The Devil in the Bathroom
Papers shuffled in the open room. Pens scratched on wooden surfaces. A young man behind Isaiah sighed. Another in front of him threw his head back and rubbed his face in stress. Isaiah looked down from his seat. He looked across the classroom and over three dozen heads. He looked across the shuffling papers and frustrated sighing and murmur of conversation. The professor stood up front. He stared down at a single piece of paper. The professor’s eyes were focused only on that paper, and it appeared as if the rest of the world had disappeared to him.
“What do you think we’re doing today?” a boy asked a few rows behind Isaiah.
“Who knows,” another answered.
“Why is everything a secret with him?” the first continued.
“Well,” the second replied again, “that is his modus operandi.”
The first chuckled. “Maybe he brought beer,” he said. “God, I hope he brought beer.”
“Well, he brought a box,” the second answered. “You can probably expect a long, droning lecture. And falling asleep.”
The first laughed again.
Isaiah glanced back as he sat down, but he could not identify those who had spoken. He looked down at the thin table in front of him. He pulled out a notebook, flipped it open, and set a pencil next to it. He then looked up at the professor. The man did have a box, a small box, two feet long and a foot wide. The professor still stared at the paper. He brought a hand up and ran an index finger across to keep his place. The paper was so close to his face that the man’s long nose almost touched it. The man’s mouth twitched as he read, and his eyes squinted in confusion. The paper he held dropped to the table at the front, and the professor looked up at the crowd of students.
The professor muttered something to himself and then said something to a student at the front. The student jumped up. He walked to the professor. The professor grabbed the box. He handed it to the student and gestured to the room as he spoke to the student again. The student nodded and moved into the crowd.
“Good afternoon!” the professor called to the room. A German accent soured his voice into a slanted whine. “The paper on rocketry is due next Friday. I know it isn’t the physics most of you want to learn about, but this is the same technology the communists are using to shoot things up into space. So, if you don’t want to wake up one day with the communists parachuting into your back yard, you will need to be able to shoot them down before that happens.”
The professor mumbled a few German words to himself before turning to the chalkboard. He picked up a piece of chalk and continued.
“American and European philosophers and scientists and physicists, whatever, have obsessed themselves with mathematics. Measurement. Everything is measurement to them.”
The professor drew a large oval on the board. He drew a line toward the bottom. The line turned up. The professor drew a triangle toward the center of the oval. The professor then added eyes, and Isaiah realized it was a face. Isaiah expected the professor to turn to the classroom, but before the man did, he added another eye at the center of the forehead above the other two eyes. He then took a sidestep to reveal the face fully, and he wrote two words on the board: “third eye.” Finally, the professor turned to the classroom.
“India is proof that those of lesser civilizations sometimes stumble on good ideas. The Bindi is a representation of the third eye. Full vision is not only what we can sense. It is not only what you can smell or taste or hear. Reality, I have found, is deeper than what you can measure. Freud and Jung, especially Jung, found that we only experience a small sliver of our own minds.”
The professor tapped between the two words with the chalk. “Only fifteen years ago, I learned that reality is just as layered and hidden as our minds.”
Isaiah thought he saw the hint of a smile on the professor’s face. “Measurers. I see you measurers rolling your eyes and shaking your heads.” He grunted. “Before I was taken under the wing of one of the most important scientists in the world, I was just like you. I was a measurer, just like all of you.
“And he opened my eyes. And I got to be a part of something amazing. I was one of the first fifty people to see a cloned animal. No one knew a thing about rocketry besides ourselves. I was among the first ten who saw the first mushroom cloud of a nuclear bomb.”
The student with the box appeared at the corner of Isaiah’s vision. He pulled a handful of something out of the box. “Pass these down,” he whispered to the person at the end of Isaiah’s row.
The person at the end of the row held out both his hands and received the handful from the box like a begging street rat. He took one of that which had been handed out to him and set it on the table, then he passed the rest down. Isaiah saw the same actions repeated until the person next to him passed what was left of the pile to him. Isaiah took one, set it on the table, and passed the rest on.
“Do you think we discovered those things by measuring, measuring, measuring? No!” The professor shouted the word to the classroom. “We did not learn these things by measuring. We achieved this knowledge by gaining access to our third eye.”
Isaiah looked down at the table. The professor had handed out little paper bags the size and length of a finger. When Isaiah picked it up, he felt a small lump at the bottom of the bag.
“Does everyone have their gateway?” the professor asked. “That is the small bag that was handed out to you.”
The room filled with grunts and nods and hands raised in the air.
“Good, good,” the professor answered. “Please dump out the bag.”
Isaiah heard a crumple of bags. He heard things hitting the table. Isaiah picked up his own bag. He tipped it upside down. A small something clattered onto the table. It was the size of a small pebble. And it was gray like a pebble. And Isaiah wondered whether it was a pebble. Had the professor gone mad? Had he handed out rocks?
The professor brought one hand high above his head. He held something between his thumb and forefinger. Isaiah assumed it was one of these small pebbles that had been handed out.
“It is not a stone,” the professor called out. “It is a pill. It is called Atalozole. I’ve found several different tools to access the third eye, but I have found this one to be the best.”
