The White Devil

by Justin Evans

  “I can’t!” Andrew squeaked. “I have to get back to school!”

  “So you can spread the disease some more? Not a chance.”

  “I have to write an essay!”

  Saying only part of it sounded absurd. But saying everything—I need to confront a ghost with the murder he committed, and I’m the only person who knows enough to do it—sounded outright insane.

  Dr. Minos shook his head in disgust. “Now I’ve heard it all,” he scoffed.

  The nurse returned. She dragged behind her a small wheeled trolley bearing a slender tank with a meter and a long, transparent tube. She began unwrapping the tube. Another nurse followed with a wheelchair. Dr. Minos found a floppy plastic face mask hooked to the tank and popped it from its plastic casing. He affixed this to the tube. The nurse started calibrating the release of the oxygen. Dr. Minos reached behind Persephone’s head to affix the gas mask. Andrew felt a sense of violation—that something so precious as Persephone’s curly black hair should be treated so unceremoniously.

  But he came to his senses.

  The doctor, the two nurses, were distracted. Their attention and first priority went to the sick patient. Andrew would be able to get away.

  Yet he wavered.

  He had been with Persephone, touching her, alongside her, continually, for almost twenty-four hours. His whole reality had shifted, adjusted to having her near him. The prospect of leaving her anguished him.

  But if he left, he would be able to return to school. He would tell Fawkes and Dr. Kahn what he had found out at Trinity. They could help him piece together the story of John Harness. They could hold their makeshift séance at Essay Club, confront the spirit, and expel him. They could save Roddy and Persephone.

  But would it work?

  John Harness—gaunt, morbid—now lingered over Andrew’s every move. He had followed Andrew from Harrow to Cambridge. He had suffocated some mysterious youth in the past. He had killed Theo in the present. Now he was clearly intent on killing more.

  Maybe I should just leave, Andrew thought. Flee. Get on a train somewhere and draw the ghost along with him. Or hail a taxi to the airport and leave everything behind. Show up in New York with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

  No, that was no good. For starters, his passport was back at school. And he would be abandoning Persephone and Roddy. He could not just leave them here, clinging to their lives so flimsily.

  Their setup complete, the nurses pushed the wheelchair and pulled the oxygen tank; Dr. Minos held the door. The trio pushed Persephone into the corridor.

  Andrew was momentarily forgotten.

  He clutched Persephone’s clothes to his chest. It was the moment of decision. He slipped through the door behind the group. Where the others turned right, he veered to the left. He headed toward the crossing of corridors thirty feet away, where the cold daylight poured in through the front doors. He tossed Persephone’s clothes onto an information counter. The attendant shot him a quizzical look. Andrew sprinted. The attendant stood and called out. Andrew reached the doors and banged through them. The cold air smacked him. The noise, the rush of traffic. An open thoroughfare. Sky. Choose a direction. He leapt down the stairs. He made the corner. In a few moments he would be lost in the urban wilderness. He crossed the street and began to run. As he hurried, he pulled his phone from his pocket and clumsily texted her, his eyes filling with tears, his thumbs misspelling

  I liove u

  I love tiuu

  I love you

  He checked behind him to make sure no ambulance or anyone in a white coat was pursuing him. He had to get back to Harrow. If he wanted to stop Harness, he needed to get closer to where SD—Speech Day—was. He needed to understand what Harness had done. Who and why he had killed, on that June day two hundred years before.

  I will find you, destroy him, and all will be well.

  PART III

  And a spirit of the air

  Hath begirt thee with a snare

  20

  Where Is He Now?

  “WHERE IS HE now, Piers?” the headmaster demanded, in the tone of voice with which he now always addressed the housemaster of the Lot: a mix of exasperation and contempt. Fawkes, over the course of one academic year and two months, had dropped in status from the Poet/Hotshot of Harrow to the level of some unlettered charwoman, so stupid and useless that all questions needed to be vociferous and loud if they were to have any hope of getting through.

  A nightmarish sense of fear and guilt shot through Fawkes. My God, I deserve to be spoken to that way. I don’t have an answer! Not only have I killed one of my boys . . . sickened another . . . now I’ve misplaced a third.

