Eerie (15 page)

Except for the filthy freshmen, she couldn't tell the difference between the students of geology and ParaScience.

In the back of the room and also at a table by herself sat a clean student with long gray hair. Her head was bowed, and it looked like she was reading something. The other students gave the gray-haired girl a wide berth.

At least I'm not the only outcast
, Hailey thought as a murmur ran through the crowd. A few of the students began to chant, which grew into a roar with some of the larger men standing and clapping in time.

“O-SHEA-O-SHEA-O-SHEA,” they cheered, and they all looked toward the door. Hailey glanced over her shoulder to see what the hubbub was, and her jaw dropped.

Swaggering into the room, freshly showered and wearing a victorious smile, Fin high-fived almost everyone he passed, and the hall erupted.

Chapter Eighteen

Welcome to Bear Towne

Fame is no plant that grows on mortal soil.

- John Milton, Lycidas

Fin joined the group of large men, who took turns clapping him on the back and hugging him.

Trying hard not to stare, Hailey wondered what else she didn't know about her favorite bartender. Clearly he'd left more than a few things out of their conversations in Pittsburgh.

A microphone crackled through the hall.

“Is this on now?” a man with a bow tie said as he stood at the front of the hall. “Uh, I see the last of our ParaScience freshmen have finally sloshed inside.”

The Pre-Med group tsk'ed and shook their heads while the flannels chuckled.

“Let's all extend to them a warm welcome, I'm sure they'd appreciate it. By the looks of them, it was a lake landing again this year, am I right?” The man looked at Fin, who pressed his lips together and nodded. “Well,” the man said, “no drownings, then?”

Fin shook his head. The man clapped his hands together.

“Wonderful. The food will be out shortly. Welcome to the Terquasquigenary anniversary of Bear Towne University's move to Alaska. Freshmen—be sure to pick up your welcome package from the tables on the west wall. Inside you will find your room assignment and orientation schedule for the week ahead as well as a campus map, a can of Yeti spray, some tree repellant, and a canister of fuel for your dormitory room ghost trap.”

Hailey hoped there'd be a written explanation of all this inside her welcome package as well.

“And here's dinner,” said the man, as a troop of uniformed ladies carried tray after silver tray of delicious-smelling fare to the buffet table.

It was then Hailey noticed Asher standing next to the man with the bow tie, leaning toward him and speaking. The man with the bow tie nodded, and Asher stepped away as the man picked up the mike.

“Uh . . . Please help yourselves, everyone, and if I could just see Miss Hailey Hartley up here quickly, please . . .” Her face flushing yet again, Hailey dipped her head.

Oh crap, why is he singling me out?

As Hailey tentatively stood, Asher spoke to the man again, watching Hailey's every move, which only made her more self-conscious. Thankfully everyone else was far more interested in the food than they were in her, and none of the students seemed to notice when she stubbed her toe on an empty chair and doubled over. When she righted herself, Asher was gone again.

“Ah, Miss Hartley,” said the man with a bow tie, holding his hand out as she approached.

Hailey extended hers expecting a handshake, but like a gentleman of old, he bowed and kissed her hand.

“I'm Professor Simeon Woodfork, and it is a delight to meet you.”

“Likewise, Professor.”

“Well,” he said, stepping back, “let's see your flail-beat.”

Hailey blinked.

“I'm sorry, sir. My what?”

“Your flail-beat. Didn't you read my instructions?”

“I read your letter, sir, but there was no mention of a flail-beat in it.”

“Hartley received a tampered package,” Fin said through a mouthful of fried chicken as he made his way to Woodfork.

“Really,” said Woodfork with great interest. “What was in it?”

“Two letters,” Hailey told him. “One signed by you and the other was . . .” She shook her head. “The other was one sentence long.”

“One sentence?” Woodfork wrinkled his forehead and looked at Fin then back to Hailey. “How was it written?”

“It looked like scribble. Like a five-year-old wrote it.”

“Thick letters?”

Hailey nodded.

“I believe you've attracted a poltergeist, Miss Hartley.”

“Oh.” She already knew she had a poltergeist and wondered if that little trouble-maker, Tomas, was responsible for sabotaging her silver envelope.

