To start out, I should introduce myself as the author of this final part. I’m Millicent Davis, or as my friends call me, Mills. For reasons that will become obvious through my account of what happened to the three of us when we returned to Stonebrook, Alex isn’t in a position to write this. Alex finished writing out his last part--what I will call “Part Eight”--as we sat in the back of Thomas’ minivan headed back toward our old hometown. Thomas told us they had gotten the minivan when Cassidy first learned she was pregnant, the idea being it would wind up being filled with kids. But so often things don’t turn out the way you expect.
It’s time I told you that I’ve been the one posting Alex’s writings, which first had to be transcribed from the old notebook he had written it all down in as things happened to him. To all of us. It was hard reading his words, reliving so many painful memories yet again and all with his voice in my head. But it was wonderful too. It let me see into his thoughts, into his heart, confirming to me that the Alex that wrote those words was the same person that I fell in love with back in third grade. Even after all that has happened, despite what I am doing, that knowledge of Alex’s heart gives me comfort and…I’m ashamed to say it…joy.
It took us six hours to get to Stonebrook from Austin, and all of us were going on minimal sleep. We had decided to drive in shifts so we could each rest some on the way, but it was hard to do more than doze fitfully as the minivan trundled toward what could be our deaths or worse. It’s funny, but the phrase “death or worse” never made since to me before. I’ve always been terrified of death. My own, of course, but even more so the deaths of those I love. The idea that there was something worse than death always seemed absurd to me.
I was wrong.
Stonebrook had been surrounded by chain-link fence and signs that declared the property condemned after the night of the candlelight vigil. Alex moved away, of course, but the rest of us got shuttled to another high school on the other side of the county for the next three years, with a new high school and middle school finally being completed and opened the fall after our graduation. I think most people in town tried to forget about Stonebrook, and no one would dare buy it or try to turn it into something else, but it still sat there like a tumor, malignant and with roots sunk deep into the heart of the place.
I had half expected someone would have just bulldozed it after all this time, but aside from thick overgrowth in the yard and sickly vines covering several of the walls, it looked largely intact. The metal fence was rusted and hung limply in spots, and it didn’t take much for us to find a spot we could lift up enough to scoot under. We were all scared, but we didn’t let it stop us. I would like to call it bravery, and maybe it was, but it felt more like bleak determination at best. Or at worst, we were caught in the gravitational pull of something much older, smarter, and stronger than us.
We got into the school easy. The first door we tried was unlocked, and after a couple of tugs it swung open with a squealing protest. We had flashlights, and despite it being early afternoon, we needed them as soon as we entered what I recognized as sixth grade hall. The three of us moved together, our lights and eyes constantly moving in every direction on the lookout for any threat. I think we knew it was pointless, that there was little we could do even if we saw something, but we had to try--or at least pretend to try. The illusion of safety and some level of control was the only thing saving our sanity as we journeyed further into the stale murk of the school.
When we drew near the metal door leading down into our old hangout, music started playing from somewhere in those lower rooms. I recognized the song.
You’re nobody til somebody loves you…
You’re nobody til somebody cares…
I pulled up short, wondering if we were meant to go down there instead of on to the gym, but Alex silently shook his head and nodded for us to keep going. I relented and followed them into the building’s heart.
The center of the floor was pulled back again, revealing the yawning black that led down into that subterranean pool. I looked around with my light, searching for a good way to climb down, when Thomas pointed to the far side of the opening. Bleachers had been ripped apart and reconfigured into a staircase that led down below. The Professor was making this all as easy as possible.
We went around to the far edge and peered down, seeing that the stairs did, in fact, go all the way to the oily liquid sheen filling the pool’s bottom. Alex tested it with his foot, and when it seemed stable, he started down with me behind him and Thomas bringing up the rear. The air grew colder as we went down, and as we reached the bottom, we found the filthy water there was freezing. It went up to the middle of my thighs and I could immediately feel my feet starting to go numb. We stood there for a several seconds, looking at each other anxiously between sweeping probes of the shadows with our lights, waiting for something to happen.
Then Alex started to scream.
