Harrow: Three Novels (Nightmare House, Mischief, The Infinite)

by Douglas Clegg

  After all, he wasn’t going to be getting any sleep.

  The night was shot.

  He tended toward sound sleep if he dropped off before eleven, but had found over the years that if he stayed awake much after midnight, he would be up most of the night.

  Headmasters rarely did well on a few hours’ sleep a night. But sometimes, he just had to face a cold Monday morning without his usual eight hours. He booted up his computer, played a game of hearts and three of solitaire, and then decided to go online and see if there was any good porn to be had.

  It wasn’t an obsession. But since Daisy (yes, Daisy, as insane as it had seemed to date a woman named Daisy at all) had taken off—no, she had leaped from him like he was a car about to crash—two years earlier, he had found that he didn’t want to get involved in the flesh again. At least not for a while. But the occasional fantasy via modem was not a bad way to pass the hours of loneliness.

  He tried some of his favorite sites, but watching other men fondle women, all of them strangers to him, was beginning to seem silly. You’re not eighteen. You’re too old for this kind of game. Good Christ, Jay. You’ve confiscated this kind of stuff from the students at school. It’s like you’re back in Harrow as a kid rather than running the place. Get on with your pathetic existence.

  He clicked his mouse over to check his email.

  His sister had written from Boston, but with no news to speak of other than some bitterness over the whole inheritance issue, which pissed him off to the point that he had to delete the note in midsentence rather than read the whole thing; and his old friend Tom had dropped him a joke from his law practice email address; and then there was some spam about “Great Opportunities in Home Business,” and “Sexy Girls Go All Night Long,” which he promptly deleted, unread. Then, an email with his own return address, with the subject: TRIMALCHIO I’M BACK.

  Confused, assuming this was some kind of spam, he opened the note.

  For a second, his screen went black, and then came up again.

  The letter read:

  Sport,

  After twenty years, you haven’t changed.

  Neither have I.

  Yes, it’s me, you knew I’d come back again to check up on you. That’s why you’ve remained behind, isn’t it? Never sure just when I’d be making my reappearance, but you knew somehow I would. Didn’t you? And you’ll never guess exactly what brought me back, but it won’t matter.

  What matters is, I want to see you again. Yes, even after it all, I want to see you where you know you’ll find me. Where you’ve always been able to find me, if only you would open the door and step inside.

  The crazy part about this, Sport, is that you really want to see me, too, don’t you? You’ve always wanted to, only you can’t face it. Well, face it, Sport, we’re like glue, and you’ve never really gone that far from me, have you? I’ve always been here, waiting.

  See you soon.

  All my best,

  The Jackal

  Trimalchio went over to the small bar near his TV set and poured some Johnny Walker Red into a glass, went to the freezer to add some ice cubes, and took his drink back to the computer.

  He sat down, puffed some more on his pipe, tried to imagine what it all meant, and drank more than a sip from the glass. The whiskey was warm and smooth. He glanced out the window, at his Ford Explorer, and the flashing yellow streetlight down the block; at the wavering silence of the street.

  Then he looked back at the computer screen.

  He read the email a few times, trying to figure out who could play this kind of trick—or who would play it—when he realized that the original email address was not his personal one, but was sent by his work email. It would have to be a student playing a prank.

  Probably from the library computers, or from one of their own laptops.

  That was it.

  Some student had hacked his way into a teacher’s email address and was using it.

  Trimalchio resolved to get to the bottom of it the following day.

  But still, something within the note had touched him, and it took all of his strength not to remember that night, many years before, when he had watched his best friend die right before his eyes.

  Chapter Six

  At Harrow, the Trenches had once been the groundskeeper’s cottage, and still bore the original caretaker’s name: Palliser, carved into the white stone at its entrance.

