Ghosts of Harvard

by Francesca Serritella

  “What are you working on?”

  “Nothing. Well, actually, I have something you might be able to help me with.” She pulled the blue notebook out of her bag. “I found some of Eric’s old notes, but I can’t understand them. It looks like part class notes, part math I’m too dumb to get, part personal calendar, part I don’t know what. Can you tell me what this might mean?”

  “Surely. Let’s have a look.” Cady handed it to him, and Nikos began slowly flipping through the pages. “The front half is definitely physics notes, I recognize this class, I was in it with him fall semester. Then it looks like experiment results, probably from a lab. But toward the end …” He shook his head and slid it back to her. “These letters aren’t like variables in an equation or anything, it’s nonsense. It must’ve been from when he was sick. I’m sorry.”

  Cady nodded. “Thanks, that’s what I thought.”

  “Thank you. Eric was always such a freak about those notes, everything with him was top secret. I took them once as a goof, and I thought he was going to kill me. I always wanted to sneak a peek.”

  She smiled, although it made her feel regretful for showing him just now. She asked her next question with the notebook tucked to her chest. “He wrote down ‘M’ a lot, with times, like social plans. Do you know who that could be?”

  “Probably Matt Cho, his roommate.”

  Of course, Cady thought, how could she forget Matt Cho? Well, probably because she hadn’t seen him in years, when they first moved Eric into his dorm freshman year. Although they had been friends and roommates all three years, Matt hadn’t come to the funeral. Cady had invited him via email, her parents had offered to pay for his flight and everything, but he hadn’t even replied. On the day of the service, they had all been too distraught to notice his absence, but his not responding to her email had stung. Maybe that’s why Cady had blocked him out.

  “I’m sorry this hasn’t been more enlightening. Is there anything else I can help you with?”

  A different thought crossed her mind. “You know what I need for a class? A copy of Dante’s Inferno.”

  “My blessed Beatrice, that should be easy to find.” Nikos tapped at the computer keyboard and quickly summoned the call number. “Ah. Widener. Let’s go.”

  Cady felt a bit anxious to include someone else in an inquiry into her own sanity, but she reasoned the voice wasn’t the only reason to look up Inferno; she would need the book for her Medieval Studies class eventually. Plus, Nikos’s company put her at ease.

  They scaled the grand gray marble steps of Widener. Though it was still only autumn, it was already cold, and the wind made it colder. A few people were scattered on the steps; a couple cuddled together sipping matching coffees, an Asian teenager posed and smiled while her parents snapped a picture, an attractive guy sat absorbed in a thick novel, hoping someone would notice his absorption. At the top of the stairs, they passed between the enormous columns and Nikos held the heavy door for her.

  They were about to pass through the small antechamber to the main lobby when Cady stopped. On each wall, there was a large white marble plaque. The left one read:

  harry·elkins·widener

  a graduate of

  this university

  born january 3·1885

  died at sea april 15·1912

  upon the foundering

  of the steamship

  titanic

  And the right:

  this library

  erected

  in loving memory of

  harry·elkins·widener

  by his mother

  eleanor·elkins·widener

  dedicated

  june 24·1915

  “Sorry, I assumed you knew the backstory,” Nikos said at her shoulder.

  “I did.” Cady had been briefly obsessed with the history of the Titanic after she saw the movie, so she knew all about Widener the man, but she didn’t know the story behind the library. “I guess I imagined he gave the money to Harvard while he was alive or in his will or something. I didn’t realize his mother did it for him.”

  “Quite a costly memorial. I wonder if Mummy had something to feel guilty about. I crossed an ocean to get away from my mother, too, but lucky for me, I made it to the other side.”

  Cady bitterly remembered her own mother saying It is his tomb.

  They passed through the security turnstile to a short but grand staircase in cool white marble, its brass handrails reflected in the smooth, gleaming walls on either side. The landing above looked like something out of a Roman palace. There was a central doorway framed by tall columns, intricately detailed, and two great, arched frescoes on either side, all in the same heavenly white marble and bathed in cool natural light from a domed skylight. Through the doorway, a great golden chandelier glowed warmly even in partial view. Cady stepped toward the staircase, awestruck.

