Bentley Little - The Burning

What was going on here? What kind of alternate universe had she entered?

She quickly glanced down at her bare feet, at the legs of her pajama bottoms, grateful to see that there were no black spots, no mold, nothing out of the ordinary. Inwardly, she breathed a sigh of relief, but she knew that she'd be checking on herself every ten minutes for the rest of the day just to make sure there was no sign of unusual growth on her skin.

Should she go to the student health center and get herself examined? Probably. She'd almost done so twenty times yesterday, deciding against it only out of fear of what she might learn. Which was no doubt what she'd end up doing today.

There was a clunk in the pipes as someone in another apartment turned on a faucet. Angela listened. The shower was still on but would not be for long. An ardent environmentalist, Chrissie took short showers in order to conserve water, and Angela wanted to «be out of the Babbitt House before her roommate emerged from the bathroom. She slipped on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, slid into some sandals, tied her hair back with a scrunchie, grabbed her books and purse and sped out of the bedroom, through the sitting room and into the hall.

Where she didn't breathe a whole lot easier.

The second-floor hallway was empty, but the atmosphere was heavy, oppressive, what she imagined it must feel like to be in a haunted house. She was hoping that her own perceptions were simply skewed, that there'd been no objectively verifiable change to the house itself. But after what she'd experienced, she could not be sure that that was true, and she knew she wouldn't be able to relax until she was outside and in the open air.

She thought of the mold on her bed, the sheet that looked like skin.

Angela hurried downstairs, grateful not to run into anyone. On the first floor, she passed by the open entrance to Winston and Brock's apartment. Neither of them was visible, but through the doorway, she saw a large black spot on their usually immaculate white couch. She sped past, feeling cold, her chest tight as she held her breath.

"Angela!"

She heard Winston calling from behind her, and though she didn't want to, she stopped, turned around. He was coming out of the apartment, and he moved next to her, arms outstretched.

"Chrissie told us what happened," he said sympathetically. She was focused on a stain that darkened Winston's collar: black mold. She glanced up at his face and saw his look of concern slide into a sly gleeful grin. "Serves you right, you stupid brown bitch!"

From inside the doorway came the sound of Brock's derisive laughter.

Stupid brown bitch.

Those were the same exact words Chrissie had used.

She ran out the front door, onto the lawn, tears stinging her eyes. There was silence behind her, but in her mind she heard everyone in the building laughing, saw all of them lined up at the windows, pointing at her, the tips of their fingers covered with black mold.

Her hands were shaking as she withdrew the ke\ chain from her purse, her fingers fumbling as she tried to find the right one. Not wanting to encounter Chris-sie, she'd come home late last night after hiding in the university library until it closed, so her usual parking spot had been taken and she'd been forced to park up the street. Fortunately. She did not want to be anywhere near Babbitt House right now.

She got in, took off. She was crying as she drove down the street and circled back toward the highway, and she was still crying when she finally made it through the center of town to school.

Being in Dr. Welkes' class was weird.

Half of the students weren't there, and most of those who had shown up were like zombies or drug addicts: glassy-eyed and staring, movements lethargic and skin pale. The professor himself seemed out of it. He attempted to continue on as though nothing had happened, and though he'd no doubt given this same lecture on the Anasazi many, many times, he stumbled over his words, got lost in his thoughts, let sentences trail off with no resolution. It was as if they'd all been damaged or affected by their experience in some deep indefinable way and were no longer able to function in the normal world.

She felt the same way herself.

She wondered if the cop did, too.

Angela realized that she had no idea if news had leaked out to the general population, if the policeman had filed a report, if a journalist covering the police beat had picked up on it, if there were stories in the newspaper or segments on the TV news. She'd been living in her own hermetically sealed environment, and since no one from the outside had contacted her, she did not know what was going on in the real world.

The class seemed to last forever, and when Dr. Welkes dismissed them early, there was a rush to escape from the room. Angela had chosen a seat near the door today and as a result was one of the first people out. Not wanting to see, talk to or be with her fellow students, she hurried to the far end of the corridor and took the stairs down instead of the elevator.

Her next class was political science, but she decided to skip it, and having nowhere else to go, she found herself in front of Edna Wong's desk in the university's housing office, sobbing as she described Chrissie's sudden shift in attitude and the racist echoes of Winston's unprovoked attack.

The housing administrator was sympathetic, understanding, all of the things Angela had expected her to be, but unless she was mistaken, there was something else present as well, a knowledge of what had transpired, an awareness of events that went beyond what Angela had told her.

Edna leaned forward. "I'm not supposed to ask this, so this is off the record and I'm going to deny I ever said it." She shot a quick glance toward the closed door. "Are they all white? Your roommates?"

Puzzled, Angela nodded. "Yes."

"I thought so."

"Do you think that has something to do with it?"

"Maybe, maybe not," the old woman answered cryptically. "It's too early to know."

"Too early?" This was getting stranger by the second.

The housing administrator did not directly respond but appeared to change the subject. She, it seemed, had heard about the fateful field trip to the recently discovered tunnel, and she asked Angela to explain what had happened in her own words. "Be honest," she said. "Tell me everything, no matter how unbelievable it sounds."

So she did, even telling the old lady about the corpse hand grabbing her and the subsequent spreading of the black mold.

Edna expressed no surprise, simply nodded.

Suddenly, Angela was not sure she wanted to be here.

"What is your ethnic background? You are Hispanic, correct?"

Angela nodded, blushing, though there was no reason for her to be embarrassed.

"Interesting," Edna said. Then she smiled brightly and put a hand on Angela's. The tears and despair were gone now, replaced by wariness and curiosity. This wasn't going at all the way she'd thought it would. "We don't have any housing available at the moment, dear, but even if we did, I'd ask you not to leave for a week or so anyway. I'd like you to ... keep an eye on the situation. Do you think you could do that for me? You're my first priority if housing becomes available, and believe me, I'll keep my eye out for you and let you know if anything comes up, but until then if you could monitor what goes on, without subjecting yourself to any uncomfortable situations ..." The housing administrator's voice trailed off.

Angela nodded, though the thought of returning to Babbitt House created knots in her stomach. In her mind, she saw black mold spreading from apartment to apartment as each of the residents waited in the hall to call her a stupid brown bitch.

The nod turned into a shake. "No," she said, and it felt weird putting her foot down like this with someone so much older than she, someone in a position of authority. "I can't."