Jim moved his hands, which were tied in front of him. The rope that bound him was somehow connected to the one that bound his ankles; and somehow this was connected to the rope around his waist. He was hog-tied. He was in the grip of something worse than ropes. He was sure. This was something twisted. These were—no doubt—the real psychopaths of school, the kids who stepped on baby birds and probably were capable of just about anything.
“Don’t struggle. It makes the ropes go tighter. Trust us. It does. Don’t. Don’t struggle. Now, Hook, just relax. The ropes are tied in the Magus knot. It can only get tighter when you move. Stay still. No one is going to hurt you.”
“We’ve seen your file. Got it from Chambers’ files. We know you’re in a spot with this Honor Trial. Here’s what happens with an Honor Trial, when you go before them. All it takes is one person to claim they saw you cheating. One person. You already know that Kelleher may not be that person. But his word carries weight. And another student brought the charge. We can fix things so that you will be in no danger of expulsion.”
“That’s right,” someone said, so close to his ear it was like a buzzing fly.
Why couldn’t he figure out who they were? In his mind he tried to imagine the yearbook photos of the upperclassmen, and he couldn’t match the voices to any of them.
“Let me tell you something about your mother that you don’t even know. Do you know how much she has to survive on each month? We know.”
You couldn’t know that! Jim wanted to shout, but the strap over his lips pinched his jaw. Profanity burst within his skull. He wanted to just shut them up. Enough!
“She takes home exactly one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars a month. The rent on the apartment is eight hundred fifty. That leaves her with four hundred dollars a month for food, heat, and telephone, to say nothing of her daily bus fare. Were you aware that when she sends you money—which she does at times—that those weeks she often goes without some meals to make sure you have the odd twenty-dollar bill? She literally goes without food. We know. We check into this kind of stuff when we’re considering someone as an initiate. We’ve gone to Yonkers. We went through the trash to find the bank statements. Yeah. All that stuff. We hear stuff sometimes. On the phone, through friends, maybe the woman who works near her might’ve said something to someone about how she goes without food on days when she sends money to her brat son who never calls her enough but needs money all the time. Sure, she doesn’t tell you, Hook, because then you wouldn’t take it, right ? Because despite the fact that you’re up for an honor violation, you actually have honor, don’t you? You wouldn’t dare take that money if you thought she wasn’t eating. You believe her when she tells you there’s plenty. Truth is, when your father died, he left nothing. There were no savings. He didn’t make all that much for Bronxville—maybe two hundred thousand a year. He was waiting for his inheritance to be really rich, but you know that grandmother of yours believes in picking and choosing what to do with her millions. She wasn’t about to give it to the son who had married below his station. The house and lifestyle in Bronxville sucked up his money, and then Stephen’s tuition and board took the rest. Your grandmother is rich, but she won’t help your mother. She hates your mother. You know that, too. Face it, Hook, you pretend you’re as well off as anyone here, but truth is, you’re a poor boy who’s just getting by.”
“We know all this because we make it our business to know everything about the students here.”
“Yes, that’s right, Hook. We do.” “Your grandmother hates your mother with a burning passion. She blames your mother for the death of your father and one of her grandsons. We know this isn’t true. We know all of this.” “All about you,” said one of the boys in the dark.
“Quiet,” someone whispered.
That voice was too familiar. He had heard it many times. The voice that whispered, “Quiet.” Who was it? Damn, think. Think of everyone. Think of anyone. Bilge? Shrike? Fricker? French? Hardass? Bleeder? Mojo?
“Your grandmother is a very wealthy woman. She could make your mother’s and your life very easy if she wanted to, but she’s a selfish, embittered old bitch, and she wants to punish your mother for having taken her son from her. She thinks your mother married for money. So she sends along a pittance—a few hundred dollars a month—to make sure you can wear those button-down shirts and Dockers and have the occasional new down vest. She also ensured that you would have a scholarship here. It isn’t hard to pull those kinds of strings in this sort of institution.”
“The night your brother died.”
“And your father,” someone corrected, his voice getting closer. “That night.”
“That night was the beginning of your life, only you probably don’t believe it. If you had fallen into the clutches of your grandmother the way your father and Stephen had, you probably would be dead, too. Or you would be turning into the kind of man this institution breeds. We are not about that.”
“No. We are about beating this system. We are about rising above it. We are about making it work for each of us rather than working for it.”
“We are here to make sure the school doesn’t eat you alive, Hook. Your grandmother would be happy if you never graduated from Harrow. Your grandmother wants to watch you and your mother suffer.”
“We can make sure that you do not get kicked out of Harrow tomorrow at the honor trial. We can make sure that you are exonerated of this grievous and awful charge. The only people who get caught for cheating, Hook, are those that someone is out to get. What you must discover is: Who is out to get you? And why? That is your task. When you have discovered that, then we will bring whatever prejudice we have to bear upon that individual in retribution for this crime. And you, Hook, will understand a meaning of brotherhood which you have not felt since the last day you saw your own brother.”
