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

by Dima Zales

  I go upstairs, and the note I left for Beth is still on her bed; I have no idea where she is, although I can make an educated guess. I think about calling Brian, but he’s probably asleep and we did say our good-nights earlier, before I was abducted out to the movies. I don’t want to wake him. After last night and me keeping him up, he can use some restful sleep.

  For that matter, so can I…

  I open my eyes. Through the cracks in the blinds, I can see a light-ish sky. Which means I actually slept through the night, with no interruptions, no nightmares, no anything.

  Beth is in her bed; she’s just starting to stir as I quietly sit up and look at the clock. It’s almost eleven o’clock. We got back from the movie last night at eleven-thirty or so, and I fell straight asleep, and that means I’ve slept for nearly twelve hours. I don’t know the last time I’ve slept that long.

  I hear mumbling from Beth. I tiptoe over to listen more closely. “Stop poking me! Can’t you see I’m taking a test? Chrissy, leave me alone!” Then she rolls over, facing me, and her hand waves out; I’m so surprised I don’t step back and she connects with my elbow. She lets out a yelp, her eyes open and she’s staring at me with utter confusion on her face. “Chrissy, I told you – oh – Sara? What?”

  “Morning, Beth!”

  She rubs her eyes, blinks several times and then, slowly, sits up. “I must have been dreaming.”

  I nod. “And talking in your sleep. I’ve never heard you do that before. You were yelling at your little sister.”

  “There’s a surprise,” she says getting her feet on the floor and unsteadily standing up. “I’m not going to get back to sleep. You mind waiting so I can take a quick shower and then we can get some breakfast?” Sounds like a good plan to me.

  “You mean lunch. But, yes. And I could use a shower, too, before I venture out among the living.” It’s nice to feel like I belong among them, for a change.

  Beth showers, I shower, and we go over to Lardner to eat. I call Brian to see if he wants to meet me there, but he’s already eaten and he was just heading to the computer lab to finish typing up his final assignment for Expository Writing. We plan to get together for dinner, though.

  After a lunch of cold cereal, Beth and I go back to our room. We’re both going to review statistics. My exam is tomorrow and even though I’m very confident about it, a little more studying can’t hurt; her exam isn’t until Friday but she needs all the help she can get.

  As we study, Beth keeps telling me to worry about my own exam, but I tell her that helping her is helping me with my own review. Which is – well, it’s not completely a lie. Besides, I owe her. Aside from the fact that I’d help her because she’s my best friend, I owe her for getting me through two semesters of French (which she speaks nearly fluently thanks to her grandmother) last year with my grade point average still intact.

  About four o’clock in the afternoon there’s a noise right outside our door, and by the time I get over there and open it up, there are two boxes sitting there on the floor – our Secret Santa gifts. Beth opens hers to reveal a jar of olives. She’s not much more impressed by that than she was by yesterday’s box of toothpicks. I avoid her eyes and mumble something about how I agree that her gifts have been really inadequate so far. Mine is another very well-wrapped empty box, which isn’t so much inadequate as frustrating. There must be a good reason for it, but I can’t imagine what it might be.

  I had Beth drop off my gift for George earlier – it’s a Frisbee today, and tomorrow it’ll be a little wind-up robot that walks along your desk. I realize that’s not very impressive, but at least children’s toys are a theme. If nothing else, the final gift is halfway decent. I remembered that I did know at least one vaguely personal thing about him. He was very vocal in his disappointment when it came out that his favorite comic strip, Bloom County, was going to end this last summer. And completely randomly I saw a nice big stuffed Opus the Penguin doll when Beth and I were downtown yesterday. In the display he had a baseball cap on, so I bought the cap as well.

  Anyway, opening our gifts seems like as good a reason as any to take a break for a little while. A little while stretches out until dinnertime, and at five-thirty I meet up with Brian for dinner. I invite Beth along, but she says she’s going to skip the dining hall tonight. “You two lovebirds go have fun,” she tells me as she shoos me out the door.

