“Eric didn’t really open up to me about his symptoms. Maybe he complained about his meds from time to time, but he certainly didn’t go into details with me.”
“But you lived with him, you must have seen the changes in him.”
“Yeah.”
Cady could tell he was uncomfortable with the conversation, but she needed to know more. “So what was the first change that you noticed?”
“He got more withdrawn. We stopped goofing around like we used to. Some days, he’d be real quiet and sort of zone out. Other times he’d be anxious and jumpy and talking a mile a minute. I knew something was wrong.”
“Do you know if he heard voices?”
Matt shrugged. “Like I said, he didn’t like to talk about it. When he told me he’d been diagnosed with schizophrenia, I knew a symptom like that was possible—I watch TV—but he didn’t get into it. He talked to me less and less, especially that last winter, when I guess he got paranoid.”
“How so?”
“He became super-secretive about everything. He’d lock his bedroom door, he wouldn’t tell me what he was working on, he’d leave the room, and if I asked him where he was going, he wouldn’t tell me. I was his best friend, and he didn’t trust me. I knew it was his sickness, but you know, it hurt.”
Matt blew his nose into a napkin. “I probably took it too personally, but I stopped trying with him. I was over it. I was over Eric.” As soon as he’d said his name, the tears welled again. “I feel terrible about it now.”
“No, I understand,” Cady said with sympathy. “I backed off too. It was a lot, and you were the one here dealing with him.”
Matt took off his glasses to wipe his eyes. “I don’t want you to think I was sitting around the room being a dick to him. I loved the guy, he wore me out, but I loved him like a brother.”
“I know—”
“He pulled away from me, not the other way around. He was never in the room, he practically lived at the Science Center, working with his adviser at all hours. And when he wasn’t in the lab, he was busy with errands for her. I felt like he was avoiding me. We never got meals together anymore—God, I sound like his jealous wife.”
All hours. Cady thought of Prokop in that lecture earlier, charismatic, masterful, and, as Cady saw it now, attractive. She remembered Robert’s voice saying I was probably in love with her. “He was close with that adviser. Obsessed. I swear, he didn’t shut up about her after he took some class with her freshman spring. I think he took every class she taught after that. There was no other professor he wanted to advise him for the Bauer. He dropped every activity to devote more time to whatever she needed him for. He thought she was a genius.”
Again, her memory returned to that voice: I came to crave her approval. Her hunch that Eric’s admiration for Prokop was more than just academic grew stronger, but she was reluctant to embrace any idea suggested by a strange voice in her head. “When she fired him from that research assistant job, it must have crushed him.”
“He wasn’t fired, he quit. At least that’s what he told me.” Matt took a sip of tea.
Cady frowned. Maybe Eric had lied to him to save face.
Matt continued, “I didn’t even know there was trouble until his adviser showed up and banged on the door.”
“On the door of your dorm room?”
“Yeah, it was nuts. She was demanding that he talk to her, begging at one point. He hadn’t been answering any of her calls or emails—I could hear her saying that from the other side of the door. But he wouldn’t open it, and he told me under no circumstances should I let her in, like she was dangerous. He said we could get in trouble with the FBI.” Matt made an incredulous face. “When he got delusional like that, I didn’t push it. All of a sudden, Mika went from being his favorite person to enemy number one.”
“Wait, who’s Mika? I thought we were talking about his adviser, Professor Prokop.”
“Oh, right, same person, but Eric called her Mika, so that’s all I ever heard.”
M. M is for Mika, not Matt, Cady thought. His notes were about her. Eric had been the favorite of many teachers in high school, but he never called any by their first name, much less a nickname. A nickname was intimate. Validating Robert’s hunch again. “Do you think he was in love with her?”
“I don’t know about love. It didn’t hurt that she was a tall blonde. She doesn’t do it for me, she’s got that Ice Princess thing going on a little too much, but I got it. She’s youngish, pretty, and has a PhD—by geek standards, she’s smoking hot.”
“But seriously. Is it possible that the feeling was mutual, that they were … involved?”
Matt frowned at first, but then his brow softened. “It certainly didn’t occur to me then, but looking back, he was so sick, he had already bailed on the Bauer—it’s hard to think of another reason that she’d keep him working as her assistant when he was in that state.”
“He bailed on the Bauer before he quit?” Prokop had made it sound as if she had reluctantly fired Eric after his Bauer project went south; she hadn’t mentioned his helping her with anything else, and she certainly hadn’t mentioned trying to get him back.
“Yeah, he dropped that pretty early that fall. He was just working on her research stuff, he said he couldn’t tell me what it was. But look, I don’t know what happened between them. I’ll only say she must have cared about him a lot, because when she was at our door that night, she seemed genuinely distraught. When he wouldn’t talk to her, I thought she was going to cry.” Matt paused. “Cry, or break the door down.”
