Eerie (16 page)

She took it and frowned.

“Go check out your room, make sure your key works, meet your roommate, take a shower, et cetera, et cetera. I'll swing by later with a German dictionary.”

He unlocked the door to his giant room.

“And don't worry about ghosts,” he said over his shoulder. “You're not gonna get any ghosts in your room.”

Hailey wrinkled her brow.

“Oh?”

“They're afraid of your roommate,” he said quickly through the crack in his door, shutting it before Hailey even had a chance to gasp.

Chapter Nineteen

The Roommate from Hell

“One skeleton said to another - If I had any guts I'd get the hell out of here.”

- Anonymous

Hailey stood in the hallway with her one piece of “luggage” and stared at the door to room 333—her room, wondering what kind of monster could scare a ghost. Whatever it was, its name was Giselle; it waited on the other side of this door, and Hailey would have to live with it for the entire year. Unless of course she fell into an in-between, and someone killed her completely . . .

As she raised the warped, wrought-iron skeleton key from her welcome kit to the lock, she straightened up and put on her friendly face. The lock clicked, and Hailey pushed open the door.

The room was larger than she'd expected, with a built-in desk, stretching almost the whole length of the left wall. Two chairs were pushed against the desk at opposite ends and in the middle, the desk was divided by two sets of drawers. The wall above the desk was mirrored from end to end. On the wall opposite the door was a large window. In the window hung a golden decoration, which resembled a dream-catcher and had a tiny motor, causing the thing to vibrate and twist back and forth.

There were two closets and two beds. Just inside the door and to the right was an empty, undressed bed—Hailey guessed that would be hers. The other was in the far corner opposite the door and occupied by a girl who lounged with her legs outstretched, her feet crossed, and her face hidden behind a beauty magazine.

She didn't stir when Hailey tentatively stepped into the room.

“Hello,” Hailey said, but the girl ignored her. “I'm Hailey,” she tried again, but the girl never acknowledged her.

Frowning, Hailey set her bag and backpack on her bare mattress. She opened her empty closet and sighed.

She should just shower and wait for Fin, she decided. Tomorrow morning, she would tour the campus and hit the bookstore, where she could hopefully find clothes, shoes, sheets, blankets, pillows, and towels. And somebody to talk to . . .

Giselle stirred in her bed and Hailey jerked her head around, but she still couldn't see the girl's face behind her magazine, which boasted “5 New Makeup Tricks to Make Him Notice You.”

Hailey rolled her eyes and unzipped her luggage. It took less than a minute to unpack, and as she gathered her hand towel, soap, and shampoo, there came a sharp knock.

“Hi!” Hailey said brightly as she opened the door to Fin.

“Here's your handbook,” he said, holding it up before passing it to her.

“Thanks.” Hailey looked at his empty hands. “Where's the dictionary?”

“Right here.” He held his arms out.

“You speak German?”

“Yeah,” he said stepping inside her room. “I grew up there once.”

Hailey cocked her head.

“What do you mean, you ‘grew up there once'?”

Fin answered with a half-smile. “What do you need translated?”

She grabbed a pen and tablet from her welcome bag and scribbled down her Tomas words.

“Khu isn't German, at all, it's . . .ancient . . .Egyptian, I think.” He shook his head. “Sort of means soul. Schatz is treasure; Gefahr is danger; bin entwichen is ‘I escaped'—Hailey . . .” With a concerned look he handed her the tablet. “What's the context of all this?”

She tried to think of a quick way to sum things up. “How much time do you have?”

“None,” he told her, checking his watch. “I'll swing by tomorrow morning for breakfast,” he said, and then he leaned over and pecked her on the cheek.

“Goodbye, raging bitch,” he called to Giselle, and without moving her magazine, she flipped him the bird as he walked out the door.

“Whoa,” Hailey breathed, clutching her stomach after the door closed. “That . . .was . . .”

“Gross,” her roommate finished for her, and Hailey looked up. Giselle had moved the magazine, stood up, and was scowling hatefully from beside her bed at Hailey, who smiled excitedly back.

