Grey Howl

by Clea Simon

  Dulcie bit into the pastry to keep from replying. Her boyfriend might have said he felt fine, but he didn’t look like himself. And his dream seemed a little too close to hers.

  Not until he had eaten the rest of the muffin did she feel comfortable leaving him. Even then, she convinced him to close the door behind her and to nap for an hour, at least.

  ‘We’ll go to bed early tonight,’ she promised.

  ‘With the conference starting? Not likely.’ The grin that opened up his face reassured her, somewhat. And with a kiss, she went off to do Thorpe’s bidding.

  ‘Hall A and Hall B the next three nights.’ The media tech seemed amused by Dulcie. ‘Then B for the final presentation. Got it.’ The tech – Kelly, she’d said her name was – swung her terminal around so Dulcie could see the schedule, each box filled out with the acronym ELLA and the last name of the presenter. ‘Assuming the building is open, we’ll get it done. We do know our job, you know.’

  ‘I know.’ Dulcie felt she owed the boyish tech an explanation. ‘It’s Thorpe, my department head. He’s a little nervous about the conference.’

  ‘I figured.’ Kelly gave her a conspiratorial grin. ‘He called three times yesterday. “Barnes must have Hall A and Showalter Hall B, and do be sure that you don’t mess up the slides.”’

  ‘He said that?’ Dulcie cringed. Kitten or no, Thorpe was not doing well. Then again, Showalter was an active candidate for his job. And Paul Barnes was, well … Paul Barnes.

  ‘That wasn’t the worst of it.’ Kelly scooted her chair closer. ‘He was asking about the renovations, about the exits, about access and when the new bathrooms will be ready. Really going on and on. I mean, we’re completely ADA compliant, he should know that.’

  ‘I didn’t realize …’ Dulcie caught herself. Dishing about Thorpe within the department was one thing. Gossiping with a stranger quite another. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘That was the weird part.’ The tech looked thoughtful. ‘The plumbing is going to be out for another day on the main floor, but we have everything working in the basement. Only, he didn’t want to hear about ramps or how to work the lift to the stage. He only seemed to care that people could come and go without running into each other. I mean, you’re all in the same field, aren’t you?’

  Dulcie flopped back against the wall. ‘It’s this conference.’ She thought about trying to explain and gave up. ‘And about the job.’ That was a little easier. ‘So Thorpe’s the interim chair,’ she was winding up, five minutes later. ‘But even after the search, the deans declined to name him – or anyone – to the position. And he has to host this conference, basically, and it’s in his best interest to attract the top scholars.’

  ‘Several of whom might want to steal his job.’ The tech filled in the blanks. ‘I get it.’ She looked up at Dulcie. ‘Who do you want to get the gig?’

  Dulcie hesitated. Kelly was being friendly, and the urge to confess was strong. Then again, the university was a really small place.

  ‘I can, you know, make sure someone has a better mike.’ That grin turned devilish as Kelly raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe arrange for some static or lighting problems.’

  ‘Oh, you couldn’t!’ She should never have said anything.

  ‘I’m joking.’ Kelly leaned back, laughing. ‘Sorry. I should know by now not to tease anyone about tenure here.’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Dulcie shook her head. ‘It’s just been so tense.’

  Kelly nodded. ‘I believe it. I’ve been working here for four years, and I’ve seen it all. But I’d be careful, if I were you.’

  Dulcie looked up, expectant.

  ‘Your Martin Thorpe might be on the right track with the separate exits and all.’ She motioned Dulcie closer and dropped her voice. ‘I wouldn’t be surprised if someone was looking for a way to sabotage a rival, or even the whole conference.’

  Dulcie was about to interrupt – to explain that the conference was better known for love triangles than for anything more dire – when Kelly continued.

  ‘When I came in this morning, I found one of the back doors propped open, when it should have been locked tight,’ she said, her voice still low. ‘It might just have been a prank, but it looked like someone had been working on the latch – hacking at it with a screwdriver or something. Positively clawing at it. My crew is responsible for making sure everything here is secure when we close out for the night, so I didn’t want to report it. I just cleaned it up. But, Dulcie? There was something else strange about the doorway. There was something sticky on the lock – and a little on the floor. I’m not sure, but I think it was blood.’

