The Academy

by Zachary Rawlins

  “That was a pretty big favor that I did you, right?” Renton said softly, his smile wide and mean. “And while I do appreciate you bringing up all this stuff up to the roof for me, maybe you should consider if things between us are really squared. What do you think, Margot?”

  Margot’s eyes narrowed, and for a moment, Alex wondered if she was going to attack him. She was, after all, a vampire, right? He had been planning on introducing himself, but found himself standing by nervously, not sure what to make of the conversation. The mood didn’t seem right for him to interrupt.

  “Very well.” Margot bowed her head for a moment, and then continued on evenly. “I can’t speak for Eerie, though. She will probably just go home by herself.”

  “I really don’t think you should let that happen, Margot,” Renton said reasonably. “Besides, you can tell Eerie that I have a bunch of candy up here for her.”

  Again, Margot paused and appeared to try and compose herself. Alex looked at the serious, pigtailed vampire, and wondered why Renton was being so hard on her. He’d already known him long enough not to like him, but he didn’t think he was stupid or fond of wasting time. Alex sipped his awful beer, and wondered what Renton’s angle was, with Margot, with Eerie, with himself.

  “It was a mistake to fall into your debt, Renton.” Margot turned and began to float away. “And you’d better be serious about the candy. You don’t want to disappoint Eerie.”

  Alex looked at Renton and wondered. Renton had gone out of his way to be friendly, in his own weird way, since Alex had arrived, but unlike Emily and Vivik, his motives were far more obscure.

  “He’s been like that since I met him,” Emily observed, looking over Alex’s shoulder. “He can be kind of a dick, and still confuses picking on girls with flirting, but he’s not really as bad as he’d like you to believe.”

  Alex spun around, startled, and found himself face-to-face with her. Her cheeks were rosy from the cold, and she held her beer gingerly in sparkly blue gloves.

  “Are you sure?” Alex said, only half-joking. “Sometimes I wonder if Renton’s really such an okay guy.”

  “Well, he did throw you a party,” Renton pointed out from behind his beer.

  “I guess. But are you seriously blackmailing that vampire just to get beer on to the roof? That seems like a bad idea.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Margot said dismissively, floating neatly over the retaining wall, Eerie held casually in her arms, as if she weighed nothing. “I don’t bite. I’m the nice kind of vampire.”

  She actually came all the way down to the ground, this time, and Alex wondered if her bare feet were cold against the stone, and shivered in his jacket. She set Eerie down carefully next to her.

  Eerie wore a red and white sweater with a pleated black skirt and black knee socks. Her exposed shoulders were perfectly round and bone-white, and the edges of her hair brushed against them, haphazard and uneven. Her outfit, like Margot’s, didn’t seem to really take temperature into account, but neither of them looked particularly bothered by the cold, either. She had a basket filled with yarn and carefully wrapped knitting needles tucked under one arm.

  Alex made a mental note to ask someone where he could get a haircut before the party ended. It seemed like the Academy really needed an orientation or a tour, or something. Maybe it was held at the start of the year, and he’d missed it.

  “That’s pretty rare,” Sarah observed. “Margot has come to these things once or twice, but I’ve never seen Eerie come to anything. You have to admit that Renton has a remarkable way with people.”

  Ways which included blackmail and bribery. Something worth knowing, Alex thought. Eerie ran over to Renton, and held out her hand expectantly.

  “Where is the candy?” Eerie’s voice was strange, with a musical, sing-song quality. The way she spoke gave him the impression that English was not her first, or best, language.

  “Here,” Renton said, pulling a different paper sack from one of his coat’s inner pockets, and handing it to Eerie. Alex was astounded to see Eerie pull a package of Skittles from it and tear it open.

  “It never even occurred to me that it would actually be bag of candy.” Alex shook his head and Emily laughed. “I figured that was slang for some kind of drug.”

  “Do you want me to introduce you?” Emily offered. “I know both of them pretty well.”

  “You’re an empath,” Sarah said, laughing. “You know everybody pretty well.”

