Chapter 4
Chapter Four
Samantha
I wake up with a start as I escape my unsettling dreams.
After a disorienting moment, I collapse back into my blankets. I’m tired of this guilt. I thought time would wash it away, but it has only stained my mind further. There’s sweat on my forehead despite the cool temperature of my dorm room. Through the window, I can see the storm has finally cleared. The campus buildings loom in deep grays and, beyond that, I can see the bay. A heavy fog blankets the calm waters. The big storm lasted three days, and I couldn’t make it across the water to the lighthouse. It’s the longest I’ve left Casper alone.
I’m eager to get back, but I’ll have to wait until after class today. I’ve been skipping too many of my lectures, and people are taking notice. The detectives have asked to speak to me at the school today…for the second time. More than anything, I want to forget that and race across the bay to Casper.
I couldn’t go now, even if I wanted to. Not in the light, when people could see. No one can know where I go. If they did, well, the evidence would be staggering for all the sins I’ve committed.
Would that be so bad, though? At least then, the pressing weight of my secrets would come into the light. I’ve thought about it lately—admitting what I did. Today, when they question me, I could unburden everything.
As quickly as I can, I get ready for class and leave the dorms, stepping out onto a wet campus in my dress. The university is soaked to the bone, deep puddles in all the flowerbeds, drowning any brightness that was left from summer. Everything looks darker and more saturated in its sogginess. Deep, forest green ivy vines race up jagged stone bricks, hanging low and dripping water in arched walkways. I feel cold, wet plops soak into my hair as I move under one.
As I avoid puddles, my eyes are slowly drawn to the library building. My boots slip between the path’s rocks and collect mud while I’m distracted. In the shadows of the entrance pillars, hidden in the recesses, I see a ghost. Professor Bram follows me everywhere around campus these days, staring out at me with accusing eyes and an open, wet line across his throat. Dark crimson stains the collar of his shirt as his eyes shine from the darkness. I don’t dare stop walking as I watch his mouth move, forming the same word over and over.
Help. Help. Help.
Chills rush down my arms as I watch the cut on his neck move when he talks.
It’s what he said the night I killed him, begging me for help when his fate was already sealed. My lips purse together, and I keep walking. My mind drifts to Casper and his sewn mouth. Why did I really sew it?
Help, Help. Help.
It was a silent wail that echoed mutely in my ears, pure terror painted in his eyes. It bothered me more than the memory of his wound opening and spilling blood. It bothered me more than when I realized I couldn’t carry him whole back to my laboratory. It was almost soothing to press sharp tools into his body and turn him into yet another part of my masterpiece—pieces weighed in my hands.
My feet carry me towards classes I’ve long since stopped caring about, and my ghost follows—always ahead of me at every corner, always begging his own killer for mercy. His mouth gapes as his eyes shine with everlasting horror.
Everyone is desperate to find the brilliant professor’s killer. It’s all campus can talk about. The case is still open, the detectives waiting for me to answer questions. The first time they sat me down, their questions were pointed, their faces sharp, their ears wide open. I stumbled over excuses and was left fumbling for words, and now, they want to talk to me again. Have they talked to anyone else twice?
My fingers rub across my gloves’ seams in a nervous habit. If I did relieve myself of this guilt, what would happen to Casper? My sins have breath and blood. My sins walk upright, watching me with yellow eyes and unknown thoughts.
Did I go too far in the name of science?
No, I know I have. I passed lines I shouldn’t. I murdered my professor and then cracked open his skull and marveled at the brain in my hands—so delicate and soft, I could have squeezed it between my fingers like dough if I had wanted to.
But I’m not mad , not yet. I wanted…to understand it all. Death and life. Didn’t I? Or did I want to play god? Lately, I’ve questioned my good intentions.
Outside my class, the detectives are standing side by side, talking to one another as they wait. Avoiding them for days must have made them seek me out. My head darts around, and other students look at me oddly—suspiciously. Suddenly, I’d much rather live with guilt than have my sins smeared across my face for everyone to see.
Backtracking, I avoid the detectives. I won’t answer their questions today. I can’t. As I turn and walk away, everyone is breathing down my neck. I feel as if they can all see my ghost, watching him mouth words to me alone, begging. Help. Help. Help. It was a silent, repetitive croak as blood soaked into the rug and spilled onto the ornate wood floor.
