Chapter 10

Amy eyed the freezer carefully, as though it might suddenly pounce. It did not pounce, but it still lacked the bottled frappuccinos she sought. After enough time had passed that it she was confident the situation was unlikely to change in the near future, she resigned herself to taking three cartons of coffee-flavored Häagen-Dazs.
Amy carried the cartons in a teetering stack to the checkout counter of Tyler Student Union Grill, where a striking girl with spiked platinum blond hair was working the counter.

“Hey, McKenzie.”

“Hey you.” McKenzie gave Amy a sharp smile. “Nice stack.”

“Uh, yeah. I’ve got some big projects due tomorrow, and so I’m going to need the caffeine.”

“There are better ways to get caffeine. Coffee, perhaps?”

“Yeah, but coffee is too acidic. I need to balance it out with dairy, and the sugar will keep my blood sugar levels up.”

“Hey, okay. Can I get you anything else?”

“Double burger, onion, pickle, mustard, mozzarella sticks.”

McKenzie gave Amy an appraising look. “And how does that fit into the biochemical balance?”

“Hey, got me. Make it two things of mozzarella sticks.”

She passed over a twenty, and McKenzie returned her change with a smile. Amy was pleased to note that this time the smile reached McKenzie’s eyes.

The grill was fairly empty this late at night. Amy picked a seat at a table not far from the counter, and watched the grey-looking cook grill her burger and throw the frozen cheese sticks into the frying basket. Something about the way he slouched through the procedure made him look like he ought to have a limp cigarette dangling from his mouth. If anyone was praying for him, they needed to start pulling extra shifts.

She let her eyes drift out of focus. At first she listened to the chatter of the room. Three boys were discussing which alcohols had made them the most sick, and their voices began merge into those of the small group discussing a sociology project as her mind wandered over the story she’d heard from the kids from Pullyblank Hall. It didn’t seem right that a professor could do something like that. He’d be fired. No, if he had tenure, he couldn’t be fired. But there would be some kind of disciplining, of that she was sure.

She suddenly realized that she was staring at McKenzie. The older girl was moving things around behind the counter, bending over to sort something in a lower drawer. She stood up, and turned her head to see Amy staring. Amy, embarrassed, pretended to be looking at the jar of spoons nearby, and then turned her head to look out the window.
The cook called out her number, and she went to get her food from the counter. McKenzie was gone. The food smelled delicious, in that thick, greasy way. She juggled the three plastic baskets of food back to her table.

Amy started with the mozzarella sticks, first dipping them in the plastic container of marinara-ish red goo. When she realized that the goo just made the sticks feel wet and taste like they’d left out for a while she finished the basket plain. She had just turned her attention to the burger, when she noticed a shape in her peripheral vision.

“I love to see a good feast. Mind if I join you?” McKenzie set down a Styrofoam cup of what looked like coffee before pulling out a chair and sitting.

“Mmph,” Amy acquiesced through a mouthful of burger.

“I’ve seen you run for the track team, right? You look good out there.”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Amy laughed. “Thanks. I hope you didn’t see my last meet. I was really off my game.”

“Up late having too much fun the night before?” McKenzie gave a slow wink as she swirled a plastic stirrer in her cup.

“No! Drinking before the night of a meet is against the rules of the athletics program. They’d kick me out.”

“Not what I was talking about. Though what I’m talking is also against athletics program rules the night before a game, according to the student handbook. It’s some hold-over from a more repressed time, but it’s still on the books.” She sipped her drink.

Amy wasn’t sure what to say, so she seized on the part that surprised her the most. “You read through the student handbook? I didn’t think anyone read that all the way through, and you don’t seem like . . . ”

“Oh, you have to read documents that proscribe your behavior. It’s how you find out what you can get away with. ‘Everything which is not forbidden is allowed.’”

“’Everything which is not forbidden is allowed,” Amy repeated. The phrase was almost tautological, but there was something oddly compelling about it. At this moment, in the wreckage of the greasy feast, it seemed full of promise.

“So, what don’t I seem like?”

Amy wasn’t sure how she had planned to end the sentence. McKenzie sipped her coffee. “I don’t know. You just seem like you’d be doing something more fun than that,” Amy eventually said. It sounded lame to her as she said it.

McKenzie grinned. “Hey, your coffee surrogate is melting. I’ll help you carry it back. But I might take a little as a delivery charge.”

Amy smiled. It seemed fair.

* * *

Though it had been a warm day, the night air had a crisp edge to it that suggested leaves changing colors, harvest beers, and lederhosen. The chill of the ice cream on Amy’s hands augmented the feeling. Walking beside her carrying ice cream in one hand and the presumed coffee in the other, McKenzie was telling a story about a Habitat for Humanity trip she’d taken.

“. . . so I told him his hair looked awesome, and that I’d trade him my shirt for it. He said deal, as long as I gave it to him up front. So, I took off my shirt, and we got a razor to shave his head . . .”

“I can just picture you shaving some hipster’s head just in a bra–”

“– Wasn’t wearing one.” Amy flushed. “So, there he is leaning over the sink, grinning like a fool –” McKenzie broke off, her eyes tracking something above Amy.