  Alex finished the last of his beer, and then collected Sarah and Emily’s empties as well. He made a trip to the cooler and got three new cans, depositing the empty ones in an already half-full paper sack. There were more people on the roof now, and a lot of them, maybe even most of them, were girls. Alex stood there for a moment, before realized that much of the party, subtly or not, had started watching him, and hurried back over to where Emily and Sarah were chatting.

  “Alright. What the hell. Introduce me to your friends.”

  Sarah laughed and patted him on the shoulder.

  “Try not to look so nervous, Alex,” Emily admonished, leading him over. “This way… Hey Margot? Eerie?”

  Emily walked to where the two girls stood, skirting the periphery of the party, up against the edge of the roof, and Alex tagged along behind her. He was going to feel bad about what had happened with Steve until he got Eerie to talk to him, no matter how much of weirdo she might turn out to be. He still felt kind of like an ass, for having tried so hard to look cool in front of her. He wondered if she hated him already, and was surprised that he cared.

  “Emily,” Margot acknowledged with a nod, from where she leaned against the wall, arms folded across her chest, her face blank but not unfriendly. “Alex. Renton was supposed to introduce us, but he wandered off, chasing after that redhead from Herzog’s class.”

  Alex was a bit taken aback, but it wasn’t an altogether bad reception, he reasoned. Eerie was staring at him, he realized, her hand frozen halfway to her mouth, a number of multicolored candies in her palm.

  “Hi! I’m Alex,” he said, raising one hand stiffly in greeting and wondering what in the hell it was that he was doing. His voice sounded odd to him, forced and artificial. “Nice to finally get to talk to both of you.”

  Margot said nothing. Eerie held absolutely still for a moment, and then, slowly, lifted the remaining candy to her mouth.

  “He’s being nice to you guys,” Emily admonished, shaking her finger and glaring at them. “I thought Rebecca had made you two promise to try and be more social this year.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sarah offered encouragingly. “No one ever knows what to say to either of them, Alex. Keep trying. You’re already doing better than most guys.”

  Eerie’s eyes widened, and then she shook her head, and looked as if she was going to speak. After a brief struggle, her expression went slack again, and then she simply looked back down to the ground. Margot glanced over at her, and then shook her head.

  “I think we should go somewhere else,” Margot said as she walked past, Emily feebly protesting as she was dragged along. “She has been talking about this boy since the other day in the cafeteria.”

  Emily went silent, and then gave Alex a panicked look as she was pulled off towards the party by the vampire. Sarah followed them, laughing at the whole scene. Despite the cold, Alex felt himself break out in sweat. Had he really been left alone with a girl who hadn’t managed to say anything coherent to him, one who wasn’t even human? In front of Emily? Alex was having serious doubts about the soundness of the whole situation.

  “I don’t get it.”

  Eerie’s voice was oddly musical, but vaguely inhuman, like a reproduction of a human voice made by a beautiful, but wholly alien, device.

  “Um, yeah… you don’t get what?”

  Alex scratched the back of his head nervously, and shifted from one foot to the other.

  “Margot says that you are an idiot. She says that you fought with Steve the other day bec
ause you are stupid…”

  She trailed off shyly, one hand toying with the edge of her skirt.

  Alex shook his head slowly.

  “That is a very real possibility,” Alex admitted. He finally got her to meet his eyes – and was stunned to discover that they were dilated to such an extent that her irises were nothing more than millimeter-thin colored rings around a reflective black space. He wasn’t certain that he’d ever seen anyone’s eyes look that way, and wondered what kind of drugs did that to you. “But, I prefer to think of myself as impulsive.”

  Eerie crumpled and discarded the Skittles wrapper, and then started digging through the bag again, seemingly oblivious to Alex’s presence.

  “So, it seems like you and Margot are pretty good friends, huh?”

  Eerie didn’t look up, she just continued rummaging.

  “Friends? I don’t really get stuff like that,” she said quietly, pulling a handful of red liquorices twists from the paper bag, “but we live in the same place.”