  Hardly a cottage, it was three times as big as the first house Jim had lived in; it housed thirty-five students on four different floors, in small, Spartan rooms, two beds apiece, one sink, one mirror (often cracked), one closet, and one slim window. The housemaster was Mr. Crowe, first floor middle—an extended apartment that even had its own can. Crowe was the most irresponsible housemaster of them all—when he wasn’t off with his fiancée in some motel along the roadside, he was sacked out by ten o’clock at night with a combination of martinis and sleeping pills, so the Trenches and its orderliness, or lack thereof, was pretty much up to the resident advisers.

  Lights Out started at ten and went till eleven, but it was ignored whenever exams were in the air; and as long as no one raised a ruckus, the various housemasters and the two house mothers who lived on campus let a lot go on if no one got into trouble.

  But still, it was 2 a.m.

  This might mean twenty demerits, which might mean running around the track twenty times and clearing the rocks and pebbles from the soccer field and having mandatory detention on Saturday and Sunday mornings and no weekend pass until Christmas.

  It could be that bad.

  Jim was one of six students in the basement dorms.

  The first floor held the two resident advisers’ rooms—they were seniors named Harkness and Becker, although the boys in the Trenches called them Hardass and Bleeder; in addition, four juniors shared rooms on the main floor.

  Then, the second and third stories held the broom closet rooms for the remaining twenty-two students. The floors were creaky, the only entrances were on the main floor, and it was hard to get through the doors or windows without making enough noise to alert Hardass and Bleeder.

  Jim looked at the window into the bathroom, but the last time he’d snuck back in that way, he’d ended up surprising Clifton, who was on the can, and who cried out just as Jim had slipped down on the tile floor, narrowly escaping a concussion.

  This time, it was either the front door or the back door.

  Hardass lived near the front; Bleeder near the back. Hardass’s light was out; Bleeder’s still burned.

  Jim walked around the house and peered into Bleeder’s open window. The blinds were only partially shut, torn and ragged near the bottom, and he got a glimpse of Bleeder.

  Bleeder was gawky and buck-toothed, but he stank of money and this naturally helped him find some acceptance among the more opportunistic boys. He was not the smartest of seniors, nor was he popular in the least, but he had the most extensive collection of porn in the entire school, and there he was, lifting up a picture of an orgy—some tangle of flesh that Jim could not quite make out—and reaching into his underwear with his free hand. Jim turned away from the window, trying to not to picture the rest of this scenario.

  All right, he thought. Getting past Bleeder’s room will be simple.

  It was anything but simple, because as soon as Jim turned the knob on the back door, and had pulled it wide enough to slip in, he saw Hardass in his big white nightshirt and checkered boxers coming out of the bathroom, flicking lights up as he went. Hardass, chubby and freckled and eternally scowling because he was having trouble getting through his last year at the ‘Row, glanced down the narrow hall at the open door.

  Jim froze in the doorway. Hardass lumbered toward him, the floorboards groaning, and Jim nearly wanted to laugh because Hardass had bunny slippers on his feet, but Hardass’s scowl grew into a full-fledged pissed-offedness. “What the hell are you doing, Hook?” His voice like curdled milk in the throat of a newborn calf.

&n
bsp; Jim caught his breath for a second. Think. Think. It wouldn’t be enough to just be wandering on campus. Curfew was at ten, sometimes it could be stretched to eleven, but after one a.m. it was damn suspect.

  “I needed to take a leak,” Jim volunteered. “You were in the bathroom. So I just went out and, you know . . .”

  “Oh, hell yeah,” Hardass said. “And what’s

  wrong with the one in your quarters?”

  “Meloni was in it.”

  “Like I believe you. There’s second and third floor, too. Three urinals on second. What, was everyone taking a crap at the precise moment your bladder was exploding? A little bird told me you were off with some Cat-House girl tonight. Maybe you were out with her and maybe you’re just sneaking in.”

  “I guess you’ll believe what you want to believe.”

  “Two demerits, Hook. Toilet duty for two weeks or Senior slave for one month. Your choice.”

  Jim shook his head. At Harrow, you accepted the small punishments; he had seen one boy go against the system, and that kid had ended up getting booted. This wasn’t an option for Jim. “I guess toilets are it.”

