“What do you mean you’re ‘very hungry’?” Ellis asked. His tone was light, but his face was serious and looked concerned. “Are you talking about eating people?”
Another laugh, though this one sounded a bit more like someone sawing through sheet metal. I tried to repress a shiver and fight the urge to scream at it to leave you alone. That was the worst part of it that first time. Seeing you not being you. The unnatural way the Professor controlled you made you look like a life-sized puppet…or a corpse. Either way, it took everything I had to keep talking to it, which is funny considering how often we talked to it after that. Part of it was because it was the first time, of course, and we grew more accustomed to the strangeness the more it happened. Part of it was because it was you, and I always had the same unease when it decided it was your turn.
“No, no. Nothing like that. I’m not trying to hurt anyone really--unless they bother any of you of course.” It paused a moment and then went on. “But I need people to know I exist, to have stronger belief in me from more sources. Signs that the ‘ghost’ is around, that kind of thing. There’s nothing you need to do…I’m strong enough now to take care of it. But I wanted to let you know I was back and I hope you do talk to me again. Your ritual is very clever and works well enough, and I’ve missed you.”
I tried to smile. “We’ve missed you too, Professor.” And it was true. Despite our fear and worry at what we were dealing with, we were already used to the idea of the Professor being our friend and protector. The thing that made us special. So whatever our misgivings at the time, they took a back seat to our happiness and relief that it was back.
Over the summer we talked to the Professor every few days. Never for too long, as it said it took energy for it to sit on one of us and it needed to conserve what it had. But it always seemed happy to come when we did our homemade ritual, and it was glad to answer questions for us when we asked. At first, we had more questions about what it was or what its end goals were, but we always got variations on the same pleasant reassurances. They were palatable enough and hard to refute, even if we had no real way of knowing if it was being honest or not.
Then we started asking more questions about what it knew. Things about the Void and the other Realms, about mysteries in our own world. We learned about a lot of things, even if we didn’t understand all of them very well. But there were gaps in its knowledge too, and I think it was being honest about them, because it enjoyed telling us things we didn’t know. For instance, it said there was little it could tell us about the Void because of the Realm’s nature. It defied easy description or understanding. But it told us several stories about the Incarnata, which it seemed to know, or at least enjoy, the best.
All it could tell us of Hell was that it existed and was vastly different now than it had been at one point due to some large battle that had taken place there. As for the place it called the Nightlands, it was more reluctant, just describing it as “one of the larger realms, full of power and potential. There is a thing there called the Baron that…well, he’s very ambitious.”
We had little context for any of that other than Hell, of course, which it knew little about. So we focused on things closer to home.
“Bigfoot?”
It was sitting on Thomas’ chest this time and gave a small grin. It had gotten better at mimicking natural facial expressions, which somehow made it both more and less creepy when it tried.
“No, not in this reality. There are two species of ape and one marsupial that have not been identified yet and are sometimes mistaken for a bigfoot, however. There’s also a genetically modified version of an alpaca that has been the basis of Yeti legends for several hundred years.”
“Weird. Ghosts?”
“Aside from me? No, only joking. Yes, there are several kinds of spiritual entities that would fall under what you would call ‘ghosts’.”
“Vampires?”
Thomas’ face lit up slightly. “Oh yes. There are a variety of those, though none that actually fit the most common archetype popularized by Bram Stoker.” It surveyed us, its eyes twitching slightly as it moved from face to face. “Have any of you read Dracula, children? It really is excellent.”
We learned that while it had vast stores of knowledge from some unknown means, the Professor still loved to learn new things and had a method by which it could draw information from books and computers without having to physically read or interact with them. Back when we had first started telling Professor stories around the school, it had fed on the school library and the textbooks in hundreds of lockers throughout the building. Toward the end we found out it had started exploring the internet, which raised its own concerns.
But during that last summer, we were just having fun. And despite the vast wealth of knowledge we had at our fingertips, we oddly only had a few sessions towards the beginning where we asked the Professor a lot of probing questions about things only it could know. Pretty soon we were just talking--telling it about what we had going on in our lives (even though there was an unspoken understanding it already knew most of what we were doing) while it asked us questions and told us stories. It really was great at telling stories.
I think it’s like if you become friends with someone from another part of the world. At first you might be quizzing each other about your respective lands, but if you are truly friends, that phase passes as you move from differences between you to things you have in common. Shared experiences replace novelty, strangeness and excitement give way to familiarity and love.
And we did love the Professor. I think in its way, it loved us too. The problem is, we started treating it like it was a person instead of whatever it really was. Like Ellis might have said, the problem with being best friends with a tiger isn’t just that you start thinking like a tiger. It’s that you assume the tiger is starting to think like you. But a tiger has tiger-thoughts and loves as a tiger loves. Soon enough, we started finding out what that meant.
