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

by Douglas Clegg

  “Let me just move this along. It went badly, the meeting between the three of us, and I lost my temper, as did his father. It was a stormy winter night, and they left together, and I was furious at the man I loved, so I put my coat on and followed them to his father’s car, and the arguments continued. I wasn’t sure if I would ever love again, and I had the baby growing inside me, and I wasn’t sure how any of it would turn out, but I had a rage that needed to be quenched. They drove off, and-I looked at Stephen—that was his name, dear Stephen—as he glanced back at me, and I remember thinking: This is not the way it is meant to turn out. This is not the way it is meant to turn out.

  “So I got in my car and I followed them, and at some point on a dark road off the main highway the snow came down faster, and the whole world seemed to be a white blur, as if the snow just erased everything around it.

  “And there was a crash.

  “Afterward, when I remembered anything, I could not even recall the last moment. I could not even imagine that I had crashed into them, and they into me, spinning on an icy, snowy road, but the two of them were dead.

  “And my child, within me, died, also.”

  6

  Ivy paused, closing her eyes. When she opened them, she wiped at the tears.

  The others watched her in silence.

  7

  Ivy’s tale, continued

  “I had lost Stephen, lost my child. I was told that I could not conceive again. And I was close to ... well, the extremes of life, I’d guess. Stephen had gone to Harrow Academy, and I had met him when he was eighteen—a senior—and I was just finishing college. But four years’ later, Stephen’s younger brother, whom I had not met, arrived at my home, and we spoke about Stephen, that night, and I felt a strong connection to his brother. In fact, I would even consider it a psychic connection, if I believed that I had any psychic ability, because that teenage boy had some power within him. It was almost like a shock, when he hugged me before he left.

  “He was part of what happened at Harrow last year. I’m not sure how much of it he knew or didn’t know. I know that he was there when the fire occurred, and I know ...” She wiped at the tears. “You don’t need to know any of that, other than the reason I’m here. I believe that there is an opening here at Harrow. I believe that Justin Gravesend had discovered a key to a doorway to another ...” She glanced at Jack Fleetwood, as if he could help, but his eyes were downcast. “And then, of course, I found out that I had yet another connection to this house. One I had never known. One that had been hidden from me by the purest of coincidences. And I now think that I met Stephen and his brother purely because Harrow wanted me to come to it.

  “My great-grandmother’s sister was the medium who vanished sometime after leaving Harrow. Isis Claviger was her stage name. Her real name was Isobel Saul. I have no doubt she was murdered within these walls. Certainly, Esteban Palliser says so in his diary. Stephen is still here. Isis is still here. I have no doubt that she was truly psychic.

  “And now I have no doubt that there is something here at Harrow for me. That I will see him again. I will see Stephen. And I will know what my great-great-aunt knew. I believe I was meant to buy this house, and I was meant to master it and its spirits in some way.”

  8

  Chet was the first to stand. “It’s ... we’re . .. not here for what... for what I thought.’”

  Jack Fleetwood leaned back on the palms of his hands, like an overgrown child splayed out on the rug. “You’re here to find the location of the haunt. Your abilities—”

  “Our abilities don’t seem to work here,” Cali said, feeling defensive of Chet.

  “No,” Chet said. “We’re here to help find something that can’t be found.”

  “Someone else’s past,” Cali said, staring at Ivy. Sensations of both compassion and confusion stirred within her.

  Ivy Martin pushed herself up from her chair, her eyes still glazed with tears. “You live your lives with this gift that God gave you, or some freak of nature endowed each of you with—and you have been paid good money to come here, and if you think you’re just entertaining some vain woman’s whim ...” Her eyes took on a steely aspect. Her complexion seemed to change, from pallor to fiery red. Then she whispered something, as if to herself, and slumped back down in the chair.

  “You all right?” Jack asked softly. He reached over from where he sat and placed a hand on her knee. “Ivy?”

  Cali glanced at Frost, who seemed to be humming to himself.

  “Fine,” Ivy said. Then she leaned forward in the chair and looked Cali directly in the eye. “If you don’t have your Ability X anymore, then something in Harrow took it from you. Have you considered that possibility?”

  Cali might have been the only one aware of it, but Frost Crane giggled next to her. Annoyingly. He had been giggling to himself, and humming, and making sly faces when he thought no one was looking. She turned to give him a cold stare, and at the same time he turned toward her and whispered nearly under his breath, “Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly. I don’t know why she swallowed a fly. Perhaps she’ll die.”

  And then Jack Fleetwood let out a yelp; they all looked at him; he was touching something in the air, as if sculpting from the invisible.

  He didn’t look at anyone, but kept his eyes midair in front of him, and curved his hands around something.

  “Where’s the fucking EMF meter when you need it?” he said.

  9

  “It’s a cold spot,” Jack Fleetwood said, his eyes wide and his expression broad and exaggerated in its happiness. “My God, we finally have something.”

  Ivy just stared into the empty space he defined with his hands.

  Then she reached near it, touching it. She quickly drew her fingers back. “Icy.”

  “Yeah, damn icy,” Jack said.

