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

by Douglas Clegg

  “Someone was always here to guard you,” Fricker said.

  “I don’t believe you.” Jim walked away from the group. At the steps up from the crypt, he turned and said, “Fuck you and your secret jack-off group. Fuck you for drugging me. Fuck you for your damn branding.”

  Then he turned and walked up the steps into the first rays of sunlight.

  “Wait up,” Trey Fricker called, but Jim kept walking, stepping around the grave markers. He still felt slightly dizzy, but did his best not to show it.

  Don’t look back. Don’t deal. Don’t let them get to you. Don’t become part of this.

  “Seriously,” Fricker said, jogging over to him.

  “I meant what I said.” Jim kept his back to Trey Fricker.

  “It’s too late. You’re in. All you have left is initiation.”

  “You lied about a lot of things. Like not knowing who the others were.” He stomped over to the graveyard gate, drawing it open. The morning sun felt good, and his stomach was growling from hunger.

  He had survived.

  They could all go to hell.

  “We’re sworn not to tell anything,” Fricker said.

  Jim turned around, wanting to punch him. But he stood there, staring at him.

  Fricker lit up a cig. “You’ll know at your initiation.”

  “I won’t be initiated.”

  “You will,” Trey said, his voice too friendly. “Because you want to stay here.”

  “Look,” Jim spat. “You don’t know what went on here last night.”

  “Yeah I do. I was there. I was the guard. I sat and watched all night.”

  “Did you hear?”

  “I heard you scratching and kicking and trying to shout. Your voice didn’t work right, not on this stuff we gave you.”

  “This stuff,” Jim laughed. “Christ, Fricker. I think it’s called the date rape drug. Something sociopaths give to girls so they can rape them. And you know what? I feel like I got raped. I wake up in the morning with a burn on my ass, and my head practically cracking from a night in Hell, and you bozos are standing around like it’s my birthday. You could kill someone with that stuff. You could’ve killed me.”

  “You dead?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Get off it,” Trey said. “You want in and you know it.”

  “I went through a lot of shit last night. I was screaming. Things were crawling on me. I saw things. I heard things. You don’t even understand.”

  “It was all hallucinations, Hook. I was there. I would’ve protected you. Honest,” Trey said. “We’ve all gone through it. All of us. No one has ever not gotten out of there in the morning and not been pissed off. Not one of us. I was pissed off when I became an Adept.”

  “Adept?”

  “This is an old society, Jimmy. My dad was in it. And so,” Fricker said, “was yours. And your brother. You’re a legacy. You’re meant to be one of us.”

  Jim laughed. He didn’t believe him. The Corpse Society was a bunch of liars. “And what does it mean, Fricker? One of us? I get away with cheating on a test?”

  “No,” Trey said. “You win. At everything you do. We look out for each other. The ‘Row’s a rough place. The teachers are bitter and mean. Some of the students are shitheads who won’t think twice about kicking you in the balls when you’re knocked down. And it’s hard to get through this place. The Corpse Society makes sure you get through, and helps you out. It’s a brotherhood. You get to keep your scholarship now, Hook, and you’re going to find that you’re a champion here as time goes on. All for one, and one for all.”

  Jim skipped his morning classes to sleep in, and by noontime the school nurse had come by to check on him. She was a husky woman with warm eyes and a faintly ironic tone in everything she said. “You have a slight fever, so I think you should stay in for the remainder of the day,” she said, after taking his temperature. “I’m sure that’s what you wanted to do all along.”

  “Mmm,” was all Jim could manage before rolling back in to the peace and serenity of his pillow, where no corpses were embracing him into madness. His sleep was long and full of gentle darkness.

  He awoke again at four in the afternoon. He took a long hot shower, and twisted around to look for the brand. Finally, he noticed the raised welt on his left butt cheek. It was so small as to be barely noticeable, but he got furious just knowing it was there. He also felt ashamed and somewhat used—that they had stripped him and branded him like he was nothing, like he had no say in it, like none of it was up to him.

  When he shaved in the steamy bathroom mirror, he noticed that his eyes were bloodshot. He looked like hell.

  He tried not to remember watching the boy as the spike had torn through his chest.

  Or the feeling of a dead woman’s mouth, pressed to the back of his neck as she held him.

  Or another sense he had felt. The sense that Miles’s words were right. The sense that there was something within him that had torn through life ever since Stephen had died. Something he couldn’t control, and it was there in that crypt with him. It kissed the back of his neck and wrapped its arms around him.

  It can’t be real. You know that. It was some drug. It was your mind going wild.

  Nothing is coming through.

  Nothing.

  But he had been there. He had felt those things around him. The dead. A woman had held him, her rotting flesh seeming to plump as she pressed herself against him. It hadn’t been a drug. It had been real.

  He broke out in a sweat, remembering. Trying to push that memory so hard back into some blank spot in his mind that a throbbing headache came on.

  He set his razor down, and went back over to the shower. He turned the water on again, and turned it up as hot as it would go, and as powerful as the spray could get, and stood there letting it blast at his face.

