to expect inside. Any new student would be fortunate to escape unscathed, only . . .well, given your . . .er . . .status here, one might try to harm you irreparably or even kill you completely if you fell into such a hole, you understand?”
“No. What’s my status?”
Woodfork waved his hand, dismissively. “No need to fret about that now. What’s important is that you leave here ready and able to pull yourself out of an in-between, and the only way to do that is to perform a flail-beat.”
“Okay.” Hailey nodded, ready to learn how to flail-beat.
“It’s quite simple,” he told her kindly. “All you have to do is use your hands or your feet to produce a regular, recurring percussive noise by striking them against whatever surface you find inside the in-between. That’s very important, to find a surface, as clapping usually doesn’t work. Of course, you already know that a regular percussion repels most non-humans,” he said, but this was all news to Hailey. “So it repels an in-between as well. With your background in percussive dance, it should be fairly simple for you, yes?”
“You mean you just have to . . .to dance your way out of an in-between?” Surely it couldn’t be that simple.
“Ah, then you understand. Alright, if you would please—just this once—demonstrate for me your flail-beat?”
Not since the day Holly vanished had Hailey urged her feet to dance. Glancing around, she made sure nobody was watching. Then, with a heavy heart but eager feet, she tapped out a simple reel beat.
Woodfork clapped her on the shoulder after two short seconds. “That will do. Can you do the same with your hands?”
“Yes.”
“Very good. Now, should you find yourself trapped in an in-between, you tap out a beat precisely like that, and you’ll pop right out,” he said with a reassuring smile. “And I may ask you to assist the other students with their flail-beat inside the in-between studio, but,” he said shaking his finger at her, “that is the only place on this campus where you may produce a regular percussive noise, do you understand?”
“Yes, but, Professor . . .why—”
He held his hand up. “No more questions today, you’ll learn everything about in-betweens and the veil and the Aether and everything else in class. For now, go and eat, pick up your welcome package and meet your fellow classmates,” he said, patting her on the back to hurry her away.
The eating part went well, as did the picking up of the welcome package, but the meeting of the fellow classmates—that went nowhere.
While Fin worked the room like a movie star, Hailey literally repelled people. No one would come within five feet of her, and she was starting to wonder if she smelled bad.
For almost two hours, Hailey sat alone at a table for fifteen, eating her smoked salmon and exploring her welcome package, which thankfully came bundled inside a Bear Towne backpack—another item she hadn’t brought. As students began filing out, she looked over her orientation schedule for the next morning and pulled out her room assignment:
Dorm: Eureka Hall, 3rd floor, Room 333
Roommate: Giselle Goarhausen.
Just as she found Eureka Hall on her campus map, a friendly voice rang out from inside her invisible five-foot demilitarized zone.
“Come on, I’ll help you with your bags,” said Fin.
Hailey looked up from her map.
“Can you tell me how to get to Eureka Hall from here?” She folded her papers and placed them inside her backpack.
“I’ll do you one better and show you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. I’m heading that way too,” he said as they walked into the grand hallway, where the other ParaSci freshmen had already removed the shrink wrap from the pallets and were picking through the luggage.
“Which ones are yours,” he asked, and her eyes searched the piles.
“That one’s mine.”
She pointed to the smallest bag on one of the pallets, and Fin grabbed it.
“What else?”
“That’s it.”
“That’s it? This?” he said, shaking her small bag. “This is all you brought to Alaska?”
“Well—” Hailey let out a curt sigh. “Yes! My letter said to bring one purse-size bag, and there wasn’t any packing list or anything else inside the envelope, and it said not to ask any questions until I got here, and . . .”
Hailey threw her hands up then dropped them in a huff, and Fin stared at her, unamused.
“Why didn’t you just ask me?” As if this would have been the logical thing to do.
Hailey let him have it.
“I haven’t seen you since the day we buried Holly. You never came back to work, you never even called to say you weren’t coming back, you just disappeared. You left me!” She turned to stomp away but turned on him again. “And you never mentioned anything about going to school in Alaska. What the heck were you doing in Pittsburgh anyway?”
Fin dropped her bag on the floor at her feet and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I never left you,” he said forcefully, and then he pushed her away, turned around, and left her.
“Clearly, Fin,” she muttered to herself as she grabbed up her bag, “you and I differ greatly in our idea of what it means to leave someone.”
He threw open the Chinook Hall door and looked back at her.
“Well?” he said grudgingly. “You coming?”
“Yes,” she said, snapping out of her grudge and trotting to the door. “Hey, what’s a parafreak?”
“It’s you,” he said in his normal, slightly caustic tone as he took Hailey’s “luggage” from her. “And me too. It’s anyone lucky enough to study ParaScience in the Last Frontier state. We are definitely the redheaded step children of the university.”
“I certainly am, but you seem to have a lot of friends here,” she told him while she tied her wet shoes.
“There’s only one friend I care about.”
He winked, and Hailey froze, her belly tightening. Then she shook her head and laughed.
Holding the door for her, he followed her out, and they headed toward Eureka Hall.