  Frost excused himself, leaving the room as if he had an appointment to keep; Ivy got down on the floor next to Jack; Cali watched Frost leave, stunned by his words. Had she imagined it? Or had he known what the little boy in the dark closet had said? The little rhyme? And had he known that other little boy? The little boy who had once said the rhyme over and over again, knowing every word, every single word, all the way to the last part. Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly ...

  10

  Chet went over and pressed his fingers against the air and felt nothing. Then, as he moved his hand around the general area, he said, “Tingly.”

  “Not cold?” Cali asked. She stood up and stepped around an empty box. She stayed back a bit, watching the others.

  “No,” Chet said. He swiftly moved his hands in and out of what Cali had come to think of as an invisible perimeter of about three feet high and a foot wide. “Like little electrical charges. I guess maybe it’s a little cold.”

  “A lot cold,” Jack said. “I’ve never experienced this quite ... quite like this.”

  “It’s a child,” Chet said.

  Jack laughed. “An icy kid, I guess.”

  “No, it’s a child. I can feel him.”

  “Him?” Cali asked.

  Chet nodded. “I don’t know why, but it is. It’s a little boy. He’s... he’s zapping all over the place. Like a ball of energy. Almost.” Chet grinned as if it were Christmas morning. “He’s playing here.”

  “This I have to try,” Cali said. “I’ve always heard about cold spots, but I thought they were just basic energy farts or something.” She took another step forward and reached her arm out and felt what at first seemed like a burning sensation, and then a brief chill in her fingertips. She drew her hand back at first, instinctively, but then thrust it in. “Wow,” was all she could muster. She found that as she pressed her hand farther into what seemed like a series of curves, each one getting colder, she had the sensation of pins-and-needles in her fingers, her hand, her wrist, and, finally, her forearm. It was like the cold spot was moving up here. And suddenly she was stricken with panic. It was moving up her arm. Irrational thoughts came into her mind�
��What would it do? Would it take her over? Would it take all her strength? Her life?

  And then something exploded for her—as if the windows had just been blown out. She stood there near the others, and a little boy stood in the center of their group. Her hand was on the boy’s shoulder, and he was the little boy from the dark closet, and he looked up at her and opened his mouth as if to scream, as if seeing her there was as terrifying to him as it was to her, and then, she was no longer in the room with the others but in her twin brothers room back home, back years ago, and he had written it on the walls in his own feces, her brother had, he had painted the walls of his bedroom with the words:

  POOR OLD LADY SHE SWALLOWED A FLY PERHAPS SHE’LL DIE.

  Blood and feces both, smeared across the wall, the rhyme went on and on, and somewhere another little boy was laughing, laughing at her, and Cali told herself that she was in a moment, within a psychometric moment, somehow taken into it, pushed into it by the cold spot, but part of her felt that she had encountered the Devil himself. Her brother, as she remembered him with his beautiful dark skin and almond eyes, just like hers, and his unkempt look, and the secret and silent understanding they had about their ability, all the love she had for her twin brother—it all was there. Flies had begun circling the room, great black and green flies, as the shit on the walls began to run, and she knew then—back when she was twelve—that her brother was insane, and that there would be no going back for either of them. He had the greater ability.

  And he had never left her. He was within her and always had been. Just as the boy Gloria Franco in Manhattan had murdered—he still existed in some form, as well, and he, too, was with Cali.

  But they were in Harrow now.

  All of them.

  Cali felt the flies buzzing around her arms. She looked down at her left arm. It was covered with the sticky brownness of the room, and the houseflies and greenflies lit upon her arm and moved like erupting sores up her arm; maggots began dropping from her flesh; and soon the flesh itself was being eaten away at by the devouring white worms and the flies. Puncture holes went into her skin—human teeth? Unseen mouths seemed to bite at her, while the flies moved in a jiggling mass around the flesh of her arm.

  It’s an hallucination. Don’t let it take you. Don’t believe it. Don’t give it power.

  Then she realized the significance. Poor old lady, she swallowed a fly. Her brother, found with his mouth open, flies around him, he had been dead for two days when the institution found him, finally, where he had lain as he died.

  The flies. And they were here, in this cold spot.

  Coming to her. Coming to cover her.

  To get into her mouth.

  So she would be the poor old lady who swallowed a fly.

  It had been a warning. It had been a portent that she had seen.

  And then it was over.

  The flies were gone; the chilly energy dissipated.

  11

  Cali nearly crumpled to the floor, feeling nauseated. It was as if the air had been knocked out of her, and she felt both light-headed and retchingly sick. She managed to steady herself with the help of Chet, whose hands were under her elbows.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I think so. I guess my abilities aren’t quite gone.”

  “Well, the cold spot’s gone, anyway,” Jack said. “Damn.” Then, barely missing a beat, to Cali: “What was it? What did you see?”

  Chet gave him an angry glare. “She’s not feeling well. Can’t you see that?”

  Cali opened her mouth to speak but then shut it again. Then, softly, she said, “It was wrong to bring us here, Jack. It was wrong.”

  12

  “I think I need to go lie down for a little while,” Cali said once she was out of the room and heading up the stairs. She felt better, slightly stronger, but a devastating exhaustion coursed through her now.