Some of the students muttered to each other. Isaiah saw a few lean and gesture to nearby classmates. He was not the only one who had thought the professor might have gone a little bit batty since a week ago.
The professor made a noise with his mouth, not a hiss, not a click of his tongue, but something in the middle. The unruly rumble of voices that had been forming smoothed to silence, and eyes looked forward. All looked forward confused and wondering what the professor was thinking and what was actually going on.
A hand shot up toward the front of the classroom. The professor nodded toward the curious student, and the curious student spoke.
“I, um, ah, is there any water to swallow the pi—”
The professor shook his head. Annoyance flashed over his face and then he looked across the entire classroom.
“I know some of you are skeptical. I was skeptical myself, and to you who think I am going mad, what is the harm in swallowing an ugly, little placebo?”
The professor reached into his breast pocket. The room remained silent. Isaiah held his own breath, and he wondered if others were doing the same. Isaiah watched as the professor attended to what he was pulling out of his pocket. It was a single cigarette. He put it between his lips, he brought up a small lighter, and he lit it. He took a few delicate puffs. He walked over to his chair. He sat down, seemed to make himself comfortable, and then looked at the classroom of young faces.
“You may begin,” he nodded to them.
Isaiah looked down at the table once more. The little gray pill pointed toward the door. It still looked like a small, smooth pebble to him, and he still wondered if the professor had gone mad. Isaiah reached out. He picked up the drug between his fingers. He rolled it on to the flat of his palm. He looked down. For a moment, he hesitated. He hesitated and wondered if he should throw the pill away, but almost on impulse, he instead brought his palm up to his mouth, the pill flew in, and he swallowed before he was able to reconsider his choice.
For the first ten minutes, nothing happened. He sat back in his chair. He looked around. He watched as others swallowed the pill, some quickly, some slowly, some with difficulty, and some without any. Most did what he did. Most sat back and looked around and waited. One or two mumbled to those near them, but they did not take long. Most just sat in silence and waited and looked to each other to see if anything was happening and looked at the professor whose head was bent down reading a book.
Isaiah wondered if he should leave after the eighth minute. The professor had played a trick on them. It was all a lesson. After sitting and reading and leisurely smoking, he would stand up. The professor would turn to the classroom and smile. He would chuckle, and what would he tell them? He would ask them all what they had expected. He would ask them if science had ever been so easy. He would laugh again and say that they all already knew you could not just take medicine and gain access to hidden knowledge, because hidden knowledge of that kind did not exist.
Isaiah could already hear his whining accent. “Do you think I sold my soul to the devil or some sort of drug to get here?” And the professor would scoff. “I’ve dedicated my life to this,” he would say. “Countless hours of struggle.” And then he would turn to the blackboard, he would start to scratch out a cross-section in chalk, and he would go on teaching as if nothing had ever happened. Because in that scenario, nothing had.
Instead, the man did not stand up after the tenth minute. He only looked up and surveyed the students in the room as if he were waiting for something.
When the first student slipped out of his chair, the thought flashed through Isaiah’s mind that the professor had poisoned them all, but that thought fled as soon as the fallen student pulled himself up to his feet and began to look about his head as if something was up near the ceiling.
“How did you get up there?” the student called into the empty space. “Well, are you going to come down?” he answered after a short moment of silence. The boy’s eyes followed an invisible something across the ceiling. Then his eyes darted around the ceiling as if he had lost sight of what he was looking at, and then a big smile spread across his face.
Another student in front of Isaiah leaned as far back in his chair as he could and burst into clattering laughter. The student to Isaiah’s left muttered to himself. Someone behind him called out across the room. “Who are you?” the student asked. “But I don’t know where you are going!” Isaiah heard a student stand up behind him. “But who are you? And what if I don’t want to?”
Isaiah watched other students follow similar patterns across the room, but as he watched the drug act upon their systems and display it in their actions, he felt nothing. He expected to feel a sweep of inebriation or something like it filling his body. He expected the world to melt around him and reveal a fantasy-scape. He expected pleasure. Light. Where was the dissolution of the real world? Where was his laughter? Where were the people the other students were talking to? Or his own transcendence?
Isaiah sat in his chair another ten, fifteen, perhaps twenty minutes without reaction to the drug. All the other students he could see had already reacted to the drug. It was only himself and the professor who were still sober, and he saw that the professor was doing the same thing as himself. The professor was looking across the room, but he was looking with more intensity than Isaiah had looked. Isaiah watched the man for several minutes. He saw how he would lock his eyes on one student. He would watch the student for half a minute, maybe more, and then he would give a little shake of his head that seemed to convey disappointment. For a moment, the professor and Isaiah’s eyes met. Isaiah thought he saw surprise glint in the cold eyes of the man, but the professor’s eyes moved away before he could be certain.
Isaiah leaned back. He stared at the ceiling high above his head. His eyes followed the curve of the beams that stretched up to hold the roof. For a moment, he wondered where such a large piece of wood had come from. And he wondered how a piece of lumber so large had been fashioned into something so graceful.
Isaiah sighed. His eyes lowered from the lithe rafters to the blackboard. He glanced at the professor, then to the door, and finally pushed himself up to the feet. Though the drug did not make him float above the floor or fill his vision up with alien creatures or alien spaces, it had done something in his stomach and his bladder.
