What Tomorrow May Bring

by Tony Bertauski

  Janie smiled but shook her head. “I’ve got to go turn in that psych paper. But good luck! Let me know how it goes.”

  “Will do.” Alessa and Janie parted and Alessa headed up the few steps towards the library door.

  When she stepped inside, the musk of old books hit her immediately. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell exactly, but it was a violent contrast to the fresh fall air outside. Alessa looked up and admired the tall vaulted ceilings and heavy wood rafters. Like most of the main campus, the library had been built in the late 1800s, a time when labor was still cheap enough that buildings were treated as detailed works of art as much as construction projects. The architectural details in the library were stunning, from the intricate woodwork in the moldings to the stained glass windows to the Versailles-patterned tile floor. From the entranceway, Alessa could look up four stories straight with nothing to block her view except a grand old chandelier.

  She headed to the information desk and the student behind the counter looked up with a smile. “How can I help you?”

  Alessa wasn’t quite sure what to ask for. “Hi. Um, I’m trying to learn more about the history of my sorority house?” She cringed. Alessa hated feeling unsure of herself. “I saw that a Mary Brighton was quoted as an expert in an article from The Burrow,” – the university was overrun with seemingly endless references to the ridiculous school mascot, and the campus newspaper was no exception – “and I think I read that she’s a librarian here?”

  “Yup! Ms. Brighton has an office up on the third floor. Just take the steps and make a right. It’s down past the local history section.”

  “Thanks,” Alessa breathed with a smile. She turned towards the large staircase on her left and headed up to the third floor. Passing stacks upon stacks of books, Alessa wondered how many tomes were housed in the building. The rows seemed almost endless.

  Reaching the office, Alessa noted that the door was open. Inside was a smallish older woman, gray hair pulled back in a severe bun, thick black glasses perched low on her nose, her neutral outfit neat but frumpy. Alessa almost had to laugh – Mary Brighton was like a caricature, displaying every trait one might attribute to a stereotypical librarian, right down to the over-large book she was patiently paging through.

  Alessa knocked gently on the wall. The librarian pushed her glasses back to the bridge of her nose and looked up. “Hello, dear. What can I assist you with?”

  “Hi. I was actually interested in learning more about the history of my sorority house, Z-E-Pi, and I saw that you were at the commemoration ceremony a few days ago?” Alessa tried not to be awkward. She didn’t know what she was going to say if Ms. Brighton asked why she was interested. She wished she had thought this through a bit more.

  “Oh, absolutely. 33 Mason Manor is one of my favorite properties on the campus. What did you want to know?”

  Alessa wondered if it would be possible to avoid the subject of the ghost. She didn’t want to be known as “the poor girl who was seeing things,” even to an old spinster that she didn’t particularly know. Alessa took a deep breath and hoped her reply was casual enough to not betray her lie. “I’m working on a project for my history class, about the lifetime of a building. I’m supposed to choose one building and write about all the notable people who lived or worked there.” She looked at the librarian expectantly.

  “Of course. I can help you with that. Just one moment.” Mary Brighton closed the volume she’d been reading and Alessa was hit with a puff of that old book smell again. Ms. Brighton stood up. “Come with me.”

  A few moments later, Alessa was seated at another uncomfortable study desk, this time in the back corner of the library’s third floor. Mary Brighton had known exactly where to find all the old town records, dating all the way back to the 1700s. Alessa was pretty sure that the ghost was from the late 1800s or early 1900s based on his clothes, though her limited knowledge of historical fashion was gleaned mainly from movies, and who knew how accurate they might be. There was a thick book for every decade from 1760 to 1999, after which Ms. Brighton had explained that the records were electronic. Alessa was worried she’d have to page through all 24 books to keep up the pretext for her research, but the librarian had given her a break when she mentioned that the house was built in the 1870s, knocking almost half the books off her list.

  Alessa picked up the first book and paged through to get acquainted with the organization. The book was broken down by year, then the properties were listed alphabetically by address. There was an entry any time a property was built, destroyed, or changed hands, with the date and any involved parties listed alongside it. Alessa started with 1870 and skipped to the M section, scanning the page for 33 Mason Manor.

  Nothing.

  She tried 1871. Still nothing.

  Alessa continued in this manner until she came across the first entry in 1878:

  Mason Manor, No. 33. New Construction, completed October 14th on 148 acres. Owner: Albert B. Mason. Residents: Albert B. Mason & Elizabeth Mason, children Albert Mason Jr., 3, and William Mason, 1.

  Now she had a start. If the young man she was seeing was from the 1890s, it could be Albert Jr. or William. She noted that the last name of the residents was the same as the address – she supposed they had named the property after the family.

  Alessa continued reading. There was nothing more in the first book, nor in the second or third. It was in the fourth volume – 1900s – that Alessa had another hit:

  Mason Manor, No. 33. New Owner, Albert Mason Jr., as of April 25th. Residents: Albert Mason Jr. & Martha Mason, children Isaac Mason, 6.

  That entry was from 1906, adding Isaac Mason as another possibility. Alessa read for a few more moments, and found one more related record in 1908. The family had acquired another 40 acres of land adjacent to the property and there was an additional entry beside Isaac under the children, a one year old Josephine Mason.