  “Good. I want them sparkling. Use your toothbrush if you have to,” Hardass said, and then grinned. He looked like a jack-o’-lantern.

  I’ll use your toothbrush to get the toilets shiny, Jim wanted to say, but was content to think it, and instead nodded to Hardass, and told him that of course he was right and it wouldn’t happen again.

  “It’s not good to lie,” Hardass added, like a kick in the butt. “Lying fucks you over. I bet that brother of yours never lied.”

  Jim entered his room like a prisoner heading for death row. The week had already begun in the shitter and was moving swiftly toward the sewer, and it was only just the dark side of Monday morning.

  Jim glanced at Mojo Meloni, hunched over his laptop on his bed, books and papers spread around.

  Mojo was a train wreck of a preppie—his khakis were nearly threadbare because he only ever wore one pair over and over again. His Izod shirts, passed down from his father’s golfing days, were two sizes too big for him. Like Jim, he was on scholarship, but was naturally book-smart and wise in the ways of handling Harrow in a manner that Jim knew he himself would never be. “Glad you’re up. Mojo, you got notes from Civ?”

  “Hell no. Kelleher spouts stupid crap. I use this,” Mojo said, tapping away at his laptop’s keyboard. The laptop was an overnight checkout from the library, one of twenty that could be reserved by students.

  Mojo always kept the laptop checked out over the return date, knowing that the librarian wouldn’t fine him because she believed his family was poverty-stricken, when in fact Mojo’s dad probably could’ve paid for tuition and board, only—in Mojo’s words—”My dad knows how to work the system. You gotta know how to work the system, Jimmy Jammy, you gotta work that mother.”

  His hair was wild all over his scalp, a nest of viperous blond straw. Thin headphones thrust beside his ears with the tinny sound of Garbage playing. “If it weren’t for AOL, I’d be up the frig-gin’ creek. I found seven sources for the Crusades.”

  “Print it out for me?”

  “Printer crapped out. You want, I can bookmark it.”

  “Okay. It help much?”

  Mojo let out a fierce guffaw that was half sneeze and half laugh. “Let me put it this way: I knew squat about the Byzantines and the whole damn Saladin business. And then I logged on and started a Yahoo search and pretty soon, voila. But man, it’s nearly 2 a.m. You are screwed. How’d you get past the guards?”

  “Bleeder was wanking and Hardass got me. I got crapper duty for a while.”

  “Hardass sucks.” Mojo nodded. “He had that kid from third, you know, the one with the corkscrew nose, he had him practically licking out the toilet. It was majorly disgusting. Undignified. Christ. All this money they all spend to go to boot camp.” Then he put his headphones back on and continued tip-tapping on the keys.

  Jim sat down on his bed and told himself he was going to just close his eyes for a second. And he did. He sat back against his two pillows, closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the Crusades, but nothing came to him. He thought of a sword, and then a cross and crescent, and then the sack of Jerusalem. But no images came.

  Instead, he thought of Lark and the way she had kissed him, and he imagined himself drawing her sweater over her head, and pretty soon, something within himself told him to open his eyes or he was going to flunk the Western Civ midterm; but then, there was Lark saying, “Oh, Jim, you don’t need to study. You’re so smart. You’re my smart, wonderful studly boyfriend,” and then she wasn’t Lark at all but some tarted-up vixen in thigh-high boots and laced red bodice, and her hair had gone completely honey-blond, and pretty soon it went from being a dream to a wet dream. But somewhere in the depths of the dream, he was in the old house in Bronxville, and he was looking up at the attic door. Someone was knocking on the other side of the door.

  Someone was scraping at it.

  It was as if a wild animal had gotten trapped in the attic.

  Scratching at the door.

  The scratches increased in frequency.

  Coming through.

  He was a boy of eleven again. It was the night his brother and father had died, and he stood

  before the attic door, and something terrible was about to break out from behind it.