  “Come again?” Fawkes said, buying time.

  “Pay attention, for God’s sake. Where is the boy?” Again Fawkes hesitated, his mouth hanging open. Colin Jute mistook this for incomprehension. “Andrew Taylor!” he exploded. “Surely you know where he is?”

  FAWKES ALREADY KNEW he was the least welcome member of the hastily assembled council that now filled the headmaster’s office. He stood at the back, skulking against the wall, next to the snapshots of Jute’s tennisy children, trying to avoid knocking them to the floor with a smash and earning further opprobrium from Jute. The room was packed; extra chairs had been brought in. Two consultants from the Health Protection Agency were given the seats of honor, the two Louis XIV–looking armchairs at Jute’s desk. Miss Palek sat in one, erect and unflappable, with her sweeping black hair and coffee eyes. This time she was joined by an older, puffier man, with white hair and a bald crown. At first his presence lent an air of seniority, gravitas, to the government’s role here, until Fawkes looked closer and noticed the man’s collar was two sizes too big, and that he fidgeted in his chair like a Fifth-former. He was pure bureaucrat. When the man introduced himself as Ronnie Pickles, Fawkes could not stop a schoolboy grin from breaking across his face.

  On the sofa sat the school communications director, Georgina Prisk, thirty years old and blond (and gorgeous, Fawkes noted glumly; luminous skin, heavy lips, large blue eyes), who chewed her pen in excitement—finally a drama worthy of her talents! Sir Alan was unable to join them to represent the faculty. (He was coping with a family situation, Jute had said vaguely—prompting another flinch from Fawkes, who wondered if, somehow, Andrew’s disappearance and Sir Alan’s were related. He hadn’t been able to reach Persephone on her mobile phone, either. It couldn’t be, he assured himself; my luck isn’t that bad. Surely.) Instead, Owen Grieve, housemaster of Rendalls, six foot six, glum, and rigid as a Frankenstein, joined Georgina on the velvet couch.

  Also present were Mr. Montague, the archly ironic senior master; and Dr. Rogers, the squat doctor with the hairy hands who manned the infirmary. Father Peter, Jute mentioned, was expected. Fawkes started hopefully at this and kept a constant ear for the door behind him.

  Jute, taking command of the meeting, had propped himself on his desk, striking the pose of leadership over his hastily gathered task force.

  He summarized the situation. One boy dead. One boy sick. Two boys possibly carrying the disease. One of these still on school grounds.

  “Your head of house’s parents have come for him?” Jute shot the question at Fawkes.

  “Yes. This morning.”

  “Add that to the debit column, Georgina. Heads of house fleeing the scene.” Jute fired an acid glance at Fawkes.

  Parents’ phone calls were pouring in, he continued. Inquiries from the media . . . ? He thrust his chin at Georgina.

  She had her notes at the ready: the Harrow Observer: their health reporter, she said. Times U.K. News. They hate us anyway, one of those yellow journalists for Labor . . . Sky TV. They’ve threatened to send a camera van.

  “We need a response. And to help us,” he said, gesturing to Miss Palek and Mr. Pickles, “our friends have joined us from the H . . . P . . . A . . .”—Jute boomed out the initials, as if the acronym itself merited fear and trembling—“with the goal of advising us w
hether, for the first time in its history, Harrow School should be shut down for health reasons.”

  Owen Grieve muttered and asked Miss Prisk to repeat it for him—had he heard right? Shut the school? Montague, uncharacteristically missing the tone, took the opportunity to correct Jute’s school history, but no one caught his comments about an 1840s closing due to diphtheria.

  Miss Palek informed them—in velvety tones so low they were forced to be silent and strain to hear—that the HPA had no interest in closing the school. In fact, they strongly urged them to remain open.

  Jute thrust out his chin in satisfaction. “I would never have agreed to anything else,” he declared.

  “It’s logical,” she said. “Closing the school would mean dispersing children to different parts of the U.K., even globally. You would spread the disease more widely. It could make you responsible for a pandemic.”

  Jute visibly soured.

