The Harrowing

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

The day passed in slow motion. Going back onto campus with all the police everywhere was out

of the question. They decided to try for ten at night, figuring the campus would have been completely cleared by then and the police would relax their vigil.

Patrick and Lisa went out for supplies, since Robin and Cain couldn’t risk being seen. Robin dozed fitfully, waking several times to find Cain poring over the ritual. She watched him, fascinated. For all his rationalism, he’s in his element now, caught up in the mysticism. Maybe we all want to believe.

They ate pizzas that Patrick and Lisa brought back. Patrick drank beer after beer and rolled joints, which he smoked, too, the look on his face precluding any protest.

Robin sat with her back against the wall, her thoughts a tumult. Waverly’s dead. She’s dead, and we could be next.

She thought of Martin, alone in the dark halls with some unimaginable thing, and shuddered.

Suddenly, Cain was crouched in front of her, taking her hands, looking at her questioningly. She shook her head, trying to smile, and he sat beside her against the wall, warm and real.

Patrick took in the two of them, and when Robin met his gaze, he nodded. Approval, or maybe a blessing.

“The Discarded Ones,” he said aloud.

Everyone looked at him.

“That’s us, right? Damaged goods. It came straight to us—because it knew.”

Cain squeezed Robin’s hand. Lisa put her head on Patrick’s shoulder.

The four of them sat in silence, listening to the sound of the rain outside.

Waiting.

The campus seemed vast in the dark as Patrick drove his SUV without lights into the woods,

heading toward the Columns. After much heated debate between the boys, they’d decided it was best to get to the dorm through campus.

They left the 4Runner in the woods and then moved through the oak grove, nervous as cats, wearing dark clothing and each carrying a duffel. The rain had abated, but the dead leaves under their feet were damp and slick, and wind lashed through the trees, intermittently showering them with droplets.

They stopped on the path, looked through a tangle of bushes to the silhouette of Mendenhall.

The dorm was towering, a huge dark shell. Robin thought she could hear a shutter banging somewhere in the building.

Cain started forward, then Patrick hissed, “Wait.”

Lights swept the pavement of the circular drive in front. All four of them hit the ground behind the bushes, waiting, not breathing. A sheriff’s car cruised by; the lights passed over them, dappling light through the bushes.

Robin pressed her face into the damp leaves, heart pounding, breathing in the loamy rot.

Then the patrol car turned the corner of the drive, moved away down the street. Robin felt Cain’s hand on hers, closing around her fingers, pulling her up.

The four of them slipped from the wet bushes and hurried around to the side wall of the building, halting at a door hidden under the fire escape.

Cain fished out his dorm keys and tried the lock. The key turned, but as they’d all expected, the door was bolted from inside.

Patrick stepped back, looked up at the slatted metal fire escape ladder above their heads, calculating the height. He turned to Lisa, spoke in a low voice.

“Up on my shoulders.”

Cain stooped, locked his hands together to boost Lisa up. She stepped into his hands and Patrick grabbed her by the waist; both of them lifted her up at once to kneel on Patrick’s shoulders. Lisa put her palms on Patrick’s head, then, balancing carefully as an acrobat, unfolded herself to a standing position.

Patrick grabbed her ankles, steadying her. She reached up for the bottom rung of the ladder, grasped it, and yanked hard. The ladder refused to budge.

“It’s stuck,” she whispered down. She gave another hard tug, then ordered Patrick to let go.

Robin watched admiringly as Lisa tucked her legs up to her chest and slung an ankle over the rung of the ladder, then hoisted herself up over the ladder and onto the platform.

Her Nikes squeaked on the wet metal as she stood and shoved down on the ladder, pushing and straining, but no amount of force would unstick it.

Cain called up softly. “Break a window and come down and let us in.”

Lisa looked down at them over the railing. Her face was hard. “No way am I going in there alone.”

Cain looked to Robin, raised his eyes to the ladder, questioning. She nodded, and he laced his hands for her.

Robin tried to copy Lisa’s moves as Cain lifted her and the two boys boosted her up. She felt Lisa’s hand grab her wrist, and Patrick’s hands gripping her ankles, pushing up.

Adrenaline flooded through her as Lisa hauled her up over the side of the platform. Robin scrambled, grabbing at the metal screen of the platform until somehow her whole body was lying flat against the metal. She was trembling all over. Lisa was crouched against the wall, panting, but she managed a ghost of a smile.

