Chapter 18 Raven
Raven
It may be, of course, above all, that what suddenly broke into this gives the previous time a charm of stillness—that hush in which something gathers or crouches. The change was actually like the spring of a beast.
—Henry James, The Turn of the Screw
I’m walking to work, Aspen at my side, when the ground begins to shake.
“What’s that?” he asks, his brows furrowed. He places a hand on my elbow, protective as always. I lean into his support.
“Don’t know.” I stare at the trembling cobblestones beneath my feet and know that something is wrong. An earthquake? It’s unusual, especially for Vermont.
In the distance, sirens blare.
Screams cut through the air. “Arches is collapsing!”
Aspen and I turn around to look at the tower, which is still standing, but the ground all around us is rumbling, shaking.
And then it happens.
The upper floors crumble like dry sand, brick by brick, everything reduced to dust. Layer by layer, foot by foot, it falls.
Arches’ finials, columns, spires, tracery, all of it surrenders to the mercy of gravity.
The tower crashes downward into a great plume of dust and debris, blocking out the sky with a gray haze that spreads quickly from the site.
A wall of dust rushes over the pavement like liquid smoke.
The cloud crashes into us. I barely have time to cover my face as it buries me from head to toe, caking my skin in a second layer of silt so fine it leaches into my pores. The rumbling stops, but my ears are still ringing.
When the dust subsides, we get a view of the destruction. The tower is mostly gone. Where the upper floors once stood there is now a hole in the sky. A gap. A missing limb. All that’s left is the jagged lower half, jutting out of the ground like a broken sword.
“Oh my God,” Aspen whispers in shock. All I can do is stare at it as, all around me, people are panicking, crying.
Then it hits me.
Arches. Atticus.
He was supposed to be at Arches early this morning, and a thick wad of panic lodges itself in my throat. No! He can’t have been in the tower! He had to have gotten out! I have to see him, I have to be with him. I have to know if he’s okay.
Sirens wail. Red and blue lights flash.
Police. Fire truck. Or an ambulance.
“Atticus!” I break into a run toward the tower.
“What are you doing?” Aspen yells, trying to pull me back.
“My friend was in there!”
I fight my way past police cruisers and fire trucks that crowd the narrow street in front of the rubble and stone that’s all that remains of Arches. Where’s Atticus? My mind is racing. Where is my friend? Is he dead? Alive?
I see his supervisor, Professor White, stumbling through the crowd, but no Atticus.
Police push the bystanders away, telling people not to look, but it’s too late. I catch sight of it, and shock grips my insides like an icy claw.
“Is that…a hand?” Aspen asks.
It’s a human hand underneath a pile of stones.
“Is it a student?” a girl in a blue sweater asks.
Oh God, please let it be a student and not Atticus. My thoughts are a jumbled mess, a buzz of bees, growing angrier and more panicked by the second. Why don’t our stupid phones work in this place?! I can’t call Atticus. I can’t call Dorian.
“What were they doing in the tower anyway?” another person asks. I don’t know who. The voices are untethered, disembodied.
To the side, a student, one I’ve seen dozens of times at the library, is talking to the police. His face is swollen with tears as he says, “We were supposed to meet here at midnight, to do the freshman trial, but I fell asleep…” He bursts into more tears, unable to finish his sentence.
A group of students is already talking. “One of the freshmen, they’re saying.”
“The trial to join St. Ad’s? Trying to fly?”
“Yeah.”
Aspen holds me tight, but I still feel like I’m floating.
“Aspen,” I say. I’m dreaming. I have to be.
“I have to do something,” he says. “Stay here.” He lets me go as he navigates to a policeman.
I can’t think, I can’t move. I’m transfixed by the sight of the limp hand, a glimmer of something red and shining dripping from a fingertip.
Police move onlookers out of the way, to clear the area for the fire trucks.
People in yellow coats barrel past me, telling everyone to vacate.
I don’t move. I can only watch as the firemen retrieve the body; the crowd whispers, a quiet murmur rising up, the bystanders wondering just who it could be.
One of the firemen has ahold of the body and makes his way out of the rubble.
Don’t let it be Atticus.
Don’t let it be Atticus.
It’s not.
Because Atticus is walking out of the fog and the smoke, holding a book. “Raven!” he cries, and we fall into each other’s arms. He’s alive. He’s alive. He’s covered in dust from head to toe, and he looks like he just climbed out of hell, but he’s alive.
We hold on to each other as the fireman carrying the body walks closer to us. Atticus and I both turn to look and catch a glimpse of the figure’s face.
“Pippa,” I say.
Time slows down, filtered through fractured moments. Her blond hair is matted with blood. Her eyes are clouded over, sightlessly staring. Her arms hang limp in the fireman’s hold. Someone screams. No, I’m the one screaming.
She’s dead. She’s actually dead. This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.
Atticus holds me. “Shhhh,” he says. “Shhhh.”
The fireman lays Pippa’s body down on the stairs, where paramedics draw a sheet over her. The police officers try to make the crowd disperse, but none of us move. “There’s nothing we can do.”
Without thinking, I yell, “You can’t just leave her there! You have to help her!”
My words make no sense. I know that, and Atticus keeps trying to soothe me. Taking me by the arm, he leads me away from the body, patting me on the back, doing his best to console me.
People run, both to and from the scene. There’s shouting. And crying.
“What was she doing at the tower?” a student asks.
The police won’t say, but rumor has it that it was part of a traditional hazing ritual to join St. Adolphus Hall.
“You knew her?” Atticus asks quietly.
I nod. I didn’t like Pippa. She wasn’t a friend, but she was someone I knew, a face I saw each day, and now she’s dead.
“You saw, right?” he asks.
I nod again.
I saw.
There were claw marks on her chest. She was mauled. Ripped apart, as if by an animal. It doesn’t make sense. Everyone thought she was crushed by the building. But that’s not what happened.
She was dead before it fell.