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

by Douglas Clegg

Jim pressed on the door, and felt it give slightly. But it was definitely locked. “We could jimmy it.”

  “Why?” Mojo asked.

  Jim shrugged.

  “I got to ask you something,” said Mojo.

  “Shoot.”

  “What’s going on with you?”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you know what I mean.”

  “I’m not sure. I think I’m losing it.”

  “What else?”

  “You mean, no one told you?” asked Jim.

  “Told me what?”

  “I’m going up for an honor violation.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not supposed to talk about it.”

  “Aw, Hook. Man! That sucks. Want a joint?”

  “Nope.”

  “I got one here.” Mojo patted his pocket.

  “No. Seriously. Thanks.”

  “God,” Mojo said. “Life sucks.” Then, “You ain’t gonna jump, are you?”

  Jim glanced out the open window. “Don’t think so. Not right now anyway. It ain’t a bad idea.” He nearly laughed.

  “Don’t jump, that’s my advice,” Mojo said, as if it were perfectly reasonable advice against a perfectly reasonable decision, and then lit up his joint. “That is totally fucked-up, Hooky. Fuck this school and its fucked-up rules and regs.” Distracted, Mojo began laughing. He pointed at the ceiling. “Freaky, freak. Holy shit, look at that.”

  Jim glanced up, but even with the candlelight, it was hard to see what Mojo was pointing at. He directed the flashlight’s beam to the ceiling of the tower. Chalk drawings of skulls and crossbones and knives and something that was some kind of scraggly circle with lines around it were all over the ceiling. Around the edge of the ceiling, the words:

  DON’T FUCK WITH THE CORPSE.

  Chapter Twenty

  “What the frig is that?” Bilge asked, pointing at the gray matter on Jim’s plate.

  It was 7:30 a.m., and the first bell would sound in ten minutes. The dining hall was packed with students, some of whom milled about the trash cans, where everyone was whining about some midterm in Latin; others were devouring breakfasts at one lunge; and some of the upperclassmen were loading up on Coke and coffee to get a morning buzz going.

  Jim Hook sat at the table across from Bilge and Tippy and Mojo, and wished he had just skipped the morning meal. Wished he had just skipped waking up after four hours’ sleep. Wished a lot of things. “Biscuits and gravy. Maybe some sausage.”

  “It’s shit on a friggin’ shingle,” Bilge said. “It looks like . . . like . . . diarrhea.”

  “Will someone tell Bilgebreath there’s no such word as frig,” Mojo said wearily.

  “Yuck.” Tippy pushed his plate away, and made vomiting noises.

  Nick Costain, a pale blond sophomore who had transferred over from Deer-field—purportedly because of bad grades—scrambled through the dining hall bleating, “Holy crap, has anyone seen Carrington? He has my Bio notes and I need them now. Bloody hell. Bloody bloody hell.” He was nearly in tears, and even some of the younger boys were snickering at him, with his tie all twisted like brambles and his hair a mess of gel and grease. “He’s gonna pay, Carrington’s gonna pay!”

  “Damn it, Bilge, you ruined my eggs,” Kip French said, covering his plate with his paper napkin.

  Jim glanced down at his plate. His stomach was already heaving, and he felt as gray as the crap sitting there, swimming in grease. “Yeah, thanks, Bilge, for the image.” He reached for the dry toast at the center of the table, and drew two slices over to his napkins. He drank the last of his milk, and chewed on the toast as he pushed himself up out of his chair.

  Breakfast was always hectic—the seniors didn’t monitor so much as they broke up morning fights, and Ms. Fidget—real name, Fitzgerald—with her meat arms and avocado hips, sat near the entrance to the dining hall at a small folding table, sucking back coffee like it was air.

  As he got just outside the dining area, feeling as if his tie were on backward, with crumbs of bread on his chin—which he swiped at with his fingers—he saw Miles, standing near the large oriel window that overlooked the soccer field. The kid was looking out the window, and the back of his head looked ragged, mainly because the lightly stained glass had cast an aura around him.

  “Miles,” Jim said, coming up to him. “What’s up, kiddo? Shrike still riding your tail?”