Robin got to her feet, brushing herself off. She pulled the flashlight from her pocket, wrapped her scarf around the flashlight and her hand. Lisa backed up against the railing. Robin smashed the flashlight through the window.

She used the flashlight to push the jagged glass out of the frame, then cautiously stuck her head through the opening. She turned her flashlight on and shone the beam down one side of the corridor, then the other. She stared into the darkness, her pulse racing—but there was no movement. The Hall was dark and utterly silent.

She looked back at Lisa, who was hovering behind her on the fire escape, and slung a leg over the windowsill.

Inside, the Hall was pitch-black compared to outside. Glass crunched under Robin’s feet. She turned to the window and helped Lisa through.

Lisa straightened and the girls looked at each other, faces pale in the dark.

Robin felt along the wall, found the light switch, flicked it. Nothing.

“Electricity’s off,” she said uneasily, then remembered they couldn’t turn the lights on anyway, not with police patrols out there.

Lisa shivered. “Let’s go fast.”

Robin turned her flashlight on, keeping the beam low, below the window level, as Cain had instructed earlier. Lisa took Robin’s hand and they ran together down the dark hallway.

The hallway opened onto the landing above the main staircase. Below them, the well of the staircase gaped open like an enormous black cave.

Lisa and Robin crossed the landing and hurried down the sweeping stairs, Robin’s flashlight bobbing wildly. At the bottom, they turned into the shadowy front hall.

In front of her, Lisa pulled up short, gasping in terror. Robin froze.

A hooded figure stood by the door in the hall.

Robin felt herself screaming in her mind, her sanity wobbling.

Then something clicked in her head as her eyes adjusted to the dark. She choked out, “Coat rack.” She shined her flashlight beam over the figure.

Someone had left a heavy coat draped over the human-size rack. A hat perched on the top completed the illusion of a shadowy stalker.

Lisa exhaled shakily, leaning limply against Robin.

“Back door,” Robin managed.

They turned away from the front door, moved slowly down the murky hall, gingerly passing by the open bathroom, the curtained fire door, the narrow kitchenette. Everything seemed animate, ominous. Lisa was clutching Robin’s hand so hard her bones hurt

The open archway of the lounge was next. Lisa slowed as they approached, reluctant.

A muffled thud came from inside the room.

Both girls stopped dead.

Robin swallowed, spoke quaveringly into the dark. “Martin?”

They were still, not breathing, just listening.

A tapping sound began somewhere in the building, faint, rhythmic mocking. Robin tried to focus through her terror. Where was it coming from? From the lounge? Or somewhere else in the house?

Lisa grabbed Robin’s hand and they both ran, past the lounge doorway, toward the back of the house. Robin couldn’t help glancing into the lounge as they pounded past. In that one glimpse, the big room seemed empty, dark, still.

The girls dashed through a doorway into the narrow back entry hall. They halted at the back door, panting. Robin’s blood was pounding in her ears, but the tapping had stopped.

Robin shot the inner bolts and used her house key in the dead bolt, swung the door open.

Cain and Patrick hustled inside, carrying the duffels.

Outside, wind shivered through the dark trees, whipped the branches into a frenzy. For a moment, Robin stood in the doorway, grateful for the air on her hot face. The wind pushed at her, and Robin slammed the door shut.

The darkness was immediate, intimate.

With the door closed, Robin could barely see anyone—just the glistening of people’s eyes. But she could feel Cain’s wiry tension and Patrick’s warm bulk beside her, could smell the cold outdoors on them, and she was momentarily comforted.

Patrick turned on the flashlight; the sudden strong beam startled them all.

“Stay away from the windows with that,” Cain warned him.

“Dude, I lay you money I’ve broken into more houses than you have,” Patrick retorted. He took a dark sock from his pocket and pulled it over the flashlight, muting the beam.

Cain turned to the girls. “Everything okay?”

Robin nodded briefly, though of course it wasn’t okay; she had no idea if anything would ever be okay again. It didn’t feel like breaking into a building. It felt like landing on another planet. The Hall seemed completely cut off from the rest of the world, as if they’d entered another dimension or a parallel universe and were lost to anyone from the real world.

Is it here? In the air? In the walls? What does it look like?

Cain squeezed her hand, as if he’d heard her thoughts. “Any sign of Martin?”

Robin bit her lip, looked at Lisa. “We heard something. In the lounge.”

Patrick reached into an inside pocket of the heavy jacket he wore and pulled out a .38-caliber handgun. The others stared at him, shocked.

“Hey—” Cain started to protest.

