CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE SEPULCHRAL WHISPERS brEWED AROUND Elliott as he returned to his dormitory. His breath was a white vapor, the tip of his nose frozen; he removed his herringbone tweed gloves on the broad steps that led to the red-bricked, white-columned Winterthur Residence Hall.
“It was horrific.”
“What the hell happened?”
“Blood everywhere. His entire shirt went crimson, like in Carrie.”
Elliott’s ears pricked, his heart jackhammered in his chest. Did something happen?
He jogged up the stairs. There were dozens of students crammed around James’s dormitory.
He could hardly step foot into Winterthur Hall as the freshmen craned their necks in crowds, the sophomores gaped over their friends’ shoulders in packs, the juniors pressed forward in herds, and masses of seniors led a path to the last door on the right.
Elliott shouldered through as many people as he could, but their leather satchels snagged his shirt buttons, their textbooks scraped his tie, their blockade precluded his forward momentum through the grain of onlookers.
His mind was a static roar of fear. Did Lucien find James? Was Elliott too late?
“Bloodstains are still on the tables, I heard.”
“Raedwine was closed for the entire night…”
Elliott’s heart stopped outside of James’s dorm’s crowded entry.
There were baskets of farewell cards, vigil candles, rosary beads, and Holy Bible passages.
Elliott could hardly step forward as heaps of homemade pies, oven-broiled lambs, pot roasts, mashed potatoes, green bean casseroles, and cartons of spiced eggnog were in every direction.
Like a burial.
Every sacrifice season, the Banebury locals rallied to bake funeral meals, send ripe fruits, and harvest baskets of fresh vegetables for the parents, the grandparents, and the victims. The locals’ gifts were mainly to discourage the student from running away, leveraging the guilt of wasting produce in times of scarcity for the working class.
However, these gifts were also to help replenish what the parent might lose in their child’s labor, even if it was one less child to feed, it was one less income when the labor force turned elderly, too aged to care for themselves without a son or daughter to render assistance.
Each year, the victims’ parents were given months worth of the wake meals, they were the first to receive the feast. Further, they were honored at the year’s end ceremony for their sacrifice, encouraged by the provost to make more children to replenish their loss, if they still could.
For nearly the first time in AEscwulf’s history, a student of affluence was expected to be selected as the honorarium to the winter solstice.
James’s mother couldn’t grieve her loss from the grave, which was why he would be another favorite vote. His parents would not miss him. His father hadn’t stepped foot in Banebury in years.
“Sorry for your loss, Elliott,” Heather T?n consoled comfortingly, offering him a mug of her famous hot chocolate. Her eyes were misted. “James was a light. We’ll miss him.”
One of the juniors shook his head. “I can’t imagine what you’re going through. I’d lose my mind if I lost my best friend.”
Isa Herrera murmured softly, “If you ever need the lecture notes after the new year, or someone to talk to, let me know. My condolences for your loss, Elliott.” Isa had baked frosted cookies with Santa Clauses and elves for Elliott. He ignored all of them.
Elliott went to his own room to put on a thicker corduroy jacket to search for James.
He jogged across campus, ankle-deep in fresh snow, his mind careening towards implosion, his breath stark in the December freeze.
The Brattleborough Athletic Facility–the BAF–had a rowing machine on the first floor that was hardly ever used by anyone else except James after the newer facility was erected.
James rowed crew for AEscwulf College, but it was the off-season in December, where he conditioned himself for the spring.
He wasn’t there.
Slowly, Elliott heard the distant locker room shower running, and he headed inside.
Hot steam cascaded down James’s hair. Soapy streams carved down the broad shoulder blades of his back, dripping down the valley of his spine, coursing between his calves.
His eyes were shut as though contemplative in thought.
James was safe. James was alive.
Elliott began unbuttoning his shirt, soaked in perspiration from his jog. “Are you alright?”
There wasn’t an answer. Elliott ignored the sweat trickling down the back of his ear.
His breaths slid down his throat. “Are you alright?”
Elliott’s heart skipped a note in his chest, dying for a moment when another minute went past. The shower head patted the stone ground with hot water.
James couldn’t hear him, his head pressed against the communal shower slate in cerebration.
Elliott cleared his throat for his attention.
Then his heart thrust alive, as always, when James’s golden eyes landed on him and smiled with warmth.