Over the summer months we had heard tales of weird happenings around the town. The Brigham Well, you know, that stupid thing in the middle of the town square? It froze over in the middle of July. Five different households woke up to find the furniture in their homes all swapped to different rooms--including the beds they were in. The bases at the rec department’s softball field all burst into flame simultaneously while over a dozen people were there to witness it after a practice session.
And people did talk about it, and some of them did attribute it to the Professor, but a lot of them just chalked it up to freak weather, an eccentric burglar, and trapped underground gases. Even if none of that made any real sense or had any proof behind it, it was easier for people to handle mundane excuses than extraordinary truth.
I think that frustrated the Professor, and I like to think it really did try to collect more belief without hurting anyone else. But it was learning its own lessons from each experiment, and it saw time and people’s aptitude for self-deception inoculating the town against belief in the Professor. But it is very smart. It knew there was no real inoculation against fear or pain. Or death.
I had been getting bugged by Timothy Egan to go out with him since the first day of sophomore year. He was a jock, but a smart one, and he had decided that he wanted to date one of the strange girls of the Stonebrook Six. He actually started out hitting on both me and Cassidy, but between the blank, uninterested stare she gave him and Thomas’ threatening glower, he had quickly settled all his efforts on me.
Two weeks in, I finally gave in. He was cute, and though I wasn’t really interested in him, I had never been on a date before so I thought it might be fun. And it actually was. He was polite, took me to a nice place, and was never aggressive or weird like I had been afraid he might be. I knew that you didn’t like it, which is part of why I went out with him at all if I’m telling the whole truth. I decided one or two more dates with him might be enough to get you to talk to me about things if you felt the same way I did. But I’m getting sidetracked, and we have other fish to fry.
The first fish actually came up while I was still going out with Tim. You and Ellis were in Mr. Jameson’s English class together, and the guy decided early on that he hated you for some reason. He’d say sarcastic things in class, mark you down on tests more harshly when he could get away with it. Ellis wasn’t harassed like that, and no one else in your class or my class with him was either. Whatever his problem, it came to a head in early October when he accused you of plagiarism.
It was the first big grade of the class, and all of his classes had the same project. An essay on one of William Blake’s poems. You probably don’t remember this, but me and you actually worked on ours together, with us both reading over each other’s work several times to make sure it was good enough, particularly with Jameson looking for any reason he could find to give you a low grade.
When you got it back with an F and a note that it had clearly been plagiarized, you were understandably furious. You told us that you asked him about it after class and he said he could tell from the writing style that it had been copied from somewhere, though he couldn’t offer any proof of course, because it was bullshit. He was smirking and telling you that, as the teacher, the grade was entirely his prerogative. That’s when you both heard the noise from outside. I think just about the entire school did.
Jameson’s prize possession was a white 1971 MG. He would come wheeling up to his teacher’s parking space that was just outside his room, occasionally honking its peppy little horn at the high school girls he liked the looks of, seemingly oblivious to the rolled eyes and snickers he always received. More than once during class I had seen him glance out the window at the car, as though guarding it from some plot to vandalize it or maybe just admiring it and daydreaming he was back behind the wheel instead of stuck teaching English to a bunch of tenth graders at Stonebrook High.
I wish I had looked up and seen his face when the two of you went to the window to see what all the commotion was. From what you told me, I think you both made it in time for him to see the last of it, but I got to witness the entire thing.
I had gotten done with gym class early, which had been sprints around the football field followed by unimaginative calisthenics--Ms. Perkins was out with knee surgery, and Coach Anderson didn’t care about anything but football, so his main plan was to tire us out and send us away early. I was cutting through the teacher parking lot on my way back to the main building when I heard a screech of metal.
It was Jameson’s MG being slowly balled up and crushed like a piece of paper in some invisible giant’s hand. Glass shattered and trim popped, but nothing flew off. Everything was self-contained in an ever-constricting sphere of force--a dying star collapsing into itself. Even with everything we had seen and knew, I would have said it was impossible if I hadn’t watched it happen. The small car was crushed into a ball less than three feet in diameter and then unceremoniously dropped back to the asphalt with a ringing thud.
I knew it was Jameson’s car, of course, but I didn’t know about your essay yet. No one did. But as I looked around at the handful of other people in the lot and saw the terrified faces pressed against every nearby window, I knew that they understood what it meant just as well as I did. When Jameson started wailing, saying that it was somehow your fault, as irrational as that was…well, it wasn’t just his car that left the school for good that day.
I remember us all getting together after school and talking about it, and none of us, even those of us that saw it, were really scared of what the Professor had done. What it was capable of now. We were just happy that it had stood up for you and gotten what it needed. Because the Professor was all anyone was talking about now, especially when Ellis slyly let it slip to a couple of people that it had happened while you were talking to Jameson about him trying to fuck you on your essay. We knew that our friend should be well-satisfied.
It took less than a week for us to realize our mistake. We had underestimated how hungry the Professor was and it had given up on trying to be gentle or doing things for a small audience. So at that Friday’s pep rally, with the bleachers packed and everyone watching, the Professor murdered Timothy Egan.
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Credits
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