“This shell thing killed Waverly,” Patrick said flatly. He cocked the gun, held it at his shoulder, then flashed Cain a crooked grin. “Southern gun culture.”

Cain smiled grimly back.

Patrick turned, and the three of them followed him through the narrow doorway into the main hall.

They stood in a block, looking warily down the dark corridor toward the lounge; Patrick and Cain in front, Lisa and Robin pushed in behind them, so close that they could feel one another breathe. Robin felt life and comfort in their warm bodies, and she was seized with a sudden fierce affection for the people around her. They were hers, she realized; they were like blood.

Patrick looked at Cain, then took a step forward, and they moved in a clump toward the arched entrance of the lounge.

At the doorway, they all paused, looked in warily.

A dark shape flashed on the other side of the room, opposite them.

They all jumped back, jostling into one another.

“Shit,” Patrick muttered, sounding annoyed at himself.

Robin realized they were staring into their own reflections in the mirror.

They all relaxed at the same time, sheepish. Robin looked around the dark cavern of the lounge. Rain beat against the outside of the arched windows. The dark shapes of trees swished and swirled in the wind.

They all jumped again at a sudden fast banging, like the report of a gun, pounding through the ceiling and walls. Robin felt the sound reverberate through her whole body, like someone touching her from inside. Lisa’s revolted gasp beside Robin told her Lisa was feeling the same thing.

Patrick and Cain spun almost angrily, looking up and around them at the molded ceiling.

The banging abruptly stopped. The silence seemed even more ominous.

“Upstairs,” Cain said tightly, moving toward the door.

The four stepped out of the lounge. Robin heard Cain’s intake of breath when Patrick’s flashlight skimmed the coat rack, then felt him relax as he recognized the shape.

They crossed the wood floor to the staircase and started up the stairs, dimmed flashlights bobbing in the dark, eyes darting nervously into every corner. The carpet was spongy beneath their feet, a slightly loathsome sensation. Robin flinched at a creak.

At the top of the stairs, Lisa froze, a scream choking in her throat.

To their left, the hallway door was opening and closing slowly, rhythmically, as if the door was breathing…in…and out…

The four stood mesmerized, watching.

Cain suddenly strode to the door and pulled it open. A strong breeze ruffled his hair, and Robin gasped. He shook his head.

“It’s the wind. Coming in the broken window.”

Robin pushed up behind him, looked down the long, dark hall. She could feel the draft from the window she’d broken.

She leaned against Cain, and he put a strong arm around her waist, holding her tightly against him.

Patrick shoved forward, marched past Robin and Cain. “Let’s fucking get on with it.” He slammed into the stairwell.

Cain moved Robin forward, touched Lisa’s arm, and the three of them followed Patrick through the door.

The stairwell was dark and hollow, resonant with their breathing as they climbed up after Patrick’s bobbing flashlight.

“O’Connor, hold up,” Cain whispered upward, and the light paused at the third-floor doorway.

The three of them caught up with Patrick on the small landing in front of the door. Patrick pulled the door open a crack and peered through into the third-floor hall. Robin could feel him untense slightly. He nodded behind to the others, then silently swung the door open into the hall.

They followed Patrick into the murky corridor, looking down at a string of silent doors, all closed.

Robin felt a rush of impatience. She moved suddenly ahead toward Martin’s corner room. Cain fell quickly into step with her, staying close by her side. She could feel Patrick and Lisa right behind.

Robin stopped at the last closed door and stared at the door frame. The mezuzah had been ripped off, leaving a slash of exposed wood.

Robin swallowed, then set her jaw and knocked hard. She jumped slightly as the sound seemed to echo through the floor. Now it’s heard us, she thought bleakly. She had a flash of swirling formless energy…chaotic malevolence…

“Martin?” she called softly. “Are you in there?”

The other three crowded closer to listen. There was only silence behind the door.

Patrick tucked the gun into the waistband of his pants and put a hand on Robin’s elbow. “Out of the way,” he ordered. Robin and Lisa shrank back against the opposite wall. Patrick raised his leg and kicked at the door below the knob. Robin saw a flash of a thigh as thick as a tree trunk; then the door crashed open against the wall inside.

Patrick pulled the gun out of his pants, cautiously stuck his head inside the black room, leading with the gun.

Robin peered around the side of him from behind. She could see no movement, no Martin, only shadows.

Patrick shoved into the room. The others followed with flashlights.