This roommate was no monster. She was just the girl with the prematurely gray hair. Hailey blew a sigh of relief, and as she marveled, Giselle fell like a feather back onto her bed and lifted her magazine again.

She certainly was aptly named, moving with the grace of a ballerina. Though her eyes were a mesmerizing crystal blue—the rest of her seemed a bit horrible, with slightly frizzy gray hair reaching down to her hips and a couple of facial wrinkles that belonged to a crotchety, 80-year-old bat.

Otherwise, in the face, Giselle looked . . .at least in Hailey's eyes . . .somewhat similar to Holly. Were it not for her six-foot stature, corpse hair, and permanent look of disgust on her kisser, she could have been Holly's doppelganger. Maybe she just missed her sister. In any case, and despite her grumpiness, Hailey liked her immediately.

“Stop staring at me,” Giselle said from behind her magazine.

“I'm sorry.” Hailey diverted her eyes. “You just remind me of my sister.”

“She must be ugly,” she said in a monotone, and Hailey shook her head.

“She was beautiful.” Hailey reached for her back pocket. “Oh,” she whispered. “Asher still has Holly's picture, or else I'd show you.”

“I don't want to see it,” Giselle droned, and Hailey ignored her indifferent tone. So far, Giselle was the only student to talk to her, and even if that “talking” amounted to a string of grouchy insults, Hailey was delighted.

“So, where are you from?” she tried.

“Hell.”

“Oh, come on, Giselle, Cleveland's not that bad,” Hailey laughed, trying to coax a smile, but Giselle flicked her magazine down to show Hailey her pointy teeth.

“It's a village in the Alps,” she said through them. “The literal translation is Hell,” she sputtered, and then with a loud tsk, she pulled herself back behind her magazine.

Hailey rubbed her forehead. “I actually have a roommate from Hell,” she muttered. “What country would that be?”

Giselle didn't answer.

“Well, I'm from Pittsburgh,” Hailey said as she arranged her things inside her closet—all on one shelf.

“I don't care,” said Giselle with more than a little hostility, but that didn't discourage Hailey. Since small talk wasn't working, she tried flattery.

“I think your eyes are really pretty, and . . .” Hailey swallowed hard. “I saw you at the welcome dinner. You and I must be wearing the same student repellant,” she laughed, and a puff of steam literally rose out of Giselle's head.

“Nobody will talk to you,” she snapped, ripping her magazine as she threw it down, “because Asher told us all to stay away from you.”

“What? When?”

“This summer. And he already killed one student as an example, and I'm not supposed to tell you that or anything else about him, but I'll probably be dead in a couple months anyway, so who cares if he rips me apart?”

Hailey's jaw fell. “That can't be, Asher's—”

“Asher can be terrifying, little girl.”

Hailey stared at Giselle, the horror of her words a great weight against her chest.

“Why are you telling me this?” Hailey murmured.

“Not because I want to be your friend. I'm telling you this so you'll stop talking to me. I don't want to know you, Hailey.”

“I had no idea,” she said quietly, her insides gone cold, and she didn't bother Giselle again.

Lying on her bed in utter silence, much like Giselle, Hailey read her student handbook from cover to cover, struggling to focus on the strangest and most fascinating subject matter she'd ever seen. Her guilt kept distracting her, gnawing at her insides like a White Forest Yeti or Man-Eating Tree, neither of which she ever wanted to happen upon. Both of which had their own section in the Bear Towne Handbook's glossary of lethal beasts.

The handbook divided White Forest hazards into two types—summer and winter.

Summer hazards included familiar things, like mosquitos and black bears, but the list ended with tips on avoiding carnivorous trees. Apparently, they only ate during waking hours and had a taste for non-Alaskan humans. The handbook advised anyone from Outside to travel through the White Forest only when escorted by a non-human.

Yetis were another hazard. According to the handbook, most of them hibernated until winter, though some seemed to enjoy warm weather, and all Yetis preferred human meat. The book recommended students carry Yeti spray and cross their fingers when venturing into the White Forest.

