Chapter 10 #2
The fresh air immediately feels good. I breathe in deeply, letting the mist that wisps past fill my lungs, my ribs straining against the bones of my corset.
Crane exhales loudly and gives his shoulders a shake. “You’re right. This does feel better. In fact, I think until the weather officially turns, we should have more classes outside. Take advantage of it. We could all think more clearly, use the magic of Mother Nature to help us.”
I eye the lake and the storm clouds that have gathered at the other end of it. So far, it looks like the rain is staying away from campus.
We walk down the central courtyard path, nodding at students as we pass.
They’re framed by fading rosebushes and tall stone statues of women holding skulls.
The statues look like they’ve been taken from the graveyards of antiquity, and yet they look appropriate among the flowers. Beauty and death mingling.
“Have you memorized all the students’ names yet?” I ask Crane, feeling strangely shy suddenly, like I’m afraid to walk beside him and not talk. I suppose this is the first time I’ve been with him outside the classroom, not to mention with him alone.
“I have,” he says, his hands clasped behind his back. Even when stooped slightly, he still towers over me. He must be at least six foot five. “The school has only forty-two students, and I happen to be good at memorization. Came very handy in med school.”
“You went to med school?” I ask. “What happened? Why did you become a teacher instead of a doctor?”
He glances up at the gray sky for a moment, the color mirroring his eyes, before looking back at me. “Would you believe me if I said that teaching is a far more noble profession?”
“No.”
He laughs, and the sound pleases me. I think I would like to make him laugh more.
“Fair enough,” he says, his eyes focused on the lake as we approach, our footsteps now meeting the fine gravel of a smaller path and crunching beneath our shoes.
“It turns out that med school wasn’t for me.
You know the gift of bestowal I possess?
Well, I didn’t know I had it at the time.
I didn’t know I had the capability to pass on energy.
So when we started to work with cadavers—dead bodies—from the morgue to practice, I discovered my touch had the ability to… well…”
My eyes go wide. “To what?”
“To cause the dead to come awake. Temporarily, of course.”
“You’re a necromancer,” I say in a hush, clutching my hand to my chest.
“No, no,” he says quickly. “Not a necromancer. I didn’t bring them back to life.
I merely just…pushed my energy into them.
” He makes a pushing motion with his hand.
“It lasted a second, but it gave me quite the scare. Not to mention, I was surrounded by very sane and normal people. They already thought I was odd with the way my brain works. I couldn’t afford for the dead to start speaking to them, or me to the dead. So I quit.”
I try to imagine what that must feel like, to have that sort of power to bring the dead back to life, even for just a moment. He must have felt like a god, I think. Perhaps that’s why he claims to be one in the classroom. I wonder if that attitude extends to the bedroom.
My lewd thoughts surprise me, and I immediately shove them away and force myself to pay attention.
“It took me a long time to figure it out too,” he goes on.
“When you give your energy to someone alive, it’s not so noticeable, not to the one giving it.
When you give it to someone dead, completely devoid of life force, well, that’s a hard one to miss.
Nonetheless, I decided I would be better off as a teacher. I’m told I made the right choice.”
I mull that over as we continue walking out of the courtyard and away from the buildings. Eventually, the gravel gives way to dirt and a layer of fallen leaves—red, orange, and gold—that ring the shoreline of the lake. Strands of mist hang just above the water like cotton ribbons.
We stand beside each other, our shoes sinking into the earth slightly, and stare at the lake. Its surface is black, reflecting back the surrounding forest like a nightmarish version of itself. I have to look away after a while, as if the lake would pull me under if I didn’t.
“So why haven’t you been feeling yourself?” I finally ask.
He stiffens, and when I glance up at him, I see a muscle in his jaw tic. “I’m afraid if I tell you, you’ll think less of me.”
He cares if I think less of him? The admission makes my stomach flip.
“I don’t think that’s possible,” I admit quietly, giving him a shy look. “After all, you just told me you have the power to make the dead come alive, and I don’t think I’ve ever admired you more.”
He stares at me in surprise, then furrows his black brows together. “Ah. Well, that’s good to know.” He licks his lips and turns his attention back to the lake. “I haven’t been sleeping well since I got here. At first, I thought it was because I haven’t been allowed my drink or my drug.”
“Your drug?”
“Opium,” he says, then eyes me, reading the concerned look on my face.
“Don’t believe the things you’ve heard about the opium dens—or joints, as we call them in the city.
It’s a good drug, and it does a lot to calm the mind, bring you peace and harmony.
But your aunt Leona was adamant that I stay sober while at the school, and, well, let me tell you that withdrawing from opium isn’t very pretty.
So the first few weeks I was here, I was barely sleeping, tossing and turning all night, just praying for a pipe or a tincture. Alas, I had no choice but to deal.”
“That certainly explains a lot,” I say. Smoking opium? I had heard the stories of men overseas and in the bigger cities smoking it in lurid dens, but I had never pegged someone as proper as Crane to be one of them. It was a dangerous drug; he should know that.
He certainly has many sides to him, I think. What else does he keep hidden?
“One would think,” he goes on, stooping down to pick up a rock from the shore. He peers at it and turns it over and over in his hand in a rhythmic motion. “But that isn’t what’s been bothering me. It’s what’s been happening to me in the middle of the night.”