“Samantha Hawthorn!” It’s the detective. My heart is beating hard in my chest. I can’t abandon Casper. I should be punished for what I did, but I can’t leave him alone. He needs me, and if the cost is my soul, then so be it. I shall see this through. Casper is what’s important now.
Once I turn around a building corner, I pick up my skirt and run. I don’t know if this is the right or wrong choice. It’s a gamble. Running makes me look guilty. However, they wanted to speak to me a second time. Do they already know?
My body crashes into someone, and I start to fall backwards before they catch me. A man’s hands grip my biceps, helping me right myself.
“Samantha?” he asks, shocked. I look over my shoulder for the detectives.
“I have to go,” I say, brushing Edgar off me. “I’m sorry.” We were both Professor Bram’s student assistants, and he always asked me about my plans after college, about family and marriage. I got the idea he wanted to court me, which I found offensive, given his talk about women settling down. It didn’t seem to matter to him that I was one of the top students in our post-grad studies. It’s not that I didn’t want to marry, but I didn’t want to give up my calling in life just to fit into a man’s ideals about a perfect life.
“Wait, Samantha—” I ignore him and run. My gut is churning with anxiety, expecting the detectives to catch up to me. I get to my dorm and then pass around it, twisting down old stone paths towards the water. At the base of the hill is the small wooden boathouse. I rip the door open and slip inside, pulling it closed as fast as possible.
Through the opening to the bay, the fog has snuck inside the building, licking at the edges of the moored steamboat I found here last year. I’m not sure what it was doing here, but it looked abandoned.
I don’t know where the detectives are. I can’t be certain they chased me, but it felt like they had—a pressure on the back of my neck. If they saw me slip in here, then I’m still not safe from capture.
Quickly, I climb aboard my little boat and tuck myself behind the railing. My breath is loud from running as I lay there, watching the ceiling sway as the boat rocks gently. The wooden deck makes my shoulder blades ache, but I don’t move, instead letting my breath even out as I feel the motion of the bay. My eyelids grow heavy and, before long, I drift asleep.
When I wake up, the boathouse is dark and my paranoia has settled. If the detectives knew it was me, they’d have arrested me. My own guilty conscience is driving me to hysteria. The whole encounter this afternoon was ridiculous. I shouldn’t have ran; the other students weren’t looking at me other than wondering why I was running.
I rip off my gloves and massage my temples, trying to work out the headache from sleeping awkwardly. I shouldn’t torture myself like this. What’s done is done, and I did what no one else could. I gave Professor Bram a new life, another chance. Can’t that be payment for my crime? It’s a more effective result than me rotting in a cell.
Casper is worth it, and Professor Bram was a brilliant scientist but not much else. His morality was twisted. I didn’t kill him because I wanted his brain. I’d have never. I didn’t kill him because he threatened to report me for desecrating corpses and carrying on twisted experiments.
I went to him that night with all my research, showing him what I’d accomplished so far and the end goal. I wanted him to be part of it, to help me. If anyone was going to understand, it was him. Professor Bram was excited about my science, bursting at the seams with the possibilities.
But he said we had to use fresher parts, or the experiment would be tainted. He wanted to kill the poor and transplant their organs. When I refused, he decided my research should be in his hands. He threatened to call the police if I didn’t agree.
He was going to put me behind bars and continue on in a much more heinous way. Even if we parted ways without the police—agreed to disagree—he was going to murder men on the street with the research I’d put in his hands.
Telling him what I was working on and providing him with all my research was the biggest mistake of my life.
I corrected my mistake.
In the corner of the boathouse, deep in the shadows, Professor Bram’s phantom mouths “help” to me over and over. I frantically rush to get the coal burning in the boat’s steam engine.
“Leave me alone,” I hiss in fear. He moves closer, the sound of his shoes scraping across the wooden planks as smoke plumes up from the chimney and into my lungs.
I cough as I watch Professor Bram come closer, reaching out for the boat. I fall over, gasping before scrambling for the rope and unmooring the boat. I kick off the boathouse deck as hard as I can, but my eyes never leave his as I drift out of the building and into the bay. They shine strangely as his mouth keeps moving.
I think I might be going insane.