An asterisk next to the chapter on Bear Towne's three active in-between zones noted a warning: small, unmarked in-betweens tend to appear and disappear here and there around campus during the spring months especially, but not exclusively.

Bewildered, Hailey closed her book and sulked. It was like reading another language.

Grabbing her shampoo, she hoped a hot shower would steam away her guilt and make things make sense. But when she walked into the shower room, the three students inside, who were in mid-shower and still soapy, all finished suddenly and scattered like cockroaches. The same thing happened in the hallway when she emerged from the showers, with the added happiness of slamming doors to punctuate her misery.

Hailey sighed and shuffled into the laundry room, wearing her other jeans—the clean ones—and a fresh t-shirt (she didn't have pajamas). In she tossed her Luftzeug clothes and shoes for a spin, using a community bottle of detergent and a healthy dose of hope that Alaskan muskeg mud would wash out.

As she closed the laundry room door behind her, she turned her attention to the giggling coming up the stairwell. Walking up the stairs with his arm around the waist of a stunning brunette and his tongue in her ear was Fin.

Hailey stumbled backward inside the laundry room and peeked through a sliver in the door.

Her heart plummeted into her stomach.

Fin fumbled with his room key as he passionately kissed this girl. She had her shirt nearly off by the time they swayed inside his room.

Hailey's throat tightened.

Slowly, dejectedly, she slid down the door and sat on the floor of the laundry room, staring at her hands until the washer clicked, unsure why she should even care that Fin had a girlfriend. Of course he had a girlfriend—why wouldn't he?

But he kissed my cheek...

Disgusted by her own jealousy, Hailey shook her head and collected her wet clothes. She'd just hang them in her closet to dry and not think about Fin. Nothing else was in her closet, and Fin didn't matter to her anyway. Her shoes might even be dry before morning, and Fin was . . .was . . .

Hailey threw open her room door and barged in, forcing Fin out of her mind by wondering if Giselle would ever speak to her again. More than that, she wondered if Giselle was even human—
sharp teeth . . .probably not.

In stocking feet, she stepped in front of her closet, when something sloshed.

“What the . . .?”

Hopping on one foot, she followed a trail of little puddles leading all the way from the door to Giselle's bed, which lay curiously empty. Someone inside the room was snoring softly. Somewhere . . .

Crouching down, Hailey peeked under Giselle's bed then lifted her gaze higher. Pressed against the ceiling above her bed and sound asleep, Giselle snored and moaned, her long, kinked gray hair hanging down like a gossamer web.

Definitely not human, Hailey thought, and she stepped in another small puddle of water with her other socked foot. Giselle must've skipped the whole drying-off part of her shower. Now she knew how Holly had felt. This was annoying.

Unable to take her eyes off her roommate from Hell, Hailey fell asleep worrying about Giselle and whether she would get in trouble for telling her Asher was a murderer. She hoped not. Giselle might hail from Hell, but she was Hailey's only friend, and that was a slice of heaven.

That night, Hailey sat on a mossy boulder in the Aether and wept. Asher approached her cautiously.

“Hailey,” he called softly, “why are you crying?”

She looked up at him through slow-motion raindrops, iridescent flecks of light that shimmered when they graced her face, mixing with her tears before tumbling away.

“I'm afraid for my roommate,” she said with pleading eyes. “Is she in trouble?”

Asher tilted his head. “Why do you ask me this?”

Maybe he didn't know what Giselle had said. Or maybe he was testing her. Or had Giselle been testing her? Had she just betrayed her roommate? Hailey shook her head. All this business with Fin—she was definitely projecting her mistrust onto Asher, onto Giselle . . .plus all that talk of murder had her head swimming . . .

She trusted Asher. Since childhood, she'd trusted him. She couldn't bear to think he'd hurt anyone, and she didn't want him angry at Giselle. She had to tell him the truth.

“Giselle told me you killed a student, and she's afraid you'll . . .kill her, too . . .for telling me.”