  SIX

  ‘Blood?’

  That was only one of the many questions Dulcie had, and possibly the least articulate. It didn’t matter. No matter how she asked, Kelly was unable – or unwilling – to elucidate before Dulcie had to leave.

  ‘I don’t know,’ the slim tech had concluded. ‘Maybe it was an animal, trapped in here and desperate to get out. But, like, how?’ She’d shaken her head and turned back to her terminals, her heavy, dark hair hiding her face. ‘Maybe someone was pranking us – or maybe pranking your conference.’

  Dulcie didn’t entirely agree. For all the high-jinks ELLA was known for, pranking wasn’t one of them. But without anything further to add, she’d let Kelly’s comment stand. At any rate, the media tech clearly had the mechanics for the auditoriums under control, and Dulcie had a study group scheduled.

  It really was babysitting, she thought twenty minutes later as she looked at the students assembled around her. Reading period made the undergrads a little frantic, and the ones who were still here, well, they tended to need even more coddling than usual. She ought to be more sympathetic, she knew that. They were nervous, and it was her job as a teaching assistant to be here to help them. All she could think about, though, was the idea of an animal … and that howl.

  ‘Ms Schwartz?’ A nasal voice broke into her reverie. Tom. She’d been fielding his queries all semester. ‘What do you say?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She had to be honest. ‘Would you repeat the question?’

  ‘I said, “Why does anyone care, anyway?”’ The whine didn’t improve the grammar.

  ‘You asked,’ Dulcie corrected him. Teaching could be a trying proposition on the best of days. Teaching sci-fi – she mentally corrected herself, ‘early speculative fiction’ – was nearly impossible. Especially to a group of students who had no sense of fun. ‘And the reason we spent so much time this semester on this aspect of The War of the Worlds, Tom, is because it’s a window on readership and perspective.’

  ‘But it was all a sham,’ Marcie chimed in. Somehow, she got two syllables out of the last word. ‘Didn’t they get mad?’

  ‘Some people did. Why? Would you?’ Dulcie knew she was prevaricating. With all the preparation for the conference, she’d fallen a bit behind on her prep for this section. Still, she figured she could at least use it as an exercise in critical thinking.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Marcie shrugged. ‘Maybe.’

  Dulcie bit her lip and made herself pause before responding. For all she knew, this girl was a whizz at chemistry. ‘Anyone else?’ Eight sets of eyes stared at her blankly, twelve if you counted the glasses. Dulcie fought the urge to stare blankly back. She couldn’t blame them. At this point in the semester, they were thinking more about how to pass the final exam then they were about any deeper meanings in what most of them had probably assumed would be a gut course.

  ‘Let’s look at this another way.’ She stood up – that helped – and started walking around the table. ‘Let’s look at what we bring to any artistic experience. When we go to a movie, for example, aren’t we sometimes expecting to be entertained?’

  The eyes followed her, but the mouths stayed still. ‘Or TV. I mean, don’t we all turn on the television sometimes knowing that what we’re going to watch will be dumb, but because we know that, somehow we can still let it captivate us?’

  A shrug
. She jumped on it. ‘Julie?’

  ‘I don’t watch TV,’ said the sophomore. ‘Only downloads.’

  Dulcie resisted the urge to shriek: It doesn’t matter! She managed to keep her voice even. ‘The question is, don’t we often set ourselves up to believe in the experience? To enjoy it? Because we want to be entertained?’

  ‘Well, if it’s good.’ Julie gnawed on the end of her pencil as if she could taste the answer. ‘Like, I don’t know, that Glee rip-off?’

  ‘But that sucks this season,’ one of her classmates, Dulcie didn’t know his name, chimed in. ‘Ever since they got rid of the blonde girl …’

  ‘Okay, everyone!’ Dulcie was not at her wit’s end yet. She was, however, close. ‘Stop it. Here’s the deal. What I want you to think about … No,’ she had to be literal with this group. ‘What I want you to be prepared to discuss is the role of the reader, of the audience, in any creative endeavor.’ She paused for a moment while they wrote that down. Or at least texted themselves some version of her assignment. She decided to bulletproof it.