He stared at Elliott’s empty palms. “You didn’t come bearing gifts, Elliott? How horrible of you.”
James slid his gold eyes to the underclassmen’s worn backpack after, where a letter rested on the edge. “Is that for me? I’m not dead yet.”
It’s for Lucien. Elliott’s fingers crushed the paper, tossing it away. “You won’t be dead. Don’t be concerned with that.”
Elliott removed his belt, socks, sweaters, and trousers, leaving it in a heap as his skin thawed with the warm water when he stepped inside the stall beside James.
James’s voice lowered, his tone reflective underneath the spray of steamy water, his mind still heavy in excogitation.
“What happens to everything beautiful on this earth, Elliott? It returns to where it came. When it’s my end, I pray I can gaze up at you for the rest of time. ” I pray I can gaze up at you.
Elliott must’ve heard him wrong. Why would James imagine that he would gaze up at Elliott? Wouldn’t he peer down from the Heavens? Elliott shook his wet waves, it didn’t matter.
“You’ll be fine. Nothing will happen to you.” A puncture of pain hit Elliott’s sternum like an ice pick, and his throat closed. Why were his eyes prickling with tears?
“Everything will happen.” Even James seemed to know his life would be marred on December 22nd. The date that would alter Elliott’s world as he knew it, despite his best efforts. It was a matter of impending fate.
Elliott’s heart rate picked up, like a badger thrashing in a cage with stubborn willpower, refusing to give into despair. He would protect James. At all costs. “We’ll find out on the solstice then.”
“I need you to make a promise to me.” His tone darkened. “If I am dead before the ceremony, and Lucien nominates Finch, you will tell Knox to kill Lucien. Swear to me.”
You will tell Knox to kill Lucien. Swear to me.
Elliott’s hand latched onto the shampoo instead, and he cleansed his hair with a rising scent of apricot, trying not to wring out his strands in bundles of anxiety.
Finch wouldn’t be nominated; their peers weren’t that soulless.
Knox lived in Arkansas now. He drove out of Connecticut, left behind an address, and never returned.
How could Elliott write him to commit murder?
How could he drive over there himself to tell Knox to commit another murder? Everything would be fine.
Why couldn’t any of the Winterthur Hall young men ever remain calm? Why were they being restless and violent?
Elliott, himself, needed to keep calm.
James’s timbre softened beside him, reaching for a towel. “Meet me at the Thornery at midnight, will you promise me that at least?”
Elliott promised. He would meet James anywhere.
James departed the shower, then dressed. He waited for Elliott to step out and get dressed. Then, he held onto Elliott’s wrist. His thumb grazed over the triquetral bone, skimming over the individual joints and musculature as he inspected his palms. “Do you need help with the bandages?”
Elliott hid all the keys in his room. But at night, his sleeping body thought his loose metal screws and bolts in his toolbox were keys.
Elliott shook his head, wrapping his hands before they traversed through wind and snow from the BAF to Winterthur Hall and warmed themselves in Elliott’s room. They were stopped by a few well-wishers and mourners. Elliott’s hands stung from the frigid air, but he ignored it.
He tried to ignore everything.
James kindled the burgundy-bricked fireplace beside Elliott’s bed.
Afterward, at the desk, James devoured the Yule fruit cakes and allspice ginger bread, his expensive merino-wool socks set on a stack of tomes near the kindling fire.
James received a behemoth inheritance from his paternal grandfather.
Even though his father hated him, his grandfather had left him nearly a fifth of everything.
The refraction of flame danced across his features. James had chopped the timber himself, instead of stealing it from Wulfram’s lodge, as he usually did. James’s logs were uneven, crude, splintered, but it worked fine.
To wash down the homemade goods, James drank Heather T?n’s hazelnut hot chocolate from Elliott’s monogrammed ETA mug.
A quarter glass of brandy rested on the desk beside the farewell cards. The fire made his swan-white hair seem licked with chariot embers at the ends, his eyes radiant with contemplation as he rotated the initialized mug through his hands.
The unbearable quiet was killing Elliott.
Typically, the dormitory was filled with laughter, and they were roughhousing by the end of the year, Kitty reading by the snowed windows.
Kitty hadn’t returned any of Elliott’s telephone calls to the foster home.
She was convinced she could get the provost to intervene.