  Ronnie Pickles leaned forward. “The best outcome,” he said—in a demi-Cockney, Fawkes noted—with the biting intonation of a human Jack Russell terrier, “would be to allow the HPA to complete its investigation. We’ll need a lockdown,” he explained. “We’ll need to extract skin tests for every student. Time zero. Then again at eight to twelve weeks. For the ones with positive results? A special regimen . . .”

  “Lockdown?” bellowed the headmaster.

  “For twelve weeks?” Montague echoed, distressed.

  Pandemonium ensued. How will it work? Will lessons continue? Everyone confined to school? What will we tell the parents? Pickles blanched; he seemed surprised that he was not being praised for his thorough and rigorous plan.

  The key, Georgina said, will be to position this in such a way that we don’t call it a lockdown, we don’t call it anything at all. We make no external announcements . . .

  What are these skin tests? Dr. Rogers shouted to be heard.

  Pickles began to answer, but Jute boomed over all of them, bringing the room back to order. “All right, all right.” He imperiously explained to Ronnie Pickles that they would not be locking down Harrow School and administering skin tests. This is a school, not a hospital.

  Pickles drew himself up, defensively. He turned to the others. “Perhaps someone can offer an alternative?”

  Miss Palek could. They had identified the inner circle for the latest confirmed infection, she said—the boys in the house known as the Lot. (She nodded at Fawkes. Jute’s scowl deepened.) Best practices dictated that they limit their actions to the boys already identified. The boys in question had been tested. Now it was merely a matter of waiting for those tests to show results. The more definitive blood test was due the next day. They had twenty-four hours where the expectations of parents, and the school, would be up in the air. This was the most anxious time, as it involved uncertainty. Sending those two boys home during this period—and only those two boys—was the best option.

  However, she added, one of the boys was from America. (Fawkes nodded his confirmation.) As a result, sending him home was impractical. They would never knowingly put a suspected TB patient on a commercial flight. As a result . . . she paused, thinking . . . maybe there was another arrangement that could be made for this American, just for the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours, that would appease parents, and yet avoid such extreme steps as testing the whole school?

  The room absorbed these reasonable words.

  “Where is he now, Piers?” demanded Jute.

  Fawkes reddened.

  He had no idea where Andrew Taylor was.

  THE NIGHT BEFORE, Fawkes had felt a gnawing insecurity. He was jittery after a day of hospitals and dire warnings. He wanted to see Andrew, and confirm he had not been struck down by this ravaging disease. He had made his way through the dark passage connecting the housemaster’s apartments to the boys’ quarters. The house lay quiet. He stamped to the third floor (wheezing, but recovered), stopped to chat with Rhys, who was packing: his parents had insisted he return home.

  But Andrew’s room was dark. It had an uninhabited feel. The curtains were open, though it had been dark outside for hours. He called Andrew’s cell phone. Left a message.

  Hours later he checked again, with the same result. He left another message.

  He slept little. In the morning—imagining every form of mishap, crime, and tragedy—he returned and found the room still untouched.

  He packed Rhys into his parents’ Volvo at dawn (he had asked them to come at a discreet hour), then flew into panic mode. He called Dr. Kahn: what the devil was her friend’s name, the one at the Starling, Nightingale, Phoenix, whatever library at Trinity. (Wren, she told him calmly. Lena Rasmussen.) After several calls to the college he found her number. Got voicemail; and not just voicemail, one of those completely unreassuring automated voicemails. (The party you have reached at box five . . . zero . . . zero . . . four . . . is not available.) He sat down, at last, to quietly freak out. He chain-smoked until he felt ill, and ran to teach a lesson on Emily bloody Dickinson.

  Americans. Everywhere but where he needed them.

  HE HAD LOST his train of thought.

  “Come again?” he said, sounding as useless as he felt.

  “Pay attention, for God’s sake!” thundered the headmaster. All the faces in the room were turned to Fawkes. “Where is the boy? Andrew Taylor! Surely you know where he is?”

  “Of course. He’s back at the Lot. He’s been lying low. He might have missed lessons today, in fact. I asked him to stay away. You know. Just until the tests came back.”

  The room was quiet. Fawkes was not sure whether anyone believed him. There was no reason they shouldn’t. Except for the fact that he was making it up.

