S'wanee: A Paranoid Thriller (27 page)

“It’s happened here before,” Cody said, and Dean Apperson nodded. “I remember, Cody. I was here.

“The so-called S’wanee Massacre is the darkest chapter in our history, but we don’t shy away from it,” he continued. “We keep records in our archives. Anyone can go read them. We created a memorial window for our chapel. We eventually commemorated the tragedy and learned from it.”

“And you think what happened way back then is happening again? Now?” Dean Apperson asked. “And Ross, your mentor, is secretly behind it? Pulling the strings, if you will?

“Not merely
hypothesizing
in a paper, not simply ruminating on the
possibilities
for discussion’s sake,” he added, “But actually causing the deaths of his fellow students in exchange for a gown to wear around the campus?”

Cody needed a drink.

“Do you like it here, Cody?” Dean Apperson asked.

“More than anything,” Cody answered, meaning it. “It’s my home.”

“You know, Cody,” Apperson continued. “I’ve lived here, at this God-favored spot, most of my adult life. I grew up here and am growing old here. I’ve seen thousands pass through. And I’ve learned that perhaps because of our isolation, or maybe even a certain loneliness, the Domain can be more prone to hysteria than one would expect.”

“Do you feel in danger, Cody?” Dean Apperson asked. “Do you think someone means you harm?”

Here we go.

“Is something in your mind suggesting, or even telling you, that you’re in jeopardy?”

“Do you hear voices, Cody?”

Code word for “crazy.” “Going Columbine.” Code word for
dangerous
.

“Do you have strange dreams, Cody?”

Cody’s only dreams lately had starred Beth, but they weren’t strange, and he wasn’t about to share them with Dean Apperson.

“There’s no shame in these symptoms,” the dean soothed. “It’s quite treatable, you know. It’s a condition that can occur in young men your age.

“It’s only when left untreated,” he went on, “that problems can arise.”

“Let’s keep an eye on this, shall we?” He smiled as Cody left the Cravens Hall living room/examining room. Cody, the once Freshman-Who-Stepped-on-the-Seal turned Freshman-Who-Might-Be-a-Paranoid-Schizophrenic.

•   •   •

“I’m not afraid of you,” Beth told him. “I don’t care what everybody says.”

“What does everybody say?” Cody asked.

“It doesn’t matter.”

At first Cody thought it was the stress of imminent finals that made everyone seem reserved and detached and on edge. But Rebel’s Rest still held cram sessions, and everyone gathered for meals and occasional study breaks with popcorn and Pearl’s pizza around the living room TV. They didn’t blatantly ostracize Cody, but there was a strange hush when he was around, and he didn’t feel welcome.

“I’m not apologizing, dude,” tattletale-Banjo finally said in the upstairs bathroom after a few days of avoiding each other. “I did it for your own good.” He and Huger now went to the Lodge together, and Cody stopped going entirely.

Ross would flash his movie star smile and say, “Waddup, Tiger?” when they’d pass in the log cabin, but it was stilted and leery.

Even Mother Hen Pearl forced an awkward, eggshell smile each time she asked, “How
are
you, Cody?”

“People think you’re a loose cannon,” Beth told him outside DuPont Library, where she waited for him every night after work. “Maybe that’s why we get along so well.”

“Come back with me,” he urged her the night of the first snowfall. “Come back to my room. Please.”

“I can’t, Cody.” She resisted for the millionth time.

“Spend the night with me,” he pleaded.

“I want to, Cody,” she said, “But…”

“It’s my birthday.”

“Oh,” she gasped. “Your birthday. Happy birthday, Cody,” she said, holding his face with both hands. “Happy, happy birthday.” She smiled at him sadly. “But…”

“Why not? Why?” he pressed.

“It’s against the…I just can’t,” she said, her eyes glassing.

“I’ll sneak you in. Nobody’s gonna think you’re a slut.”

“It’s not that, Cody.” She bit her lip, looking around. “Hell, I don’t care what anybody here thinks anymore.”

“You
are
afraid of me,” he said. “Aren’t you?”

“No, Cody,” she said, eyeing him directly. “I’m not afraid of
you
at all.”

“Fuck it,” she said, now angry. “This is stupid. It’s just so stupid.”

She grabbed his hand. “Take me there, Cody.”

•   •   •

Cody did everything he could to make Beth happy, but she wouldn’t stop crying.

