Authors: Alexandra Sokoloff
CHAPTER THREE
By five, the dorm was completely, eerily empty, halls dark and silent as the grave.
Robin had expected to feel at least some relief at Waverly’s departure. Instead, she felt a dread closing in on panic.
She had never experienced the dorm without dozens of people in it. Deserted, it was much bigger than she’d realized, three stories and two and a half wings of crooked corridors, confusing to navigate without the landmarks of familiar faces. All the floors looked disconcertingly the same when the doors were shut.
And Robin hadn’t really imagined how different it would
feel
—that there was a life force in the presence of others that pervaded the building. Even when she was in her own room, consciously unaware, her subconscious must have registered all the others.
Now the Hall was as empty and dead as a shell.
Without people, too, the dorm seemed to lose its very insulation. The wind reached icy fingers through minute cracks in the walls, snaked its way up through the floorboards. The rain had started again, slanting and relentless, and with it a fresh assault of wind. The windows rattled like bones; the whole structure shifted and groaned on its foundation.
And it had finally occurred to Robin that the communal bathroom was all the way down the hall. She’d have to leave her room in the middle of the night, when anyone could be lurking around, lying in wait for lone college girls stupid enough not to go home for vacation. No one could possibly hear her if she screamed and screamed.
Stop it
, she ordered herself.
Go out there right now instead of being an idiot about it
.
She opened her door to a dark hall of closed doors, all locked to silent rooms. She took a breath and made her way down the corridor to the bathroom.
She stepped through the doorway—and pulled up short, stifling a gasp. There was someone else in the bathroom.
A slim girl with a wild mane of questionably blond hair was leaning over one of the sinks lined up under the long horizontal mirror. Her mouth was pursed in concentration as she outlined her already-blackened eyes with kohl. Her torn lace blouse and short skirt revealed an elaborate navel piercing and several provocatively placed tattoos. A piece of red yarn was tied around one wrist, knotted in several places and frayed at the ends. Some L.A. thing, no doubt; she positively reeked of California.
The girl—Lisa, Robin thought her name was—had a room on the opposite side of Robin’s floor. She had the paleness and perpetual yawn of a druggie, but there was an interesting fuck-you fire in her eyes. In the two months of the short term, Robin had seen numerous boys leaving and entering her room at all hours of the night and day, almost never the same one for even two days in a row.
Lisa glanced at Robin sideways in the mirror, drawled, “Love these
holidays
…”
Robin felt again the blistering envy of the fierce, crackling life in the other girl. But this time, along with the envy was something more: a yearning, an uncharacteristic impulse to reach out. She hovered by the lockers, gathering the courage to ask the girl if she was staying—then jumped as a voice spoke right behind her.
“You comin’, or what?”
Robin twisted around. A sullen leather-jacketed young man with dyed black hair slouched in the doorway.
Lisa half-smiled ambiguously, stuck the kohl pencil behind her ear, and sauntered out past Robin, a hip-shot walk, oozing an indolent and perhaps slightly stoned sensuality. She disappeared in the direction of the stairwell with the boy.
Robin stood looking at her own reflection in the mirror for a long time. Dark hair, dark eyes, dark clothes…dark, dark, dark. The harsh fluorescents hummed above her head. Beyond the tiled divider wall, a shower dripped.
She reached out and put her hand on the mirror, blocking out her own face.
CHAPTER FOUR
The wind felt along the building outside…scratching for entry, whispering to get in.
Robin walked along the dark hall…past closed doors…moving inexorably toward a door at the end with brilliant light along the cracks of it. The whispering was all around her, growing as she approached…louder…louder—
The door crashed open, tearing from its hinges, unleashing a storm of formless swirling energies, howling with rage…rushing forth
—
Robin woke to dim gray light, with her heart pounding crazily in her chest.
The shutters banged steadily against the window. The wind moaned as rain pelted down, icy, miserable.
She lay still, burrowed in bed, unnerved by her dream, the images of inchoate swirling things.
She’d fallen asleep while trying to read Jung’s explanation of archetypes; she could feel the heavy lump of book beside her in the bed. That’s where the swirling things had come from.
She reached for the book and looked down at the page.
The archetype is an irrepresentable, unconscious, pre-existent form that seems to be part of the inherited structure of the psyche and can therefore manifest itself spontaneously anywhere, at any time
….
Robin wasn’t sure she understood the concept, but there was something disturbing about it. A pre-existent form that could spontaneously manifest itself anywhere, at any time? Not exactly something she wanted to hear this weekend.