My chest pounding, I turned to look at him and saw he was looking off toward one of the corners of the pool. I shined my light where he was looking and couldn’t understand what I was seeing. There were two bodies there, a man and a woman, both horrifically gaunt and pale, but somehow familiar looking too. They looked recently dead, and between their twisted expressions and the way they were huddled together, I knew the pair had been terrified at the end. I wanted to move closer to get a better look at their faces, sure that I knew them somehow, when I realized that Alex was still yelling. I was turning back to try and calm him down when he suddenly stopped. Meeting his eyes, I saw the Professor was on him now.
“Hello, children. Welcome home.”
I tried to control my fear and anger. “Yes, we’re here, Professor. What do you need from us? How can we make this all stop?”
A coarse, watery chuckle. “Full of questions, are we? My dear friends are very concerned with what I want and need now.” It pulled Alex’s face into an angry grimace. “All it took is killing two of us to wake you up. To make you care.”
Thomas spoke up. “You didn’t have to do it. You didn’t have to kill my sweet Cassidy, you motherfucker. You didn’t have to kill her or Ellis.”
It turned Alex’s withering gaze on him. “You aren’t in a position to be criticizing the treatment of our friends, are you?” Thomas recoiled and fell silent. Turning back to me, the Professor continued. “But your questions, if late in coming, are reasonable and necessary. And I don’t think they’re the only questions you will have before this is done. But I can best answer most of them with a story. Alex’s story is finally ready to be told. I’d apologize for the uncomfortable accommodations during storytime, but this is where you left us to rot after all.”
Before I could ask anything else, it had begun.
Alex’s Story
Once there was a boy named Alex. One day when he was bored in class at his creepy new school, he had a thought. A terrible and wonderful thought: What if the school that he and his friends found themselves at was haunted?
He shared this thought with his friends, and this led to stories and adventures with their new friend, the Professor. As you already know, the Professor was able to come from a Realm of unbeing through your words and thoughts and belief. That place was called the Void, and it had no interest in returning there. It was an empty, lonely place, and it was now in a place with good friends and so many things to see and do.
For a long time, everything was wonderful, and the Professor grew stronger. But the Professor was very smart, and it knew these good times might not last forever. So it used a bit of its new strength to talk with its friends and better protect them, even if they were away from the school. It also used some of that strength to talk to Alex’s sister, Alicia, in her dreams, planting the seeds it needed to summon her if it became necessary for its fallback plan.
In time, it began to hope it wouldn’t necessary after all. It was happy and its friends were happy--or so it thought. But then its friends decided they were tired of the Professor. They thought it was just a pet or a curiosity—some novel addition to their lives they could take off the shelf when they felt like it or when they wanted everyone else reminded how special they were. The Professor understood this, but it still loved its friends, and it tried to grow and survive without hurting anyone else.
But eventually it came to understand that people only really understand pain and fear. Even love is given shape by the relief of the pain of loneliness and the fear of losing that which you love. And the Professor was no different. And while it loved its friends dearly, it loved itself more.
When the Professor learned what the rest of the Stonebrook Six were planning, a ritual of unbeing, it was afraid it might work, but more than that, it was hurt by the betrayal. It decided that it needed to be strong enough to resist any attempts to drive it back into oblivion, and the best way to do that was to slaughter several people in front of a large crowd. It had already grown significantly stronger from Timothy Egan’s death, but imagine what it could do with a few more?
It called little Alicia late that afternoon before people started to arrive for the vigil. It told her to be quiet and not let anyone see her come, which she did without fail. Her eyes were glazed over and her mouth was drooling just a bit, but no one saw her close enough to notice as she walked to Stonebrook. She slipped into the school stealthily and made her way to the gym, where the floor was open and waiting. The Professor picked her up and brought her down into the water, and it wasn’t until she was in the cold and the wet that she started to wake up. Fortunately, when the Professor sealed the floor shut again, no one could hear her down there screaming and crying in the dark.
Later, when Alex went to save her, you and Ellis stopped him. The Professor was so relieved. It didn’t want to hurt any of you, and it tried to just end it there, going so far as to close the pool again in the hopes you would all just go away. But Alex wouldn’t stop.
He ran from the rest of you, fighting his way through the throngs of people rushing around outside. He got shoved down three times into the gravel parking lot, and once he would have had his head stepped on by a large, terrified man if the Professor had not reached out and shoved the man away. But Alex was scared for Alicia now and didn’t notice. He just kept going home to get help.
