[Anthology] The Paranormal 13- now With a Bonus 14th Novel!

by Dima Zales

  She looks at her watch as she’s packing up her books. “I can’t believe we were sitting here for six hours!”

  I agree! “You said it, Mel,” I answer, cringing as I hear the word escape my lips. I know she hates being called “Mel.” I think it was literally the very first thing she said when we all introduced ourselves that first day at orientation. I really, truly didn’t do it on purpose. Not this time, anyway.

  She surprisingly doesn’t take offense. “I appreciate you taking all this time. Really. You didn’t need to go over this all day, you know it cold.” Well, that’s true. But it’s very classy of her to say so.

  “You can make it up to me sometime,” I say. “But right now I want to get back to the dorm, drop everything off and get something to eat. I’m starving!” She agrees, and we walk back, chatting pleasantly enough as it just begins to snow. I’m wiped out – doing six hours of anything in one sitting is tough, no matter what it is. But I feel like I did a good deed for the day, and that thought warms me up ever so slightly on the cold walk home.

  Now I’m lying in bed, at the early hour of ten o’clock. I want to be sure to get a good night’s sleep so I can be at my best for the Biochemistry final tomorrow. I may know it all cold, like Melanie said, but that won’t help if I’m ragged and half-awake during the test…

  …Sara’s in a classroom in the middle of an exam, and a roomful of students is busily writing away in their exam books, all except one of them, a tall blonde girl who’s standing up in the middle of the room, completely naked. Sara shakes her head as she watches her roommate grow more and more agitated, and then the door to the classroom opens, and three women, all tall, all blonde, and a fourth, a teenage girl with dark hair, troop in.

  Beth’s sisters. They point at her in unison, as Beth just stands there, seemingly unable to do anything at all. Sara closes her eyes, not wanting to see any more, thinking that she knew Beth was concerned, but she had no idea her roommate was that worried about her statistics final…

  …and without transition, Sara finds herself elsewhere. She’s outside, on grass, trees all around, and above the trees in the nighttime sky tall buildings loom everywhere. She wouldn’t swear to it, but she’s pretty sure this is Central Park, in New York City. When she sees her floormate Jane, Jane Barnaby, she’s convinced she’s right; Jane, like her roommate Jessica, is from there. Sara follows Jane as she sits down on a bench, next to a young man who looks about her age, with the same brown hair, the same coloring, a young man who might be her brother. Yes, Sara remembers, she has a twin brother. They really do look very alike, except that while Jane is wearing jeans and a sweatshirt, her brother wears a dark suit, and a cape around his neck. He turns to her, telling Jane that it’s time for her to join him, he knows she wants to, and it’ll be so quick and so easy, and then he opens his mouth wide, baring big white fangs…

  …and now Sara is standing in a small living room. She recognizes it immediately as the apartment Mona the Resident Director lives in downstairs. Mona is sitting at a table, with a stack of books next to her, scanning pages quickly, highlighting frantically, trying to keep up as the pages begin to turn on their own. When she finishes one book, two more appear from nowhere on top of the stack, and now she opens two books at once, her eyes darting back and forth, and then another book appears, and another, until finally the table collapses under the weight of them all…

  …she’s back in her own dorm room, sitting on her own bed, inside Beth’s head again, looking over at Beth’s bed, where Beth lies seductively – it’s the only word that fits – wearing nothing but a gold bikini that barely covers anything at all. Clearly her dread of the Statistics final is forgotten. There are footsteps outside the door, and Sara turns to watch as the doorknob turns, the door opens, and in walks a tuxedo-clad Sean Connery, gun in one hand, cocktail shaker in the other. Beth asks him who he is, and Sara thinks to herself that this is all her fault; she put this image in her roommate’s mind. Sean Connery answers, as Sara knows he will, “The name’s Bond, James Bond…”

  …there’s a ringing sound, ringing, ringing, ringing. I open my eyes, expecting to see my roommate in bed with a world-famous British secret agent, but it’s just Beth there, sleeping peacefully. She does have a very satisfied smile on her face, though. I won’t be telling her I saw that particular dream. I will take that particular secret to the grave.