Isaiah shuffled sideways through the desks. He climbed around a muttering student. He side-stepped one still calling to the front of the classroom. He passed several more students wrapped up in the drug, and the final one he passed sat near the door. This student was crunched up in a fetal position. If Isaiah did not see this other student’s body pressed against the floor, he would have sworn he was floating. The student had the perfect picture of peace upon his face.
Isaiah was glad to leave the noise and disorder of the classroom and enter the hallway. He turned left toward the bathroom. He did not look back into the classroom. Though what was happening piqued his interest, he knew this “third eye” expressed by the professor was only a mythology curiosity. Though the man said this was how he and his German colleagues made great leaps in technological development, Isaiah knew it was all a joke from the professor at worst and a delusion the German scientific community had plunged themselves into at best. A drug trip, that is all it was. A drug trip. He was sure of it, and Isaiah knew what a drug trip was. All it was, everything that every single student in the classroom was experiencing, was thin chemical interactions. The drug was entering the body. Its microscopic molecules were attaching themselves to the brain. Everything they were seeing in that classroom behind him was only within their minds. It was all fake. Completely fake. There was nothing real, nothing tangible, nothing that could be touched. Nothing from that two-dimensional, drug-induced reality could affect anything in this true reality.
And how could that little pill he had ingested a half-hour ago connect him to any greater reality than the one he was in when even his dying father could not, would not, reach out and touch him in any significant way?
As Isaiah pulled open the bathroom door, his stomach tumbled within him. After his first few steps, he felt a knot in his stomach and then a wave of nausea from his groin up through his stomach and into his head. He stumbled to the mirror. He felt the heat fill his face. Sweat beaded on his forehead. He felt another wave of nausea pull through his stomach. He felt a twist in his throat and then a gag seize his entire body. The sweat showered from his face onto the sink. Hot saliva filled his mouth. Snot began to drip from his nose. His throat twisted again. A gag seized his body again. And again, he gagged and his body seized and nothing came out. And he wished something would come out. His body was filled with the painful upward pull of nausea, and he wanted to lie down, to go back to the classroom, to fall asleep, to vomit, but all he could do was wait. And he waited, half-standing, half-crouched, wishing for a dozen outcomes, filled with that sickly, seizing ache.
But the vomit would not come. He did not gag again. He just swayed and sweat and snot dribbled from his nose, and saliva dangled off his bottom lip. Then the nausea pulled back into his stomach. It shriveled up into a heavy ball at the center of his stomach. Then the nausea rolled within him for a while longer until little by little the nausea evaporated.
Isaiah wiped the sweat and the snot from his face and flung it away. He looked into the mirror and jumped. He thought the dark, human figure he saw in the mirror would disappear, but it did not. It just stood, completely still, and cold fear filled Isaiah.
The shadow did not open its mouth because it did not have a mouth. It did not speak to him, but it communicated. He could feel this. He could experience this communication, but he did not understand what was going on. At first, he thought that what he understood from this thing was only an intrusive thought, but as it continued, he knew what he was understanding was not from himself.
“I have been waiting for you,” it said, or whatever one would call this communication.
Isaiah did not answer. He was too frozen with fear.
“You are right to be afraid,” the being continued. “Most people are afraid, but most think they don’t need to be. Most think they are the same as me, and I am the same as them. But you know.” The voice was so smooth, gentle, kind, like a nurturing parent. “You know that I am dangerous. I feel it within you. I knew that you were the only one who would understand, so that is why I am talking to you.” Isaiah thought the being chuckled, but it did not. It only conveyed humor or something like humor. Because it was not humor. It was analogous to humor. It was something beyond human experience. It was light. It was warm. Isaiah did not find humor move through him, but if he were to describe exactly what he felt from that being, he would have called it a chuckle. But it was not.
“You are chosen,” the being continued. “Not the Chosen One. You’re not that special. But you are chosen.”
Isaiah glanced at the thing again. It seemed to pulsate. It seemed to writhe as if it were covered in moving beetles. Cold fear continued to seize him. His face and hands became hot. His breath came out heavily. He wanted to move. He wanted to leave the bathroom, to run even, but he felt too much fear. His feet felt cemented to the floor. He could not even move his hands from the side of the sink.
“You may speak,” the thing communicated.
It seemed an endless amount of time that Isaiah tried to speak. His teeth clenched together in fear, and each moment, he had to will them to open. When he was finally able to open his mouth to speak, the only sound that came out was a fear-filled squeak. After another squeak and a gargle from his throat, he was finally able to form full words.
“What do you want from me?” Isaiah asked. He thought he felt another wave of nausea fill him, but it faded before he wretched again.
The thing chuckled again, or that thing which seemed like a chuckle to Isaiah. Isaiah heard a whistle and then the sound of wind that was not accompanied by wind. A small spot on the dark shape began to shine, a spot the size of a quarter, and the little spot on the dark being shone like the sun, and even through the mirror, Isaiah had to squint to look at the figure. Then the spot grew. It leached outward. It grew from the size of a quarter to a spot the size of a baseball, and the light continued to leach out until it covered the entire chest of the being. Then the light covered the legs followed by the head of the being. And where only shadow had been before, there was now only light. And it was not a white light. It appeared to be white light, but when Isaiah looked at it fully, he saw that it was a thousand colors, a thousand colors and still as featureless as before.