  “Wrong way,” Nikos said.

  “But,” Cady began, unable to hide her disappointment.

  “I know it’s beautiful, but the stacks are this way. Come along. Call me Virgil.” He gave a little bow and a flourish of his hand, directing her away, and she reluctantly obeyed. Nikos added, “Sadly, nothing, where we now arrive, is shining.”

  They took a sharp left, bypassing the staircase, and suddenly Cady found herself in a darker, more ordinary room with computer screens against the wall and a central, curved information desk. He led her past the beeping, stamping, shuffling sounds of people checking out books, through to an even smaller room with an elevator on one side and a metal door like those on a gymnasium on the other, and against the third wall was a small desk with photocopies of maps, scrap paper, and tiny pencils. Nikos glanced at a cluttered library map, which appeared utterly incomprehensible to Cady, before he pressed through the metal door.

  The door led to a concrete staircase lit with harsh fluorescent wall sconces. She followed Nikos down an odd interval of a flight and a half when he pressed through another door. As the door clicked shut behind them, Cady realized they were finally in “the stacks.” Rows upon rows of putty-colored metal bookshelves stretched out before them with only a narrow walkway alongside. There seemed to be no one around, the air was stale, and the lights were off.

  “Why is it so dark?” Cady whispered.

  “Watch this,” Nikos whispered back. He took a giant step forward, thrust out his hands, and cried, “Let there be light!”

  In the next second, the fluorescent ceiling lights above him clicked on with a loud ka-chunk, and one hissed and flickered. Nikos looked back over his shoulder, grinning. Cady laughed nervously.

  “They’re on motion detectors,” he said. “No need to light this crypt at all hours. Come on, this way.”

  As they passed each row of books the lights around them clicked on, chunk, chunk, chunk, buzzing and crackling with age and electricity. It reminded Cady of Dr. Frankenstein pulling the succession of the levers on his machine, vivifying the corpse with lightning bolts.

  “It’s kind of creepy down here.” Cady followed him. “Where is everybody?”

  “You can do an awful lot of wandering in the stacks before you see another soul. But that’s mostly because Harvard students would rather do anything in a library other than actual research. Speaking of—” Nikos stopped and turned around to face her. “You’ve heard about the stacks tradition?” One dark eyebrow lifted.

  Cady shook her head.

  “There are three things every Harvard student is supposed to do before they graduate. One, take a piss on the foot of the John Harvard statue, the same foot all the tourists rub for good luck, poor bastards.”

  “Ew.”

  “Yes, it’s not really for girls, that one. Second is Primal Scream. That’s where the night before the finals period begins, in the dead of winter, you get naked and run round the Yard screaming like a lunatic. It would be
all right, except that’s another one in which the girls are a bit reluctant to participate, so it’s sort of a mishmash of bobbing male bodies with their knobs spinning about like pinwheels. It really doesn’t show a man to his best advantage. I learned that the hard way.” Nikos gave a sheepish pout that made her giggle. “And the third, well, the third is the very best one. The third is you have to have sex in the stacks of Widener.”

  Cady managed only “Hm.”

  Nikos maintained eye contact. “Are you trying to guess whether I’ve done it?”

  Cady could feel her cheeks flushing. “No.”

  “I have not. I am saving myself for someone special, so get that hungry look out of your eye.”

  She laughed. “You’re terrible.”

  “Flattery will get you nowhere. We have a job to do here, and I am very focused on your studies.” Nikos started back down the aisle. They stopped when they reached the row labeled with the correct combination of letters and numbers and decimals, and he crouched to scan the titles. “Here we are. Inferno,” he said, rolling the r dramatically. “By Dante Alighieri. This Kirkpatrick is a good translation. Have you ever studied it before?”

  “No, I’m embarrassed to say I’ve never read a word of it.”