In fact, everything about Jung so far was unnerving…a man who’d begun his psychological studies back in the 1920s by going to séances—which, although cool, was somehow not what she’d expected to be studying in college.
She looked out the window at wind churning the trees, and shivered.
Then her stomach growled almost comically and she realized she was starving. She stared out at the storm in dismay.
She hadn’t thought about food, or that there would be too much of a gale outside for her to try for a convenience store or for The Lair on campus—which, she suddenly remembered, would be closed over the holiday anyway. She made a quick mental inventory of the stock on her closet shelf. It was as bleak as the day: a box of Triscuits, some packages of instant cocoa, and a stack of the student’s friend, Top Ramen—none of which was even remotely appealing. Waverly never ate, of course, though Robin knew there was an emergency bottle of Jack Daniel’s hidden behind her spare comforter on the top shelf of her closet, kept around to wash down the designer pain medication Waverly no doubt lifted from a mother as blond and petite and shrill as she was.
Robin’s only hope of food was a trip to the second floor, where a communal laundry room housed a Coke and candy machine, and there would surely be coffee and perhaps someone’s leftovers in the kitchenette.
But that meant going out into the hall.
She lay under the pile of comforters as long as she could, clinging to the warmth, until caffeine withdrawal forced her up. She dressed randomly, a skirt over wool leggings, a bulky sweater over a turtleneck, black on black, while rain pelted against the window behind her.
Her door creaked open into the corridor as she stepped carefully outside her room.
With all the doors closed, the hall was dim, spooky, far too reminiscent of her dream. She glanced toward the end of the hall…but of course there was only a wall, no door edged with brilliant light.
She stood uneasily in the doorway, listening for any sound.
Nothing but the wind scraping along the building outside.
A fragment from Lister’s lecture hovered in the back of her head:
…
Jung believed there was a universal unconscious around us, populated by ancient forces that exist apart from us, yet interact with and act upon us
.
She eased the door closed behind her, irrationally not wanting to disturb the silence, or draw attention to herself.
What are you afraid of, archetypes?
She mocked herself.
That’s mature
.
She hurried down the carpeted hall, descended a flight of pitch-black stairs as quickly and silently as she could manage.
The second floor was as deserted as her own, a dark tube of locked doors. Blue light spilled from the open doorway of the laundry room. Robin swallowed and crossed the hall.
Inside, she reached along the wall and flicked on the light, grateful for the spluttering glare of the fluorescents. The washing machines were silent cubes, the dryers black, watching windows against the wall.
Robin walked past the line of washers to the lighted Coke machine, a cheery red in the monochromatic room. She reached into her skirt pocket, slid in quarters until a Coke can dropped into the tray with a sharp clunk.
Robin flinched, raw-nerved, at the sound.
Behind her there was a huge inhalation, like the rush of breath. Robin gasped, whirled—and stared at the generator, which had whooshed on behind her.
She ran all the way back to her room and slammed the door behind her, leaned against it, shaking, berating herself.
And wondered how she could possibly make it through three days.
* * *
The phone call came right after noon, just as she’d known it would.
When she picked up her phone, her mother was drunk, of course. Robin could almost smell it through the airwaves, sweet, stale whiskey. ‘Tis the season, though for Mom, any old season would do.
Robin had carefully explained, the last time she’d called and found her mother not too out of it, that she’d be staying at school over Thanksgiving. Her mother had seemed to absorb it at the time.
But somewhere along the line, something must have been lost, and her mother had missed the fact that Robin wasn’t going to be coming home. Now her voice was edged with hysteria.
Robin tried for calm. “I told you, Mom. I can’t leave. I have a huge exam next week. Practically everyone’s staying. We’ve having a big dinner here....”
She flinched and held the phone away from her face. Drunken rambling came from the earpiece.
She sank down on the window seat, looked down at a lone student, head bent against the rain as he crossed the deserted street. The wheedling and cajoling segued into recrimination, and then the crying jag. Robin rested her forehead against the cold glass. The words didn’t matter; she’d heard it before. It was all some dark, unfathomable mass, a vortex of chaos and confusion.
Her mother was screaming now—her father again, always her father. “You’re just like him. Lying, selfish bitch…”
Robin choked out, “I gotta go, Mom. I gotta go.” She punched off the phone and hurled it against the wall. It bounced under her desk and she backed away, swaying, sick.
Instantly, it began to ring again. She threw herself down on the floor, groped under her desk, found the phone next to the wallboard. She pushed down on the power button until the ringing stopped.