“It is funny—at least that is what you would call it—that you speak of “wants” to me. I do not want. I have never wanted. I am beyond desire. You are chosen. I do not desire you. I do not desire to be rid of you. You are chosen. I do not choose. I do not make any choices. I did not choose you.”
Isaiah stared at the being. His eyes filled with light. All he was able to see was white, and he had the sense that this being had surrounded him entirely. He was within this thing, and he was frozen. And he was burning hot. And a blindfold of light had been wrapped around his eyes. And he could see miles into the distance, farther than he had ever seen before. He felt love. He felt like an infant swaddled and looking up at the caring eyes of his mother. But he had never felt such hate in his life. And maybe that hate was the only thing he felt, and that hate was all this cold and heat and love, all blended together into what he now understood as hate.
“Why am I here? Why do you communicate with me?” Isaiah strained the words through his fear.
“I understand why,” the thing answered. “First, you aren’t here. Here does not matter. Here is not here. And there is as here as here is here. The why of why you’re here does not matter because the here does not exist, so the why does not matter.”
Isaiah shivered. He caught himself holding his breath. He breathed out slowly, and he wished he could run away from this thing. And while he wished he could flee in terror, he wished this thing would wrap about him and hold him in the closest embrace.
It was an evil thing, such an evil thing, the evilest thing he could ever imagine. It was a beautiful thing, all the beauty of the world collapsed into this being, more beautiful than the human body could begin to understand.
“And why do you contact me?” Isaiah asked again. His voice still quivered.
“I have minds within me that contain knowledge that will change the world—have, is, shall change the world,” the thing answered.
“What knowledge?” Isaiah asked.
The thing laughed again. The “laugh” turned into something like a hiss. This hiss turned into a shriek. Pain filled his eyes. He was blinded again. Nausea swept into him. He was lifted. He spun as if drunk. The nausea filled up all of him. He felt as if he were rising in the air like a rocket. He thought he would end up retching and then vomiting all over the sink, but just as he felt he could not move upward any faster, just as the pain in his eyes became so great he thought they would pop out of his head, just as the retching began and he was sure he was about to vomit, he found himself back in his desk.
And the nausea, the pain, the blindness, the light, and the movement were all gone.
The only things that remained to tell him he had experienced something was the sweat that covered him and a cold memory of that confusing hatred that sat in the center of his chest like a kettlebell.
Isaiah looked around the room. He was as certain as he could be that he had come back from his trip. He thought the other students slumped in their seats was as good of evidence as any that he was experiencing the real world. All of the students had the same tired look on their faces. Sweat beaded on every forehead.
“Tell me,” the professor spoke loudly from the front of the classroom. His voice seemed louder than before the pill. His voice made Isaiah’s head hurt. “Please raise your hand if you had a positive experience after you had taken the pill.”
Isaiah heard the creak of chairs from the other students. He looked around the classroom, and he saw hands going up, one after another until he did not see any student who did not hold up a hand. And he wondered if anyone was lying. How had every single one, besides himself, had a positive experience? How had not even one met some evil or painful thing?
Isaiah had a desire to put up his hand. He did not want to be the only one without his raised. He felt alone. He felt sadness. He felt cold. He knew all he had to do to get rid of these feelings was raise his hand, but something pushed him not to. And he did not.
Then the professor smiled. He looked across the room at each of the raised hands.
“This is only the first of many experiences you will have in this class. It may take some time before amazing ideas are conveyed to you, but even if it takes more time than you expect, do not be discouraged.”
The professor turned to the board. He picked up a piece of chalk and drew four parallel lines down the board. These four lines created three columns. “Here,” he pointed to the left column. “On a piece of paper, you write what makes sense.” He pointed to the right column. “Here you write what you see.” He pointed to the center column. “You write what the third eye reveals to you.”
A hand shot up from the front of the classroom. The professor nodded toward the student. “How will we know it is from the third eye?” the student asked.
The professor nodded as he answered. “You will have no doubt what comes from the third eye. This is all I need you to do. Make sure you do not eat for the next few hours.”
Isaiah thought he saw the student at the front of the classroom nod, but his own eyes were focused on the professor. Something. . . something had happened. He knew how drugs worked, at least to a degree. The chemical entered the brain, entered the bloodstream, and things danced before the eyes that did not exist. But something. . . this something.
Isaiah had met something. It was not just a fictitious image created by his mind. It was something more, so much more. And Isaiah felt that. This being shifted something in him, and he felt apart from his own self. He was in his body. He was himself, but he had changed.
As the rest of the classroom bustled with students gathering their things and heading toward the door, Isaiah felt himself sink heavily into his chair. Two students began to talk and laugh about how the professor’s third eye jabbering must be a joke. Another joined in, and the conversation quickly shifted to lunch.