  We have a very pleasant dinner. Well, the company and the conversation are pleasant, anyway. The actual dining, as usual, isn’t quite as good. We linger there until Lardner closes at seven o’clock, and then even though it’s freezing out we walk slowly around the back of the building. We go past the other three undergraduate dorms out behind Lardner and the ten story building that’s for grad student housing before we loop around and come back to the front door of Carson House. He doesn’t seem to mind the cold, and with his arm around me I don’t either.

  He’s got exams Monday and Tuesday, so I won’t be seeing much of him until after physics on Wednesday. I can see in his eyes that he’s thinking exactly the same thing. It hits me that this is the exact spot we stood in a week ago Saturday, after our first date, when it felt like the whole world was waiting to see what I would decide.

  Right now, standing here in the same place there isn’t a world at all. There’s just him, and just us, and I pull him close and we kiss.

  It’s not until I’ve watched him walk back to his dorm, watched the door close behind him, that I go inside myself. I can feel goosebumps all over my body, but they’ve got nothing to do with the cold. “That was some show you just put on,” Melody Katz calls out to me as I’m unbuttoning my coat. I guess we had an audience.

  “A lady doesn’t kiss and tell,” I say, laughing.

  Mark Bainbridge and his roommate Allan are on the couch next to Melody. Allan answers me. “No, you don’t really have to, not with a performance like that!”

  I’m still laughing. This is just teasing; I’ve known all of them for my whole time at school, I’d call all of them friends. You know what, though? It wouldn’t matter to me right now if they were being mean.

  Still, I feel like I ought to give a little something back. “You’re one to talk, Allan. I remember you and Rita,” Rita Danelo, queen of the fire alarm panel, was his girlfriend until last summer, “going at it in the produce aisle of the supermarket that time. I thought somebody was going to have to hose you two down.”

  I can see by the nodding of heads and the silence from Allan that I’ve scored a point. I think I’ll leave on a high note. I wave goodbye and head upstairs to my room. I can probably get a couple more hours of studying done and still get to sleep early so I’ll be ready for my exam tomorrow.

  The next three days pass by in a blur. I don’t have any nightmares, for which I’m very thankful. I take my Statistics for Experimenters final on Monday and I’m pretty sure I ace it. I spend Monday night and all day Tuesday working on physics.

  By Tuesday night I’m pretty much going out of my mind, until Beth forces me to close my book and listen to her for five minutes. She reminds me that I did get an A minus on the first exam, way back in October before I stopped understanding anything. She adds that I’ve done all the homework and that as long as I just show up for the exam and write something down for each question, there’s no way I can score badly enough to actually fail the class. She asks me, “Doesn’t that ease your mind?”

  It’s a mark of how much I value her friendship that I don’t dump on what she said. I don’t point out that while I might not fail, if I do badly enough on the final I could end up with a D for the course. I don’t add that that would look just as bad as an F on my med school applications. Instead I thank her, hug her, and tell her with as much conviction as I can muster that, “Yes, it eases my mind a lot.”

  Finally, Wednesday arrives. The exam is at one in the afternoon. I try to cheer myself up by telling myself that at least it’s not at high noon. Beth forces me not only to walk over to Lardner for breakfas
t, but to put food on my tray and actually eat it. When we get back, I make sure my calculator, several pens, and the two sheets of notes we’re allowed are all in my purse. Then I repeatedly go back into the purse to check that they’re still there. I turn the calculator on to be sure it’s working. I fret about whether I should stop by the bookstore and buy an extra battery for the calculator just in case, on my way to the exam. I think it’s probably a mark of how much Beth values my friendship that she doesn’t strangle me to death.

  At noon, I’m sure to Beth’s great relief, I start to head over to the exam. It might be the cold air calming my mind, or maybe just knowing that in three or four hours it’ll all be over with, but by the time I get to the exam I feel – well, not confident, exactly. Maybe “accepting” is the best word. Whatever will happen will happen.

  It’s over. The exam was bad, but not nearly as awful as I imagined it would be. The hours and hours of beating my head against the wall going over and over everything did some good. I’m pretty sure I didn’t merely pass but – hopefully – managed at least a C on the exam.