  If it was Isaac, the ghost she was seeing was probably from between 1915 and 1920. She knew from the Z-E-Pi article that the university had purchased the property in the 30s, so that left two or three volumes to go through to narrow down the possibilities.

  Unfortunately, though, it would have to wait. Alessa glanced at the clock and realized she had only 20 minutes until her physics lecture, and she still needed to run home and grab her laptop, which she had forgotten in her rush to get to the midterm that morning.

  Alessa jotted down the information she had found and resolved to come back the next time she had a few free moments. She stacked the volumes of records chronologically and carried them back to the shelves from which Mary Brighton had taken them. She took one last look at the clock – 17 minutes. That was just enough time to dash across campus, grab her computer, and meet Janie at the science building.

  5. ENCOUNTER

  Alessa climbed the steps to her house with 13 minutes to spare until the start of her lecture. She hastily bounded to the second floor and tried to remember if she had anything edible in her minifridge. She thought there might be a few string cheeses left and made a mental note to grab one as she swung around the doorway into her room.

  Alessa stopped short. Standing at the window not ten feet from her was a tall solitary figure, partially cast in shadow. He was looking out the window, breathing gently, one slim lace up boot perched on the low windowsill, narrow suspenders pulled taut across a broad, flat back and fastened to the narrow waist of his trim brown slacks. Lost in his own thoughts, he gazed pensively across the expanse of the lawn, his chin perched gently upon the knuckles of his left fist, white shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow. She could see the muscles in his forearm flex as he clenched and unclenched his hand.

  Alessa stifled the urge to scream as adrenaline rushed through her body. Panic threatened to overtake her as blood throbbed through her temples, her muscles tensing for action. But she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, so she just stood still, watching.

  He was contemplative, as usual, gazing through the window but not focuse
d on anything in particular. He dropped his left arm and ruffled a hand through the short waves of his soft brown hair. His skin was pale, but not the pallid color of sickness, more the luminous porcelain of mid-winter.

  Alessa’s body refused to calm, her insides churning as she fought the mayhem stirring in her chest. Terror mixed with agony, her heart sinking with each beat, overwhelmed with an aching sorrow she couldn’t explain. But at the same time, she felt the firm tug of a powerful longing, the depths of which she’d never experienced before. She couldn’t have torn her eyes from him if she’d tried.

  His image glowed faintly, the lines of the windowpane just barely visible through his semi-translucent form. For a moment, his head inclined in her direction and she could see the gleam of one sea blue eye above a strong, straight nose and thin pale rose lips.

  Transfixed by his face, Alessa couldn’t get a grip on her emotions. She was frightened and anxious, every impulse in her body telling her to run. But at the same time she felt strangely drawn to him, and she knew she couldn’t have forced her feet to move even if she’d wanted to. She was frozen in place, powerless to act, waves of anguish washing over her, drowning. And on top of all this, that ever-present, searing longing that rooted her in place despite her best instincts towards self-preservation. How did this strange apparition invoke such turmoil in her?

  Alessa knew somewhere inside that she needed to connect with the ghost, needed to break through the barrier that separated them, but she didn’t know how. The only thing she could think to do was speak, but what would she say? How could she start? And did he even know she was there? How would he react to her intrusion?

  Alessa was building the courage to try to communicate when the ghost began to fade. It started with the hazy glow around him, which grew strong for a moment then rapidly drew inward, erasing his presence as it went. Alessa thought she saw a small flicker and then the form was gone.

  She gasped for air; she didn’t realize she’d been holding her breath. The entire encounter had only lasted a few seconds, maybe ten at the most, but she was overcome with exhaustion. Her heart was still pounding and she was trembling from her fingertips to her toes.

  Worse, her entire mental state was in shambles. Alessa didn’t understand the tumultuous emotions that had hammered through her and she was still reeling from the experience. Seeing the ghost was thrilling, but it was also alarming and strange, and it shook her straight to her core. That was a normal enough reaction to this kind of situation, but there was something else, too, something specific to this ghost.

  Her attraction to him was magnetic, and it went beyond her natural curiosity. And yes, he was an incredibly appealing guy – the kind she would have pined over in high school – but it was more than that too. It was like she knew him. She just couldn’t explain it.

  Whenever she was in his presence, she desperately wanted to reach out to him, to tell him he wasn’t alone. He was forever gazing out over some landscape that Alessa was blind to, hard lines of melancholy scored into his face. But she just couldn’t bring herself to interrupt his reverie, held hostage as she was by her body’s impulses.

  The sound of footsteps approaching from down the hall brought Alessa back to reality. She quickly closed the door behind her. The last thing she wanted to do right now was exchange pleasantries with one of her housemates.

  She leaned her back against the door, spreading her palms against the cool wood. Alessa looked up at the ceiling, releasing a deep sigh. These encounters always left her shaken and emotionally drained, and she didn’t have time to deal with it today. She had to get to class.