  Anyway, she’s sleeping so deeply that the ringing – the fire alarm, obviously – isn’t registering with her at all. I get up as quietly as I can, unlock the door, inch it open and sniff the air out in the hallway.

  It’s exactly what I expect, the stench of burned popcorn. The door to the next room over opens up, and Kelly Travers pops her head out, hair all over the place, eyes unfocused. She, too, sniffs, and then turns towards me. “Who was it?”

  The horrible little stove is on the other side of the floor from us. And sure enough, just now here comes someone around the corner, as up and down the hall doors are opening one by one. Kate Billings, who’s isn’t even technically a student of the university – she goes to the Ohio Institute of Music and they’ve got an arrangement for their students to live in our dorms – has a guilty look on her face as she sees us. “Terrie and I were up late studying. We just wanted a snack. We were really careful,” she says, wincing as she does. You can’t be careful enough with that stove. In my three years here it’s never worked right.

  Behind me, I hear the voice of our floor’s Resident Assistant, Melody Katz. “Go back to bed, everybody. Try to get some sleep.” She glares at Kate, shakes her head, but she doesn’t say anything further to her; seeing Kate’s wretched expression, she doesn’t have the heart to berate her. “I’ll go find Rita.”

  Rita Danelo happens to be – as far as any of us know – the only person in the dorm who knows how to open the fire alarm panel down in the lobby and turn it off. Otherwise we’d have to wait for Security to show up. And they wouldn’t turn the alarm off until they were satisfied that every single resident was safely out of their room and outside.

  I’m not sure how Rita learned how to do it, and at the moment I don’t really care. It’s freezing outside and I don’t want to wait half an hour for Security to get here. Melody heads down the hall in her ridiculous bunny slippers in search of Rita. Reassured that we won’t have to trudge outside in our bathrobes or pajamas, the rest of us all retreat back into our rooms.

  “’night, Kelly,” I mutter to my neighbor as her door closes behind her, and then, a little more sharply, “’night, Kate.” She doesn’t quite meet my eyes. And then I close the door gently behind me, relock it. Beth, of course, is still smiling, and still fast asleep.

  It’s early in the afternoon on Friday, and the air outside is a little bit less frigid than it’s been for days. The sky is – well it’s still gray, but it’s a lighter gray, at least. And I have only two exams left to go, now that Biochemistry is done.

  How did I do? Well, I did fantastic. No question I’m getting an A. Between that and Science in Western Thought, I’m done with two classes, and only three to go. I wasn’t happy with everything I’ve put together for the advanced Organic Chemistry lab, and I want to make absolutely sure I get an A there as well, so once physics is done next Wednesday, I can take as much time as I need to get it perfect.

  I’m not even leaving until the following Wednesday – I made the reservations a month ago, before I had any idea what my finals schedule would look like. Brian’s last exam isn’t until Monday the 18th, the final day of exams and he’s leaving the next morning, so it works out well that I’ll have plenty of time with him. That’s especially good since we haven’t figured out how or when we’re going to get together over Christmas break. We worked out that it’s probably only about a forty minute drive from my house to his, but with family stuff who knows when we’ll be able to see each other.

  On top of all that, there’s another reason I’m glad I’m staying on campus after my last exam: I can help Beth with h
er Statistics. That’s not until next Friday, and after what I saw in her head last night it’s obvious that she doesn’t feel remotely prepared for it. I’ll tell her my plan as soon as I see her.

  I’m on my way back to the dorm right now, and then we’re going to go downtown together to see what we can find for Secret Santa. We’re supposed to start giving the gifts tomorrow, and all I’ve got for George so far is a Slinky. He’ll get that tomorrow, so I need four more things. It’ll also just be nice to be off of campus for a couple of hours. I think I’ve earned a break.