19
Cady left Tealuxe with her thoughts churning. The M in Eric’s notebook wasn’t Matt, it was Mika, his pet name for his advisr. She reviewed every mention of “M,” rereading with new eyes notes like Dinner at M’s, call M, birthday drink for M, M 8pm, M 10:30pm, M 7am. They clearly spent a lot of time together, often outside normal school hours. But then something happened between them, something bad. Prokop said she fired Eric, Eric said he’d quit; until an hour ago, Cady would have believed a professor over her mentally ill brother without question, but after hearing Matt’s account of Prokop’s visit to their dorm room, banging on the door, begging to talk to Eric, Prokop’s version no longer made sense. Prokop had wanted him to continue working with her—desperately, it seemed.
But why would Prokop lie?
It wasn’t like firing Eric made her look better in regard to his death. Eric’s suicide wasn’t explicitly anyone’s fault but his own, but Prokop’s assertion that she fired Eric, a fragile student who took his own life soon after, arguably made her look worse than if Eric had quit of his own accord. The lie was more awkward than the truth.
Or was it?
Cady hated that her maybe-imaginary friend first planted the idea, but she now fully accepted the notion that Eric had loved Prokop—the long hours “working” with her at the lab, after-hours errands, Eric’s obsession with “Mika”—it made sense. Prokop’s oversized reaction when he broke things off indicated that she had strong feelings for him, too.
Did Prokop lie about firing Eric to cover the fact that they were having an affair?
She was almost home when a text pinged on her phone. It was Ranjoo saying she was having friends over to “pregame” before going out, which meant doing shots, taking photos, and blasting music. It was the last thing Cady felt like doing. She stopped walking in front of her dorm, newly reluctant to enter. She craved privacy, some peace and quiet, a place where she could think. But where could she go? The campus transformed on Friday nights. The pall of pending exams, paper deadlines, and unread reading assignments was temporarily lifted, or at least drowned in cheap alcohol, and she knew that everyone inside the warm, bright building would be boisterous and loud. She looked across the Yard and saw Memorial Church, lit with warm spotlights on its robin’s-egg-blue door and red brick and white spire, giving it the idyllic
appearance of a model building in a train set, and remembered what Matt had said about how it had helped him. It was late, but she wondered if the student center was still open. She figured it couldn’t hurt to check. She bypassed Weld and crossed the green.
Up close, the church looked dark and closed, but Cady mounted the church steps to read a board with the service schedule. Maybe she would go to a service that weekend, although treating possible hallucinations with religion felt uncomfortably close to seeking an exorcist. But from the corner of her eye, she noticed the farthest right door to the church was ajar. It felt like a sign. After a quick glance over her shoulders to make sure no one would see her, she slipped inside.
Even in darkness, the church’s beauty took her breath away. Cady didn’t expect the interior to be so lofty and open, larger than it seemed from the outside. Moonlight streamed from high windows on one side, lighting the far edge of the wooden pews but leaving the aisle and other side in shadow. Smooth white pillars lined either side of the pews and lifted the arched ceiling to a great height. Although it was dark, everything—the pews, the walls, the pillars, the embellished ceiling—was painted the same clean white, which now glowed a lunar gray. Cady stepped lightly down the aisle carpet, the only true color in the room—it must be vermilion in the daytime, but now it was a deep blood red. Her eyes followed the color to an altar table draped in matching crimson velvet, with the Harvard seal stitched in gold. On the left side stood the pulpit, a grand hexagonal structure of dark wood, carved like ebony. Atop the lectern on the right was a golden statue of an eagle poised to take flight, wings outstretched, head lowered, sightless eyes fixed in Cady’s direction.
She took a seat in the pews and let the silence of the space wash over her, focusing on her breath as she inhaled and exhaled deeply. The exhaustion of the day caught up with her. She had so many questions, and the one person who could answer them was the one out of reach. She wished she could talk to him, then found herself doing just that:
Eric, why did you leave? Did Professor Prokop break your heart? Did the pressure here become too much? Did you think you’d never get better? I looked up to you, challenged myself to achieve at your level, to get into the school you went to, I wanted to be you—but do we share an illness? Did you hear things like what I’m hearing, is this how it starts? Or are these voices something completely different? Am I channeling another dimension, some version of the past made present? But why? What’s the message? Even if you didn’t experience anything like them, you’d know what to do, you’d know how to interpret them better than I do. You were the one who taught me the meaning and the purpose of things, until the moment that you made the most senseless decision your last. It’s not fair. What kind of sick joke is it that I start hearing the voices of dead people, but I can’t hear yours?
Eric, are you still mad at me?
Cady strained to listen, tensing every muscle in her body.
Someone was humming.
As she recognized the tune, the hair on the back of her neck stood up. It was the song from the shower, “Happy Days Are Here Again.”
“Who’s there?”
Oh, sorry, I didn’t mean to creep up on you.
It wasn’t Eric, it was a stranger, a new voice, a man’s. Cady felt instantly vulnerable and afraid.
You don’t need to be frightened, I’m a student here.
Cady jumped to her feet, ready to run—but from what? Could she escape this voice even if she wanted to? She stopped herself. She felt unsafe but had to know what was going on.
Please, don’t leave. I’m just laying out programs for tomorrow’s service, I’m an usher. Normally I’d do it in the morning, but I have crew practice tomorrow. Reverend Phillips leaves the door unlocked for me.
Cady’s memory leaped back to the open door … was it possible?