  “You saw something in there.” Chet touched her shoulder lightly. “You okay?” They went up the stairs, with Cali practically clinging to the banister for balance.

  “We’re the wrong people to be at Harrow,” Cali said. “People with psi talent should not be in this house.” She didn’t need to add her next thought: We should all three of us leave. As soon as possible. But she couldn’t quite get it out.

  Once they got to her bedroom, Cali lay down, not letting go of Chefs hand. “Stay here, Chet. Just until I fall asleep. I shouldn’t be tired. I just woke up, practically. But I feel ... drained. Like ... well... and I don’t want to sleep long. Not long.”

  “It’s the house. It’s getting to us.”

  “Give me a few minutes. Don’t let me sleep for even an hour,” she whispered. “Just stay here.” “All right,” he said. “All right.”

  13

  But when Cali woke up several hours later, she was alone.

  14

  It was a sound that woke her up more than anything. It sounded like laughter, but also a scraping sound, like someone was raking leaves on pavement. She took a quick shower, dressed in slacks and a clean shirt, and then went to find Chet again.

  15

  She found him in the hall outside her room.

  “You still want to leave?” Chet asked.

  “Yes,” she said. “But... I feel stronger, which is weird. I mean, really stronger. Like I actually got something from that ... cold spot. I thought it took something from me. But it’s almost like a gift, to have that kind of vision. As frightening as it seemed at the time.”

  He touched her arm lightly. “We’ll get going in a bit, then,” Chet said. “I don’t mind giving the money back.”

  “Greed is hard to resist, but I feel the same.”

  “Okay. But we’re still looking for Mira right now. Once we find her—”

  Cali had completely forgotten about Mira. “Oh, God. Mira.”

  “Jack says he’s calling the police in another hour if we don’t find her,” Chet said. “He’s only a little less worried because the dog’s gone, too.”

  “He must be worried sick. I’m sure she’s fine,” Cali said, but the truth was, she wasn’t sure at all. Not after what she had seen crawl up her arm. Not after the feeling that she had been psychically sucked by a big vacuum from hell. “If Conan is with her, she’s probably just pissed off. She probably is in town somewhere. Or she went back home. Has he tried calling his house?”

  Chet looked at her blankly. “Frost is acting screwy, and Ivy is down in those ... tunnels ... trying to see if Mira’s hiding below somewhere.”

  “Have you looked down there?’ She pointed down the long corridor to the other wing of the house. The part she had considered the forbidden area, with its interior skeletal structure of the house, its gaping empty windows covered over with plastic sheets. The west wing. Jacks words were in her head: Don’t go over there. Not for evil house reasons, but because it’s got cracks and holes and rotted wood and practically zero insulation. And it looks like shit. “She might be there. She had to chase Conan through there the other night.

  16

  She craved a cup of coffee, but the truth was, she’d had a curiosity about the other wing, the crumbling, run-down part of the house that was virtually off-limits to them. Even in their tours of the house, they’d just been shown beyond some plastic sheets that hung down as insulation to the rooms that seemed to have been destroyed, not by fire or water, but by some idiotic contractor who had torn the floors up mistakenly, and then had, no doubt, been fired by Ivy Martin herself for destroying the integrity of the house. She and Chet went through the double doors and carefully walked on the more solid planks, avoiding the boards with upturned nails. It was icy here—there were fist-sized holes in the roof—they could look up through what seemed a cathedral ceiling to the late afternoon sky above, clouded over but with still enough light to guide them. Cali called out for Mira, and Chet ran about—giving Cali minor heart attacks as she watched him barely miss putting his foot through a stairway or step off the edge of a floor into a roo
m below. Bricks were piled up in corners, and the remnants of the school still existed in these broken rooms—student desks were piled up in a room that had an acoustic-tile ceiling and floors with torn-up linoleum.

  Finally, when she’d caught up to Chet, he grabbed her around the waist and said, “You can stop me from doing this if you want,” but she hadn’t wanted him to stop, and they kissed, and she felt guilty for the kiss, but she let it continue for a long while. What the fuck are we doing? she thought. Why am I letting him kiss me when everything in my gut is telling me to get out of the house? But part of her had begun to suspect that the cold spot was just a hallucination—completely—a trick of a haywire consciousness. A trick from within herself. Just like the tricks her brother Ned had experienced, the tricks that drove him crazy, perhaps. It was crossed wires of psi and maybe one of the others—Frost or Chet, too—had overloaded her circuits in some way. She could explain it all in her head, and then she felt less awful about kissing Chet and feeling what she let come through her bloodstream.

  They only stopped when he looked up and noticed a light snow—just a few small flakes—drift down through the gaping hole in the roof and rafters above them.

  “Look,” he said. “It’s already snowing. Not even officially winter yet, and we got snow.”

  17

  “I felt so alone. I mean, even with people around. You understand that, don’t you?” Chet asked, arms entwined around her. They lay on what should’ve been a group of planks, but it felt fine to both of them. It had not gone further than kissing and embracing, and it felt slow and easy to Cali.