Teri looked behind her, hoping to see other students coming out of Physical Sciences, hoping to see her professor. But everyone else had exited through the main entrance that led to the well-lit parking lot in front of the building, and she remained alone on the dark, winding walkway that was a shortcut to her dorm. To her right, on a bench beneath the dim, hazy light of an old lamppost, a couple was making out, and she let out a sigh of relief, grateful she was not the only one here. Seconds later, however, she was past the bench and walking between two pine trees whose shadowed indentations resembled malevolent beings with pointed heads. The trunks of both trees were more than thick enough for someone to hide behind.
She sped up. Noises from the outside world seemed to have faded away or been swallowed up by the silence, and the only sound she heard was the tap-tap-tap of her own shoes on the sidewalk. There were goose bumps on her arms, and not from the temperature. It was hard to see, and she kept her eyes on the ground, not wanting to trip over a rock or branch or crack in the cement. The walkway curved, then straightened, opening out onto a flat expanse of concrete. She looked up.
A man was standing at the bottom of the steps in front of Royce Hall.
Facing her.
Teri quickened her pace. His form was little more than a silhouette, but something about the man seemed off, though for several seconds she couldn’t figure out exactly what it was. She finally decided that it was the disquieting way he just stood there, unmoving, in what seemed a strangely formal, almost militaristic stance: arms at his sides, back straight, legs slightly apart.
She was stupid to have taken this shortcut across campus unaccompanied. Especially with Joan and Kara missing. She should have walked with everyone else out to the parking lot and caught a ride back. Or called from one of the campus security phones for an escort. But she was used to being on campus at odd hours in odd places—and by herself—so she hadn’t really thought about the danger of walking alone at night.
No. That wasn’t precisely true. She’d been nervous from the beginning tonight, ever since leaving the Physical Sciences building, and while she didn’t believe in omens or premonitions or nebulous warnings from irrational sources, she thought now that she should have paid closer attention to her gut.
The man took a few precise steps forward, moving from the shadows into the yellowish illumination of one of the walkway lights, and Teri realized what else made her uneasy: she had seen him before. She did not know where, did not know when, but he definitely seemed familiar to her. He was dressed in simple, earthy, homemade-looking clothes that would best be described as peasant garb, and his dark hair was medium-length and parted in the middle, making it appear as though his forehead was topped by a peaked roof.
There was something wrong with him, she saw as he drew closer. He walked in a stilted manner, not as an affectation and not because he was trained to do so, but because he had to: there was something the matter with his legs. It was not just his legs, though. His arms, too, seemed strange, his entire body slightly malformed. She was even more frightened than she had been before, and she clutched her books tightly, her stride growing longer as she attempted to hurry past.
“I need to talk to you,” he said.
Teri ran.
The man had some kind of accent, but her panicked mind could not quite place it, and at that moment his speech patterns were the least of her concerns. She kept her eyes on the ground, still afraid of tripping and falling. Her dorm was quite a ways off in another direction, and down another empty path, but she was close to the edge of campus here, and she dashed toward the street, grateful for the presence of life and lights and people.
She didn’t scream for help—for all she knew she was in no danger whatsoever and everything was all in her head—but she wanted to get as far away from that man as quickly as possible—
Where had she seen him before?
—and be surrounded by the safety of strangers. Even if he did mean her harm, he would not be able to do anything in the middle of a crowd of people.
And there was a crowd. The sidewalk bordering the school was teeming with students out for coffee or a movie, a trip to a bookstore or a late dinner. Groups of young men and women were walking together, talking, laughing. Teri pushed her way into the midst of them, feeling protected and secure as she passed a couple with their arms around each other, a gaggle of men arguing about politics. She looked over her shoulder, back toward the darkness of the campus, stepped off the curb—
And a car slammed into her, throwing her several feet into the air.
She landed hard on the pavement, on her back. There were screams all around her, but she could not tell who they were coming from because she could not move her eyes to see. She could not move anything at all. She could hear a muffled liquid sound in her head, like the burbling of a fountain, and she knew that was the noise of blood gushing out of her, but she could feel nothing. There was no pain at all in any part of her body. That was a bad sign. Bad.
Even as she thought this, she grew weaker. The act of thinking seemed to take all of her concentration and energy, and keeping her eyes open became a task more difficult than lifting hundred-pound weights. She was slipping away; she knew it, she felt it, and there was nothing she could do about it.
The last thing she saw before her eyes closed for the last time was the man in peasant garb standing over her, looking down, nodding.
Smiling.
Six
Gary awoke feeling anxious, frightened, sad and totally wrung out. Whether what he’d experienced was a legitimate nightmare or had been generated by the residue of whatever drug had been administered to them all back at Burning Man, he had no idea. But the emotions produced by the dream were real, and he could not remember ever having felt worse
The phone rang just as he was sitting up. It was Reyn, and he seemed alert, wide awake, as though he’d been up for a while. He wasted no time with greetings.
“I’m online,” Reyn said. “Joan’s Facebook page is gone.”
“What?”
“MySpace, too.” There was a brief pause. “I don’t want to sound paranoid, but it seems like someone’s trying to erase her, pretend like she doesn’t exist. I mean, first her school records, and now this…”
Gary’s head felt heavy. His brain still wasn’t functioning. “Who?”
“I don’t know. I thought you might have an idea.”
The Outsiders?
Gary glanced at his clock. Six a.m. He’d been asleep for over fifteen hours. Panic welled within him at the thought of all that could have happened during that time. “I’m going to find Joan’s parents,” he told Reyn. “I’ll try to call them again, but if I can’t get through, I’m driving up there. I have their address.”
“Don’t you think the police have already contacted them?”
“The police don’t even think she exists!”
“You’re right. At least her parents can clear that up. And maybe they have some idea of what’s going on. Where do they live again?”
“Cayucos. I checked: It’s about a five-hour drive. I can be back by late afternoon.”
“I’ll go with you,” Reyn offered.
“No,” Gary said.“It’s the second week of school.There’s no reason for you to screw up your classes. I have an excuse. She’s my girlfriend. It might not fly with Neilson—”
“Neilson,” Reyn moaned.
“—but the rest of my instructors seem cool, and I can probably get away with it. At least this once. I think you’d better stay here, though.” Left unsaid was the thought that Reyn should build up some brownie points now because he might need to take some time off later.