  “Ideas, then?” Jute challenged them. “About where to put him? We should get him away from school for a day or two. That’s the point, isn’t it? Care to put him up, anyone?”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “I was joking,” Jute said, in a fatigued voice.

  “Put him in the Three Arrows,” offered Montague. “It’s an inn, down the hill,” he explained to Miss Palek and Ronnie Pickles. “It’s musty and rambling enough: he’s sure to have his privacy. Parents stay there, at Speech Day, but I can’t claim to have seen any other guests. How the place stays in business I’ve no idea. But that’s not our problem, is it?”

  “I’ll come along,” announced Ronnie Pickles. “I will assess the location. Make sure it’s suitable.”

  “Done. Fawkes, and, er, Mr. Pickles, you move the boy to the inn.” Jute waved them on. “Georgina, Owen, draft some talking points. Review them with me. We’ll communicate first to the staff, then parents. . . .”

  The room began to mill. People rose. They passed Fawkes with heads down, or with the tight smile one would give to a marked man. At last Ronnie Pickles reached Fawkes; oblivious to the housemaster’s plummeting school standing, he gave him an ingratiating wink.

  “Ready to make your school a safer place?” he said.

  “Heh,” replied Fawkes, joining him. “So we’re partners in crime, eh?”

  Pickles seemed puzzled. “Crime? You must have a guilty conscience. We’re doing good!” He slapped Fawkes on the back and grinned.

  THEY MADE THEIR way into the dark, damp High Street. Fawkes fidgeted, checked his phone, lit a smoke. Pickles waited patiently. Fawkes did not see what he could do to salvage the situation. The bloody HPA man was coming with him to the Lot. He would see that Andrew was gone. What then? Would Pickles raise the alarm? Begin a manhunt?

  Eventually, not knowing what else to do, Fawkes began easing down the High Street toward the Lot, asking Pickles banal questions, using the time while the man babbled to rack his brains for excuses.

  Oh, too bad. He must be at the library!

  Where he would be exposing other boys to TB? Try again.

  Oh, I forgot, he’s meeting a family friend in London.

  Riding the tube? Terrible idea!

  They reached the Lot too soon.

 
; “Never been inside one of these,” said Pickles, curious. “Boys’ boarding school dormitory. Home of the rich and famous, eh?”

  Fawkes ascended the stairs like a man climbing the gallows. What would they do to him, he wondered. Did a government health agency have the power to prosecute? For endangering public health? Or maybe they just had the power to recommend arrest and jail time. “I’m sorry,” Fawkes said, with sudden heat. “Can I offer you a cup of tea? I’m so rude to have forgotten! It didn’t occur to me, and you must have had such a . . .”

  “I’m all right,” said Pickles. “Let’s get this over with. After that—maybe a pint at the inn.” Another wink. Fawkes glumly imagined himself falling off the wagon with this bureaucrat.

  “Long staircase,” Fawkes apologized. “Need a rest?”

  “I’ll manage.”

  They reached Andrew’s landing. The crack under Andrew’s door glowed bright yellow. Fawkes’s heart leapt. “Ah!” he said, his voice piping an octave higher. “Here he is!”

  Fawkes pushed open the door. Andrew, in school uniform, sat by his printer, picking up sheets as they came out. He had a sheaf gathered in his hands. He turned, saw his housemaster, and leapt to his feet.

  “Where have you been? We’ve got to go to Dr. Kahn, right away! Persephone’s sick! I know why, it’s worse than we imagined . . .”

  Pickles eased into the room behind Fawkes. Andrew clammed up.

  “Someone else sick, you say?” Pickles inquired.

  “Ah.” Andrew was dumbstruck. Fawkes introduced the HPA man. It gave Andrew time to recover. “Just someone . . . in the play we’re doing. You know.” He stroked his throat. “Laryngitis.”

  “Andrew,” Fawkes began—his eyes boring into him, willing him to keep his mouth shut. “You need to pack your things.”

  DID PICKLES SUSPECT them? He sat in the back, quietly. Andrew took the front seat of Fawkes’s cigarette-marred Citroën and stared forward. He had been able to pull Fawkes aside long enough to tell what had happened to Persephone in hissing tones.