The curtains were drawn, but even in the thick darkness, the clutter was unnerving. Books were stacked in teetering piles; the bed was in chaos. Food wrappers and soft-drink cans were scattered everywhere, as if Martin had been living out of the snack machine for weeks instead of just a day and a half. Robin cringed at the rank, rotted smell.

Cain trained his flashlight beam on the mirror. Robin drew in a breath. Hebrew letters were scrawled on the glass and the wall beside it: thick, dark smears of something that looked suspiciously like blood.

Lisa gasped behind them and they all turned instantly. Her flashlight was aimed at a desk pushed into the middle of the room, with a chair in front of it.

The Ouija board was laid out on top of the desk, the planchette in the center of it. Martin’s miniature tape recorder was beside it, and fat candles were set up around the board, burned halfway down, hardened wax pooled around them.

Robin focused on a pile of books, open on top of one another, stacked on the chair, with more on the floor beside the desk. Half of the titles were in Hebrew. She glanced at Cain.

He moved forward, staring down at the board. He pulled out his lighter, lighted the candles. The flickering flames seemed to make the room colder, not warmer.

Cain switched on the tape recorder on the table. Everyone jumped as Waverly’s voice screamed out of the small speaker: “You’re really going to stay here with these freaks?”

Robin had a swift shock of déjà vu at the sound of her dead roommate’s voice, then she realized. “It’s the tape Martin made in the attic. He left it running.”

Patrick’s voice rasped from the tape, an ugly sound. “Fuck off and die, you bitch.”

Patrick blanched in the candlelight. “Turn it off,” he said thickly.

“Wait.” Robin fast-forwarded the tape past Waverly’s feminine twittering to find Martin’s voice again.

“Come on. Let’s keep going,” Martin was saying.

Then Cain’s voice, incredulous: “You’ve got to be kidding.”

“Don’t let her ruin it.”

Robin flinched at the obsessive intensity of Martin’s voice. They all stared at the tape recorder.

Cain’s voice cut Martin off curtly. “I don’t know what you’re after, but we’re done.”

Robin looked up at Cain. His face was tense, fixed on the tape recorder. Patrick shifted uncomfortably. “Okay, so—”

Cain said sharply, “Wait.”

They all stood around the desk uneasily, listening as the tape continued to play. There was the sound of people moving, footsteps on the wooden floor, a door opening, then closing.

Then silence…just the hiss of tape.

And then the sound of the tape being snapped off. But before anyone could even take a breath, the tape started again. Robin stiffened.

On the tape was the squeak of a chair being pulled out…and Martin’s determined voice, speaking aloud.

“Are you still there?”

The four of them stiffened at the familiar scraping sound of the planchette moving on the board.

Then Martin’s voice again, low with excitement: “I’m here, too.”

Patrick looked up. “Shit. He did it himself.”

On the tape, Martin spoke with a touch of longing. “Are you really…Qlippah?”

Robin jolted, whispered. “He did know. He knew what it was.” Cain met her eyes, tense.

There was a brief scraping on the tape, and Martin’s voice reading the message. “ ’Yes.’”

A pause. “And you were there…at the beginning of creation?”

There was a longer scraping, and Martin’s voice, reading out the reply. “‘Before the beginning….’”

Another pause, then more scraping. Martin spoke suddenly, so intensely that Robin flinched. “I do want to know more.”

The scraping came again, faster now. They could hear Martin’s breathing on the tape. What do you mean, I could see?”

The scraping.

Then Martin’s voice again, rising in disbelief. “See God?”

Patrick moved in the dark beside Robin, an explosive gesture. “What the fuck—”

Martin’s taped voice cut through his. “Yes. I want to see God. How?”

Robin felt faint with the sound of the scraping of the planchette. There was a long silence on the tape. I’m going crazy, she thought. I really am going to go crazy.

Martin’s voice came again. This time there was a distinct note of wariness.

“I don’t know. What would you do…if you were in me?”

Robin’s eyes leapt to Cain’s face. He stared back at her across the candles, jolted.

“Sweet Jesus,” Patrick mumbled. Lisa pushed in to him; he put an arm around her waist blankly.

On the tape, Martin was sounding out letters, stumbling over unfamiliar words. “‘Nayah, horeh, yiyeh .…?’”

The four looked around at one another, uncomprehending. Then Martin’s voice continued, full of longing as he read slowly over the scraping of the planchette.

“‘I can show you all that was…that is…and that will be.’”

Robin was frozen with fear. She whispered aloud, “No, Martin, don’t….”