  7

  (December 8-13, 1989)

  It ends up being more than just a couple of hours; Beth and I don’t get back until almost eight o'clock. By the time we do, the temperature’s dropped at least twenty degrees, and it was pretty cold to start with. The minute the train stops at the University Circle station and the doors open, the frigid air hits me. I hurry out and down the platform and take the steps three at a time until I’m out of the station, with Beth right behind me. We cover the three blocks to Carson House at a dead run, and we’re both completely winded by the time we get there. I collapse onto the ugly purple couch, raising a small cloud of dust – which normally I’d find gross, but right now I’m too cold and exhausted to care.

  And hungry, too, as my stomach loudly reminds me. Everyone in the lobby is already staring at me. Melody Katz laughs. “You shouldn’t skip dinner, don’t you know that?”

  We got caught up shopping, and then I wanted to get back so I could spend some time with Brian tonight, so we ended up not eating. “We were busy,” I pant, pointing at our shopping bags. I just now notice that Joe Karver is hooking up the communal VCR to the TV. I take a couple of deep breaths until I can talk in something close to a normal tone of voice. “Sorry to interrupt. What are you guys watching tonight?”

  “Yeah, that is a good question,” Melody says, a little too sharply. Clearly we came in right in the middle of the regular Friday night argument over who gets to pick the movies. It’s bad enough when the debate is what to rent at Vidstar video up in Coventry. It’s worse on a night like this, when nobody’s willing to brave the Arctic conditions outside to go there and the choices are limited to what videos the folks currently in the lobby have in their rooms. Which doesn’t leave much.

  After a couple more minutes collecting my breath I head upstairs, Beth right behind me, as the argument gets up to speed. I put my shopping down, throw my coat on my chair, and my hand’s on the phone and dialing Brian before I even realize what I’m doing.

  Beth rolls her eyes while the phone rings once, twice, three times until Brian picks up. “Hey,” I greet him.

  “I was starting to worry when I didn’t hear from you all day,” he answers me, but I hear more hurt than worry in his voice. I said I’d meet up with him sometime after my exam; I guess we had different definitions of “sometime.”

  “I lost track of time. Beth and I went downtown, we only just got back,” I tell him, trying to put a bit of reassurance into it. I try to suppress the thought that I haven’t done anything wrong and I shouldn’t need to be doing any reassuring.

  “Are we still getting together tonight?” Apparently, I do need to be doing it.

  I put my hand over the mouthpiece of the phone, and I sigh. “Absolutely!” I tell him, trying again, and this time it seems to work.

  “What were you thinking?”

  Considering that it’s about minus two hundred degrees out right now, the options are pretty limited. He can come over here and sit on the couch downstairs with me while we watch a movie, I can ask Beth to give us a couple of hours to ourselves in my room or I can go over to him. It’s no choice at all, really.

  “My roommate was talking about having her boyfriend come over here,” I say, looking over to Beth, and she nods, “so how about if I run over and meet you? Give me fifteen minutes or so,” I say, shuddering already at the prospect of going back outside, even to run a couple of hundred feet. “I need to work up the courage to go back out into the cold.”

  “I’ll be downstairs to let you in,” he says, and the line goes dead. I can almost hear his door slamming shut as he heads for his lobby to meet me.

  “That’s not a bad idea, actually,” Beth tells me once I’ve hung up the phone. “I wouldn’t mind seeing Ron, so long as I don’t have to go back outside to see him. Besides,” she says, “it’ll be better than watching Monty Python downstairs for the twentieth time this semester."

  She’s on the phone almost immediately, while I’m getting my coat, scarf, hat and gloves on, ready to brave the elements once more. When I get back downstairs, wrapping my scarf around my neck, covering up every possible inch of flesh as I head for the door, I see that Beth was right – it’s “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” again. Somebody in this dorm really needs to stock up on some new movies.

  It must be my imagination, but I swear I can feel icicles forming inside my nose, just from the thirty seconds I’m outside running from Carson House over to Allen. Brian’s already got the door open, and in I go. I notice he isn’t quite meeting my eyes, though. We head straight upstairs to his room, and when he shuts the door behind us, he still isn’t looking at me.

