A cool spring drizzle settled in over the campus, blanketing the buildings, the trees, the flowers--all with a ghostly greyness. Zach felt that very dank colorlessness in his bones.
He kept to his bed, shuffled to classes zombie-style, and avoided everyone.
He wouldn't talk to Maddy. She had been angry, curious, sad, and angry in turn, but he couldn't. Couldn't. She eventually backed off, but he felt her waiting.
Jacob was in his own funk. Something had happened with Ava, and she wasn't around.
When he turned in his Joyce paper, the professor ribbed him about his hangover.
A teaching assistant had taken over the bio class, so Zach had no sight of professor Enkins.
When he slept, which wasn't much, he had terrifying dreams of dark things moving through deep waters; claws, tentacles; a girl sobbing, sobbing, sobbing. And he dreamt of a temple built by the sea, looking down on a town wrapped around an aquamarine harbor.
At first, he was waiting for the police to arrive, but no police arrived.
That night (as he would forever remember it) he had showered in the hottest water he could stand and scrubbed himself raw. He had vomited, and then showered again. By the time he got back to his room, Ava was gone.
He showered three, four times a day, but no matter how painfully hot the water was, he could not scrub the ugly, angry sound of the girl grunting
Fuck her
out of his mind.
Eventually, he cautiously reached out with his awareness, just to see if the girl was still alive; and after a despondent stretch, thinking her bloated body might be well down-river, his awareness found her.
She was laughing with her family, somewhere away from campus, across state. He observed all the layers of her he could without "touching." She seemed buoyant, cheerful, free. Zach couldn't imagine how this was possible, so he examined more closely. Eventually he found it, the shadow, a cluster, faded almost to nothing, memories orphaned and quickly withering. He couldn't see them, couldn't know what her experience had been. Rolling in his bed, turning to the wall, he let it go.
* * *
"You've been a busy young man," Professor Enkins said.
Zach had gone to the Friday office hours. The week was nothing but a bleak, bleary blur. Enkins was leaning back in his chair, with his feet on the industrial-steel desk, and his jacket slung over a coat tree.
"What have you done?" Zach said.
"I gave you what you wanted. You were free. I had a few protections in place, to prevent the worst, and left you to your own devices. And what a complete balls-up it was. Utterly predictable, but it's the only way to learn."
"You were preventing the worst? Like what?"
"Is anyone dead, Zechariah? Are you in jail? Has an angry mob hung you from a tree or burned your family out of their home? How's your little friend, the one you are hiding from me? All healthy?"
Zach tightened his lips.
"You see? You know nothing. Nothing, Zechariah. You're just a decent kid, trying to do the right thing, led astray by his hormones, and energy-raped by a passing ghost. Poor boy. Are you ready to get serious now?"
"And where have
you
been?" Zach asked. "Both your classes subbed this week."
"I had some unrelated travel."
"I want to roll all of this back. Take it back. Orphan my memories. I don't want any of this."
"That I cannot do, Zechariah. You cannot un-ring this bell, as they say. You have learned enough to be a danger to yourself and others. It's time to man up. Another phrase I like."
"What about the girl in the library? How many others like me are there?"
Enkins steepled his fingers thoughtfully. Zach was pleased to note this was the first time he had caught the professor off guard. And he was also interested to realize he
could
mention the girl in the library. Ava seemed completely off limits, his mind couldn't even picture her when he was near Enkins.
"Tell me more," Enkins said.
Zach recounted the brief interaction.
"Interesting," was the only response. "That may bear further investigation. In general, Zechariah, you will not encounter others like yourself. These arts have long faded. A few shamans, a few tantrics, here and there a pocket of
Goddess worshipers
." He said the latter with distaste.
He went on: "But even in those categories, the vast majorities are frauds or delusionary."
"So," the professor concluded, "we will file that one for future reference. In the meantime, you need to know how to contain your energy, control it, and how to protect yourself from ghosts and demons."
"This is literally the craziest shit I've ever heard."
"Your culture has commodified the spirit world, you have the wrong cognitive structures to understand what I am saying. But you know it's real. Now lean back. Five, four, three..."
* * *
He blinked awake, and discovered they were not alone. A young woman had joined them.
"How are you feeling, young fellow?" the Professor asked.
He felt better. Stronger. The weight of dread and horror seemed to have lifted.
"What did you do?"
"Nothing major. Palliative only. It's time for the lesson. Zechariah, please meet my lovely assistant, Yasmin, our sweet gift from God."
She curtsied. "Jasmine, actually," she said. "The professor has a thing about my name."
Zach nodded, "Yeah, mine too."
Jasmine had wavy black hair around a dark olive face and startling ice blue eyes. A low cut top revealed excitingly ample cleavage. She had a short skirt.
"You in my bio class?" he asked.
"No, the professor and I go back a ways."