He even moved the yellow house with red shutters from New Jersey down to the Domain, because his mother bought it with his college fund and now he was eighteen and it was
his
. He put up the white picket fence and kept the deer family and Canada geese and squirrels in the yard, and Nesta stayed on the front porch and got along with everybody. But Beth hated the Domain and had nightmares in the house—thrashing nightmares—and eventually she talked gibberish and started to get up, and Cody feared she was going mad and would wander into personal danger. He held her tight when she gasped in her sleep and finally called for Dean Apperson, who brought the Blue Scrubs and said not to worry; they would make her better, and he’d miss her, but he knew they’d bring her back happy.

•   •   •

Beth slipped out before Cody woke up. She left her rhinestone earrings next to the bed, and the sheets were still rumpled where she’d lain against him all night. His room was bright from the snow that covered the campus overnight and still fell thick and silent out his window.

Cody breathed in the pillow that smelled like her hair. He’d never spent a whole night with a girl before. Eventually, soon, when she was ready and comfortable, they’d wake up together, and he’d bring her down for breakfast, and everyone would know he was normal.

Beth didn’t meet him after work the next night, or the next.

“I’m not sure who that is, sugar,” Pearl puzzled when Cody described her. “Do you have a picture?”

“
Who
?” the Widow asked.

“If she never even told you her last name, son,” Proctor Bob said, unsmiling, “I reckon she doesn’t want to be found by you. I reckon you should respect that.”

“Um, she’s around, I think,” said a dude with a snowball in front of Tuckaway Hall. Cody had tracked it down through his own trial and error, since it wasn’t on his map.

“Has anybody seen Beth?” snowball dude asked the others who had stopped their impromptu battle when Cody approached.

“Um, is she expecting you?” a girl with a purple snow hat said. “Is she even back?” another girl said.

“Is this Tuckaway Hall?” Cody asked. It was big and lifeless, with only a skeleton crew of students meandering about.

“Beth is a friend of mine,” he continued, when no one answered. “Has anybody seen her?” He rubbed his hand nonsensically, massaging its kinks.

“I can give her a message,” purple hat girl said. Cody felt he’d wandered onto a foreign campus.

“Where’s her room?” he asked.

The skeleton crew looked at him. At the Warning-Sign-Freshman on a campus where word traveled fast.

“Should we call someone?” he heard a girl ask a boy. Cody walked away.

“Dude, you’re kinda spooking people,” Ross said later, pulling Cody aside. “Just chill out, dude.” Cody nodded and asked everybody he saw, all the usual studiers at DuPont Library, people he’d seen every day, anybody he could find. Nobody helped.

“It’s possible,” Dean Apperson, who made a rare visit to Rebel’s Rest, told him, “this young lady is not interested, or perhaps has lost interest, in your company. Perhaps it’s best to leave it at that, Cody.”

Cody nodded and went to his desk, where he kept the New Student kit S’wanee had sent him last summer. He flipped through his “S’wanee Places” book to the “Notable Alumni” section.

•   •   •

“
Newsweek
magazine,” the receptionist answered pleasantly.

“Mr. Crownover’s office,” the assistant said when routed to his desk.

“May I ask who’s calling?” she said.

“Cody Marko,” Cody said from his bedroom. “I’m a freshman at S’wanee. He went to college here.”

“Yes,” the assistant said. “May I ask what it’s regarding?”

“He was the newspaper editor here. The
S’wanee Purple
.”

“Yes, I know,” the assistant said.

“It’s very important I speak to him. It’s an emergency.”

“I can’t reach Mr. Crownover right now,” the assistant said. “He’s in the air. But I’m happy to take your number and pass along the message.”

•   •   •

Dean Apperson was in on it.

Dean Apperson was there, on the front row, when Ross made his sales pitch to the white coats. Dressed Gordon Gekko, nodding proudly at his protégé.

Dean Apperson was there when Ross, under his tutelage, explained their science project and human trials that would end on January 15. “Worth every penny…”

A sales pitch that could make S’wanee millions. Millions for a new building or a new stadium. Millions for Dean Apperson.

He was there, calling the shots, when Ross and the workers fine-tuned the “evergreen,” the beaming tower that popped loudly and extinguished the fireflies with its explosive, electric signal.