“In any case,” the professor said, clapping his hands together, “Pádraig here will find you a handbook, and everything else you need is in your welcome package. But before you leave this hall, I must advise you, Miss Hartley, to ready your flail-beat.”

“Okay . . .”

“You see, due to the random breaks in the veil here at Bear Towne, we recommend all students practice their extraction technique should they stumble upon an unmarked in-between and become accidentally trapped there.”

Pinching her face together thoughtfully, she replayed Woodfork's sentence in her head, but she literally had no idea what he was talking about.

“I'm sorry, I didn't understand one word of that.”

Woodfork smiled brightly at Fin who gnawed the last sliver of meat off a chicken leg then left to fetch another.

“Ah, what a delight you are indeed,” said the professor. “Most students would try to bamboozle me. Nobody admits when they don't know something anymore—this is so refreshing.” He drew a breath and continued. “The veil is a barrier that separates Earth from the two other realms—the Aether and the Heavens. An in-between is a partial opening through the veil—not large enough to travel completely through, you see, but still sufficient in size to pull one partially across. It leaves one trapped and somewhat vulnerable—it's a bit like stepping into deep, sticky mud.”

That, Hailey understood.

“Every in-between is fraught with danger. One never knows what to expect inside. Any new student would be fortunate to escape unscathed, only . . .well, given your . . .er . . .
status
here, one might try to harm you irreparably or even kill you completely if you fell into such a hole, you understand?”

“No. What's my status?”

Woodfork waved his hand, dismissively. “No need to fret about that now. What's important is that you leave here ready and able to pull yourself out of an in-between, and the only way to do that is to perform a flail-beat.”

“Okay.” Hailey nodded, ready to learn how to flail-beat.

“It's quite simple,” he told her kindly. “All you have to do is use your hands or your feet to produce a regular, recurring percussive noise by striking them against whatever surface you find inside the in-between. That's very important, to find a surface, as clapping usually doesn't work. Of course, you already know that a regular percussion repels most non-humans,” he said, but this was all news to Hailey. “So it repels an in-between as well. With your background in percussive dance, it should be fairly simple for you, yes?”

“You mean you just have to . . .to dance your way out of an in-between?” Surely it couldn't be that simple.

“Ah, then you understand. Alright, if you would please—just this once—demonstrate for me your flail-beat?”

Not since the day Holly vanished had Hailey urged her feet to dance. Glancing around, she made sure nobody was watching. Then, with a heavy heart but eager feet, she tapped out a simple reel beat.

Woodfork clapped her on the shoulder after two short seconds. “That will do. Can you do the same with your hands?”

“Yes.”

“Very good. Now, should you find yourself trapped in an in-between, you tap out a beat precisely like that, and you'll pop right out,” he said with a reassuring smile. “And I may ask you to assist the other students with their flail-beat inside the in-between studio, but,” he said shaking his finger at her, “that is the
only
place on this campus where you may produce a regular percussive noise, do you understand?”

“Yes, but, Professor . . .why—”

He held his hand up. “No more questions today, you'll learn everything about in-betweens and the veil and the Aether and everything else in class. For now, go and eat, pick up your welcome package and meet your fellow classmates,” he said, patting her on the back to hurry her away.

The eating part went well, as did the picking up of the welcome package, but the meeting of the fellow classmates—that went nowhere.

While Fin worked the room like a movie star, Hailey literally repelled people. No one would come within five feet of her, and she was starting to wonder if she smelled bad.

For almost two hours, Hailey sat alone at a table for fifteen, eating her smoked salmon and exploring her welcome package, which thankfully came bundled inside a Bear Towne backpack—another item she hadn't brought. As students began filing out, she looked over her orientation schedule for the next morning and pulled out her room assignment:

Dorm: Eureka Hall, 3rd floor, Room 333

Roommate: Giselle Goarhausen.

Just as she found Eureka Hall on her campus map, a friendly voice rang out from inside her invisible five-foot demilitarized zone.

“Come on, I'll help you with your bags,” said Fin.

Hailey looked up from her map.

“Can you tell me how to get to Eureka Hall from here?” She folded her papers and placed them inside her backpack.