  ‘I am not, repeat not, saying that this will be on the final. But I think it will be useful if you can tell the study group about a book or a television show or a movie – some form of mass media – that you had an idea about. That could be as simple as thinking that you were going to like it. Or not like it. And then be able to tell us how or why that idea – that preconception – influenced your actual experience.’ She paused. It was pointless. The moment she’d said this wouldn’t necessarily be on the exam, most of them had stopped taking notes.

  She had one more shot in the locker. ‘Are any of you going to the ELLA talks this weekend?’

  Silence.

  ‘You do know that as members of the university, you can attend the conference’s public lectures. Don’t you? And that many of these same questions of authorship, of reader, even of point of view, will be covered by some of the leading minds in our field.’ Dulcie left out that she would be speaking. Surely someone would ask.

  As she’d hoped, a hand went up. ‘If we go, will we get credit?’

  She watched them pack up their tablets and phones with an almost unreasonable flood of relief. At the very least, when she next met with this particularly obtuse bunch, the conference would be over. Maybe she’d have some new ideas by then.

  For now, she was off the hook. This group wasn’t the sort to hound her with questions. If that was indeed what their vague articulations were. Maybe, she thought, she should be teaching semiotics.

  Gothic literature still had her heart, though, and Dulcie scooped her own papers into her bag with a sense of urgency. Professor Showalter should have arrived in Cambridge by now. They’d been emailing and made plans to meet at the Science Center café. Dulcie hadn’t realized, then, that the little eatery would be out of commission, but it was still a convenient rendezvous. Besides, the professor had wanted to see the hall where she’d be speaking. Then they could go out, get some lunch, and talk about their plans.

  It was almost too good to be true. To have the backing of an esteemed academic, a professor who just might become the head of her own department …

  With a twinge of guilt, Dulcie thought of Paul Barnes. Before last night, she had only known the greying academic by reputation. Now that she’d met him, she realized he fit the bill, too. And she had to admit it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he got the job either. It wasn’t that he had been so solicitous of her well being, though that had certainly been nice. It was also that he was an old school academic, like Renée Showalter – and like herself. Paul Barnes focused on early American fiction, like Showalter did. The fact that he hadn’t published much recently – nothing since his groundbreaking and provocatively titled book So Many Cities, So Many Hills: the Great Awakening in the New Republic – undoubtedly had more to do with the shifting trends of academia than with his talent. Fashion favored the super-modernists, like Marco Tesla. But the pendulum had to swing back, Dulcie told herself. At any rate, she probably had another year before she’d be out, looking for a job. And after this weekend, she’d have presented at a major conference. Presented in the presence of – and maybe even worked with – two of her idols. Either one of whom might end up here at the university.

  Dulcie had a bounce in her step as she made her way back across the Yard, despite the icy wind that buffeted her as she walked. The early morning clouds had parted, exposing a pale winter sun. Even though it didn’t give much warmth, the flat white light brightened Dulcie’s mood. Time for her own work and most of her students gone: an academic’s dream. She laughed as the thought formed; it was such a truism. She was still chortling when her phone rang, which was probably why she answered without looking to see who it was.

  ‘Dulcie, thank the goddess.’ Dulcie fell back to earth. Her mother had that effect on her. ‘I’m so glad I reached you!’

  ‘Hi, Lucy,’ she answered in as calm a voice as she could muster. It had taken a while, but Dulcie had finally learned to ignore her mother’s constant drama. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Do you still have that cat by you? You know, the special one?’ Despite her annoyance at the interruption, Dulcie found herself smiling again. Lucy was so predictable, always starting her phone calls as if they were in the middle of a conversation, leaving Dulcie to piece together whatever she had missed.

  ‘They’re all special, Lucy.’ She might be amused, but she still couldn’t resist ribbing her mother as she walked. ‘Isn’t that what a devotee of Bast should know?’