  Get it out of me. Wash it out. Please God clean it out of my mind. Get out the dead. Put them back in the ground or in heaven or hell or someplace other than here.

  Even Stephen, don’t make me see him. Don’t make me remember when he came back to me, or when he told me things, don’t make me remember his face and how even after he was dead I could see it.

  I will undo every bad thing I’ve ever done. I will make sure that I don’t get away with anything. I will not join some secret society. I will not run from all this shit. I want to make everybody proud, I want to make my mom smile again maybe just once, I want to have Stephen be proud of me, I want Dad to think I turned out okay, but I can’t do it if it means remembering what got me in that tomb.

  I want it gone.

  Gone.

  Even if it means my dreams go with it.

  The shower began to cool, and eventually he had to turn the water off.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  “No honor trial?” Jim sat in Trimalchio’s office, his books on his lap. He had spent all the previous evening brooding in the library, brooding over his supper of meatloaf and potatoes, brooding in his dorm room, unwilling to talk to Mojo Meloni or anyone. He hadn’t even called up Lark because he was afraid she’d think he was just messed up.

  But now, Friday morning, the day of his Honor Trial, he knew his course.

  And then this.

  There would be no Honor Trial.

  Just like that.

  “That’s right, Mr. Hook,” the headmaster said, sitting across from him in a brown leather chair. “We have no witness now. We can’t have a trial without an accuser.”

  “What about Carrington?”

  “He ran away. His parents and the authorities are looking for him in Pennsylvania. They suspect he’s gone to a friend’s place. We found a note that stated his intentions. Apparently, he had some problems that were hidden from us here. But that’s not your concern. You’re off the hook, Hook.” Trimalchio half smiled at his play on words.

  “What about Mr. Kelleher?”

  Trimalchio dismissed this with a wave of his hand. “He’s not a witness. He did not see yo
u cheat. Between you, me, and the wall, Mr. Hook, that’s one teacher who has it out for you. I would not ordinarily tell you something like this, but one has to be realistic when dealing with schools. Mr. Kelleher,” the headmaster said, his voice dropping to a whisper, “is a bit of a prig.” He waited a moment to let this sink in. Jim wondered: had he said “prig” or “prick”? It was all the same to him.

  Trimalchio continued. “But you’ll get through the rest of the year if you just apply yourself a bit and perhaps don’t let on that you dislike that teacher so much.”

  Jim grinned, but something within him prickled, and the grin faded. “I need to tell you something.”

  “Tell away.”

  Jim inhaled deeply, and held it. He felt that everything would change now.

  There would be no going back.

  “I cheated on that test,” Jim said.

  “Oh,” Mr. Trimalchio said. “Jim. You don’t need to say that.”

  “I didn’t mean to cheat. I was scared that I’d lose my scholarship. Then I wouldn’t be able to graduate from Harrow. It meant a lot to me then.”

  “And it doesn’t now?”

  “Not as much. Not after some stuff that’s been happening.”

  “What’s been happening? What would make a student confess to this? Not that I don’t admire your honesty in coming forward, Hook. But what prompted this, when in fact you could be in the clear?”

  “You told me about that poem. ‘If.’ “

  Trimalchio nodded.

  “I read it last night in the library. I read it over and over again.”

  “ If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you.’ “

  “Yep. I thought about it, and it meant something to me, sir.”

  “And it meant that you needed to confess this.”

  “No,” Jim said. “It meant that I needed to be who I am. And if I cheated on that test, knowing there was an honor code, knowing that I don’t believe in cheating, it means something was going wrong with me and I wanted to be thrown out. Something doesn’t fit right with me here. Cheating on that test was a cheap way of getting tossed.”

  “Well,” Trimalchio said, leaning back in his chair. “Do you mind my pipe?”

  “That’s fine, sir.”

  The headmaster reached into his hounds-tooth jacket pocket and drew out a small dark pipe. He went through the ritual of loading it with tobacco and lighting it. He puffed on it in silence for a few moments. Then he said, “On the one hand, I’m pleased that you came to me with this, Hook. You have a great deal of insight into yourself, and I hardly ever see that with Harrow boys. Sure, there are some very smart and clever young men here. There are those who are blessed with looks and money and enough intelligence to go on to maneuver places like Harvard and Yale and MIT and Princeton. But there aren’t many with that kind of self-understanding. I commend you. I’m impressed.”

  “Don’t be, sir. I feel like a worm.”

  “I’ve found in life that low self-esteem seems to go hand in hand with teenagers who are brighter than average.”

  “If I were so bright, would I have cheated on a test?”

  “Enough,” Trimalchio said. Pipe smoke began to encircle his face. “What else has led you to this?”

  “Sir?”

  “This revelation. You’ve been looking like a ghost of your former self all week. When I saw you on Wednesday, you seemed happy and depressed at the same time. I would guess you’ve had four hours’ sleep in the past three days. Something else is going on. Is it just conscience? I can tell.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  Trimalchio sucked on his pipe and glanced over at the plaques and photographs on the wall. “I had a friend here, back when I was a student. My best friend, Hook.”

  “The one who killed himself?”