  Miles twisted his neck around to see Jim, but Jim perceived something different for a moment. It was as if someone else were standing there with Miles, not next to Miles, but specifically where Miles stood. Another boy, just about Miles’s height and weight, and most of the other boy was a blur.

  Man, this hangover. I will never drink a drop of liquor again in all my life. Never ever ever ever, Jim promised himself.

  “Hey Hook,” Miles said. “Look at this.” He motioned for him to look out the window.

  Jim went over, and looked out over the arches of the abbey, across the soccer field and the scattered woods beyond. “Hey, Mole,” he said, feeling warm just at the sight of the kid.

  “It’s something you should see,” Miles said. “It’s something nobody would notice until now. Now that you’re here. It’s weird how it happens, huh? It’s like something once gets jogged in your head and then maybe later it crosses with something that happens and it’s like you get struck by lightning, only you never saw the lightning. Look. Really look.”

  “Okay, but where? I can’t see anything.”

  “Right here, look. Something’s coming through,” Miles said, but Jim couldn’t see anything out in the field. Rain had just begun falling a few seconds before, and Jim noticed that the sky was beginning to turn a pasty color. “It’s already started. You brought it here, you’re like a key, and now it’s like you woke something up.”

  Then, what felt like a shiver went through Jim as he stood looking at the day through the yellow-pink of the stained glass window, and it felt as if he’d pressed his hand into some kind of mud, or some dead animal lying by the roadside, or some slick wet warm . . . thing.

  Something’s coming through.

  He had just a moment before scruffed Miles’s hair, but now no one stood next to him at all.

  Miles had not moved from the spot.

  He was simply not there.

  In his place, Jim was positive he could see something that approximated human breath on an icy day. An intense chill overcame him, and his hands became fists—his muscles tightened— against the icy sensation.

  But the worst part was, it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling to him.

  During study hall, Jim passed Trey Fricker a note:

  I think I’m cracking up. I’m seeing things. Skip fourth period. Meet me out by the woods.

  Fricker wrote back:

  Okay. This better be good. The woods where?

  Jim wrote back:

  Near the bone yard.

  Fricker wrote back:

  Why?

  Jim wrote:

  It’s important.

  Jim told him everything. They could see the graveyard from the path. The rain had all but stopped spitting; the brilliant yellows and reds of the leaves that carpeted the woods seemed to brighten as the sun gradually came out from behind the clouds, and Jim told him about the students who had grabbed him, the finger with the ring, and Miles, who had faded into the stained glass window.

  “Miles who?” Fricker asked.

  “The kid from seventh grade. Only I find out this morning from Mrs. Boone, there’s no Miles in seventh grade. There’s no Miles in the school. There’s no Miles anywhere.”

  “Miles to go before I sleep,” Fricker said.

  “Huh?”

  “Nothing. Just thinking out loud.”

  Jim didn’t stop with Miles; he went on and on about the tower and the door opening; the feeling of being watched constantly; the sense that something terrible was about to happen.

  “So, what you’re saving is, you’re losing it.”
/>
  Jim laughed out loud. “Yeah. Yeah! That’s what I’m saying,” he said, clapping his hands together. “Man, that feels good.”

  “Well, Jim, my man, you are losing it, but good.” They walked along together, smushing mud and crunching through leaves that had escaped the rainfall. “It sounds like it’s maybe all this shit from the Honor Trial.”

  “I didn’t make it up. All of it. The stuff about the other students. They pretty much beat the crap out of me.”

  “Okay, I’ll accept that as fact. So there’s some

  secret group of guys who have some club. Like the Key Club only .. . evil.” Fricker giggled. “Sorry, man.” He drew a pack of smokes from his pocket and lit one up. “You been getting high these last couple days?”

  “Nope.”

  Fricker sucked on the cigarette like it was a breast. “All right. So let’s assume it all happened.”

  “I mean, it did,” Jim said.

  “Maybe you should get high. Want to get high?”

  Jim shook his head. “No.”

  “We could go to the bongatorium and light up with the stoners, and then maybe you’d get more lucid about all this. Or at least not look like you were going to jump off a cliff.”