  Alex took a sip from his beer, and rapidly considered his options. Renton and Vivik had disappeared, as had Margot, Sarah and Emily. As a matter of fact, the entire party was conspicuously distant from them. He was obviously on his own, and he’d need a pretty good excuse to walk away. That meant he’d have to finish the beer, as rapidly as politeness allowed, since going to get another was the only reason to walk away that he could come up with. This still left him needing something, anything to say to the girl standing next to him.

  “You seem to really… like candy,” Alex observed, lamely casting about for a topic, any topic.

  Eerie seemed to give the question serious consideration, nibbling on a Red Vine, before nodding gravely.

  “But, I have been practicing eating other food. Actually,” she added, looking thoughtful, “that’s why I was in the cafeteria the other day. I don’t usually go there.”

  Alex felt mildly encouraged. He was starting to get the hang of her bizarre intonation, and her last statement had even referenced what he had wanted to talk about. This, Alex thought proudly, was communication.

  All of a sudden, then, Eerie was standing very, very close to him, on her tip toes so that her eyes would be level with his. Her pupils were black and glittering and huge, and he could see a ghost image of himself reflected in them, looking far more nervous and less cool than he would have liked.

  “You’ve only just been activated. But it’s already started, hasn’t it?”

  Alex backed away a step, and then shook his head.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  Eerie took another step forward, dropping the paper bag into her knitting basket and then clutching the basket handle in both hands.

  “Don’t you remember, Alex? Hasn’t this happened already?” Eerie voice was distant, her eyes wet and unfocused. “Are you dreaming now, Alex? Isn’t it hard to tell?”

  Alex shook his head, utterly dumbfounded. He had no idea what the girl was talking about, but at the same time, it made him terribly nervous. Something he had dreamed, maybe, a strange sense of déjà vu… he wasn’t certain. He was, however, certain that Eerie was standing too close to him, and he half-stumbled a few steps away.

  “I don’t understand.” Alex felt hot, almost feverish. There was a strange buzzing sound that seemed to emanate from the back of his neck, like static from the base of his skull. “Why are you asking me all these questions?”

  “Can you feel it already?” Eerie asked softly. “The slippage. Dislocation. Oh, so very lonely. Haven’t I already told you my secret?”

  Eerie’s eyes were half-closed now, and her arms were wrapped around herself tightly. She stumbled forward, dazed, almost colliding with Alex in the process. He caught her awkwardly, trying to push her away and stand her upright at the same time, without much success in either endeavor.

  “The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Her melodic voice was barely a whisper, and he had to strain to hear it. “Surely you’ve noticed. Don’t you fall asleep earlier and earlier, since you came here? Can you remember going to bed when you wake up?”

  “Yes,” Alex replied, his throat hoarse, “and no.”

  Eerie clutched herself even tighter, the folds of sweater pulled tight across her chest in a way that he found quite distracting. Her skin was flushed, and icy cold where Alex’s fingers brushed against her shoulder. She pressed her forehead against his chest, and he was afraid that she really would fall over, she seemed so out of it.

  “And when you wake up, sometimes, and you feel like someone is there with you.” Eerie’s voice had lost all of its interrogative qualities, replaced with something that sounded more like a bald statement of fact. “And sometimes, when you wake up, you know things that you didn’t know before. But you’ll never remember another dream, now that you’ve come here.”

  “H-How,” Alex stammered, “how is it that you know these things?”

  “The Church of Sleep, Alex.” Eerie looked at him as if she had answered his question in full. “When we sleep, we are programmed. What else could sleep be? But who does the programming, and to what end? To where do they drive us?”

  Li put his hand on Alex’s shoulder, and the strange atmosphere immediately deflated, Eerie retreating back from him hurriedly, as if she’d only now realized how close they were. Alex felt confusion as well as a profound sense of relief.

  “Try not to overwhelm Alex,” Li said to Eerie, patting her on the head affectionately. “You can’t try and tell him everything all at once.”