  I can’t believe he’s upset that I didn’t call him earlier. I sit down on his bed, and he sits across from me, on the spare bed. He doesn’t have a roommate. At least, he hasn’t had one, since the one he did have, Paul, started to have crippling panic attacks and withdrew from school two weeks before Thanksgiving

  Brian looks like he’s about halfway towards having one himself right now. I really don’t understand. Does he really think – what? I don’t even know. “Brian, come over here. Sit next to me.”

  He does, after a minute or two. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t around all day. I know I said we’d get together, and I should’ve waited to hear from you before I went downtown. Do you forgive me?” I haven’t done anything that needs forgiving, but I try very hard to keep that feeling out of the words I’m saying. I think that comes across because he relaxes a bit, nods his head slightly. “So how was your first college final exam?”

  That’s what the problem is, right there. He thought I’d be waiting for him after he got out, to congratulate him. On top of which, he was probably terrified about his first exam, and if I’d been paying attention I’d have known that.

  “Easier than I thought,” he says. “I was expecting…”

  Something horrible and impossible. Exactly. My first final, freshman year, was Chemistry. I knew that class backwards and forwards. I’d gotten an A on every quiz, I did every piece of extra credit offered. I could have aced that test in my sleep. And I was still frightened when I walked into the classroom and opened up my exam book. I was so relieved afterwards, so proud of myself for getting through my very first final…

  Just like Brian. And he wanted to share that feeling with his girlfriend, wanted me to be proud of him.

  Oh, my. I just had another thought, and now it all fits together. I wasn’t just his first time. I’m his first real, proper girlfriend. Everything he does with me, he’s doing for the first time. Including the first time something happens that isn’t exactly how he imagines it should be – the first disappointment, however silly and minor. Like the first time his girlfriend blows him off when she said she’d be there, even if it is only for a couple of hours.

  I move right next to him, touch his cheek, turn his face to me. Now he’s finally looking me in the eyes, and I take his face in both hands. I pull him closer and kiss him. I’m not sure how long it lasts, but it feels like forever.

  It’s ten-thirty now. We’ve been – mostly – talking for the last two hours. I was absolutely right about him, about being the first girlfriend he’s had. I can’t believe I didn’t realize that right away. It was pretty obvious. It’s easy to forget that he’s only a few months out of high school. Then again, in my defense, I have been somewhat preoccupied lately.

  My thoughts are interrupted by one of the most h
ideous sounds I’ve ever heard, and what’s worse is that it comes from me. Brian is so startled he backs several feet away. He’s looking at me as though he thinks something’s going to explode out of my stomach like the guy in “Alien.”

  “I’m hungry, OK?” I say, and Brian bursts out laughing. I glare at him for a moment, and my stomach rumbles, very loudly, again. I can’t help it; I have to laugh too. “Wow, that was pretty bad, wasn’t it?”

  Brian very gallantly offers to go to the only place we can think of that’s open at this hour, Little Caesar’s Pizza, and bring me back some much-needed food. I don’t feel right about sending him out alone into the freezing cold, and I definitely don’t feel up to going out there with him. Besides, I’ve got a better idea. I ask him how much money he has on him, and he says “Thirty dollars.” I ask him to give it to me. I pull my clothes back on – I did say mostly talking, didn’t I? take his money, and tell him to wait here.

  I go down to the lobby. At the bottom of the stairs, I loudly clear my throat, and call out to the small crowd gathered there watching a movie on their dorm’s communal VCR (I notice they’re watching Monty Python, too. Clearly the video selection here isn’t any better than in my dorm. At least it’s a different Monty Python, “Meaning of Life.”). “I’ve got twenty bucks here for whoever will go to Little Caesar’s, pick up a double-cheese-and-pepperoni pizza and a two-liter of coke, and bring it up to me in room 411. Anybody?”