“I'll do you one better and show you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. I'm heading that way too,” he said as they walked into the grand hallway, where the other ParaSci freshmen had already removed the shrink wrap from the pallets and were picking through the luggage.

“Which ones are yours,” he asked, and her eyes searched the piles.

“That one's mine.”

She pointed to the smallest bag on one of the pallets, and Fin grabbed it.

“What else?”

“That's it.”

“That's it? This?” he said, shaking her small bag. “This is all you brought to Alaska?”

“Well—” Hailey let out a curt sigh. “Yes! My letter said to bring
one
purse-size bag, and there wasn't any packing list or anything else inside the envelope, and it said not to ask any questions until I got here, and . . .”

Hailey threw her hands up then dropped them in a huff, and Fin stared at her, unamused.

“Why didn't you just ask me?” As if this would have been the logical thing to do.

Hailey let him have it.

“I haven't
seen
you since the day we buried Holly. You never came back to work, you never even
called
to say you weren't coming back, you just disappeared. You left me!” She turned to stomp away but turned on him again. “And you never mentioned
anything
about going to school in Alaska. What the heck were you doing in Pittsburgh anyway?”

Fin dropped her bag on the floor at her feet and grabbed her by the shoulders. “I
never
left you,” he said forcefully, and then he pushed her away, turned around, and left her.

“Clearly, Fin,” she muttered to herself as she grabbed up her bag, “you and I differ greatly in our idea of what it means to leave someone.”

He threw open the Chinook Hall door and looked back at her.

“Well?” he said grudgingly. “You coming?”

“Yes,” she said, snapping out of her grudge and trotting to the door. “Hey, what's a parafreak?”

“It's you,” he said in his normal, slightly caustic tone as he took Hailey's “luggage” from her. “And me too. It's anyone lucky enough to study ParaScience in the Last Frontier state. We are definitely the redheaded step children of the university.”

“I certainly am, but you seem to have a lot of friends here,” she told him while she tied her wet shoes.

“There's only one friend I care about.”

He winked, and Hailey froze, her belly tightening. Then she shook her head and laughed.

Holding the door for her, he followed her out, and they headed toward Eureka Hall.

“Really, though, Fin, what were you doing in Pittsburgh?”

“Chasing women and getting into trouble,” he answered without hesitation as their path opened into a giant square.

Several buildings dotted the campus, some log, some stone, and one that looked like a giant igloo. Each bore an ornately carved wooden signpost with large, bubonic-looking knots.

“Eureka Hall is here on the north-east corner.” Fin opened the outer door for her and showed her inside.

“I'm on the third floor,” she told him.

“I know.”

Up the stairs they went, and Fin explained Eureka's layout.

“So, this is the only co-ed dorm on campus.” The stairway opened onto a large landing that split the building in two. “To the right are the boys' rooms and to the left are all the girls' rooms. The girls have their own showers, which are conveniently located almost directly across from your room, next to the laundry closet. In front of us is the Spruce Room, which is a community study hall slash TV room slash kitchenette.”

He opened the door to the Spruce Room and turned on the lights.

“Nice,” she said, taking in the giant TV, five fluffy couches, desks and tables.

“This,” he said pointing to a large presidential-looking suite adjacent to the Spruce Room, “is where your Resident Assistant lives.”

“Okay,” Hailey said with a nod.

“If you have any problems—you get locked out of your room, you have an issue with your roommate, you need more Yeti spray—any problems, Hailey, you come and knock on this door, okay?”

“Okay.”

“And I'll answer.”

“O—what?”

Fin smiled.

“You're my RA?” Hailey said brightly.

“Yup.”

Yes! He'd be right down the hall and could help her get her bearings and explain these in-betweens and answer her questions, and oh crap! What about Tomas and these ghost traps? She had to disable them.

“I need to go to the library,” she blurted.

“Of course you do.” Fin threw a confused hand in the air.

“I need a German dictionary and a book that explains these ghost traps,” she continued very seriously. She did not want Tomas getting stuck. “The campus map shows the library, but it doesn't give the hours and—”

“Stop. The library is closed. Besides, you need to unpack all your stuff,” he said holding up her bag.