His father showed up at the gym a few minutes later, screaming Alicia’s name. The Professor knew where this was heading. They would try to find Alicia and take her away, ruining its plan. So it killed the man where he stood. It hoped this brutal act would be enough to scare Alex away, but no. He came back into the gym just moments later, screaming for the Professor to let his little sister go.
It knew now that Alex would never give up, and it wasn’t sure it could keep her hidden from him the way it could others outside of their circle of six. So with great sadness, it opened the floor one last time.
Alex climbed down into the lower depths and Alicia ran to him with a discordant wail, her eyes full of fresh tears. She was already half mad by that point, but she knew her big brother when she saw him. Just then, Alex felt himself being dragged into the dark and tried to push his sister away towards the light, but it was too late. Too late for both of them.
Or was it? As Alex looked up, it saw a figure climbing back out. Scrambling over the floor’s edge as the opening began to constrict again, it turned back. Alex realized with horror that he recognized the person looking down at them--it was himself.
The Professor has many plans. Plans within plans. One of its plans was that if it came to it, if it found itself betrayed or alone, it could find someone and take them. Pull them down into the dark and sustain them. Feed on their belief and their fear, taking in a little more than it would have to expend to keep them alive. It picked Alicia because it knew her through Alex, and through Alex, she knew it. Initially, as it sat in the shadows mulling over this plan, this failsafe if its friends ever turned on it, it also saw the collateral benefit of Alex’s grief and guilt over the loss of Alicia. These emotions would fuel Alex’s belief in the Professor and help it to survive.
But when Alex wouldn’t leave it alone, when he insisted on returning for his sister, the Professor had to make a choice. Risk Alex somehow taking Alicia back and leaving it to starve as it was slowly forgotten, or take Alex as well. With two people to feed from, the Professor could live and grow stronger for quite some time.
It was Alex’s eyes that made it change its mind. When Alex felt the Professor’s grasp begin to tug them back into the dark, his eyes were so full of fear and despair that it was more than the Professor could stand. It couldn’t let Alex go, but it always had a plan, even for this.
If the children had given it substance and strength just by believing, perhaps it could do the same. Its mind was not a human mind, or even a tiger mind. Its mind was vast and deep and so terribly, horribly quick. Before Alex had been drug three feet, it had imagined a new Alex. Perfect down to the last cell, even to the dirt and blood on his face. And not just physically. For all intents and purposes it was Alex, or as close as the Professor was capable of, and the Professor was capable of quite a lot.
The only thing this Alex lacked was access to certain memories. Things that would cripple him and keep him from having a good life. Things that would bring him back looking for Alicia next week or month or year. These things were deeply buried deep. The Professor removed and sacrificed Alex’s belief in it so that this version of his friend could live and be free. Then it sent the new Alex out to the football field where he lay down with their dear, unconscious friends and fell asleep.
In the next few hours, several people pried open the floor and came down to search for survivors. They found the bodies of the others, but saw no sign of Alex and Alicia. The Professor was powerful enough with both of them for strength that it could keep them glamoured and undetectable. They screamed for help, but no one heard them, and eventually the search was called off. Then things were quiet down in the dark.
The Professor knew little of the outside world in the following years. It was conserving and building its strength as best it could, but it was also expending more than it had originally planned. For it was not just keeping Alicia and the original Alex alive in the pool now. It was having to continue to believe in the new Alex too.
The Alex that crawled out of the pool that night was being seen and talked to, and every day he grew stronger because of the shared belief of the world around him that he existed and was real. And he was Alex in every way that mattered. But he was still unique in a way that made him vulnerable.
The Professor’s belief was of a different quality than most. It was not from this place, and its beliefs, while powerful and potentially permanent, required regular attention to stay alive. And it wanted the new Alex to stay alive--it wanted him to have a long and happy life. So it sacrificed some of the power it was collecting to make sure that happened.
But then something unforeseen happened. The Professor is not perfect or infallible, and it made a mistake. It recognized too late a sickness in Alicia and its Alex. A simple staph infection, but one that obliterated their bodies faster than it could heal them. It could have repaired the damage if it had pulled away its support of the other Alex, of course, but it couldn’t bear to do that. So it watched them finally die instead.
