Silas Confidential

Chapter 3

With a frustrated groan, I slammed my History of the Codex Mendoza shut and got to my feet. Slowly, steadily, I started to pace the length of my dorm room.  The commotion next door was getting to be almost too much to endure.  I needed my study time. I needed my beauty sleep.  Like it or not, skin as flawless as mine didn’t just happen.  It took eight hours of deep, undisturbed sleep and a gentle cleanser to work that magic. Laura Hollis was messing with that.

                  This had been going on for weeks now and I still wasn’t any closer to finding out what was going on; let alone putting a stop it.

At first I thought it was just Laura in a sugar induced fit banging on the walls and throwing things around her room.  The more I thought about it, though, the realization occurred to me that no one, especially someone that diminutive in stature, could make that much noise on her own.

                  There were other possible explanations. I was still considering the underground gambling ring, but I couldn’t find anyone willing to confirm my suspicions. I had asked around, as discreetly as I could considering I was talking to the Zetas, about any illegal activity around the campus.  Kirsch, one of the frat boys who followed Laura around like a puppy, told me if there was an underground gambling ring he would definitely know about it.  In fact, he said he’d probably be running it.  When he said that, I snickered because there was no way the Zetas could ever pull off something like that.

                  Unlike the previous outbursts of totally unnecessary noise, this one seemed to have momentum and showed no signs of shutting up. Cautiously, I opened my door and peered out into the hallway.  I immediately had to pull back as Danny Lawrence ran by me.  I could have sworn she had a piece of wood clutched in her hand, a stake like the ones from Buffy by the looks of it.  Perry was hot on her heels, and they both disappeared inside Laura’s room without so much as looking at me.

                  I considered following them, but quickly changed my mind. Whatever they were doing looked dangerous and possibly life-threatening.  I retreated back into my room and shut the door.  I had classes to study for.   I didn’t need to get arrested for getting involved in whatever they were doing in that room.  As I stood with my ear pressed to the door, it occurred to me that they might just be planting something.  Wooden stakes were used all the time to hold plants up in pots.  Maybe Danny and Perry were helping Laura with an herb garden.  Maybe she was finally going to stop eating all the junk and start eating healthily. It’d probably do her some good.

                  I plopped back into my desk chair with an exasperated sigh.  Who was I kidding? Gardening was not a full contact sport.  A person didn’t make that much noise potting plants in new enriched soil.  If anything, that would have brought a Zen like atmosphere to the dorm. Not chaos.

                  I opened the top drawer in my desk and took out my scrabble game.  I opened it, set out the board and spilled the letters across the surface.  After I’d done some research on hauntings and a ghost in Crowley Hall, all thanks to some mysterious ghostly dude, I managed to make contact with one such entity here in the dorm. Using my expert research skills and knowledge of séances, my mom would be so proud, I was able to perform a séance on the scrabble board.  Now, any being trying to reach me through the spirit world could move the letter tiles around and talk to me. 

Someone, in fact, had contacted me already.

                  Her name was Rose.  She had been a student at Silas University in the seventies. I didn’t get exactly what year, because there weren’t any number tiles and spelling out nineteen seventy something just took too darn long.   She had been able to tell me that she’d died here on campus during an environmental rally. I think they were protesting the use of coal in the school kitchens or something.  Someone had shot her and her boyfriend Marcus during a riot instigated by the local militia and riot control police hoping to avoid any bad press for the university.  I felt so bad for her.  She seemed like someone I could really connect with, had she been alive.

                  I had asked Rose if she would show herself to me, but she refused.  I wondered now if I had been too forward.  Maybe she was shy like I was.  I did glimpse her image though when she’d been moving some of the letter tiles.  It wasn’t anything definitive, just a hint, almost like a shadow reflected in glass.  I could make out long brown hair, and an angular face.  I couldn’t see her eyes.  Her right side had been obscured by the fall of her hair anyway.  I did get a sense that she’d been taller than me, and thinner.  Maybe it was the romantic in me, but I thought she was enchanting.

                  I lined up all the letter tiles and was about to arrange a message for Rose, when a horrendous noise came from outside my window.  I hurriedly got up and raced to my window that over-looked out onto the quad.  I saw people running all over the central green.  Some of them were yelling at each other, at the sky, shaking their fists at each other and pointing accusatory fingers. Was that Kirsch running by, waving his hands in the air and screaming? The noise came again; a horrible cracking sound, like a hundred wooden beams being snapped in half by a giant.  Was it an earthquake?  This was Austria.  I was pretty sure earthquakes weren’t a thing here.

                  I knew I should stay in my room and find a safe place to hunker down, but curiosity got the better of me. I pulled on my shoes, opened my door and walked out into the hallway.  I followed the stream of students out onto the quad and down the walkway towards the Lustig Theatre.

                  Another terrible breaking sound echoed across the university.  I watched in abject horror as the ground split apart in front of me.   I couldn’t believe this was happening.  I’d heard of sinkholes. Maybe this was one developing?  I slowly backed away as the ground shifted under my feet.  It quaked, splitting these giant gaping cracks in the ground even further apart.  All went quiet for a moment, and then, like the dawn of a horrifyingly brave new world, up from the ground and the ruins of the quad rose a giant grey spotted mushroom.

                  I stared at it in disbelief.   What the hell was a giant mushroom doing springing out of Lustig Theatre?  Obviously the Alchemy Club had allowed yet another experiment to go awry.  The Dean needed to get a handle on those boys.  They’d end up burning the place down if they were allowed to. Doing things for ‘science’ was not an excuse for mayhem.

                  Before I could consider what to do next, there was a loud rumble that vibrated the ground.  It even made my legs quiver. Then there came a thunderous POP.  I didn’t know what was happening but I saw random students slapping their hands over their faces and dropping to the ground.   I was about to ask the girl standing next to me what was going on, but an unseen force pushed me to the ground, just as another booming POP filled the air.

                  When I fell, I hit my head on a rock.  I rolled onto my back and blinked up at the cloudless blue sky.  My eyes were closing.  I thought I was going to pass out.  Before I lost consciousness, I felt a soft, gentle hand on my cheek.

“Rose?” I whispered before darkness enveloped me in gentle arms.