  ‘Don’t fool with me, Dulcinea Schwartz.’ Her mother’s tone stopped Dulcie in her tracks and she found herself staring at the phone in the weak sunlight. Sadly, the flat device gave no clue as to what cue Dulcie had misheard – or what the earlier part of the conversation might have been – so she started listening, and walking, again. ‘You know the one I mean. The little marmalade. The … the … the tiger cat.’

  ‘The were-kitten?’ Dulcie wasn’t sure what she’d missed, but she regretted the words the moment they were out of her mouth. She had no proof that Tigger, Thorpe’s little orange tabby, had any unusual powers, and was only going on a half-remembered and distinctly fuzzy impression of something she might – or might not – have witnessed about a month ago. She had told her mother about it in a moment of weakness, simply because Lucy was one of the few people on earth who wouldn’t automatically assume she was crazy.

  ‘That’s the one, dear.’ Dulcie had gotten it right. At least partly. ‘But you know, “were-kitten” is a misnomer, “were” implying a human element. Unless you’ve noted other transformative powers?’

  Her mother sounded so hopeful, Dulcie hated breaking the news, but she was coming up to the Science Center now, and this didn’t seem like the kind of conversation she’d want to continue in anybody’s presence. ‘No, I’m sorry. And really, Lucy, I’m not even sure what I did see. It’s just that …’ She paused outside the glass doors. How to explain that she thought she’d seen the tiny orange creature grow into a tiger when she had been threatened? Dulcie had been dizzy from a blow to the head at the time, which made what she thought she had seen even more unlikely.

  Maybe the best path was not to explain at all. ‘Tigger is now living with Martin Thorpe, my thesis adviser.’ Silence on the other end of the line. ‘He really needed a cat, Lucy.’ Her mother had to understand that.

  The depth of the theatrical sigh implied that she did. ‘I was afraid that was the case,’ Lucy said, after the requisite dramatic pause.

  ‘Why? What’s going on?’ Even with the weak sun, the day was frosty, and Dulcie wanted to hurry this conversation along.

  ‘Because that means there’s another.’

  Dulcie rolled her eyes. ‘Mom? I’m kind of busy here.’

  ‘Shape shifters aren’t all bad, Dulcie. But they don’t always know their own powers.’ She must have heard Dulcie’s intake of breath, because she cut her next dramatic pause short. ‘They can be dangerous, Dulcie. Never forget
that.’

  Dulcie looked once more at the phone, but it had gone dead in her hand. Knowing Lucy, that could have been intentional. Her mother had been known to hang up in a fit of pique, especially when she felt her daughter was not taking her seriously. Then again, it was just about equally likely that her mother had accidentally disconnected her – or that she or one of her co-residents had forgotten to pay the communal phone bill again. Either way, as Dulcie opened the door to warmth and noise of another sort, Dulcie suspected that she’d be hearing more about the kitten or – what was it? – shape shifters soon enough. It was time to get her own life into gear.

  SEVEN

  ‘Dulcie!’ Renée Showalter’s simple, enthusiastic greeting, audible even above the construction noise, was much more satisfying. And although her thick red hair was beginning to come loose from its old-fashioned bun, the visiting academic also looked a lot more like the woman Dulcie would hope to be one day than did her own mother. At least professionally, Dulcie amended with a flash of guilt. Lucy couldn’t help who she was, just as Dulcie would never be as tall as the woman beaming down at her. ‘How are you?’

  ‘A little harried.’ Dulcie was suddenly aware of her own flushed cheeks. She’d spent so long dallying with her mother that she’d dashed through the lobby to the hall. ‘Thorpe has me checking on the audio-visuals for the conference.’

  ‘Ah.’ Professor Showalter nodded. She clearly understood, and Dulcie was pierced by another pang. The jackhammers didn’t help.

  ‘He just wants everything to be perfect,’ she backtracked, once the noise had died down. ‘And it does mean I get to meet everyone. Though, of course, I already know you, and I ran into Paul Barnes last night.’ Too late, Dulcie tried to mask the lift in her own voice.

  ‘Paul Barnes?’ Showalter must have heard it, too, but she refrained from commenting further.

  ‘I think he must know my work.’ Dulcie couldn’t resist a little brag. ‘He seemed to recognize my name.’