  She looked slowly around the room. Everything was in its place – the oversized original fireplace mantle to her left, her twin bed and nightstand beyond it against the wall, then the double window and finally her desk and fridge across from the bed. To her right was the large sliding door sealing off the double closet. It was amazing how such a familiar place could for those few moments feel so foreign to her, like another world she didn’t belong in.

  She crossed the room and snapped the lid of her laptop shut, unplugging the power cord from the back of the machine as she awkwardly attempted to scoop it up with the other hand. She regretted once again that she hadn’t splurged on a higher-end model constructed of lighter materials as she exchanged the heavy textbook in her backpack for the heavier computer in her hand and closed the zipper. Looking at her bedside clock, she noted that she had 10 minutes to make it back across campus.

  Alessa turned towards the door and then she remembered the string cheese. The scene inside her refrigerator was dismal. The shelves were lined with half-rotted fruit and takeout leftovers from who knows when. On the door she found a few cans of diet soda. Checking the bottom drawer, she hit upon the package of string cheese with three individually wrapped sticks remaining. She grabbed one and accidentally slammed the fridge door as she headed out, the adrenaline still ringing through her body.

  Springing down the stairs of the house, Alessa set a quick pace down the cobblestone path that led back to the quad. She peeled the plastic back from the string cheese as she went, anxiously swallowing bites as she strode past ambling students. Janie would throw a fit if she could see; she viewed not peeling string cheese into strings as virtually sacrilegious.

  A couple frat boys were tossing a frisbee across the quad while some freshman girls stood huddled under a tree, stealing glances at the guys and giggling to each other. Alessa watched a comic looking professor in a classic tweed blazer replete with elbow patches hustle a stack of papers a foot tall towards the faculty offices. On the far side of the quad, a team of facility workers were blowing fallen leaves into a pile and raking them into bags. Taking in the ordinary college scene around her, Alessa began to feel almost normal again.

  It’d been a couple weeks since she’d last seen the ghost, and she had forgotten how unsettling it was. It was as though for a few moments her whole world turned upside-down. Ghosts weren’t supposed to exist. She shouldn’t be wandering into her room in the middle of the day to find a strange man standing there, only to watch him disappear into thin air seconds later. It was true that much of her life in the past year didn’t make sense to her, but at least it was still firmly grounded in reality, on a planet with clear laws of nature that no one could break.

  This ghost thing turned all of that on its head. She was sure that what she was seeing was real, despite Janie’s half-joking hints to the contrary, and that knowledge made her wonder what else she had mistakenly taken for granted.

  There had been her family’s stability for one. She’d always counted on her parents to be there for her, to be a guiding voice and a security blanket whenever she needed them. In spite of the constant fighting in recent years, Alessa needed her parents. And one moment in the wrong place at the wrong time had taken them from her, forever.

  Then, of course, there was her own infallibility. Alessa had been so wrapped up in her dreams for the future that she had failed to prepare for reality. Yes, her parents’ death was a curveball she hadn’t anticipated, and her reaction – depression, withdrawal, breakdown – had been pretty understandable. But even if they had survived the accident and things had gone back to normal, Alessa had a sneaking suspicion that she might still be in the same boat.

  She had thought she was invincible, but in the end she was just deluded. Yes, she was a talented student and a good leader with a strong resume, but there were thousands of others just like her. She didn’t know what had ever made her think that she was entitled to admission to only the best schools in the country. She should have known that getting accepted to any of the schools on her list was a shot in the dark, and she should have put more time into evaluating other more realistic options that might actually have been a good match for her.

  She’d always preferred to be a big fish in a small pond, and she could have had her pick of decent colleges, even after all the devastation of the accident. Instead, she’d squandered her opportunity an
d had to settle for this massive university where she was nothing but a number.

  Arriving at the door to the lecture hall, Alessa felt more lost than she ever had. She didn’t know what to believe in anymore. Certainly not her own judgment, certainly not her parents’ permanence, and certainly not the laws of science. In the past year, if there was one thing Alessa had learned, it was not to trust herself, not even down to the most basic truths. Like that ghosts were only stories. She knew now that there was much more to this world than it had seemed.

  6. DISSECTION

  Janie had saved a seat for Alessa towards the back of the huge auditorium. “Cutting it a little close, aren’t you?” she jibed with a mischievous smirk.

  Alessa was unfailingly punctual. She knew that Janie – who was always running ten minutes behind – must take a small amount of pleasure in seeing their roles reversed for once. Usually it was a frazzled Janie plopping down into her seat, frantically pulling out her notes seconds before the beginning of class. Today it was Alessa’s turn.

  Alessa looked at Janie. She didn’t know where to start.

  Janie’s expression shifted into concern. “You look like you’ve seen…”

  “A ghost, yes,” Alessa said under her breath.

  Janie’s eyes popped. “Just now?” she whispered urgently.

  Alessa noticed that Professor Liu was stepping up to the podium. “Yes,” she whispered back, “in my room.”

  “What happened?” Janie breathed.

  The professor had started speaking, something about being pleased with the results of this morning’s exam.

  Alessa lowered her voice to give Janie the summary. “The same thing as always: he was just standing there and then he disappeared.”

  “Kind of anticlimactic.”

  “No kidding.”

  Janie thought for a moment. “Did you find anything at the library?”