“We are your family here at Harrow. And when you move beyond Harrow, we will still be your family.”
“We have brothers from our tribe who have gone on to university and the world outside, but they have always remained in touch. A network, if you will.”
“They help us. They help each other. They investigate for us, and we for them. This moment of your midterm exam is fortuitous. We knew
you would be in a situation to require our services; and we were hoping that someone as resourceful and intelligent as yourself would be in a position to want to contribute to our group.”
“Our club.”
“Our fraternity.”
“Our society.”
“I can almost hear the wheels turning in your head as you lie there, Hook. You are thinking how to undo the ropes. Impossible, I assure you. You are wondering who you will tell when you are finally released. Also impossible, as you will soon discover. You may in fact be trying to figure out a suitable revenge for the students who learned everything about your background and family, who have even learned things—regarding taxes and estates and inheritances— that you do not yet know, and you may never know, about your family. But, as the school motto says, just wait for what will come.”
“Is it not true that your father graduated from Harrow in 1975? Is it not also true that your brother, Stephen, was meant to graduate in the spring of 1995? Have you heard the rumors about what your father and brother were doing the night of their deaths in the presumed accident?”
Jim thought he heard someone laugh, but it might’ve been the other noise—the sound he hadn’t noticed at first. It was a fan, whirring. To block out any noise outside whatever room they were in. Whatever dark room this was. They had a fan—no, two electric fans going. Where were they? What room in Harrow could this be? It couldn’t be a classroom. An office? Angstrom’s office? No. He felt his mind like wild monkeys in a jungle screaming at him to get out, to breathe, to somehow survive this and gain superhuman strength, to break free from whatever held him. But the more he struggled, the tighter the ropes became.
Where the hell had they taken him? Was this the library?
Had they somehow gotten some keys to—
Yes, that had to be it!
Old Man Chambers had been going up and down the hall talking about his keys. Someone had stolen them. Stolen them and hadn’t given them back.
That’s what had happened. These students had stolen the keys and had some room. Chambers’ office?
“We will tell you the rumors. They are not pleasant. It was said that your father and brother had gone to some whore in the city. After that they had spent the evening celebrating, drinking at a watering hole called the Blue Glass. Your father, it was reported, drank several martinis, and your brother had shots of whiskey. There is more about the Blue Glass and its customers. Some day we may let you see the report.”
“Once you’ve reached level three.”
“A word to the wise, Hook: if you find something that seems unusual, keep it to yourself. It’s from us. A small gift.”
“Yes. Level three. The Blue Glass is not the sort of place where Harrow graduates are usually found, but something had happened with your brother that year. He was troubled over something. He had stolen something from us. Yes, from us. He knew about us, and he purposefully stole this item. And your father—well, although you couldn’t have known this, had a woman in the city.”
“Ivy Martin,” a deep voice said. Christ, they all sounded alike. “Not a suitable companion, but the kind your father generally enjoyed. She ran a certain business near the meat-packing district of the city, and it was to that place that your brother Stephen and your father went next.”
“Let’s take a second so it can sink in. It’s a lot for him to process.”
Jim tried not to conjure up the images their words brought into his mind. He tried not to see his father making love to some woman in a room made of blue glass. For some reason, he imagined blue glass beads hanging in a doorway, and a woman naked from the waist up, standing there, a bottle in her hand. He tried not to see his brother’s leering, drunken face, as he drew the snow-white panties off a woman named Ivy Martin whose face was devoid of features.
He felt the wetness of tears in his eyes.
“All right. Look, Hook. You probably do not believe any of this. All we ask is that you allow that this may be rumor, or may be a distortion of facts that were quite different than what was said and reported from that winter night. You see, we do know that Ivy Martin knows more about this. We know this for a fact.”
“Why are we telling you all this, Hook? Well, there’s a good reason. Right now, you’re at level one. This is the level of Trust. We need to know that we can trust you. And you need to know that you can trust us. So your first assignment, to be completed within the three days between now and your Honor Trial, is to find Ivy Martin and confront her. And bring back what she now possesses that your brother stole from us.”
Jim wanted to protest: The Honor Trial is tomorrow! I don’t have three days! What the hell did Stephen steal? He wouldn’t steal anything, I know he wouldn’t! He never stole, he never liked even borrowing things from people. Was Stephen part of this bullshit? What the hell’s happening? Someone get me out of here!
“Confrontation is the first rule.”
“Yes, face everything. It’s one of our mottos.”
“It’s very much who we are. There are other issues, too. You’ll come to know each one leading up to your initiation.”
“We are the ones who make things work in the fucked-up world of Harrow.”
“We are the ones who do what needs to be done behind the scenes.”
“We stand up for each other and for all of us together.”
“We follow a creed. It’s a creed you’ll learn when you’re one of us.”
“Our fire will be part of your light.”
“We are one hand. A hand needs all its fingers.”
“As a body needs all its organs.”
“As a mind needs all its understanding.”
“As a soul hungers for understanding of the world behind the one we see.”
“We survive in absolute secrecy. Mention one thing about us, to anyone, and you will live to regret it. We are all around you. You will not know who we are.”