She sat back on her knees, hugging herself, feeling her mother’s energy like a bottomless whirlpool, taking her down, down.
It wasn’t
him
she was afraid of being like.
That
was what she came from.
That
was what she was. Broken, defective, fatally abnormal. No wonder no one wanted to come near her.
It was all black, all nothingness.
The abyss.
* * *
Pure dark now. The rain gusted outside, the trees shivered in the wind. The Hall shuddered in its own kind of agony, impervious to the one human sound deep within it. But something in the dark corridors leaned forward…listening.
Robin was tightly curled in the window seat of her room, arms wrapped around her knees, sobs tearing through her. The blackness had descended again, leaving no room for anything else.
After a long while, she looked up, drew a shaky breath. Her chest hurt from crying, but now, suddenly, she was calm. Exhausted, but deeply calm.
She stood, swiped at her eyes with an overlong sleeve, and crossed unsteadily to Waverly’s bureau. She knelt on the brown carpet and opened the bottom drawer, pushing aside sweatshirts and petite tees in pastel colors—to find the bottle of Valium.
She shook it. More than enough.
And suddenly, she was clear.
CHAPTER FIVE
The wide main staircase descended into the murky gloom of the bottom floor, lighted only by red neon EXIT signs.
Robin stood at the top of the stairs with Waverly’s bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand, the bottle of pills in the other, looking down into the abyss.
She’d cracked the bottle in her room, even swallowed the first pill, washed down with whiskey—and immediately realized that not under any circumstances was she going to have Waverly be the one to find her. She could just hear the shrill screaming, the exaggerated hysteria. In the lounge, she could abandon herself to the infinitely more acceptable kindness of the first returning stranger.
She swayed slightly, brushing against the banister, but she didn’t feel drunk at all. A dreaminess had come over her. Now that she’d decided, everything seemed so easy, and simple. Not that she hadn’t thought of it before, but thinking wasn’t the same as deciding. Deciding was freedom.
She started down the stairs.
The shining floor below reflected the dark red lights, creating the strange impression that she was descending into a lake. In fact, she felt as if she were moving through water, a trancelike, not unpleasant feeling, a bit like having no body at all. There was a distant roaring in her ears, like a vacuum, like the sea. Down she went, and down. The roaring became more distinct, whispering, like a million formless voices overlapping. She wasn’t alone, she realized with crystal clarity. But the thought wasn’t frightening, not at all. They wanted her, the voices…They were welcoming, beckoning…
She stepped off the last stair—was jolted back to reality as her foot hit the floor. It was solid after all. And the voices were gone. She stood for a moment, then moved across the red streaks of light into the dark main hall, toward the high arched doorway of the lounge.
It was empty, a long, deep room with faded Victorian elegance; once a grand parlor, it was now used as a common living area. Robin paused in the archway and felt the heaviness of time emanating from the room. It was like a stage set waiting for the players, dark walnut paneling and tall arched windows, on one end a cluster of heavy scarred tables etched with decades of graffiti, in front of a wall of built-in bookshelves, on the other end a separate cluster of battered, sagging couches in front of an ornate fireplace, creating distinct lounging areas for studying and for TV. A dusty chandelier hung from the molded ceiling; a cloudy mirror cast rippled reflections over the hearth. A few lamps at the periphery of the room were on very low, lamps with hideous gold-painted plaster bases. They always seemed to be on, like night-lights, perhaps an attempt to keep drunk students from falling over themselves when they stumbled in late at night.
Robin walked unsteadily the length of the lounge, her shoes sinking deeply into the worn plum-colored carpet with cabbage roses. The room seemed immense to her, the walls distant shadows. She finally reached the other side and lowered herself into an overstuffed chair near the fireplace. The chair swallowed her, a comfortable paralysis.
The rain pounded outside; the wet night shone blue through the arched windows.
Robin stared into the gloomy depths of the unlighted hearth, uncapped the bottle of Jack, and took a deep slug. The whiskey raced through her like amber fire, a fierce, tingling burn. She blinked back tears and drank again.
She sank deeper into the chair, her body heavy and loose. She turned over her palm dreamily to look at the bottle of pills. They rattled dryly inside the orange plastic, a good few dozen. Freedom.
Robin took another slug of whiskey. The room swam, and through the pleasant spinning she noticed hazily a quality of anticipation in the room itself, a curiosity. The room seemed to be waiting for her, almost holding its breath.
The distant roaring was back in her ears…like the sound inside a seashell…..