  “Ah, you’ll like it. We studied it at Eton, and I remember particularly loving that flatterers have to lie in a river of shit. I don’t remember what circle or canto that was, but …”

  Cady wasn’t listening. He’d triggered an idea. “Nikos,” she said abruptly.

  “Cadence,” he answered, mimicking her serious tone. “Yes, what is it?”

  “Sorry, but can you check, what’s Canto Five?”

  Nikos looked down at the book, checking the table of contents and flipping to the appropriate page. Suddenly impatient, Cady fought the urge to snatch the book from his hands. “Canto Five is …” he clicked his tongue as his eyes scanned the page. “Paolo e Francesca.”

  A chill tiptoed down her spine, vertebra by vertebra. Cady replayed her voice saying it.

  I’ve never read a word of it.

  10

  It was a relief to close the door of Weld 23 and hear it latch behind her. Her dorm room hadn’t felt like home until being outside it got so scary. Cady took a deep breath, inhaling the familiar scent of microwave popcorn, Andrea’s study fuel of choice. She grabbed a can of La Croix from the mini-fridge, cracking the tab with a trembling hand. It was her own fault, she told herself, she had let her worries spiral out of control. First the call from her mother had triggered traumatic memories, then she made it worse by revisiting those emails from Eric, and Cady had overwhelmed herself. Maybe imagining the voice in Medieval Studies class was a bizarre coping mechanism, a self-made puzzle for distraction. Her mind felt so cluttered, she couldn’t think without tripping over some new fear or old memory. She needed to reset. Cady went to her bedroom and undressed, slipped into her robe, grabbed her towel and toiletries caddy, and headed down the hall for a nice long shower.

  The women’s bathroom had a row of four toilet stalls facing four shower stalls, each with a flimsy, peach-colored shower curtain not quite wide enough for Cady’s preferred degree of privacy. She had arbitrarily chosen the second-to-last shower stall as her favorite, if only to create comfort via routine. She relaxed a little to find she had the place to herself today, checking for feet beneath the stall doors to be sure. Cady disliked being nude in front of girls she didn’t know, and the bright fluorescent lights in the Weld bathroom didn’t make it any easier. It felt like getting naked in a lab.

  Cady hung her towel on the hook, pushed up the sleeve of her robe, and reached in to turn the water on. The shower head sputtered with a metallic whine that she could feel in her teeth, but soon it got going smoothly and quietly and the water grew hot. She pulled her ponytail holder from her hair, slipped off her robe, and hopped behind the shower curtain.

  The hot water pounded her head and shoulders, melting the tension that had knotted there. She leaned her chin back, exposing her neck, and let the water soak her hair, face, and ears. She was working shampoo into her scalp and squeezing her eyes shut when she was shocked by the loud crash of a cymbal.

  Startled, Cady swore to herself. It took another moment for her brain to register that the blast of sound was actually music.

  The tinny peal of a trumpet and the writhing whine of muted brass horns sounded all the sharper for pinging off the tiled walls, but she recognized the old-time tune “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

  Was this some kind of prank? Who was blasting Depression-era jazz in the women’s bathroom?

  “Who’s out there?” Cady shouted over the music. “Ranjoo, Andrea? Is that you?”

  No answer.

  “Yo, whoever, can you lower it?” Her voice echoed off the tile.

  The music bounced along at the same uncomfortable volume. Cady grumbled and gave a rough rinse to the suds on her brow, turned off the water, and poked her head out.

  No one was there. “Hello?” The only answer was the lilting clarinets’ cheerful melody and the plucky bass line, unnervingly out of place echoing in the empty restroom. Fear crept from the top of her head down her spine like a drop of cold water.

  Cady checked every stall for some sort of bluetooth speaker, an iPhone, any possible source for the sound, but came up with nothing. Soaking wet and wrapped only in a towel, she swung the door open to the hallway, where she could still hear the music. A guy was walking toward her, texting on his phone.

  “Hey, do you know who’s playing that music?” she asked him.

  He looked up in surprise, then confusion; Cady guessed he hadn’t expected a nearly naked girl in his way.

  “Sorry, what?” He pulled wireless earbuds out of his ears.

