“I wanted to tell her that what they’ve been doing is wrong,” she said.
“Williams,” Brian gasped. He was tuning up again, just like earlier in the truck. The girl blurred, and he shut his eyes to keep the world from spinning. He leaned against the wall opposite her, forced himself to breathe.
“The professor,” she said, “and the others. I don’t know their names. I never met them in person. Dr. Williams showed up at my dorm one night and asked me if I would do something for him. Take a picture with a boy. It was nothing. Just a snapshot on a couch-the couch was green, I’ll remember that for as long as live-with his arm around me. They told me that they were going to send it to Mary for that class she was taking, the logic class. It was nothing. And I did it. I didn’t know what the picture meant. They paid me, you see. It was nothing but I-I needed the money. But then I heard about Dr. Williams disappearing from campus and I called the number they’d given me.”
“The number?”
“It was on the back of Dr. Williams’s business card,” she said. “Just in case I had problems. Just in case Mary started asking me stuff. Questions. A man answered. It wasn’t Dr. Williams. This guy was younger, like a student. I asked him if Dr. Williams was okay, and he told me not to worry about it. He said that it was nothing, just a rumor. So I drove to his house.”
“You drove to Williams’s house?”
“Yes. On Pride Street. And there in the driveway was Dean Orman’s car. I knew it was his because I’d seen it around campus. He parks it in the lot at Carnegie, where I do my work study.”
“What was Orman doing at Williams’s house, Summer?”
The girl continued. Her stare was broken, her voice wavering. She didn’t want to go on, Brian knew, but couldn’t stop now. “I was going to just knock on the door. Just tell them I wasn’t comfortable with whatever they were doing. I didn’t like to deceive Mary. She’s like my best friend at Winchester. Why would I want to do anything to her, you know?”
“You saw them in there, didn’t you?”
She nodded. “I heard a bunch of voices coming from inside. Like a big party was going on. So I walked around to the side of the house and I saw…I saw…”
“What did you see, Summer? Tell me.”
“I saw them tying Williams up. They were taping his hands with, you know, masking tape. Or duct tape. Something. They were putting his hands behind his back and leading him around the room. But-”
“But what, damnit?” Brian asked. He was getting impatient with her. The hall was spinning, and it was all he could do to steady himself against the wall.
“They were all laughing. Like it was all a joke. Dean Orman was there. A few other people I didn’t recognize. And then-oh God-and then Williams turned and saw me. Through the window. He saw me. Or at least I thought he did. Later I couldn’t be sure. Thought I might have just imagined it. But I swear he looked-”
“Dangerous,” Brian finished for her.
“Exactly,” Summer said. “Dangerous. He looked like he had caught me in something. And so I ran. I drove off campus and stayed at a friend’s apartment in St. Owsley. I flunked both my classes. I haven’t told my parents anything. I just couldn’t…”
“Have you heard from them?” he asked.
“No. They called my cell, but I didn’t pick up. I eventually just turned it off. I haven’t spoken with Mary for a week or two. She probably thinks I’m dead.”
Mary’s got her own problems right now, Brian thought but didn’t say.
“But last night it just got to me,” Summer went on. “I thought about what I’d done. For fifty bucks, you know. Fifty bucks! For a fucking picture on a green couch. I couldn’t keep silent anymore. I thought Mary was in danger. The way Dr. Williams looked at me through that window, I thought maybe Mary was in trouble. I wondered if maybe I was responsible somehow…”
Brian waited, but she didn’t go on. She put her head down again and started to sob. It was a weeping at first, and soon it was a deep, ragged sob.
But he was no longer focused on the girl. He thought about what she’d said last: I thought Mary was in danger.
Williams was trying to hurt Mary.
Brian didn’t bother with the slow elevator at Brown Hall. He bolted down the stairs and burst out into the cold night. He knew exactly where he needed to go, knew that the only way to end this was to get to Williams before he could do any more damage.
I thought Mary was in danger.
Brian went to his favorite place on the Winchester campus: the viaduct. He threw his leg over the barrier and climbed across. He started down the bank toward Miller’s Creek, slipping here and there in the mud. There were no students around, thank God-no one to see him crawling on his hands and knees into the muck, just as he had in an early dawn three years ago, just days after he’d returned to Winchester. A security light on the viaduct gave him some light, enough to see his own hands becoming smeared with black as he dug.
Soon, he felt it. It was still wrapped in the towel he’d put it in.
He pulled it up out of the dirt, the ground below him making a sucking sound, and removed the towel. The Thing appeared in the sickly light off the viaduct. It was a gun-the 9 mm Smith & Wesson Marcus had used to shoot himself. Brian had kept it because there didn’t seem as if there was anything else to do. For weeks he’d carried it around in his truck, the Thing pulsing with some invisible energy from the glove compartment. When he came to Winchester, he’d wrapped it in a towel and packed it away. When he got here there was nowhere to keep it, nowhere to really hide it. And so he’d brought it down to the banks of Miller’s Creek and buried it, the closest thing he could think of to actually destroying it.
Afterward, his arms and knees covered with the black muck of the creek side, the Thing hidden in his coat pocket, he walked toward Up Campus. Toward Leonard Williams’s house.
51
The first thing Mary noticed when she entered Seminary East: the room was full of people. They were people she had seen before, all of them familiar to her. The second thing she noticed was that Elizabeth Orman was standing at the podium, where Professor Williams had stood during their classes. The woman was smiling a strange, almost beatific smile.
52
Brian walked slowly. He’d cut his knee on a rock, and the dirt in the torn skin began to burn when he reached Pride Street. There were no cars. The campus was completely silent; the only sound was the traffic moving up and down Montgomery three blocks ahead of him.
Williams’s house came into view up ahead, and Brian began to jog. He heard the dog barking, saw the man’s pickup truck in the drive. He put his hand in his pocket, felt the weight of the gun, held it still as his coat jostled. Brian had shot a gun only once, with his father years ago. He had no intention of shooting one tonight; he wanted only to have protection in case…
In case what?
In case Mary was there, in the man’s house.
And they were laughing, Summer McCoy had told him.
Laughing? Why had they been laughing?
He was right in front of Williams’s house. It was dark; no lights were on inside at all.
Weird, thought Brian. Maybe they’re in the basement.
He approached the house, and as he did something caught his eye in the distance. It was the Seminary Building looming over the evergreen trees just across Loquax Avenue. The lights were on up there in Seminary East.
Why the hell would the lights be on? Brian wondered.