All right, now you.
Me what?
What are you doing in a church in the middle of the night?
I’m either talking to ghosts or I’m losing my mind.
Really? His laugh was warm. You make it look good.
Cady softened a bit in spite of herself. —Who are you?
You want the whole story? I’m James Whitaker Goodwin, Jr., but everyone calls me Whit. Only son of Emmeline Goodwin and the late James Whitaker Goodwin, Sr., of Savannah, Georgia. I’m a junior, varsity rower, physics concentrator, record collector, and all-around music enthusiast. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss … ?
Cady.
Nice to meet you, Cady. Now, what really brought you here?
My brother, Eric.
Has he passed on?
Yes. Have you?
Talked to those who’ve passed? Why, sure. My father died in the Great War when I was a tyke, if I didn’t talk to ghosts, I wouldn’t have gotten to tell him anything.
Did he ever talk back?
I wish. I s’pose he does, in his way. Through his record collection, he left me his old Victrola. Through his military service, I grew up hearing those stories. I don’t feel him much here, though. If my father were a ghost, he wouldn’t haunt Harvard. He wouldn’t be caught dead sitting around a classroom, so why would he after death? High school and then straight into the Navy. He wasn’t the type to pore over a book. I don’t know if I’m the type either—or maybe I just hate that I am.
Your brother, how does he answer?
He doesn’t.
Maybe just not in the ways you’re expecting.If I may ask, how did he pass?
He killed himself on this campus.
Another sound came from somewhere behind her. She spun to look toward the back of the church, but nothing was there. She forced herself to say its name aloud. “Whit?” Her own voice speaking the unusual name for the first time sounded eerily foreign in this space. Did she really believe this was a harmless “fingerprint” from another dimension? Cady stood still and listened, lightheaded, every muscle in her body tense. She closed her eyes, the next name coming out as more of a whispered prayer: “Eric?”
“Cady!” a new voice echoed in the church, loud and more present, making Cady jump. “Look up!”
She lifted her gaze to the balcony at the back of the church, where a dark figure was leaning over the railing, his face only half-lit by the moonlight. “Nikos?”
“Yes, hold on, I’ll come right down,” he replied. He scurried across the balcony and disappeared, while Cady all but collapsed in a pew, trying to catch her breath. He reemerged from a side door on the ground floor of the church. “Whatever are you doing here?” he said on the way, but when he reached her, Cady simply threw her arms around him and hugged him tight.
“Oh my God, I was so scared!”
“I scared you?” Nikos delicately unwound her arms from his neck. “Do you know how utterly creepy you looked, standing in the middle of the aisle like some sort of bride of the damned? I thought I’d seen a ghost!”
Cady heaved an exhalation. “Then we’re even.”
“What are you doing here, conducting some sort of séance? I’m not standing atop a pentagram, am I?”
Cady gave a laugh, mostly to stall—she didn’t have a good answer for his question. “I was passing by and I heard something, I thought, I don’t know, I was curious.” The truth blinkered in her mind as she rambled: I was talking to a ghost. “The door was open,” she added, a little too defensively.
“Was it? I was sure I locked it behind me.”
“You have keys to the church?”
“Blasphemy, isn’t it? But yes, unlike you, I have permission to be here. It’s my practice hour.”
“Practice for what?”
“The organ.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Come up if you don’t believe me.” Nikos held out his hand.
Cady hesitated for only a moment before letting him lead her to the back corner of the ch
urch; she liked the feeling of his hand around hers—warm, alive, real—she had to will herself not to squeeze his fingers. When they reached a stone spiral staircase, Cady glanced once over her shoulder at the vacant pews, half-expecting to see someone watching them go.
The balcony was up out of reach of the moonlight streaming in from the windows, and Cady’s eyes struggled to adjust at first. She was distracted by the height, looking down into the nave of the church, still scanning for a figure to go with the voice she’d heard. So when she finally looked to the right and saw the organ, it took her breath away. It looked like some sort of heavenly gate; the great arc of its height reached all the way to the ceiling and almost the full breadth of the balcony, and its golden pipes glowed without any light reflecting from them. Nikos let go of her hand and walked up the choral risers to the bench at the dark wooden heart of the instrument. He sat and flicked on a lamp above the music stand, illuminating the keyboards but silhouetting his torso, the stray light creeping up the pipes whose open mouths cast inverted shadows, like a kid with a flashlight beneath his chin. When Nikos turned to look back at her, the light shone all around his head but obscured his face in shadow. For a strange moment, Cady thought she saw someone else’s features, but then, that accent: “Are you joining me?”
Cady sat close to Nikos on the bench. Four keyboards lay before them, stacked one on top of the other, like rows of shark teeth. “I can’t believe you actually play this.”
“I’m playing at service this Sunday, which is why I have to brush up. Normally my practice hour is Thursday nights, eleven to midnight, but I swapped with Yumee. There are a few of us organists.”
“Why so late at night?”
“They have to find time when the church is closed so we don’t bother anybody. And you know, it’s hard to sort out the schedules of overbooked Harvard students, we’re far too busy and far too important.”
Ghosts of Harvard Page 16
