Alexandra Sokoloff - The Harrowing

For a moment, Robin forgot her suspicions and looked around her in wonder at twin beds pushed together to form one big lush bed, draped veils, tin-framed mirrors on the wall, a carved wood screen, big pillows on the floor. Books lay open everywhere, overflowing ashtrays beside them. Robin noticed a Madonna CD case open on top of the dresser. Not what I would have expected of Lisa at all. So Martin was right , she realized, startled. Or did he know Lisa before tonight? She felt another sickening wave of paranoia.

Robin turned and caught Lisa watching her narrowly.

“You have a private?” Robin asked, flustered.

Lisa widened her eyes in mock innocence. “Can’t seem to keep a roommate. Oh well .” She grinned at Robin, tossed her a T-shirt to sleep in. She pulled her own torn sweater over her head, then peeled off her camisole with deliberate languor, exposing a Celtic tattoo on her left breast.

She turned to examine herself in the dresser mirror, stroking her stomach, trailing her hands down her waist. She held Robin’s eyes in the reflection.

God, everything’s an act with you, isn’t it? Robin thought. But there was a charge in the room, electric and titillating.

Irritated, Robin moved to the bed, set her candle on the bed table, and unzipped her skirt.

So we ‘re not going to talk about tonight at all, then?

As she slid off her skirt, Waverly’s prescription bottle fell from the pocket and rolled on the floor, rattling. Robin reached for it, her face hot with shame, but Lisa was too quick for her. She scooped it up and looked at the pills with an expert eye, then turned her gaze to Robin, speculatively.

“How many were you going to take? All of them, or just enough to get you some attention?”

Lisa gasped as Robin grabbed her wrist, held it hard. “I won’t tell. You were moving it, weren’t you?”

Lisa’s eyebrows quirked. She smiled thinly. “Sweetie pie, I swear I thought you were.”

They looked at each other for a long moment Robin felt chilled. Then Lisa shrugged, her eyes sparkling. “Well, well, well. This could get interesting.”

She climbed into bed, flashing long bare legs, and snuggled under the covers.

Robin sat slowly on the other side, confused—and strangely exhilarated.

Lisa twisted down on the cap of Waverly’s prescription bottle and popped a pill, then offered it to Robin. “Valium?”

Robin shook her head.

Lisa leaned to her bed table to blow out the nearest candles, then paused, her face wreathed with the flickering glow. She called out brightly into the shadows, “Night night Zachary. Sweet dreams.” She huffed the candles out.

The last candle flickered out, drowned in its own wax. In the pitch-black of Lisa’s room, the girls slept, crashed out on opposite sides of the wide bed. But there was something else there, not asleep. The darkness of the room seemed to breathe.

Robin stirred, frowning… She opened her eyes.…

A pale young man stood in the shadows at the foot of the bed, looking down at her, his sunken eyes dark and fathomless .

Robin jolted awake, her heart hammering madly. Her eyes jumped to the end of the bed.

No one.

She breathed out slowly, realized she had been dreaming.

She sat up, looked around her. Though her arms were still covered in gooseflesh, there was no one else in the room. Obviously , she chided herself. What did you really think?

The light was sluggishly gray, but bright enough to register as afternoon.

She glanced down to her left. Lisa was sprawled on her side of the bed, dead to the world.

Robin looked past her, out the window, at yet another miserably rainy day.

Suddenly, the rest of the evening came back to her, a flurry of weird, disturbing images and emotions: the electric tingling under her fingers; the heart-stopping feeling of someone, or something, really in the room with them and moving the wooden pointer; fear and fierce exhilaration—the promise of something wildly mysterious just out of reach.

She felt confused and excited and alive. For the first time in ages, she couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

She sat up with a wild desire to laugh, then forced herself to stop, breathe, and get out of bed as carefully as she could. Lisa didn’t move.

Dressed now and reasonably combed, Robin slipped out of Lisa’s room and quietly closed the door behind her, clutching a Sartre coffee mug she’d grabbed from Lisa’s bookshelf.

She peered down the hall. With the overhead lights still on the fritz and all the doors closed along both sides, the corridor was as dank as if it were midnight. She stood for a moment, letting her eyes adjust to the dark, then moved through the murky hall, descended through the hollow stairwell to the second floor.

The tiny kitchenette was dark, the lights still not functioning. Robin stepped into the room—and pulled up short. Someone was at the counter. She recognized the lithe frame even before Cain turned, holding a Pyrex pot of coffee. His black T-shirt had a graphic of an eyeball dressed in top hat and tails, no doubt from a band Robin would have recognized if she’d been sufficiently hip.

His face brightened slightly, seeing her. “Oh, hey.” He extended the pot, offering her some.

“How’d you get it hot?” Robin asked, puzzled.

Cain shrugged, flicked his Zippo lighter with his free hand. “Don’t even try to keep me from my coffee.”

Robin stepped forward, holding out the Sartre mug for him to pour. When the cup was full, he lifted his eyes, meeting hers. “Any more spooks last night?” he asked, his voice heavy with irony.

She said carelessly, “It stopped after you left. We figure you were doing it all along.”

She felt a rush of pleasure that he laughed, startled. “You got me.”

Their eyes met again, a moment of surprising heat. Robin looked away quickly, confused, and gulped coffee, scalding the roof of her mouth.

The frisson of attraction was still there as they walked down the main staircase, a little flustered with each other. Unsure of how to talk to Mr. Skeptic about the previous night, Robin kept silent. But then she caught Cain looking at her. They swayed against each other and it felt like electricity crackling between them.

Robin pulled away and spoke abruptly, caffeine and nervousness making her brusque.

“So what’s your major, anyway?”

He actually flashed her a smile. “Pre-law—can’t you tell?” She found herself relaxing, smiling back. “What’s yours?”

“Undeclared.” And then she fired back impulsively, “Can’t you tell?”

Cain didn’t laugh this time, but looked it her so intensely, she had to look away.

They’d reached the bottom of the stairway, and although Robin had been completely unaware of where they were going, it seemed inevitable that they moved across the hall to the lounge.

They stepped into the arched doorway and both halted, staring. Robin felt her breath knocked out of her.

The room was a shambles, furniture overturned, the couch pushed across the room and tipped on end against the wall, books dumped from the shelves as if a cyclone had spiraled through the room. Robin looked around her, speechless.

In the gray light from the windows, Cain’s face was tight. “Someone’s playing games.”

Robin turned to him, startled. “Who?”

His eyes narrowed. “Smells like frat boy to me.”

Robin stiffened, protective of Patrick, but said nothing as she moved slowly into the room. The round table she and Lisa had used last night was still in front of the fireplace, seemingly the only thing in the room that hadn’t been tossed. She walked up to look.