  I walk out of the exam room and all thoughts of the test are banished; Brian’s outside, waiting for me. I run to him, hug him so tightly that he winces and I know that, for me, for this minute anyway, everything is right with the world.

  8

  (December 13-19, 1989)

  I completely forgot that Brian’s got another exam tomorrow, so I don’t want to distract him tonight. He walks me home, though, keeping me warm and contented all the way. I give him a quick kiss when we get to the front door, and then, as he’s turning to leave, I pull him back for a not-so-quick kiss. But then I really do have to let him go so he can get back to studying.

  I also forgot about the dorm Christmas party tonight, but I’m immediately reminded when I walk in the door. Joe and Melody are stringing tinsel up all around the lounge, and there are a bunch of gifts already under the Christmas tree in the corner. I wave to them, head upstairs to drop off my coat, and return with my gift for George.

  “You guys got everything under control?” I ask. I’ve got some free time, if they need help.

  “The eggnog is in the fridge. Julie Paschal’s got a bottle of rum she promised to bring down to spike it with. And Mona’s going up to bring food from Hunan Coventry, so I think we’re all set,” Melody answers. I guess they’re covered, so I go back upstairs for a much needed and well-deserved nap…

  Someone’s got my arm, they’re shaking me – my eyes open slowly – it’s Beth. “Up you get,” she orders. “It’s almost seven.” The party. I could use another hour or ten of sleep, but I do as I’m told and get on my feet. I look down: still dressed, even my shoes are still on. I must have gone out the moment I sat on the bed.

  We go downstairs, and most everyone in the dorm is there. The food’s here and I help myself to a couple of egg rolls and squeeze in between Jackie and Kelly Travers on the couch. Joe Karver is playing Santa. He’s by the tree handing out gifts one at a time, making sure to give the recipients enough time to open them and be either pleased or embarrassed at what they got and who they got it from.

  There’s a cute moment when Jackie gets her gift, a pair of tickets to the Symphony, from Fred. “Yeah, that was random,” her roommate Carolyn yells out. The next gift turns out to be to Fred, and it’s an autographed baseball card. From Jackie, of course.

  Beth opens her bottle of gin to much ooh-ing and aah-ing. When she asks him if it was all his idea, Jim Quarters proves to be incapable of lying with a straight face, and admits that he had help. Beth doesn’t need to ask who from. “We’ll be opening this Friday night,” she promises.

  George gets handed his gift, and opens it up. He seems very pleased by his Opus the Penguin, and especially taken with the Cleveland Indians cap it’s wearing. But then he looks around blankly, trying to guess whose gift it is. “There was a card!” I say, rolling my eyes at him. “Not that you need it now,” I add, with a sigh. He thanks me; I have to say I did good.

  Finally it comes around to me, and I’m handed a rectangular box. There’s definitely something in it this time. I do open the card before tearing into the package. “Paging Dr. Barnes,” the card reads, “You might find these useful in the future. Merry Christmas, Mark.”

  I open it up, and it’s light-blue scrubs, the same kind they wear at University Hospital. “These are great!” They really are. I’m thrilled. “But what the heck was up with the empty boxes?”

  Mark shrugs. “I thought they were funny. Didn’t you?” No, but there’s no point saying that, is there?

  I’m back in my room now, and I’m not sure how I’ve managed to stay awake this long. The party went on until almost eleven. By popular request, I put on my scrubs and modeled them for everyone. A good time was had by all, but as soon as things started to wind down I went straight upstairs, got ready for bed and here I am, drifting off…

  …Sara‘s in the pool, the giant Olympic-sized pool on the other side of campus, swimming laps. She wouldn’t call herself a great swimmer, but she’s OK in the water, and she can’t figure out why she’s having such trouble now. Or why the water seems to be hurting her; she feels as though she’s getting paper cuts all over her body. When she opens her eyes, she sees the answer: the pool is filled, not with water, but with books. Textbooks…