  The next thing he knew, Mojo was shaking him awake, his eyes stung, his tongue felt like parchment, his breath stank, his brain hurt from the hint of sunlight that came through the window, and he was hoping that this new moment was the dream.

  “Hey bud,” Mojo said. “You got a class in twenty minutes. I think you might want to shower, fart-face.”

  Fifteen was an age of tyrants and victims, the hormonally challenged and the hormonally advanced.

  Somewhere, in between it all, Jim found himself in a hellish situation. It didn’t help that his ties seemed to have disappeared in the night, that his shirt, starched as of Saturday, was lying, wrinkled, on the closet floor, and that something that looked dangerously like dog crap was on the heel of his shoes.

  But they were omens for him, in some strange way.

  Omens of the worst day to come.

  Chapter Seven

  Some losers routinely got up at 5 a.m. to jog three miles around town and then shower at the field house to get to their desks and delve into their work so that they’d be fresh and brilliant for the young minds as they poured into the classrooms, but Gert McTeague was having none of it.

  She always got up just ten minutes before she was due in the headmaster’s office—at eight a.m.—and sometimes she managed to shower and do her hair in that short period of time, sometimes she didn’t, but if anyone complained, she would deck them with a glare that was famous at Harrow Academy, and had been since she’d worked under Old Man Chambers back in the 1960s, her first years at the school as Upper School Secretary.

  Gert sometimes stank of night sweat and whatever garlic-laden meat she’d been mixing with her beer, but what she lacked in hygiene she made up for in warmth—at least, according to her—and when she arrived at the Main Office at eight that morning, she was surprised to see that Trimalchio had not beat her to it. She unlocked the office door and switched on the lights.

  But something was not quite right. Sure, everything was in place, she’d later tell her friend Sally, who worked in the supply storeroom; sure, the front area looked as neat as it had the day before; the switchboard, old-fashioned dinosaur that it was, hadn’t been gummed up with chewing gum, as the class of 76 had done one spring day; and nothing seemed to be missing from her desk. But something was off. Finally, she noticed what it was: Someone had taken all the plaques and framed photographs off the wall and had switched their positions. The picture of the school was where the photo of the headmaster should have been; the photo of Old Man Chambers was now in the place where the original sketch of Harrow Academy had been.

  “It wasn’t anyth
ing worth losing sanity over,” she told Sally on her third cigarette break of the morning, “but why would any of these kids take the time to do something as ridiculous as that? Ridiculous.”

  “Because they’re like that,” Sally said, sucking back on a menthol stick. “They’re all a bunch of sociopaths, you ask me.”

  In the boiler room, the janitor, a man of fifty-seven named Seth Oaks, who had nearly been fired seven years running, looked at what was painted on the wall near the furnace. He was thinking of reporting it, but was sure that he’d just get threatened again, merely because he sometimes drank too much on the job—as if it were anyone’s business.

  The words were, even to his mind, obscene, and he worked half the morning scrubbing them away so that no one would ever see them.

  Joey Cippola was always the first kid in first period Latin III, and when he got into class that morning, he recognized the words written on the blackboard. At first, he thought it was going to be the lesson, but as he translated the words as best he could, it bothered him more than he thought something so simple-minded ever could.

  The words translated to:

  BE HE ALIVE OR BE HE DEAD.

  Mr. Potts and Mrs. Custer were rumored to be having an affair, although no one could have ever matched a more unlikely pair.

  There was a certain rat-like quality to both of them, and in some ways they looked as if they’d come from the same gene pool—they were on the short side, and Mr. Potts was a bit hunched over, paunchy, while Mrs. Custer was broad-shouldered, straight-backed, and husky but not soft. Yet it was their eyes, their round brown eyes, and the slightly pugged noses they both possessed; and perhaps something in the way Custer walked that shared the same rhythm with Potts’s wobbling march. Although they had first names—William and Adele—they called each other Potts and Custer and would not even allow contemporaries to call them by anything else.