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| Photo By Robert S. Donovan |
Her room was about as homey as a dorm room can get. The desks and closets were firmly attached to the walls, and had been there since the building opened. As such, they were old enough that they were sort of cool again. Andi had purple Christmas lights strung along the wall and ceiling over her bed, and a big poster of a Salvador Dali’s In Voluptas Mors photograph. Her roommate hated it, but not as much as she hated Andi’s sculptures displayed about the room.
In high school, Andi had developed an interest in taxidermy. Before long, she stopped trying to create realistic looking animals, and instead started dressing the animals, or just their skeletons, in fantastical outfits and posing them.
Her roommate had complained about them, so she’d brought the majority of her sculptures home one weekend, just her favorites were still in the room, and in an effort to be neighborly Andi had tried to arrange the things on her desk so that the strange little creatures would be hard to notice if you weren’t looking for them.
All the same, her roommate spent as little time in the room as she could. Her roommate, Rachel, was so determined to be normal it was off-putting. Andi had tried making friends with Rachel, but found it impossible to get beyond Rachel’s “normal” exterior. Andi felt a little bit like one of the Addams family trying to relate to an outsider any time they talked.
There was a knock at her door. That would be the other reason Rachel avoided Andi. Rob was very possibly the nicest guy on campus, but in order to find that out you had to get past his appearance. Rob was huge: Six feet and four inches of solid muscle. He also tended to dress in ripped denim and leather, and kept his head cleanly shaved. Generally, his outfit featured no fewer than five skulls. Rob was studying Political Science.
He and Andi were not a couple. If you asked them, they would both say dating the other would be like dating a sibling. They’d met the year before in Physics 101, and quickly became best friends after getting paired as lab partners.
Andi marked her place in the book she was reading, climbed down from her lofted bed, and let Rob in.
Rob seemed pretty excited tonight.
“You’re not going to believe this,” Rob said. “Right here in town, they found a bunch of actual human bones in somebody’s shed.”
“Seriously?” Andi said. “Was it a serial killer, or what?”
“They don’t know, or aren’t saying. I guess this guy passed away recently, and his kids were getting his house ready to sell when they found a box with a bunch of bones in it,” Rob said.
“Hunh. Not a whole skeleton though?”
Rob pulled out Rachel’s desk chair and sat down on it.
“No, just a leg bone and, like, a couple of ribs,” Rob said. “I guess they’re looking into it to see if there’s some kind of occult connection.”
Andi rolled her eyes.
“Have they looked into it to see if the guy was a teacher at a medical school first?” she said.
“Well, probably not,” Rob said. “What fun would that be? It’s way more fun for everyone if the guy was secretly a devil worshipper.”
Andi smiled slightly, “Good point. It’s probably the most excitement the police in this town have had in years.”
“I know, right? I bet the investigation is going to take years, just because they won’t want it to end.”
“I bet,” Andi said. “So, what do you want to do today?”
Rob leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling as though the answer might be up there.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Want to cruise down to the Bump and Grind and hang out for a while?”
The Bump and Grind was a coffee shop that had opened up fairly recently not too far from campus. The woman who ran it, Tamara, had recently relocated from some place in California. She was usually pretty vague about why she’d left California for Wisconsin, though Andi had pieced together that there had been a guy who had turned out to be some kind of nutcase back west, so Tamara had closed up her coffee shop there and moved it here.
Andi couldn’t think of anything else better to do, so she said, “Sure, let’s go.”
It was about four blocks to the Bump and Grind. Andi grabbed her jacket and a pair of knit mittens for the walk.
The sidewalks around campus could be pretty treacherous. No one was exactly sure if the school actually tried to keep the sidewalks clear or at least salted in the winter or not. Either way, enough people trampled all the snow down that the sidewalks ended up being entirely covered with a sheet of ice that never really melted, it just kept getting thicker, and more slippery. It was usually easiest to walk in the snow on either side of the sidewalk rather than try to keep from falling on the sidewalks themselves.
As the two of them walked, Andi heard a motorcycle roaring, somewhere close by. She couldn’t believe anyone would be out riding when it was this cold, and the roads were so slick from snow and ice. She turned to look, but couldn’t spot the rider anywhere.