Robin set the whiskey down beside the chair and pushed down on the childproof cap of the medicine bottle. It felt like a great effort to twist it open. She poured the entire bottle of pills into her palm.
She took a breath, then sat up, leaned over the pills in her hand. A line floated into her head, a fragment of Sappho from the margins of her Ancient Worlds textbook: “
I love, I burn, and only love require, and nothing less can quench the raging fire…
”
She swallowed through the ache in her throat, lifted her hand.
In the back of the room, someone coughed.
Robin jumped from the chair, twisted around.
In the darkness at the back of the long room, a slight, pale young man in glasses sat hunched over several piles of books spread out on one of the heavy tables.
The pure shock of it sobered her instantly. Through her confusion, she recognized the face: the White Rabbit, from her psych class. A name popped into her head that she hadn’t known she knew: Martin.
Her hand curled around the pills in her palm, hiding them. She eased that hand behind her back. “I thought…I was the only one here.”
Martin looked at her without speaking. Robin was flustered. Had he seen what she was about to do? Had he—the thought turned her crimson—coughed on purpose? To alert her, or stop her?
Ambient light from a streetlamp outside glimmered off his glasses. She couldn’t see his eyes to know for sure. Desperate to break the silence, she cast around for something to say. Her eyes fell on the books stacked in front of him and she recognized the titles.
Totem and Taboo. Psychoanalysis and the Occult. Dreams and Telepathy
. All Freud. Not required reading for class, either.
He must really be into it.
She groped for words to make the situation seem more normal, spoke carefully so as not to slur her words. “Is that for Psych 128? I’ve seen you in class.”
He stared at her, pale-eyed behind glasses. “Behavioral or developmental?”
She blinked, then realized what he was asking. “Oh, I’m not a major. I’m just…there.”
Martin looked at her blankly, returned to his book without comment.
Robin stood for a moment, feeling dismissed. She turned her back to him, carefully opened her fist, and poured the pills, warm from her clenched hand, back into the bottle. She capped it and slid it into her skirt pocket with a feeling of relief at accomplishing the maneuver.
She glanced back at Martin. He was bent over the shadowed table, completely absorbed in his bode. She wanted to flee, but the arch of the doorway seemed too far away to negotiate; she didn’t trust her legs.
At a loss, she looked around the room and focused on the dark fireplace.
Well, a fire, maybe. I could do that
.
She put a hand on the arm of the chair and lowered herself to kneel on the smoke-stained stone base of the hearth. Carefully, she pulled logs from the wood box and piled them onto the andirons.
She stole a glance back at Martin. He seemed to have forgotten her entirely.
Invisible again
, she thought bleakly.
The Forgotten
.
The dreamlike languor had returned, but the motions of building the fire, wadding and packing newspaper between the logs, kept her awake. She sat back on her heels, looked around on the flagstone hearth and in the wood box for matches.
A voice spoke right behind her, at ear level. ‘Try this.”
Robin twisted on her knees in startled disbelief.
A slim, edgy young man lay stretched out on his back on a sagging faux-leather couch the size of a small barge. A
Rolling Stone
magazine lay open on his chest. He looked at her, a cool gray gaze, extended a lighter without sitting up.
Robin breathed out. “God. I didn’t see you.”
His face was expressionless. “You weren’t looking.”
Robin forced herself to reach and take the lighter from him. She flicked it and held it to several edges of the newspaper with a trembling hand. To her relief, flames blazed up obligingly, catching and spreading.
Willing herself to act normal, she turned to the young man and handed the lighter back. He kept it in his hand, pulled a crumpled pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, and offered it to Robin with a slight, silent gesture. She shook her head. He lighted up and smoked, all interest in her abruptly withdrawn, like a door being shut.
Robin turned back to the fire, watching the rolling flames. The pleasant, drowsy lull she had been experiencing, the presence, almost support, of the house was gone, and she felt anxious and wary of these strangers, vaguely ashamed. Her silent, womblike room had turned out to be crawling with people, and now she was stuck pretending she had not been here to—
Her mind flinched away from the thought, though she could feel the pill bottle digging into her thigh. She glanced carefully at the whiskey bottle, mercifully concealed by the side of the couch. She didn’t think either of the boys had seen. Not that they’d care.
She sneaked a look at the one on the couch.
He was staring ahead of him with an abstracted look, off in his own world.
Looks like a musician
, she thought, and decided it was his hands that made her think so, even more than the long limbs, scruffy hair, and
Rolling Stone
on his chest. His hands were alive, deliberate—precise and graceful with the cigarette he held, even though they seemed huge, almost the wrong size for the litheness of his body.