Martin’s voice suddenly blasted from the tape.

“All right, then—come inside me. I…invite you.”

Lisa’s eyes were wide with terror. “No…” she choked out.

They all stiffened at a strange, strangled sound on the tape. Martin was choking, gurgling. Then there was a horrible, triumphant howl. “Ahhhhhhhh. Ahh. Ahhh.”

Robin felt her skin crawl. Her legs were so watery, she could barely stand.

Martin’s voice was purring with an almost sexual pleasure. “Oh, yes…oh, the body…the body, now…”

And now a savage glee, an alien voice, hair-raising. Robin felt her gorge rise. The others looked equally sick as the voice cackled on. “In the body…in the body now…the body…in the body…”

There was a scuffling sound on the tape and then the sound of the door opening and closing.

Then silence. Nothing but the hiss of blank tape.

Cain reached out and turned off the recorder. They all looked at one another in the wavering candlelight, deathly pale.

“That’s what it wanted,” Cain spoke thinly, and everyone looked to him. “A body. The bodies the Qlippoth were denied by God. It even said so. We just weren’t listening.”

“It was just playing with us all along—trying to get in somewhere,” Robin spoke aloud, realizing. And it tried with Patrick first, she thought, remembering the midterm. And with Lisa. But Martin let it in.

Something clicked into place. “It was Martin in my room that night,” she murmured.

“He killed Waverly.” Patrick’s blue eyes were like ice.

Outside in the hall, doors began to slam rapidly, up one side of the corridor and down the other. They all spun in terror. A horrible, insane giggling echoed through the building, freezing their blood.

The doors slammed outside, the sound coming closer…

Patrick leapt at the door, bracing it closed with all his strength. Some incredible force began pounding on the door from outside; the knocks reverberated through the wood, shaking the frame. Patrick’s arms were jarred with the raps.

The knocking abruptly stopped.

Then the door slowly buckled inward, an enormous pressure caving it on its hinges. Lisa’s eyes widened; she began to scream.

Cain threw himself against the door, straining with Patrick to hold it closed.

The door suddenly thumped back into place.

Outside, the doors slammed again, a rapid staccato wave, angry and thundering. Robin was screaming with Lisa.

The slamming abruptly stopped.

Dead silence. The four stood frozen, Patrick and Cain still braced against the door, afraid to move. The front door, two floors below, seemed a continent away.

Lisa was trembling all over, her teeth knocking together. “God…God…what do we do?”

Patrick hefted the gun, grim. “We nail him.” He started to open the door.

Lisa shrieked, “No!”

Robin grabbed Patrick’s arm. “You can’t just kill him.”

“The fuck I can’t.”

They were all talking at once then, fast, their voices overlapping, charged with adrenaline and hysteria.

“Think.” Robin dug her nails into Patrick’s forearm. “And then what—you end up in prison for murder?”

“Better than dead,” Patrick shot back. “Kill the fucker before he kills us. He killed Waverly.” He towered in the dark; the veins were standing out in his neck.

“Not Martin,” Cain said. He sounded short of breath. “That thing inside him.”

Lisa’s voice was shrill, almost a scream. “He asked for it. You heard. He invited it in!”

Robin wheeled on her. “So did you, Lisa. You found the board…right?” Robin faced the other three, pale and resolute. “But we all wanted to play. We all kept going. We all called it.”

They were silent, the truth sinking in.

Cain spoke more slowly now. “Even if we shot Martin, we don’t know that it would die.”

Patrick kicked the wall beside him savagely, caving in the thin plasterboard. Lisa flinched.

“Motherfucking shit. So what now?” He looked at the others, helpless. The candlelight flickered on the walls around them, playing over the crude Hebrew letters.

“Catch him,” Robin said slowly, looking at Cain. “Do the banishing ritual.”

“Catch him?” Patrick’s voice rose in disbelief. “He’s got a demon inside him.”

“And you’ve got a gun,” Cain said steadily. “Clip him in the leg and I’ll jump him.”

Lisa’s eyes leapt wildly from one to the other. “You got that ceremony off the Net. What if it doesn’t work?”

Cain looked grim. “Then we tie him, call the cops, and run.”

They all looked around at one another. It seemed an eternity before anyone spoke. Robin realized the silence was acquiescence.

Patrick shifted unhappily. “Don’t blame me if I miss and blow off his goddamn head.”

Cain turned on him. “You better not. I mean it, cowboy. Because we need all five of us for the ritual to work.”