“Where’s the bike?” Andi said to Rob.
Rob looked confused. “What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you hear that motorcycle? Who on Earth is out riding now? They must be freezing their ass off. Or have a death wish. Or both,” Andi said.
Rob shrugged and shook his head.
“I don’t hear a bike,” he said.
Andi looked skeptical. “Have you had your hearing checked lately?”
“My hearing is fine. Have you talked to a psychiatrist about the audio hallucinations you’ve been having lately?”
“Get bent.”
Rob laughed, and after a moment Andi did too.
“Maybe it was a pickup truck?” Andi said. “Some of those guys have ridiculously loud exhaust too.”
“Could be,” Rob said. “I didn’t hear a damn thing, though.”
They reached the Bump and Grind after a couple minutes, and went inside. There weren’t too many people hanging out there, which was probably typical for a Thursday afternoon, but there was a line.
Andi noticed a tall woman, with blonde hair waiting in line a few people ahead of them. She was scary thin, and pale, but looked pleasant enough.
Poor thing has an eating disorder, Andi thought. Or else she’s sick. Cancer maybe?
She saw the woman pull a phone out of her pocket and grimace after looking at it. The woman stepped out of line and started hurrying toward the door. She made eye contact with Andi as she walked by.
“No coffee for the wicked, eh?” Andi said to her.
The woman blinked, apparently surprised Andi was talking to her, then said, “Sweetie, you don’t know the half of it.”
She hustled out of the Bump and Grind, and Andi turned back to Rob, who was looking at her somewhat quizzically.
“What?” Andi said.
“Who were you talking to?” Rob said.
“The woman who just left. Were you distracted by something?” Andi said.
“What woman?” Rob said. He looked around, and then whispered conspiratorially, “Are you high? Because you could have shared.”
Andi gave Rob an irritated look.
“No, I’m not high. The blonde? She was a couple spots ahead of us here? She had to leave before she was able to get her coffee.”
“Well, if you say so,” Rob said. He sounded doubtful. “Maybe I missed it.”
They reached the counter. The owner, Tamara, was working the register, taking orders, and making drinks, so it took her a couple of minutes before she was able to come over and take Andi and Rob’s order.
“Hey you two,” Tamara said, with a big smile. “You haven’t been in for a few days. I was starting to worry about you and your general caffeination levels.”
“Well, school, you know,” Andi said.
The two of them ordered, and found a spot to sit in some comfy chairs near the front window.
Andi heard a motorcycle roar past, apparently just on the street outside. She turned quickly to look, but couldn’t see anything.
“You OK there, Andi?” Rob said. He looked concerned.
“You heard that, right?” Andi said.
“Heard what?” Rob said. He looked concerned and wary, now.
“A motorcycle again. You must have heard it. It’s quiet in here and it sounded like it just rolled right past us on the road outside,” Andi said. She stood up and went to take a look from closer to the window, to see if she could spot the bike.
“Are you screwing with me?” Rob said. “I didn’t hear anything. You just twisted around in your seat and started staring out the window. There wasn’t a motorcycle.”
“Are you screwing with me?” Andi asked in return. “It was so loud. You must have heard something.”
Rob looked very concerned now. “You’re not joking. Andi, if you’re not high, maybe you should go talk to the medical center. Stress can do funny things to you.”
“I’m not stressed, and I’m not hearing things,” Andi said, then paused for a second. “OK, well, maybe I am stressed, but I’m not so stressed I’m hallucinating!”
“Is this the first time you’ve heard things no one else hears?” Rob said.
Andi thought about it. She’d heard a motorcycle at weird times before, but she’d always been alone, so there was no way of knowing if anyone else had heard it.
“I don’t know. I guess so,” Andi said. She was suddenly feeling extremely uncomfortable.
“Hey, it’s just me here, Andi. I’m not going to judge you, I just want to help you out if I can,” Rob said.
“Thanks Rob. Maybe I’ll go talk to the folks in the medical center tomorrow,” Andi said. “Just to be sure.”
“I think that’s probably a really good idea,” Rob said. “Just to be sure.”