  Eerie’s shoulders slumped and she looked distraught, and for some reason, Alex immediately felt guilty. What was it with this girl? He didn’t understand anything. But his head was starting to clear, and whatever strange effect the girl’s words had on him was already fading.

  “I’m sorry, Alex.” Eerie looked at him, unaccountably sad. “I didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

  “Everything is fine, Eerie,” Alex insisted. “Nothing bad happened.”

  Eerie looked one way, then the other, and then leaned in close so that Alex could hear her whisper.

  “I’ll help you out with something, then, to make up for it.” Alex felt a bit nervous with her standing this close, but this time he didn’t pull away. Whatever it was Eerie had to say, he was sure he wanted to hear it. “Walking in the snow, under a grey sky, you will wonder if it is okay. I won’t be able to say it, then, because I’m shy. Alex,” Eerie whispered, her lips so close to his ear that he could feel her breathe. “It’s okay with me.”

  Eerie straightened back up, and then smiled at him. Her oval face lit up when she smiled, and he was struck by how familiar she looked, how nostalgic, in a way he couldn’t put his finger on. Alex could only stare at her and wonder what any of what she said had meant.

  Alex found himself shaking his head, trying to clear it. Had this all happened before? Why was it that he kept thinking about a cloud of golden butterflies, wheeling and diving in rough unison under the brilliant afternoon sunlight near Half Moon Bay? Had he ever actually seen that? Whose memory was it?

  “Something bad is coming, Alex. Right now. It’ll hurt a bit,” Eerie said sadly, kicking at the ground absently, “but you’ll have to make it through without my help. Don’t worry, though,” she said reassuringly. “I know you will.”

  Where Eerie had stood, there was only a cloud of golden smoke, dissipating in the wind, smelling delicately of sandalwood. Alex turned back toward the rest of the party, wanting to ask someone what had happened.

  The party had become a still-life portrait. Sarah was frozen in midsentence, caught up in conversation with Renton and a black girl he didn’t recognize. Li was right behind them, along with Vivik, Todd, and two other guys that Alex vaguely remembered from class. All of them were rigid, silent, flesh-colored statues arrayed across the jumbled surface of the roof. Alex took a step closer, and realized that even the beer in the bottle Renton was drinking from was inert, held in perfect suspension in the neck of the bottle.

/>   He heard a strange, metallic sound from behind him and spun around. Hovering in front of him, perhaps twenty feet above the roof of the building, a thing that he could not stand to look at directly loomed over him with its many terrible eyes, and screamed.

  The scream was not like anything Alex had heard before. It was barely even a sound. He felt revulsion from the very depths of his being, and was immediately sick, coughing up bile as his stomach contracted and heaved. The sound the creature made was like a terrible reverberating siren, endless and punishing, battering his mind and thoughts into fragments. His chest and abdomen were racked with spasms, and his legs twisted and collapsed underneath him. He spilled onto his contorted back, unable to move, pinned down by the sheer horror of the thing, the noise, the horrible piercing shriek.

  There was a sudden wetness on his face, and then he realized that his nose was bleeding. His vision blurred, and an impression of the thing seemed to be burned into his retina, so that every time he blinked he saw an afterimage of its horrible shape. The light refracted around it bizarrely, disorienting Alex, filling him with a formless and intolerable anxiety. The scream drilled into him, it ate away at everything around him, corroding reality. The world would not tolerate an existence like the one above him and in its desperate attempt to shed the abomination, the world itself was unraveling around him.

  Alex felt it in the stone crumbling beneath his hands, in the crawling of his skin, everything rejecting the monster’s existence on a molecular level, like a cancer afflicting the world. The air hissed and smoked where it met the distended grey appendages and the building beneath began to shudder and fracture. It was translucent, but even the moonlight that eked through the glutinous mass was corrupted and ruined. The monster was so fundamentally abominable that Alex could not help but understand: the world around him was dying rather than accepting the existence of this thing, and if he stayed there too much longer, he would as well.