Isaiah looked at the professor. The man looked down into his opened briefcase. He seemed to move some papers around. He tossed a book in. Then he snapped the briefcase shut. The professor glanced at the board. He looked to the door and the clambering students, and then his eyes moved from the door up to the seats. The professor’s eyes whipped across the seats until they caught Isaiah. Isaiah swallowed as the German’s eyes grabbed him. As the professor stared at him, Isaiah did not see the old man blink. He only stared and continued to stare, and even after Isaiah’s eyes broke away, he knew the professor’s razor eyes still stared at him.
Isaiah looked down at his books. He grabbed his bag. He shuffled his things into his bag. He tossed his bag over his shoulder, and, keeping his eyes on the floor in front of himself, he shuffled out past the other seats and made his way toward the door.
“You,” Isaiah heard the professor call from the front of the classroom.
Isaiah did not want to look back, but something turned him. Something—it was not himself—and he looked fully at the professor.
The professor motioned Isaiah to the center of the room. Isaiah’s legs felt mechanical. He wanted to leave, but his legs moved on their own. He wanted that acid in his stomach to dissipate. He wanted to forget everything. But he was walking back into that drug trip, the darkness, the weight, and the thing that spoke to him.
“What is your name?” the professor asked. Though the scar on the man’s cheek always made him seem ferocious, his voice had softened, like Isaiah was some sort of prized son.
“Isaiah Fleet.” The words were level. Though Isaiah did not feel calm, though he felt the opposite of calm with a slow rise of worry filling his throat like vomit, he refused to show it to this man.
“Is this your first class with me?” the professor asked.
Isaiah shook his head.
“How many?” the professor continued.
Isaiah glanced at the board. The three eyes the professor had drawn on the board were still there. The two natural ones seemed to glance off toward the door, and the third, the central eye, seemed to stare right at him.
“I. . .” He continued to stare at the eye as he recalled how many classes he had taken with this specific professor. He knew it was three almost immediately, but the odd intensity of that strangely round eye caught him for a moment before he remembered that he had not answered. “This is my third,” he finally stammered out.
The professor nodded. Something like a smile formed on his face, but his eyes, despite that curling mouth, remained cold. “You saw something different than everyone else,” the old German continued. “All the others, they were transported to places of delight, but you. . .” The professor turned to the drawing of the three eyes himself. “We all experienced it back then,” he said as he continued to stare intensely at the central eye. “All together, swept up.” The fake smile dropped from his face, and it was replaced by clear, serious delight.
Then he turned to Isaiah with a smirk, as if he had forgotten about him. “Do you know where my office is?” the professor asked. The affected softness was gone now. His old, serious, matter-of-fact cadence was back.
“I do,” Isaiah answered. “It’s in the syllabus.”
“Fifteen minutes. Meet me there.”
Isaiah nodded and was going to answer the professor, but the man was already halfway across the room and at the door before Isaiah could get any sound to come out of his throat. “Yes, sir,” he said to the empty room. Then he looked at the last glimpse of the professor disappear from the doorway. Then he looked to the eyes, then the classroom, then the seat where he had taken that innocuous-looking pill and seen that dark figure behind him. Isaiah felt fear sweep over him, and he turned and walked toward the door as fast as he could so as to escape any danger that was still in the room. To escape that dark thing if it still remained. As the classroom door slammed behind him and he hustled down the hall, he was not sure he could escape it, and he wondered how he would sleep that night.
“Iz.”
Isaiah jumped as he heard his name hissed out. He glanced back, but he did not see anyone.
“Iz.” The name was said louder this time. It was from the left, a familiar voice; he was sure.
Isaiah sighed in relief as he turned and saw Daniel. In any other situation, he would have been annoyed to see Daniel, but in his unsettled state, he was glad to see anyone who pulled him from that classroom and that drug trip.
“Hi, Dan,” Isaiah breathed out as one quick sound.
Daniel looked back for a moment. It was not confusion on his face, but it was something similar. Concern? Something like concern, but Isaiah doubted it was concern.
“Are you feeling sick?” Daniel asked.
“No,” Isaiah responded. He tried to tighten his features to make himself appear more like himself, but he doubted it worked. He knew he should have nodded at that moment. He knew that being sick was the perfect excuse for how this thing he had experienced was playing across his face, but unless he came up with a good excuse for why he looked like he had seen Satan himself (which he almost believed he had), Daniel would go on wondering. And unanswered questions about himself in Daniel’s hands were not a good thing. He was nosy and annoying.
“I had a paper due today,” he answered. “With everything happening with dad. . .” Isaiah did not continue. He could have finished the sentence, but he knew he needed to allow Daniel to finish the thought for himself. Isaiah did not know with much certainty what Daniel would tack on to the end of the thought, but he knew if he added something Daniel found odd, Daniel would pursue it further. And the devil coming to speak to him in the bathroom had not left any energy in him with which he would be able to lie.
Daniel sighed at the comment. Isaiah was glad he did not inquire into Isaiah’s features further, but he was surprised at this emotional reaction from his brother. It was not the anger he had seen in the hospital, anger Isaiah had expected. It was a man whose circumstances had beaten him into some sort of submission, and Isaiah had never seen his brother in such a state.
“I came to talk about Dad,” Daniel continued.
“More news from the doctors?” Isaiah asked. “Bad news?”
Daniel shook his head. “I got a little angry at the hospital, didn’t I?”