  “Oh, you had headphones.” Cady huffed in relief. “That music, do you hear it now? ‘Happy Days Are Here Again,’ like an oldies station or something? It’s driving me crazy, where is it coming from?”

  He frowned at her, uncomprehending. “What music?”

  “Are you kidding? It scared the shit out of me in the shower, I can still hear it out here. Someone is blasting it.”

  He paused for a moment, tilting his head, then shrugged. “Sorry, I don’t hear anything.” He replaced his earbuds and gave Cady and the growing puddle at her feet a wide berth.

  By now the vocals had come in, a quartet of men’s voices: Happy days are here again, the skies above are clear again …

  Cady looked around her in every direction, down the hall, up the entryway stairwell, but no one seemed to be bothered in the slightest.

  Let us sing a song of cheer again,

  No one seemed to be hearing anything unusual at all.

  Happy days are here again!

  Cady slammed the women’s bathroom door behind her and locked it from the inside. But the music only grew in volume.

  All together, shout it now! There’s no one who can doubt it now …

  Her heart thundered in her chest, she couldn’t catch her breath, her thoughts spiraled, but one fact had become clear: No one else could hear the music. The music was in her head.

  The realization curdled in the pit of her stomach and rose up. She hurtled into the nearest shower stall before she doubled over and dry-heaved, with every muscle in her body straining for some relief. None came.

  She turned on the water, letting it soak her and her towel as she crumpled to the tile floor. It washed her tears and muffled her sobs. But the water could do nothing to drown out the music, taunting:

  Your cares and troubles are gone, there’ll be no more from now on …

  She knew she could be predisposed to mental illness, she knew this terrible potential was in her blood. And yet she had come here and risked it, dared it to show itself. Now it had.

  So let us sing a song of happy cheer again,

  Her new question was— />
  Happy happy happy days are here again!

  —Would she survive?

  11

  When Ranjoo found Cady in their shared bedroom later that evening, she didn’t know that Cady had been sitting on the bed in her towel, paralyzed with anxiety, for nearly two hours. Ranjoo thought she was just being lazy and insisted she get ready for the party at the Phoenix. She even went so far as to pick out Cady’s outfit for her—dark wash jeans, black ankle boots, and, after most of Cady’s wardrobe was dismissed as too “basic,” Ranjoo’s own slinky, off-the-shoulder top that Cady, admittedly, loved.

  “Now I have to go meet Dev, who’s going to get us in, so you should meet me there. And please put some eye makeup on. You know I love the Puritan beauty thing you do, but tonight we’re going to a party, not a barn raising.”

  Cady saluted her. She had never been more grateful to be told what to do.

  Alone, Cady looked in the mirror, searching her reflection for evidence of the cracks she was feeling. But she looked good, she looked normal, she told herself, she was normal. Songs get stuck in people’s heads all the time, no big deal. But at that volume? And that old vintage tune, when had she last heard it? Not recently, maybe not ever. Like she’d never read Inferno, or heard that voice, or— Stop. Don’t dwell on it. That will only make it worse.

  Cady got extra close to the mirror and drew a shaky charcoal line over her lashes. She remembered when she’d first tried eyeliner in ninth grade, and Eric saw her at breakfast and immediately quoted Charlie Sheen’s line from Ferris Bueller, “You wear too much eye makeup. My sister wears too much. People think she’s a whore.” Eric had thought it was hilarious, but Cady rarely wore it again as a result. Now that seemed so overly sensitive; she had always been too easily influenced by Eric. She wasn’t like him, she wasn’t like him at all—she said it to herself like a pep talk. Cady applied two coats of mascara, only flinching and smearing it onto her cheek once.

  Cady pulled her hair aside to slide the right earring in, revealing the still too short chunk of hair behind her ear and the faint mauve scar on the side of her neck. The sound of her own voice played in her mind, terrified: Eric, what are you doing? Stop, it’s me, Eric, it’s me. She covered the scar with her hand and shut her eyes to that memory, though her pulse beat against her fingers, as if that night were pounding on the door.