Dead Beautiful

“But what are you interested in, regardless of what your parents wanted?” he pressed.

I hesitated. “I... I don’t know. I like books and reading. And I like Biology. Anatomy, dissection. It sounds kind of cool. But I’ve never really taken it, so who knows. I probably wouldn’t even like it.”

He gave me a troubled look. “Why do you say that?”

“Dad told me that science was a flawed field. Something about how it was just another form of prediction. It tries to explain the mysteries of life and death by using a very small vocabulary. That’s what he said, at least.”

My grandfather rubbed his chin. “I see. Well, perhaps you should give it a try, lest he was mistaken. At Gottfried.”

I nodded. Was my grandfather actually being supportive of something I wanted to do? Maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

That night after my grandfather went to bed, I turned on the bedside light and explored my mother’s room. It was like a museum, everything perfectly preserved, as if the sixteen-year-old version of my mother had just left for a date with my father, and would return any minute, sneaking in through the back door so my grandfather wouldn’t catch her. I ran my hands just above her perfumes, her porcelain figurines, her pens and pencils, not wanting to touch them, to change anything about them. She had stacks of books, mostly paperback fantasy novels and children’s tales, a pile of old notebooks scrawled with numbers and equations from math class, I assumed, and a binder full of notes from what seemed to be a literature class. In the margins, she had doodled my father’s name over and over again. I traced my fingers around the letters. Robert Redgrave. I liked the idea that they had once been my age, passing notes and daydreaming about each other in class. With a yawn, I clutched the notebook to my chest and crawled into my mother’s bed. Surrounded by her things, I finally felt safe, and fell into the first full night’s sleep I’d had in weeks.

In the morning we set out. Dustin drove us through the grassy knolls of Vermont, the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and finally into western Maine. It was getting late in the afternoon, the sun beating a yellow orange on the horizon. In the distance an airplane left a trail of white steam heading toward the west, and I watched as it disappeared behind the mountains. We hadn’t seen civilization in hours.

Up ahead, the darkened mouth of a tunnel was carved into the earth. Dustin locked the car doors. The radio became scratchy until it turned completely static.

When we emerged through the other end, we were in the mountains. The alpine passage had been carved into the granite. Giant peaks jutted out of the ground, framing the horizon like jaws. As we climbed higher into the mountains, the temperature dropped. Snowmelt trickled down from the peaks, soaking the road, and Dustin slowed as we turned a bend.

And then out of nowhere, we passed a house. It was half dilapidated, made of a dark wood that was rotting at the base. I was sure it was abandoned until I spotted a figure moving inside, behind the curtains of a cracked kitchen window.

I pressed my face against the glass to get a better look as we drove by. It was followed by another house, only this one was smaller and better kept, resting tenuously on a bed of granite. Slowly, we began to pass more houses until we reached an intersection with a general store, a gas station, and a diner with a faded sign that read beatrice’s.

“What is this place?” I asked.

“Attica Falls,” said my grandfather.

A few cars were parked along the side of the road, and a man was pumping diesel into a rusty pickup truck at the gas station. A stray cat ran under a house porch. Otherwise, the town was empty. Dustin made a left at the intersection, then headed up a steep road that led us around the mountain. The town ended as suddenly as it began. I looked back to catch one last glimpse of it just as we hugged the bend. Attica Falls.

When I turned back around, we had come to a stop. Nestled into the forest were tall iron gates spiraling together like the branches of a tree. Hanging at the center was a brass plate engraved with gottfried academy. A crest of arms was inscribed below it, with the words vox sapientiae clamans ex inferno. A small man dressed in a guard’s uniform approached the driver’s side.

Dustin rolled down his window. “Mr. Brownell Winters,” he said solemnly.

Surprised, the guard stepped back and stood up straight. “Sir,” he said, giving our car a stiff nod and running to open the gates. As we drove past, he peered into the car curiously, but quickly looked away.

Inside the school grounds the terrain was much different than the rugged wilderness that surrounded it. The ground was flat and green, with sprawling quadrangles of grass and trees. The massive buildings that comprised the campus were made of dark brick that had been stained and faded by the elements until it had acquired a smoky hue.

Ivy climbed up the walls, giving me the feeling that the buildings had not been built at all, but had grown naturally out of the earth.

We pulled into a half-crescent driveway and parked at the foot of a staggeringly large stone building, with ARCHEBALD HALL engraved above the entrance. Dustin left the car running and took my suitcases out of the trunk.

“Oh, I can get that,” I said, but he refused. With a bow, he carried them into the hall, leaving only my backpack at my feet.

“This is where we part ways,” my grandfather said.

“You’re leaving?” Suddenly I felt very alone.

“Would you have me stay?” He studied me pensively. “Edith Lumbar. She’s a professor here and an old colleague of mine. Should you ever feel unsafe, go to her. She’s very capable.”

I nodded, fidgeting with the bottom of my cardigan.

“And you have my phone number. Don’t be shy about calling.”

“Okay.”

“You remind me of your mother when she was your age. I should be happy if you turned out the same.”

In a gesture intended to comfort me, he gave me a stiff hug. And with only one place to go, I walked up the steps to Archebald Hall.

I found myself standing in a giant hallway with a high-vaulted ceiling and mahogany colored walls that reminded me of the interior of a church. I ambled down the hall until I reached an open doorway on my right. I peeked in.

“Come in,” said a friendly voice.

Startled, I stepped inside. A young woman wearing red lipstick and a secretary’s skirt suit was seated behind a desk, sorting through a stack of files. She was simultaneously plain and glamorous, like a 1950s movie star. I half expected her to look up from a typewriter and pull out a long cigarette. She smiled when she saw me approach.