Isaiah smiled at the understatement and nodded his head.
“I shouldn’t have gotten so angry,” Daniel continued. “I should have controlled myself.”
Isaiah nodded again, not to agree with his brother but to push him toward his intended purpose of why he had sought Isaiah out in the middle of the day.
“I set a bad example.” Daniel let the words hang in the air for a moment, as if he were waiting for Isaiah to absolve him of this wrongdoing, but Isaiah did not respond. He just kept on walking and keeping his sight directed forward. “I set a bad example, and Jeremiah came to me saying he wanted to go out and hunt the man down.”
Isaiah stopped. He looked over at Daniel to see if he was joking. Daniel’s face was serious. He nodded toward Isaiah to tell him it was true. Then Isaiah laughed, a quick sound pushed from his lungs.
“He did,” Daniel continued.
The two continued walking forward before Isaiah answered him. “And what did you tell him?” Isaiah asked.
“I told him. . . Well, what do you think I told him?” Daniel practically muttered, his voice matter-of-fact. “I damn well told him that we don’t do that. I told him it isn’t our job and we leave that to the police.”
Isaiah laughed again. He was so glad Daniel had come to help rid him of that acid in his gut from the drug trip. “But you don’t believe that,” he answered Daniel. “You don’t believe that at all.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Isaiah saw Daniel shake his head slowly. “I was only wrong in my anger, Iz, not in what I know we need to do.”
Isaiah laughed a final time. “Hold on,” Isaiah answered with the tang of laughter still in his voice. “You do know Mother will be falling apart with all the family members she’ll be burying.”
Daniel sighed. Isaiah saw something like regret. Something like frustration or sadness fill his face, but Daniel did not respond. Isaiah’s older brother let the silence grow thick between them, and it was Isaiah who was the first to cut that silence.
“The answer is no, Dan,” Isaiah said.
“I haven’t asked the question yet,” Daniel answered.
“You don’t need to,” Isaiah shook his head.
“Isaiah,” Daniel continued, “the police aren’t going to do anything about Dad. We could go to them. We would fill out a statement. They would tell us they’ll do everything they can, and all they’ll do is stick that statement in a file cabinet and forget about it.”
“I don’t care,” Isaiah answered. “But I know Ezekiel would care. I know Ezekiel does care. Maybe you should talk to him.”
“Isaiah,” Daniel continued, “don’t play dumb. You know Ezekiel would never do it. You know I need you, that I have no chance to convince him unless you are helping me convince him.”
Isaiah shook his head several times. He stopped again and turned to Daniel. “Ezekiel is exactly correct about this. If we go after the shooter, we’ll all end up dead. We may even disappear. And then Mother. . .” Isaiah paused. He let Daniel fill in the rest of the thought again. “And,” he continued, “Ezekiel is probably much more likely to help than me.”
Daniel shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said.
“Well,” Isaiah took an annoyed breath. “Ezekiel cares, probably more than any of us. But me? I just want to be done with everything. If Dad dies, I want to be able to move on. I am trying to focus on school. Live my life.”
It seemed as if Daniel was about to say something else, but Isaiah continued before Daniel had a chance to speak. “I have a meeting right now,” he said. Isaiah looked down a short, dark hall to indicate to his brother he had to go.
Daniel sighed. A disappointed look filled his face. He nodded and then turned and walked away. “I will see you at the hospital,” Daniel said without turning to look back at Isaiah.
Isaiah did not respond at all. Daniel’s feet clopped down the hall. The man stopped. Isaiah thought Daniel was going to turn around to argue, to try to convince him to launch into what would be a suicide mission. But Daniel did not turn. Isaiah saw his brother’s shoulders move up and then down as if he had taken a deep breath. Finally, Daniel turned and disappeared down the hall that led to the exit.
Isaiah was not sure he was glad Daniel was gone. Would he have preferred Daniel turning around and arguing with him to meeting with the professor? Isaiah looked down the hall where Daniel had left him. This hall led to an older wing of the school, and he could tell. It was darker, narrower. The tiles were stained and chipped. Light fixtures were spread farther apart. A few ceiling tiles had water stains from some long-fixed leak.
Isaiah was early, but he moved down the hallway anyway. It was two turns to the professor’s office. He would pass four or five offices, take a left, and after several more offices, he would take another left, and this final hallway would lead to the professor’s office at the very end of the hall.
As Isaiah took the first left in this old wing, a flutter of worry moved through him. He wondered what the professor wanted, but he worried more about why the professor had asked him to meet.
That thing. The shadow—it was something he wanted to escape. He wanted to forget it if he could forget it. It was like a nightmare that would not go away. The evil was brimming up inside his mind, a memory that kept on rearing its head to remind him that reality was only a thin veneer over darkness and rottenness.
Isaiah had heard this wing of the school was haunted. He knew with some certainty that a student had killed himself in this wing. Isaiah did not know the specifics of the death, but he had heard it was gruesome, bloody, blood-splattered-across-an-entire-classroom bloody. The memory of the dark being pushed down on him, but he wondered whether this suicide-tainted wing added to what he felt. He did not know what he had seen in the bathroom. Maybe it was only from his mind (his logical sense told him it could not be from anywhere else), but if it was something real, he felt this wing and the suicide that occurred here had opened a door for that dark figure from the bathroom to come through.