The signal aimed directly at Rebel’s Rest that made Cody’s ears ring and caused a piercing headache that made him vomit and black out on the Perimeter Trail. Where they tracked him down, unsuccessful in their initial hijacking attempt (
Good Samaritans, my ass
). “We just had to tweak a few things,” Dean Apperson had said in the infirmary.

Cody was immune to the hijacking, he realized thankfully, rubbing his shoulder. His friends hadn’t been so lucky. The Fallen Flock.

The dryer buzzed, and Cody folded his laundry, alone in the basement catacombs. He hadn’t even started his Western Civ term paper. He’d ask Dick and Nancy for an extension.

Dean Apperson was detached and only mildly irritated that morning when Nesta tore through Fletcher’s throat. He was
analytical
.

He was a junior when the S’wanee Massacre went down, Cody calculated.

He was
the
junior.

And he still wore his gown.

He’d poisoned the twelve students in 1971 and watched them go mad and kill themselves as part of his own Gownsmen science experiment. He hadn’t been caught and somehow became head of the school. Dean Apperson was smooth and crafty and had outfoxed John Crownover, who now ran
Newsweek
and would get Cody’s message as soon as he landed.

Apperson installed the window at All Saints, not to commemorate a tragedy, but to celebrate his crowning college achievement.

Dean Apperson was insane.

And he was Ross’s mentor and role model.

He’d tried to convince Cody that
he
was crazy. He’d tried to convince the others, too.

Cody carried his laundry past the basement gym lockers and upstairs, where two dudes were taking a study break over
Call of Duty
.

But S’wanee didn’t belong to Dean Apperson. Or Ross. It belonged to all the students and teachers and alumni for the past 150 years. Now it belonged to Cody, too.

Save S’wanee
.

Crownover would call back soon. If not, Cody would call again. And again.

Cody was not surprised, at all, when his iPhone stopped working that day.

It was January 14.

•   •   •

“Mrs. Simpson, one of the dogs is loose. I think it ran downstairs.”

“
Inside
?” the Widow said. “With wet paws?” She hobbled toward the library stairs, wonk-looking for prints.

As he waited on hold, crouched behind her desk phone, out of camera reach, Cody had second thoughts. His iPhone was over three years old. They broke often; he knew that. He used to check them in for Genius Bar service all the time. Maybe his had just played out. He should have bought a new one before he lost his discount.

But if Apperson and Ross could zap a human brain, then jamming a cell phone would be a cakewalk, wouldn’t it?

“This is John Crownover.”

The brisk manner snapped Cody to attention.

“…Hello, Mr. Crownover. I’m Cody Marko.”

“The S’wanee freshman, right?” Crownover said. “How’s life at the Domain?”

“It’s fine, thank you,” Cody answered automatically.

“It usually is. What can I do for you, Freshman Cody?”

“Actually, it’s not fine, sir.”

Cody laid it all out, quickly, since the Widow was bound to return soon. There was silence on the other end.

“I know it sounds crazy, sir,” Cody said.

“It does sound extreme,” Crownover agreed. “But extreme things have happened there before, sadly. People get very carried away.”

“Ivan Apperson was the junior, wasn’t he, sir? The one you suspected?”

“Appy Apperson. No one called him Ivan.” Crownover chuckled. “Although we should have. Ivan the Terrible.”

“Ivan the Terrible,” Cody agreed, trying to pinpoint the joke. He liked the sound of it anyway.

“I think he was testing compounds, or spores really, in hopes of selling it to the military. As a weapon in Vietnam, or potentially the Soviet Union,” Crownover continued. “Driving the enemy insane, making them turn on each other, has been the Holy Grail of our military for decades. But it’s never been practical, or even possible. And the testing was inhumane and gruesome.”

“There was lots of crazy testing back then,” Crownover added. “The military-academic complex, if you will. It was a different era, the Cold War. It was quite paranoid.”

“Yes, sir, I know,” Cody said. “I’ve read about it.” Cody was relieved. Crownover got it. He understood.

“But we couldn’t pin it on him,” Crownover went on. “And the trustees shut down the investigation. Shut down the whole paper, actually.” He sighed over the phone. “Quite ironic that he runs the place now, isn’t it? Oh well. It was so long ago.”

“He put a window in All Saints to commemorate it,” Cody said, and Crownover said, “Yes, I’ve seen it. I come back every spring for reunions.”

“But it’s happening again, sir,” Cody said, and Crownover said, “Yes, that’s what you said. They seem to be testing a new method. It’s alarming, isn’t it?”