“We are not above the law,” someone whispered. “We are the law.”
Then someone’s smelly hand came over his nose, and he struggled against it, but the ropes around him tightened. He couldn’t breathe through his mouth. He felt a smack at the back of his head.
Then another.
And another.
They were going to beat him up.
Maybe they were going to kill him.
No!
He struggled against the blows, and then felt a kick in his ribs.
Somebody help me! Christ, somebody help me! Somebody! Anybody!
Then, Jim lost consciousness.
Chapter Thirteen
Something’s coming through.
How you gonna make your big bro proud?
Something’s coming through.
You’re in a room, Jim, a room in your mind, and you’re safe here, even though you can hear them scratching at the door. You’re safe here. There are things out there that want to get in where you are, but you’re not going to let ‘em in, are you? You’re going to stay in that room and you ‘re going to hear some screams and you ‘re going to hear that scratching at the door, but you’re not going to let ‘em in, because this is your place, your hideout.
This may even be your own personal asylum, Jim, with pads on the watts, and warm fuzzies to keep you comfortable, but there’s always something there, always something scratching at the door.
Don’t see what you don’t want to see, Jim, you don’t have to see what’s coming through.
But it’s coming for you anyway.
And Jim, it wants to grind your bones to make its bread.
PART TWO
PUNISHMENT
Chapter Fourteen
Jim Hook awoke in the graveyard out among the woods, lying between a headstone and foot-stone.
He was feeling poorly—that was the only way he could describe what had seeped into his blood and bones since the morning. It wasn’t precisely rage, it wasn’t just anger, it may have been a lot of hurt, but he had an overall sense that the world was hostile, and nothing that had happened that day had improved on that.
He glanced around, paranoid now that he’d be surrounded by cloaked figures or jeering upperclassmen or pretty much anything, now that he’d been in that dark room with those Invisibles, as he’d come to think of them.
Panic accompanied paranoia; then a weird calm overcame him for a brief second or two. A calm like clear air within his mind, sweeping out all the dust and confusion.
This kind of shit doesn’t really happen. There are no secret societies at Harrow Academy. Not like this one. Not one that could beat you up and throw you in a room of darkness and tell you things about your family that you couldn’t even find out yourself. Maybe it’s me going nuts. He had gone nuts once before. It had been brief, but after his brother and father had died, he’d begun seeing things—nothing much—just things that weren’t there. Then he’d begun shouting uncontrollably. Then, in a progression which had been bizarre to even his eleven-year-old mind, he’d started to wet himself pretty much anywhere, and sometimes he’d cuss out loud in the most inappropriate ways.
His mom had joked that she’d have to call an exorcist, but it was simply to a child psychiatrist he’d gone—and found out nothing. The doc had attributed it to the trauma of losing his dad and Stephen, but before he dismissed the problem completely, he had taken Jim aside and held tight to his arm. “Now, you don’t want to end up in some padded room somewhere, do you, James?”
Of course not, you quack. He wished he could go back in time and say it. Instead he had just shaken his head a little, feeling as if it weren’t a psychiatrist with him but God Himself.
“All you have to do is realize something, James,” the doc said, so quietly it felt like punishment. “And that is this: Your brother and
your father are dead. You loved them. They’re gone. You can’t bring them back. And you can’t be angry at your mother over this. She didn’t do it. Sometimes, terrible things happen, James. Sometimes, you just have to hold in the bad words and the urine and the way you feel. That’s all that’s happening to you. You’re not experiencing anything that others won’t experience in their lifetimes. So tell yourself that it’s over. You need to say goodbye to the hurt and start healing. It’s just life.”
It was the biggest piece of bullshit he had ever heard up until that point, but, in fact, the peeing in his pants had stopped, and he had no great desire to cuss out loud—at least not until he’d entered high school.
So, you’re not nuts, James, he told himself as he lay feeling the stinging pain in his ribs where someone had hit him too hard.
It’s just fugged-up life, as Michael-the-Good would tell you. Fugging clocksuckin’ motherfriggin’ life.
And life hurts like a bitch.
Head pounding; eyes smarting from something; his lungs knocking back big bushels of air as if someone had been trying to smother him.
Maybe the bastards had. Maybe they left him for dead. Maybe they were still gonna kill him. He thought just about fifty things in the space of a minute or two, and then sat up.
Bald Hill was just up along the path; he could see the lights of the towers of school beyond the scraggly trees. For a brief disoriented moment, he was pretty sure that maybe he’d imagined all the crap with the other students in the dark. But his sides hurt enough, and as the seconds passed, he knew that what had just happened was real.
A clean, frosty breeze made him shiver, and the fallen leaves scuttled around the graves. He knew the area well, as he’d often wandered there to study on a bright and clear afternoon; or had gone out with Fricker and Tippy, who tended to jones for cigarettes just after supper. Sometimes the seniors dragged freshmen out in the dark of the moon and scared the living shit out of them with tales of Harrow terror and then kicked their butts all the way back to their rooms.
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