As Isaiah made the final left turn, he wanted to curse. The dark image squeezed his chest, and he knew he would not be taking any more of that drug from the professor. It had been a dream, a terrible dream. It was a chemical reaction in his brain, painted hallucinations in front of his eyes. It would be gone in a week. After that week, it would emerge in his mind from time to time, but he would go on with his life within its previous normalcy. But why would he plunge himself into that hallucination again? Why would anyone?
But what if—
Isaiah shook his head. He took the final few steps to the professor’s door. “Professor Debus,” he read, but he did not open the door. He heard voices from the other side, so he waited to the side of the door and decided what he was going to say when the professor was ready for him.
“If you were the boss, you could make the decisions,” a voice said. It was not the professor’s.
Isaiah heard the sound of annoyance from the professor. “You don’t understand the partnership we have, do you?” the professor answered. “I work for no one. I had a master once, but I don’t serve inferior people.”
The other person grunted. There was a pause. “He wants your results in an easily readable summary,” the other voice said. “He doesn’t want scientific reports.”
The professor laughed. “The human body is complex. I am not sure if we can even understand it fully. Tell him that if he wants me to take a three-ton computing machine and integrate it with an organism it takes time. Conclusions don’t come quickly. I can’t give a summary if I don’t know what I think.”
The other man made a noise.
“Does he want a superman or does he not?” The professor’s voice almost rose to a shout.
Another noise came from the other man, but the noise was cut short.
There was another pause.
“Okay, okay,” the other man responded, “I’ll relay the message.” Isaiah could hear bare acquiescence in his voice, not much more.
The professor grunted. Isaiah heard shuffling from the room. He saw the knob turn. Before the door opened, Isaiah took several steps away from it. When it did open, a man not yet thirty appeared. He was thin. He had straw-blonde hair and light green eyes. The man glanced at Isaiah but passed quickly as if Isaiah did not matter at all. The blonde man almost ran down the hallway. He turned the corner. His footsteps pounded on the floor. The door swung shut before the last noise of the man disappeared.
Isaiah did not open the door right way. He watched the door. He heard a shuffling from the other side. He heard a mutter. The professor had asked that Isaiah come to his office, but that did not mean Isaiah had to. What would the professor do if he did not meet, fail him? Perhaps, but was the professor so petty? Was confronting the darkness he had seen worse than failing the class?
Isaiah looked at the door a moment longer. He reached out his hand. He hesitated again, and then he knocked. Isaiah heard a final shuffling of papers and then a “Come in.”
Isaiah felt the cold knob beneath his fingers. He held his breath and pushed. The door swung inward. The professor sat hunched over his desk. A pile of papers was on either side. A life-sized anatomy chart was on the wall behind him in line with his own body.
The professor looked up. Isaiah was struck by the blueness of his eyes, and the man’s bushy gray eyebrows accented them even further.
“Fleet, please sit,” the professor said. His voice was soft.
Isaiah nodded. He felt a flutter of anxiety in his throat. The chair squeaked as Isaiah pulled it out. It creaked as he sat down. When he looked up, he saw that he sat far lower than the other man. Isaiah’s neck met the top of the desk. His eyes were level with the man’s chest.
“It’s Fleet, correct?” the man asked as he looked down at him.
“It is Fleet.” Isaiah nodded as he spoke.
The professor leaned back in his chair. He smirked. His eyes gleamed as he stared over to the door. “And where does that name come from?” he asked.
Isaiah shrugged. “I’m told it is Irish,” he said.
The professor grunted and looked back at him. Isaiah thought he sensed distaste. Isaiah continued to study the professor’s face, but when the professor’s eyes moved to look back at him, Isaiah shifted his own to look at the anatomy chart behind the man.
“You were the only one.”
Isaiah looked from the anatomy chart back to the professor.
“It has been five years. Five years, and you are the only one who matters.”
Isaiah swore he could feel the man’s eyes study every inch of his face.
“An Irishman?” the professor continued. “I wouldn’t believe it if I had not seen it. Why would it talk to an Irishman? Someone. . .” he shook his head. “I’ve never understood how the inferior could ever do anything that should be impossible for them,” he muttered.
“Um,” Isaiah swallowed. He looked back at the professor. The man’s intense blue eyes still studied Isaiah. “Why am I here?” he asked.
The professor still looked at him, but now he smiled. “Did you enjoy the experience?” he asked.
Isaiah furrowed his brow and shook his head.
The professor’s smile grew wider. “Good. Good.” The professor let out a chuckle.
“Good?” Isaiah retorted. “It did not seem good, at all.” He felt the confusion tighten in his face.
“Did you see how anyone else reacted?” the professor continued.
Isaiah thought back to himself sitting in the classroom. He remembered those moving about. He remembered the student calling to the ceiling joyously as if he were a little boy.
“I did,” Isaiah answered.
“And the smiles on their faces?” the professor asked.
“I did,” Isaiah said again.
“I’ve seen so many happy students, and all of them think they are stepping into a world of hidden knowledge.” The professor swiveled on the chair until his body was parallel with his desk. He looked at the anatomy chart. He sighed.