A chill coasts down my neck, and I pull at the edges of my sleeves, wishing I had gloves for warmth. “What’s happened in the middle of the night?”
He steps away from me and grasps the rock in his hand and then, with a burst of power, whips it across the surface of the lake, where it skips six times before sinking.
Ripples slowly expand. “I’ve been waking up in a cold sweat, which might be part of the withdrawal, and then hearing my name being called. Or someone crying.”
I shiver. “That’s unsettling. Is it your neighbor in another room?”
“It’s a woman’s voice,” he states, bending down to pick up another rock.
“And in the men’s wing, no women are allowed.
Of course, I thought perhaps it was Professor Daniels having an affair with the school nurse or something to that end.
But that never explained why she called my name. So, of course, I assumed it was Marie.”
“Who is Marie?” I ask carefully, ignoring the strange taste of jealousy when I said her name.
“My ex-wife,” he says. His expression is blank.
My brows rise. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were married. Are you…divorced?” I glance down at his hand as if expecting to see a ring, even though I know he doesn’t wear one.
“Widowed,” he says, winding up and skipping another stone across the water. “She died.”
“I’m so sorry,” I say again, feeling like my words can’t mean enough. The poor man.
“Mmm,” he murmurs with a small nod, watching as the ripples spread. “Yes. She died, and, well, sometimes I hear her voice in the night.”
“No wonder you haven’t been sleeping.”
He gives me a pained look. “That’s not the worst of it. The voice wakes me up, but then lately, there’s been a…a…”
“A what?”
He sighs and runs his hand over his face.
“I don’t know. I just don’t. I heard this sound outside my door.
It wasn’t Marie. It was the sound of something heavy dragging itself down the hall.
I opened the door, and lo and behold, I saw a trail of blood going down the hallway and a body pulling itself along. ”
I gasp, nearly falling backward.
Crane is quick. His long arms shoot around my waist, holding me up. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be scaring my students so that they faint,” he murmurs, and his face has never been so close to mine.
I’m shocked by his story, scared, and yet my eyes are sweeping over his features, noting all the little things I didn’t notice at a distance, such as the scar at the end of his left brow or the slightly crooked tip of his nose.
I definitely didn’t notice the mahogany brown that’s flecked in with the gray of his iris that gives his eyes such warmth and depth.
“No,” I squeak, conscious of how close my mouth is to his. “I’m fine. I’m fine.”
His eyes drop to my lips for a moment, and then he frowns. “Good.”
He pulls back and straightens me up, his arms dropping away, distance coming between us.
“Tell me more,” I say quickly before he has a chance to change his mind.
He thinks that over and then nods at the buildings. “I will, but only if I can walk you back inside. I’m afraid it’s getting a little chilly out, and you don’t have a coat.”
I want to tell him that I’m always hot, since I’m always wearing so many layers, but I just nod, and we walk away from the shore.
“Not to mention that lake makes me feel uncomfortable sometimes,” he adds.
I glance at it over my shoulder, at the darkness. I have to agree with him.
“The energy is palpable.”
“Strange energy,” I say, nodding.
“Too fitting for a ghost story,” he says.
“So what happened?” I prod, our feet on the gravel path again. “You saw the body. Was it a woman? A man?”
“A woman in a nightgown. Always crawling around the corner.” He makes a face at that, and I suppress another shudder.
“And yet I could never catch up with her. Finally, I saw her go inside my room, but when I went in after her, she was gone. And the blood, which had been very real on the floor, was all gone. The only tangible thing that was left behind was a row of lit candles on my windowsill and a dead snake on my desk, stabbed with sewing needles. Someone had written Welcome to Sleepy Hollow. May you never leave in blood.”
“My goodness,” I say through a gasp. “That’s…that’s…”
“Cruel? Horrifying? Diabolical?” he provides. “I thought so too. But when I brought it up with Sister Sophie, she passed it off as a prank. Some students are illusionists, especially second-years, and it’s not uncommon to haze the new teachers.”
“But the woman in the hallway,” I point out. “The blood.”
“The blood disappeared,” he says, “so that points to illusion.”
“But you don’t believe that.”
He gives me a curious look. “No. You’re right.
I don’t believe that. Especially as it happened again last night.
I woke up to hear Marie’s voice, her…laugh”—a dark look comes over his eyes—“then I heard the…body. As it went down the hall. But this time, I didn’t want to invite trouble.
I stayed in my room with the door locked and waited for the sound to disappear.
It took a while, sounded like it was going up and down the hallway for hours, but I refused to open the door. Still barely slept after that.”
We stop in front of the building that holds his classroom. “I’m afraid this is where we’ll be parting ways today,” he says with a slight bow.
“You can’t leave me now,” I protest. I reach out and grab the collar of his coat. “I want to know more.”
“And I have papers to grade,” he says, eyeing my hand until I let go of him.
“But I promise if it happens again, I’ll let you know.
” He swallows and looks around the grounds.
“I have to admit it’s nice to be able to tell this to someone who doesn’t dismiss the whole thing.
” His gaze comes back to me, this time with intensity.
“You’re nothing like the rest of your family, are you? ”
“I hope not,” I find myself admitting.
He gives me a knowing smile. “Take care, Kat.”
Then he turns and walks off, and I know there is so much more he’s not telling me.