  “Yes,” the headmaster said. “We were so close, it changed me when he took his own life. He had violated the honor code, too. He was facing expulsion. I knew it. He knew it. But. . .”

  Jim looked down at the floor, waiting for the headmaster to continue.

  “Still, he killed himself. If I could go back in time, I’d change it. I’d erase all the years to get back to him. And I’d tell him: All right, Jacky. You made a mistake. Make up for it. Do something so great with your life that you redeem your error. And I’d tell him something else, something I’ve learned in my own life and in watching the boys that come through this school. I’ll tell it to you, Hook, since my friend is no longer here. Hook. Jim. It’s not important whether you cheated on a test. What is important is that you faced it.” Trimalchio nodded, as if this meant something beyond mere words.

  Jim glanced up. He felt a brief confusion. “Yes, sir. But I still will be expelled.”

  “No, Mr. Hook.” Trimalchio made a feeble attempt at a grin. “I think what has been said within this room remains within this room. Sanctum sanctorum.”

  “But—”

  “No buts about it. You have had a moment of grace, James Hook. Accept it, and move on,” the headmaster said. He stood up, wreath of smoke following him, and went to open the door to his office. “Now, on to class.”

  “You’re one of them,” Jim said in the doorway.

  “Excuse me, Hook?” Trimalchio betrayed no knowledge on his face. Perhaps he was not a Corpse. Perhaps he was. Perhaps it was all just screwy, this world of Harrow.

  “Nothing,” Jim said, and went to his locker to get his Geometry notebook.

  And that’s when he noticed the other book there in his locker, on top of piles of lined paper and textbooks he hadn’t even cracked yet in Sophomore English. The one he had checked out of the library the day he’d been caught.

  The Infinite Ones by Isis Claviger.

  He began reading it during fourth period study hall, when he should’ve been doing his math assignment.

  Jim found himself staring at the old photo of Isis Claviger, and found her less beautiful than he had at first thought. Some aspect about her bothered him, but he couldn’t tell what it was. Then he checked the table of contents and saw words and phrases that seemed goofy, until he saw the one phrase that he should have noticed in the first place.

  Chapter 14: The Haunting Rituals. Including psychic phenomena, poltergeist activity, telekinetic and telepathic waves, and Justin Gravesend’s dream of a New Age at Harrow House.

  Jim turned to the chapter and began reading.

  I first heard about Gravesend’s Experiment, as it was being called in Paris, when I was undergoing the spiritual vibrations at the Malemort Abbey with the three Mages from Rennes who had of late begun attracting crowds and had set up a pilgrimage first at Carnac, and then later at the abbey. It was all but torn down, and the old men had set up camp nearby. I had grown tired of living in the wild to this extent, for it rained three times a week and the cave like arched ceiling leaked tremendously. Soon after I heard of Gravesend, he sought me out, as is so often the case with the synchronous aspect of Psi phenomena. I had, by that time, gone to stay with James Witherel in London for the British Spiritualist Society’s series of lectures on astral projection. Mrs. Cormorander had employed me to contact her guardian angels, which proved to be something I found impossible, although she paid me handsomely for sitting at a table in her house for nine consecutive evenings with no results to speak of.

  Gravesend located me with a package which included a first-class ticket for a ship from Liverpool, and enough money to make myself comfortable in the interim. I used his generous donation to pay off some debts I had accumulated, and soon I was on a voyage to what became the most intriguing and addictive study of my career.

  After several weeks, I came to the house in the Hudson Valley, and as soon as I saw what Justin Gravesend was planning, I knew that he was both mad with genius and the only man I would ever love.

  He had created, with this house called Harrow, a museum of arcane and profane ritual, the side of human contact with the spiritual which rises above the m
erely passed-on and disembodied spirits of loved ones.

  He intended to touch the Eternal with this house.

  Although I had some fear at first, I felt it very much within the stones of Harrow House. I began to help him identify and find other artifacts and ancient texts in an effort to reach the Other Side. One of the easiest and earliest acquisitions to which I was party was the presumed bones and skull of the child killer, Gilles de Rais, as well as two of the instruments of his work.

  By the time the bell rang for his next class, Jim had finished the chapter. He quickly flipped to the photographs in the book, particularly the one of a house.

  It was Harrow. It was different from what he knew, because the front of the house had been redone at some point since the photo was taken. The towers had been added, the entryway had changed. But the arches of the abbey in back, and the windows to the classrooms were the same, and the bit of land around it was similar enough.

  He looked at the picture of Isis Claviger again.

  There it was: Her hand held up delicately near her neck as she self-consciously touched her necklace.

  The Alexandrite ring on the middle finger of her left hand.

  After his last class, he went to the library to shelve books and help catalog some of the newer books that had come in that week. The librarian was busy in the stacks with one of the other students, pulling out books with bindings that needed repair. When he got a chance, Jim went to the computer and looked up the name Isis Claviger, but there were no books listed other than the one he already had. He looked up Justin Gravesend, and again, nothing. And then, on a whim, he looked up Harrow

  Academy, and came up with a pamphlet shelved under the Student Papers Collection called “Harrow Academy and Its History: A Senior Project by Jay Trimalchio.”