Amy looked up and gasped. There was a dim light in the branches of the oak above her, picking out a wrinkled, bulbous face from the foliage. A couple yards below, a pair of weathered but formal black shoes appeared to be dangling from a branch. As she stared, there was a motion in the branches above, and she was able to distinguish the shape of an elderly man sitting in the tree, lighting a pipe. The match gave a brief glimpse of a gobliny face. The old man got the pipe lit and took a couple puffs.

“Good evening, Professor Kincaid,” McKenzie said with surprising aplomb.

This weird apparition was the Kincaid of legend and lore? He was so undignified, and so old. There was something very upsetting about the old man in the tree, and Amy desperately wanted him to get down. She cleared her throat nervously. “I believe it’s against school policy to climb campus trees, Professor.

“For students, yes,” Kincaid replied. “It’s been the prerogative of all faculty to scale any such trees as they feel fit, and to lecture from trees in as many as but no more than three-fourths of their lecture periods ever since the glorious tenure of Professor Van Der Meer. He spent so much time in the trees of this campus that many mistook him for a large monkey.”

He left off there. After some expectant goggling, Amy began to speak, only to be cut off by Kinkaid. “Of course, that’s a very common and reprehensible taxonomy error. The good professor was actually a large chimpanzee, which is, of course, in the ape branch, no pun intended. It’s sad that the spectacle has gone out of higher learning.”

Amy turned to look at McKenzie, wondering how this seemingly unflappable girl would deal with the strange, arborial professor. Her expression strode the fence between amused and bored.

“So, what brings you to this part of the campus this evening, Professor?” McKenzie asked, voice cool and even.

“I had been in my office taking care of some light misanthropy when it occurred to me that you would need my aid to live through the night.” With that, Kincaid tossed something glinting at McKenzie, who moved to catch it, realized both hands were encumbered, and instead let it carom off her head while wincing slightly. She passed the ice cream back to Amy, before stooping to retrieve the object. Amy, feeling lost, mumbled apologetically without being sure what she was apologizing for.

McKenzie stood and held something up the dusty light of the nearest lamppost. It looked like a worm-eaten mahogany ball with metal inlaid. The noticeable red bump on McKenzie’s forehead where it had struck her made her seem somewhat less invincible. The professor had said . . .

“Did you say we’re in danger? What do you mean?”

Kincaid’s head turned in her direction, but he didn’t answer.

McKenzie stopped turning the object over in the light. “Looks like an artifact of suspicious origin to me,” she said.

“That depends on what you suspect me of.” McKenzie and Kinkaid seemed to know each other from somewhere, but neither of them seemed to be talking directly to the other. It felt like part of a game, one to which Amy hadn’t been told the rules.

“Of course, Professor, it’s my duty to turn this over to the nearest professor for safekeeping, as the student handbook quite clearly prohibits student possession of any antiquities, curios, or artifacts of suspicious origin.”

Amy started at this. “Hey, you were right!”

McKenzie turned to Amy. “You mean I am right.”

“I mean about how useful it is to read the handbook. That’s still in the past.”

“Indeed it does, Miss Fuselage –”

“That’s not my name –”

“– However, since the nearest professor delivered it into your possession, and returning it to him (hereafter referred to as me) would just cause me to relinquish it back to you again, the prohibition collapses in order to prevent an infinite loop which would cost the college its most important faculty member and its fourth-most important student in one blow.” With that Kincaid shifted, and seemed to disappear into the tree.

“Fourth-most?” McKenzie seemed indignant.

“Is he still in the tree?”

McKenzie shook her head. “Probably not.” She resumed walking.

Amy caught up to her, ice cream stack teetering. “It seemed like you two knew each other. Does he do this sort of thing often?”

McKenzie shrugged, seeming distracted. “He’s my advisor. Well, not really. But he claims to be.”

“So, are you worried about what he said?”

“You can’t listen to him too carefully. Most of what he says is designed to confuse you. But hey, now I’m carrying too much to help with the ice cream, and I’d better run,” McKenzie said, abruptly heading off across the green. She turned, walking backwards for a moment, and shot back, “There’s a thing on Friday. You should come. I’ll email you.” She turned again, and strode across the dark quad, her pale hair like a distant torch.

Amy stood dumbstruck. “Thanks for walking with me,” she called out. “It was nice . . . ” she finished in a mumble. She felt very alone suddenly.

Part 2 – Prologue

— In the midnight depths of the earth beneath the elder college, there is a fissure. This fissure is not in the ancient stone that forms the world’s bones, but rather between the infinite infinitesimal distances within the very substance of the stone. It is hiding behind the sizzling electrons, always occluded from every direction. It is hiding in front of everything we have ever known, and thereby entirely invisible. Something is moving through the fissure; or maybe it is the fissure itself moving. It is moving with a purpose full of the endless patience of endings. Presumably it has no intelligence guiding it, for it is not alive. No, certainly not alive. And though it is deep, still very deep below, it is moving, drawn towards the college’s very mortar by means unknowable.
— And then the fire alarm went off, and I woke up. And that was my dream.
— Then we agree that it was a portent that drunk people still shouldn’t be microwaving popcorn?
— Agreed. On a related topic, the sodium lights out here make that old towel and pajama bottoms combination you’re sporting look quite fetchingly . . . ancient.
— Why thank you! And may I say that the cold is bringing out the color in your cheeks in a way which quite sets you apart from the deeply ill famine victim that your shivering would otherwise suggest.
— Touche, my friend.
— Well, now those kindly firemen are leaving, and I suggest that we return to our dear dormitory at once.