“So, the drug is all a lie? A joke?” Isaiah answered.
The professor shook his head, a slow, somber shake that made even Isaiah feel sorry for him. “No.” The professor’s voice was subdued. “Not a lie. No joke.” He shook his head again. “I remember the dark rooms, the drink. We thought rituals would help. And we all swore we saw a figure. Maybe you would call it darkness. And we spoke to the figure. And the figure spoke back. And it gave us information. Figures, equations, images.” The professor took a final look at the anatomy chart, and then his eyes wandered back to Isaiah. They were nowhere near as intense as before. “Fifteen years ago. And I’ve been teaching students for six, and you are the first in whom I’ve seen fear.” The professor leaned forward in his chair and put his elbows on his desk. “What did you see?” he asked. The question was more concise and more forceful than the meandering about his memories.
“I—” The word caught in Isaiah’s throat. The same fear he felt before he opened the door fluttered in his throat. “I only saw it through a mirror,” he said.
The professor nodded. “Start at the beginning,” he said. “Just after you took the tablet.”
Isaiah nodded back. He swallowed as he thought back to looking down at the small pill. The bathroom flashed through his mind. He saw the thing. He felt its weight press down on him again.
“I didn’t see anything at first,” Isaiah continued. He spoke with unfocused eyes, as one remembering what had happened and forgetting everything in the present. “I was sitting in the classroom. Everyone else was reacting to the drug. I had to go to the bathroom, so I got up. And after I was in the bathroom, I saw it. I saw it through the mirror. I never looked back, but it was there.”
“And what did it look like?” the professor asked when Isaiah paused. “How did it make you feel?” he added.
Isaiah took a deep, ragged breath of fear. “It was shadow, like smoke, but it was hard to look at, like pitch black. It was like seeing something in complete darkness.” Isaiah sighed. Even talking about it made him feel heavy. He did not want to return to that bathroom, not even in memory. The weight and the darkness invading his mind were too heavy, too big, splitting like an axe to the center of the skull.
“And how it felt?” the professor pressed when Isaiah did not elaborate further.
Isaiah felt pain twist onto his face, but he did not care if the professor saw. He was sure the pain (if he could even call it that) within him was far greater than the pain his face could display. He wanted to stand up and tell the professor to go to Hell. He knew it was not a logical reaction to the fictional thing his mind had created. But he did not stand up and yell. He knew it was only his emotion, but he felt something push him into his chair. He tried to pull himself away from the thought, but the thought crowded in on him until it was the only thing in his mind. And something pushed him to speak. He knew it was himself making the choice, but the act felt like he was not the one in control.
“The world was over.” The fear flooded into Isaiah as he spoke. If that thought was real, if that darkness was real, it was in the room. If anything with intelligence existed outside of the realm of what humans could perceive, it was that thing, and only the real presence of that thing could elicit the emotions within him that he now felt.
“But no,” Isaiah continued. “The world was not over,” he stammered out. “I see myself.” Isaiah saw darkness at the edges of his eyes. “Still. I am still. Unmoving.” He had a sense that the dark being was in the room. “Not still, unmoving, yes, something like that, stuck.” Isaiah felt the fear build in his throat. “I’m stuck.” He tried to swallow down the fear, but he could not. The darkness spread from the edges of his vision toward the center. “I am. . .” His vision became black. His ears began to ring. A pain shot through his jaw from one side to the other just under the ears. “Lost?” He did not know if that was the right word, the right concept. “Dark?” He knew that was not correct either. “Sick, breaking, rotting, falling down.” Isaiah’s breath thickened. The fear grew. The fear filled him. Panic. Panic bit him in half.
Isaiah now knew what the word was that would describe how he felt, but he could not say it. A whirlwind of black swirled around him.
“Fleet.”
Isaiah saw the light. The professor was before him. The whirlwind had hushed. Isaiah was in the office again. It was only in his head. The only thing that remained was his heavy breathing and the emotions in his body. It was the same as before. It happened, but it could not have happened because the only thing humans had to work with was the physical world around them.
“Mr. Fleet,” the professor said again.
Isaiah looked at the professor.
“You saw darkness,” the professor continued. “What did it say? What did it ask you?” the professor asked.
“Ah. . .” Isaiah did not answer at first. He had no issue remembering what the being had said. It had told him he had been chosen. At first, Isaiah thought he would tell the professor this information. Why not explain what some fictional being had said? “The thing, it asked who I was,” he lied. “And I told it my name,” he continued. “And it asked why I was there.”
“What did you say,” the professor interrupted.
“I couldn’t talk. I was just scared. I just stood there. It said something else I couldn’t understand, and then I was back in the classroom.”
The professor nodded. Interest filled his face. “And that was it?” He leaned forward as if he were a little boy waiting for dessert.
Isaiah nodded.
The professor laughed, a cackle Isaiah would have expected from a radio-drama villain. The professor pushed himself to his feet.
“Fifteen years,” the man sighed out satisfaction. “You are the one. You are chosen.” He laughed again. The professor said something in German that Isaiah could not understand. Then he looked at Isaiah. “The gates are open once again,” he said.