  “I look like that?”

  Fricker grinned. “Oh yeah, buddy. You look like that. Like you’re going to jump off the highest cliff in all of Christendom.”

  “And the finger.”

  “You still got it?”

  “I stuck it in my dresser.”

  “Kee-rist.”

  “And that whole story about Stephen and my dad.”

  “Well, that’s no doubt pure crap. If there is some little secret clique here, they’re probably just playing off all those stories about that shit.”

  “About my dad?” Jim asked. He stopped. The silence of the woods overcame him. He felt as if the world had somehow stopped spinning. “There are stories about my dad?”

  “Not really just your dad. Both of them,” Fricker said matter-of-factly.

  “Like what?”

  “What, you never heard them?”

  “Never.”

  “It was some senior. Last year. He had known your brother when this guy was a freshman. They were pretty good friends. When your brother got killed in that wreck, he had this story that sort of spread that your brother and your dad were at some whorehouse down in the city. That’s all.”

  “That’s all?”

  “Oh, come on. Come on, Hook. You musta heard all that before. Someone musta told you.”

  Jim blurted, “It was a car wreck. The other guy—driving the other car—was drinking.”

  “What other guy? Hook, there was no other guy. Your dad was drunk. Everyone knows it. Everyone but you.”

  That’s when Jim balled up his fist and swung a punch without even realizing he’d raised his arm.

  Got Trey Fricker right beneath the jaw, too, and practically knocked the cigarette right out of his hand, but Fricker managed to move with the punch and keep his balance.

  “My dad wasn’t drunk, that’s a goddamn lie!” Jim shouted, standing there, his fist in the air ready for another swing.

  “Batshit, Hook, calm down,” Fricker said out of the side of his mouth, cig thrust between his lips. He reached up and rubbed his chin. “Owie, that hurt.”

  “Take it back.”

  Fricker looked at him defiantly. “No. The truth is the truth. To ... to deny it would be like another honor violation, Hook, and you know it. Face it.”

  Jim spat at his feet. “I thought you were my friend.”

  “I am,” Fricker said. “Keep your damn temper, dude.”

  Jim felt so much better from the hit, even though his fist was aching like a son of a bitch, that he wasn’t even all that mad at Fricker. “It’s just a lie someone made up somewhere. I am so sick of everybody telling lies.”

  “You’re so sick of ‘em you’re willing to tell a few yourself, right?” Fricker said. He looked like a strange sort of philosopher with the cig hanging from his mouth, his hair a mess, his chin already bruising a little. “Hey, I got a joke. Listen up. A guy is really horny and he goes to this whorehouse. He says, I gotta get me a girl.’ The madam shouts up the stairs, ‘Hey, Joe, get Betty down here!’ The guy says, ‘How much is Betty?’ And the madam says, ‘A hundred bucks.’ ‘Well, says the guy, I can’t afford her.’ ‘Okay,’ the madam says. Then she shouts up the stairs, ‘Hey, Joe, send down Bertha!’ and the guy says, ‘How much is Bertha?’ and the madam says, ‘Twenty bucks.’ And the guy says, ‘Aw, I can’t afford her. Got anyone cheaper?’ The madam says, ‘So how much you got?’ and the guy says, ‘Two bucks,’ and the madam shouts up the stairs, ‘Hey, Joe! Grease up the cat!”

  “Why’d you tell me that stupid joke?” Jim asked, but he had to crack a smile. It was an old joke, but the way Fricker had told it, it was as bad as it had ever been.

  “So’s you’d laugh,” Fricker said. “Why else do people tell jokes? Christ, Hook, you’re seeing things, you’re hung-over, you’re headed for an honor trial, you’re in a freakin’ shithole of a situation, but you still gotta laugh at jokes now and then. Even dumb ones.”

  After a few awkward minutes, they went to sit on a large rock that overlooked the Hudson River.

  Jim hadn’t said anything, and although thoughts formed in his mind—all causing him further headaches—he didn’t want to express any of them.

