I woke up cold and damp, with snow and ash falling above my head. I was lying on the ground, having no recollection of how I’d gotten there, or what had happened to have me back above ground. The last thing I remembered happening was venturing under the Lustig Theatre after Perry, Laura and LaFontaine.
An acrid, foul taste rose up in my throat and I rolled over, dry heaving onto the dead grass of the quad. I had tried to save Rose and I had failed.
I sat up. There were people all around me, waking up on the grass. They looked as disoriented and confused as I felt. I couldn’t stop the ringing in my ears. Had there been an explosion of some kind? Ash was falling, mixing with the snow from the sky, and there was wood and metal, twisted debris all around.
Coughing on the stench in the air, I turned around to see a huge hole where Lustig Theatre had once been.
Damn.
What the heck had happened here? How did I not remember anything? What was with me and passing out and losing time? It had to be a symptom of being in this place for too long, I just knew it. I was starting to think that I was being affected like Laura Hollis so obviously was, caught up and having the life sucked out of me by this place. There was something that kept me here though, beyond the family legacy I was trying to uphold.
Still, there was no helping it. The Lusting was gone.
I got to my feet, brushed the snow and ash from my pants and started toward Crowley Hall. I needed a hot shower, a change of clothes and a good cry. Rose was gone. I couldn’t save her. I was a failure.
I was halfway back, weaving my way through the destruction, when I caught sight of Laura and her usual gaggle of followers, only there were more of them! My face lit up, the missing girls! Betty! I was so happy to see her I nearly ran over to hug her, but the look on Laura’s face stopped me. She looked as though she’d seen a ghost. Everyone was hurt in some way. Something wasn’t right. I couldn’t remember, but the sick feeling in my stomach told me something horrible had happened. I let them enter the hall first and hung back until I was sure they wouldn’t see me when I went inside. I didn’t want to interfere with whatever was going on.
I would see Betty later anyway. Maybe she would finally give me back that shirt I lent her.
I was still close enough to listen in, even if they couldn’t see me (they were talking really loud) as I followed them into the res hall. I heard Laura mention something about a blog and Carmilla and a giant cat. The idea struck me as odd, because I remembered that one of the things Professor Cochrane had suggested was that we do a video blog for that project back in September. I wondered if maybe Laura had been doing one.
Once I returned to my room, still filthy from the explosion but fixated on finally, finally getting to the bottom of this, I sat at my desk and booted up my laptop. I had to know what this blog thing was about. I did a search on the Silas U network and lo and behold Laura’s blog popped up on the common search tab with a flag next to it indicating that it was both a student work and not to be trusted. Ignoring the warning, I ran through her entries and saw that she had documented everything.
Somehow I had failed to see the truth about Laura and what she was doing in her room this whole time. It was all there. Betty’s disappearance, Carmilla being a vampire, Will, that Zeta who’d slimed me with brain gunk, being a vampire, the Dean being her mother AND being a vampire. Was everyone a vampire? Okay, it seemed as though Danny and the rest of Laura’s friends were all perfectly normal. But yikes - these were all the things Rose had been trying to tell me, and I was too caught up on my personal crusade to listen.
Rose…
I ran my fingers over the scrabble tiles beside my laptop. Tears dripped down my cheeks to dot the table and the wooden squares. I’d lost the best friend I’d ever had. And what was worse was that I hardly even knew Rose. She’d just helped me in so many ways, she’d always been there, always tried to help. She was wonderful, helpful and now there was nothing there... I already could feel her absence in my room and in my heart.
I was such a loser. I couldn’t save my friend. After all she’d done for me. The memories came rushing back to me. I saw her in that cavern, trying to pull me away and getting sucked in in my stead. I couldn’t stop her from being pulled into the light. I was too weak, too afraid. I rubbed the tips of my fingers together. I remember brushing them against hers, but I was too weak to get a solid grip on her hand. Anger surged through me. I swiped my arm across the desk and flung the letter tiles across the room.
They didn’t clatter to the floor. No, instead they pinged against something solid in the middle of my room. Something that I could not see.
I stood and moved toward the space where all the letter tiles had been scattered. Tentatively I reached out. I didn’t know what I was expecting but it certainly wasn’t the shoulder I felt under the palm of my hand, or the wisps of hair that swept over my skin.
“Rose?” I whispered, hope squeezing my heart so hard I could barely breathe.
At first there was a tiny orb of light hovering in front of my face. Then it grew and grew and grew until my room was filled with a warm yellow glow. Inside that luminance I could make out a face. It was oval shaped and pale and perfect. It was her. It was Rose.
She took a step out of the light so I could see her fully. Her long dark hair flowed over her shoulders, and the bangs over her face, covering the socket where her eye should have been. She wore a wreath of flowers in her hair, a tunic with bell sleeves and a flowery skirt that hung to her dainty feet. She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.
“How can this be?” I asked
“You saved me Mary.”
Her voice was like a clear bell singing. It sent a shiver down my body.
“But how?”
“With your courage.”
I shook my head. “I am in no way courageous.”
“You are. You’re my hero.”
I reached out for her. I couldn’t believe she was here standing in front of me. I couldn’t believe I could see her, hear her and touch her. She took my hand and squeezed it with her own.
“How are you real? Are you not dead anymore?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel real.” She entwined her fingers with mine.
I didn’t know how it happened, and right now I didn’t really care. I was holding hands with Rose. That was all that mattered to me.
“All I remember was the bright light, I saw you reaching out for me,” she said. “The next thing I remember was your voice in my head. I blinked and I was here, in your room, with you.”
“This is crazy.” I shook my head, but grinned.
“This is Silas University.”