  …Without transition, she finds herself in the lounge of the dorm. The usual dusty purple couches are there, but where the TV should be there’s nothing, not even the faded old carpet. Just open ground with rocks strewn about. There she sees two familiar faces: Allan, who’d been teasing her the other night, she remembers, and another fellow resident, Jake. Jake, Sara recalls, is now dating Rita Danelo, who had been Allan’s girlfriend. They’re both dressed as though they ought to be in a swashbuckler movie, and they’ve both got swords. When Allan raises his sword towards Jake and calls out to him, “My name is Allen Irving. You stole my girlfriend. Prepare to die,” Sara knows that it’s Allen’s dream she’s in. She also knows that it’s at least partly thanks to her that he’s having this particular dream…

  …Sara’s in a dorm room now, but whose? It’s very neat, with the two twin beds pushed together to create a single makeshift queen-sized bed. She recognizes the occupants from a photo on the desk; dark-haired Julie Paschal, and her boyfriend, short, sandy-haired Glenn. Sara notices the mail on the floor by the door, and then the door opens and in walks Julie. She picks up the mail, examines it carefully. Sara knows despite never having seen it that the logo on the two clearly not identical letters is that of the American Plastics Corporation. She needs no special knowledge to guess that both Julie and Glenn have had on-campus job interviews with them. Sara watches Julie as she examines the thicker letter, addressed to her, and then the thinner one, the rejection letter, addressed to Glenn. Sara sees the conflict in Julie’s eyes as she grasps the two letters in both hands as if to tear them up…

  …the room vanishes, replaced by the back seat of a car. A very nice car, a Cadillac, Sara sees, as she looks out the window, watches as the car turns on to Old Tree Road, then continues on for a few more blocks. When it finally stops, Sara doesn’t need to see the driver’s face to know what it looks like; she doesn’t need to see what’s in the trunk to know what’s there; doesn’t need to watch to know what will happen next. She watches anyway, she can’t turn away no matter how much she wants to…

  I’m – where am I? In a car, out by Old Tree Road. He did it again. He – no, I’m in my room. In my bed. My left hand is aching – there are teeth marks. I can’t believe I – God, I must have stuffed my hand in my mouth while I was asleep, to try and keep from screaming, so I wouldn’t wake Beth up.

  I guess it worked; she’s sleeping soundly, not a care in the world. I look at my hand more closely. I came very close to drawing blood. It’s almost funny – for a minute I’m distracted by wondering what would have happened if I had? I would have needed stitches. How would I have explained such a severe bite, obviously by
a human? Would I have needed a tetanus shot? Almost funny.

  But it isn’t, really. Because I know what the dream meant. I know that the girl is dead for real. Another girl. Two, now. I knew it would happen again, I said it, and now it’s happened. And I know there’ll be more.

  The tears are flowing, and it’s taking every ounce of strength I have to keep quiet, to let Beth sleep. I want to scream my lungs out. I want to call Brian and have him come and rescue me, even though I’m only the witness, and the one who really needed rescuing is beyond any help now. I want this to end.

  But I don’t do what I want or get what I want. All I do is clutch my pillow tightly and cry silently and beg for God or someone to help me, but nobody does.

  I might have drifted back to sleep for a few minutes here and there the rest of the night, but mostly I just laid there and cried. Beth is still asleep but she’s starting to stir, she’ll be up in a few minutes. I have to try and put the nightmare out of my mind, to be in a better state for her today. I told her I would spend as much time with her going over statistics as she needed, and I just have to keep my promise, that’s all there is to it.

  I take a deep breath, and another, and a third, and then I slowly sit up and even more slowly stand. I put on my slippers and my bathrobe; maybe a hot shower will clear my mind a little, get me ready to help her.

  It doesn’t really work. My mind is not any clearer, and it isn’t eased at all. At least I’m clean, and maybe – if Beth even notices how bad I look – I can pass it off as a bad night’s sleep thanks to too much eggnog. Maybe she’ll even be too worried about her exam to remember that I didn’t actually have any eggnog.

  “Don’t tell me you had another nightmare,” she says when I walk back into the room. So much for making up a story. She knows me too well, and I didn’t give her nearly enough credit. I should have known she wouldn’t just let it pass.