  Finally, on his third smoke, Fricker said, “Here’s the thing, Hook. What you’re going through may not be so incredible, and you may not be losing your mind. When I first came here—in seventh grade—from Parham over in Hanover, I was pretty much lost. Just like you are right now. Just like it. I was screwed up about some things and I was getting into trouble, and basically,” and here he took a long suck of smoke into his lungs and then blew it all out in one great gust, ‘lying my way through stuff. I wasn’t quite together yet. Harrow’s hard on guys. We all know it. We know that getting through classes and making the grade here is like rope-climbing with greasy palms. Maybe, just maybe, whoever these guys are, they’re trying to make your life easier. Maybe they can take care of this whole honor violation thing for you. Or maybe it’s a test. Maybe it’s the Honor Council testing to see if you’ll cheat further. All kinds of crap goes on here that’s confusing. There’s one group I heard of that sounds like the one who got to you.”

  Jim looked at him. “Who are they?”

  Fricker shrugged. “They’re called the Corpse Club or something.” He spoke as if this were a sacred utterance. As if, just by saying it, something uninvited had arrived.

  “You hear things sometimes about them. They’re around. They may just be seniors. Maybe they’re juniors and sophomores, too. They’re secret. Okay, I knew this one kid. He was in trouble, and suddenly he was getting good grades, or things were sort of going his way, and I asked him about it and he said it was nothing. Then one day in the showers, I noticed this thing—on his butt.”

  Fricker grinned. “Right on his cheek. It was like a smiley face, and I told him, and he told me to shut the fuck up. Now this guy was kind of a friend of mine up until then, and later on I’m thinking it’s not a smiley face on his ass, but a big C. So I’m talking to these three guys when we go down to St. Cat’s one time. This senior named Spencer is driving us, and this guy I know’s name comes up and I talk about the big C on his butt, and the other guys who are passing around a joint in the backseat start cracking up, but Spencer doesn’t crack a smile. Later on, when we park the car, and the stoners are off to see their stonettes, Spence pulls me aside and he tells me to stay away from this friend of mine with the C on his butt. I ask him why, and he tells me this whole long story about how his cousin used to have that C on his butt, too, and his cousin ended up transferring out of Harrow and going to Exeter to finish up, only he never finished up, he just sort of vanished, and showed up two years later in Boston all paranoid because he said someone named the Corpse was after him and was going t
o kill him.

  “So I don’t think much of this, but when I hear from this guy Spence again, he’s graduating last year, and it’s almost graduation time, and he tells me something else about this. He tells me they’re after him. I ask him what he means. He tells me the Corpses are after him and they’re not going to stop until they get him. I ask him what can they do? And he says nothing then, ‘cause all these other guys pour into the hall around us, but the next thing I hear is that Spence doesn’t graduate. He gets caught for some honor violation and he’s booted—two weeks before he’d have his diploma. Harvard went out the window. I never heard from him again, but that name kept sticking in my mind. The Corpse Society. That’s the exact name I think. It’s some mindfuck group, far as I can tell.”

  “Just my luck,” Jim said.

  “I had one other run-in with them,” Fricker added.

  “When?”

  “When I was initiated,” Trey Fricker said, and stubbed his cigarette out against the rock.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jim began laughing.

  Fricker looked at him funny. “What the hell’s so funny?”

  “Right. You’re one of them. It can’t be real. It’s all a joke, right? A big setup for a prank?”

  “It’s real,” Fricker said, and the ensuing silence was like a gag over Jim’s mouth again. He struggled to say something, but nothing occurred to him. So many things welled up in Jim at the moment that he got just what Fricker was saying, that it took a few seconds before he shoved him hard, and Fricker fell back in the muddy grass.

  Fricker just sat there, shaking his head. “That make you feel better?”

  “Sure did.”

  All Jim could think about were the things those guys had told him in the dark, how they’d hit him, how they knew things about his mother and said terrible things about his father and brother.

  There was a vibe he was picking up from Fricker—something that both scared him a little and intrigued him a lot. What was it that Fricker knew? If he knew this kind of stuff about his life, what did he know from this sinister society about other kids? And maybe they weren’t all that bad. Maybe they really wanted to help him keep his scholarship and stay at Harrow.