As she looked up from his hands, she realized he was watching her watch him. She blushed deeply, instantly, and he looked at her, unsmiling.
But before either could speak, if either was going to, a voice called from the doorway of the lounge, big and hearty and familiar. “Hello, orphans. Happy Turkey Day.”
Robin turned, caught her breath as she saw Patrick roll through the archway into the lounge, dressed in a Green Bay jersey and sweats, pulling a massive beer cooler on creaking wheels behind him.
Her heart leapt with sudden life, hope knocking against her chest. The young man on the couch shook his head slightly and returned to his magazine. In the back, Martin stiffened, hunched lower over his Freud.
Patrick navigated a little unsteadily toward the big old TV. “Let the games begin.”
He stopped, finally noticing Robin kneeling on the floor. A strange look crossed his face; he looked almost as surprised to see her as she was to see him. “Hey, Robin. You stayed, too, huh?”
The look on his face was almost guilty. Robin thought of the duffel he’d been carrying yesterday, the show he’d made of leaving with Waverly.
He doesn’t want her to know he stayed
, she realized.
Patrick flipped open the cooler and dipped into the ice for a beer, handed a dripping long-necked bottle to Robin with a gallant flourish. “Drink up,” he ordered. “I’m way ahead of ya.”
Robin gingerly shook icy water from the bottle and used the edge of her sweater to twist off the cap. Self-conscious, she drank too quickly, but the beer was instantly warming.
She sat back against the armchair and found, to her surprise, that her dark thoughts of before had retreated. The fire was a hot blaze; the room felt full of maleness and possibility.
Patrick found the remote on the top of the TV and clicked it on. The sound blasted in the room, preshow for the college game.
Martin looked up from his table, irritated.
Patrick instantly turned toward Martin.
Eyes in the back of his head
, Robin thought—not the first time she’d noticed.
“Not botherin’ you, are we, chief?” he asked Martin pleasantly enough, though everyone in the room knew that football was going to be the order of the day. Martin ignored him, hunched farther over his book in the yellow light of the gooseneck lamp.
Ancient enmity, brains and jocks
, Robin thought from her seat on the floor. She took another swallow of beer, grimaced at the yeasty bite of it.
Patrick raised his voice, apparently to include the young man on the couch. “Nebraska versus ‘Bama. Any bets?” He winked at Robin and she colored.
The young man on the couch barely looked up from his magazine. “Pass.” Robin noticed his hands again.
Patrick looked at him more closely, seemed to recognize him. “You’re in McConlan’s band, right?”
The young man looked over the top of his magazine. His voice was dry, flat. “No. He’s in mine.”
Patrick grinned easily. “Whatever, dude.” He pulled another bottle from the ice, tossed it toward the couch. The young man caught it expertly, one-handed. Robin was aware that the exchange was a test, some masculine jockeying, animal prowess, and found herself glad that the slim young man had passed.
Patrick glanced back toward Martin, waved a beer. “How ‘bout you back there, bud? Join the living?”
Martin sighed pointedly without looking up from his book.
Patrick lowered himself into a big armchair with a clear view of the TV. He looked at Robin on the floor by the fire and suddenly leaned down close to her for a moment. She caught a scent of beer and aftershave, was dizzy with the nearness of him. “Waverly doesn’t need to know about this, know what I’m sayin’? I just—didn’t feel like going home.” He looked at her, blue eyes serious and pleading.
Robin felt a rush of understanding and fierce protectiveness. Of course she understood. He didn’t want to get any nearer home than she did. She looked back at him and saw that he knew. A warm feeling of intimacy surged between them, secret and safe. She felt lightheaded with the sudden bond.
And then the moment was broken by a feminine drawl from the doorway behind. “Well, well, what have we here? Island of lost souls?”
Robin turned reluctantly. The girl from the bathroom—Lisa—stood slouched against the frame of the entry, an exaggeratedly sensual pose, cutoff sweater revealing miles of bare skin above a short skirt. Robin realized through a haze of Valium and beer that she was not surprised to see her. From the moment in the bathroom, she had somehow known that Lisa would be here.
Lisa pushed off the doorjamb and strolled into the room, yawning, raccoon-eyed. She leaned over Patrick’s chair and pointed to a beer. “Pop me?”
Patrick twisted the cap off a bottle, extended it, grinning lazily, as if he were in on some joke. Lisa touched his hand, let her fingers linger on his as she took the bottle from him.