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TWENTY
With Phoenix gone, Honeysuckle House felt truly empty. I had driven out the incubus—and the incubus had, in turn, driven out my roommate.
Liz Book, after explaining to me that the bear-shaped shadow I’d seen on the wall was her familiar, Ursuline (and promising to tell me more aboutthatlater), said I shouldn’t look at it that way. Phoenix had been clearly troubled to begin with and the real tipping point for her had been the exposure of her fraudulent memoir. But I felt sure it had been the exorcism and its aftermath that had driven Phoenix over the edge. Why else would she have gone on about demons the way she had?
“Besides, we don’t know thathedidn’t bring Jen Davies here to expose Phoenix,” I pointed out. “After all, he downed a plane two hundred miles to the west and created a ring of ice around a town so my boyfriend couldn’t spend Thanksgiving with me.”
I knew I sounded paranoid, but I thought I could be excused a little anxiety after what I’d been through. Having failed to gain my love, the incubus had decided that I’d have to be all by myself.
Well, I’d show him. I didn’t mind living alone and I wasn’t going to flip out like Phoenix. I was determined to buckle down for what remained of the semester. I had plenty of work because I’d offered to take Phoenix’s class until Dean Book could find a replacement, which probably wouldn’t be until after thewinter break. The first thing I found out from the class was that Phoenix hadn’t returned anyone’s work since the beginning of the semester. I promised I would rectify that situation right away—and sat myself down to spend the weekend reading the life stories of twenty-four college-age students.
You wouldn’t have thought they’d have that much life to write about—but you would have been wrong. I read the story of a girl from central Africa who’d fled her native country to avoid genital mutilation. I read a brief, but poignant, account by Flonia Rugova of how she and her mother had fled Albania. Not all the students came from exotic backgrounds. Richie Esposito from the Bronx had handed in a graphic novel in which rival gangs of rats, roaches, and pigeons fought for control of the city after a nuclear apocalypse.
I read Nicky Ballard’s work with particular attention, searching for clues to the Ballard curse, but Nicky hadn’t written much.
I reread the piece Nicky called “Household Ghosts” that she had read in class. She had written below the last line, “I’d really like to work on poetry this semester.”
At the bottom of the page Phoenix had scrawled,YOU MUST CONFRONT YOUR GHOSTS!!!But I understood where Nicky was coming from. My grandmother Adelaide had made a fetish of our family’s origins, which went back to theMayflower. She was always going off to some DAR event or to her club—a fusty place called the Grove where all the faded gentry of New York society gathered to compare their family trees. The place had given me the creeps; I was always afraid I was going to use the wrong fork or break the eggshell-thin teacups.
I crossed out Phoenix’s comment and wrote:I love the images in your writing. Why don’t you try some poems?
Then I took out the Xeroxed copy I’d made of the list of the people who had died in the Ulster & Clare Great Crash of ’93. I’d start researching each of the names this week. It was onething to tell Nicky to move on from her ghosts, but until I found the “ghost” who had cursed her she was going to be trapped in that moldering house.
The one student whose work I didn’t get to read was Mara Marinca. The purple folder containing her memoir in progress was missing. I spoke to Liz about it and she called Phoenix’s mother to see if Phoenix had the folder when she checked into McLean, but Mrs. Middlefield insisted that she didn’t. “She kept asking us to send for that girl’s writing, but of course we told her we couldn’t.”
I searched the whole house for the folder—or any stray scrap of Mara’s writing. I recalled seeing the folder in the library before I went to class the day Phoenix was taken away. Perhaps if she had thought that someone—thedemon, she’d said—was trying to break in to steal the papers she might have hidden them. But as hard as I looked the only things I found of Phoenix’s were half-empty liquor bottles stashed in a dozen clever hiding places.
I saved Mara’s conference for last on Monday, dreading the moment when I’d have to tell her that everything she’d written that semester was missing.
“Phoenix spoke very highly of your writing ability,” I told her. “If you print out another copy I’ll be happy to read it.”
“Print out?” Mara asked, her pale, tea-colored eyes staring at me dumbly.
I suppressed a twinge of impatience. Her command of English certainly seemed to come and go randomly.
“Yes, from your computer. If you don’t have a printer I believe you can send a file to the campus printing center. Or you could just send me a copy by email.”
“But I don’t make my writing on the computer. I make it with pen. On paper.”
“Oh,” I said, my heart sinking. “I don’t suppose you made copies.”
Mara shook her head. “I never thought that was necessary.These things I wrote…they were just…” Mara pinched her fingers together and made a series of loops in the air. For a moment I imagined I saw writing in the air—strange runic symbols that hovered like fireflies—but then I blinked and the images faded. “How do you say? Scribbles?”
“Phoenix didn’t think they were scribbles,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “She was quite taken with what you wrote.”
Mara smiled sadly. “I am afraid so taken she was taken away. Maybe it is not so good for me to write about the terrible things I have seen. Perhaps putting them into words makes them more real and does no one good.”
“But it won’t do you any good to keep those things inside. Perhaps you should talk to someone. Dr. Lilly, for instance.”
Mara sniffed. “I have spoken to her, but she doesn’t understand.”
It seemed to me that Soheila Lilly was exactly the person who would understand the anguish of exile, but like many young people Mara didn’t think an older person could understand her experiences. “How about Flonia Rugova?” I asked. “She’s from Albania, which is close to your country.”
Mara cast her eyes down as she often did when her homeland was alluded to, but when she glanced up her eyes were narrowed with interest. “Hm…perhaps you are right. Flonia and I might have much in common and it would be nice to have someone to talk to. Nicolette is very busy now with her boyfriend, Benjamin. She doesn’t even come back to our room at night…oh!” Mara clapped her hand to her mouth. “Perhaps I should not have said that. I do not want to get Nicolette in trouble.”
“It’s okay, Mara. I don’t think Fairwick has a curfew. But I can see how that might be lonely for you. Maybe you should try to make some new friends…get to know some of the other students better.”
Mara gave me the biggest smile I’d ever seen on her—or on anyone else, for that matter. Her mouth was unusually wide…and full of really bad teeth. “Yes, that is what I’ll do. Starting with Flonia Rugova. And as for the writing class…would it be okay if I didn’t hand anything in for a while? Just until I decide what I want to write?”