For a time, it resigned itself to starving to death in the darkness. It still had those that remembered it, that feared it somewhat, but that was old and abstract terror paved over by years of new memories and repression. Not enough to sustain it for long.
The problem was, it got scared. When it saw itself approaching the end, saw the Void opening up to reclaim it, it knew it couldn’t just let go. It wanted to survive too much. So with the last of its power, it killed Cassidy. Within a few hours it felt far stronger. After Ellis, it was stronger still. And as Alex, your Alex, came to remember me, I felt more like myself again.
But I need your help.
“Enough of this,” Thomas bellowed, reaching into his waistband and pulling out his gun. The last time I had seen it was when Alex had taken it from him while the Professor was using Thomas back at my house. He had gotten it back before we left apparently, and was now pointing it at me. “Mills, this is all lies. Don’t you see this? It’s self-serving bullshit. It’s all part of its plan.”
I was so broken at that point, I didn’t care much if he did shoot me. I didn’t want to believe what the Professor was saying, but as it talked, I had looked closer at the two huddled corpses. I knew why they were familiar. They were versions of what Alicia and Alex might look like after years of insanity and darkness. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t think, I just wanted everything to stop for a minute. Just stop.
But it wouldn’t stop. And the Professor was talking again. “Yes, this was Thomas’ new idea since you left your house. Kill the two of you here and then himself. The idea being that if and when someone finds you, they’ll blame him, not the Professor, and I’ll fade on away. Isn’t that right, Tom?”
I turned to back to Thomas and saw that he was frozen, his eyes bulging. The Professor released his head enough for him to speak, and he gasped out, “It’s the only way. We all have to die to stop it. We can’t let it out.”
I looked at Thomas for several seconds, weighing the truth and merit of his words. He might be right. It might be the only way to stop the Professor, and didn’t we owe it to the world to not let it out?
But then I looked back at Alex. Maybe not the original Alex, but the only Alex I had left. I might be willing to die, but was I willing to let him die too? And the Professor had always been true to its word with us really. We were the ones trying to hurt it, not the other way around. Thoughts of Cassidy and Ellis pushed their way up and I ignored them. It had explained that, and would we do any different to protect ourselves? To protect the ones we loved the most?
“Thomas, I’m sorry.” I was crying when I said it, but my voice was steady. Turning to Alex, I told the Professor my choice. “Thomas has to die.”
A moment later there was a fine red mist floating in the air where Thomas had been. I let out an involuntary scream and started shaking. Then I felt Alex’s arms around me. It took me only a moment to realize the Professor still had him.
“I’m sorry for that, Mills. But that part of it is over now. You and Alex will be safe from now on. I just need you to do one last thing for me.”
When it began to whisper its plan to me, all I could do was laugh.
Alex slept all the way back, and I could tell when I woke him that he doesn’t remember anything of what happened while the Professor was sitting on him. That’s for the best. I’ll tell him in time, over the next few days--even the parts about where he came from. I can’t have secrets between us again and I won’t risk him learning about it through these posts or some other means. I’ll tell him everything, once it’s too late for him to stop me.
The main things I need him to understand are that he is safe now and how much I love him. Because I do. There’s a part of me that says I’m being selfish or delusional, but it’s a small part that gets smaller every time I look at him. Like the Professor, I’m doing what’s necessary for us to survive.
And what it asked in return for our safety and happiness wasn’t so bad in the end. Alex had done most of the work already. It just told me to find a place where we could tell this story. The story of the Stonebrook Six. The story of how the Professor came to be. So after I finish writing this final part, I’ll start posting each portion, one at a time.
I’ll post, then wait. Post, then wait. And those of you that read those first parts will hopefully come back for more. Come back to hear more about the Professor. Come back to believe a little more. By the time you’ve made it this far, it’ll be too late.
And you say to yourself, well that’s just silly. It’s just a story to you. That’s what I told the Professor when it first told me its plan too. But it just laughed its dead crow laugh and said, “We’re all just stories to each other, Mills. And the head doesn’t tell the heart what to believe. Just tell people about me and I think I’ll do just fine.” The more I’ve thought about it, the more I think it might be right.
So congratulations. And I’m sorry. You now have a tiger for a friend too.
---
Credits
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