“Since the incident, my eyes are sensitive to light. It’s more comfortable for me in the dark. How apropos, right? The philosophy and psych majors at this school would have a field day with that one.” She stood. “I’m going to have some tea. Would you like some?”
“Sure. Can I help?”
“No, I’m fine. Peppermint or English Breakfast?”
“Peppermint.”
Christa smiled. “Good choice.”
She flicked on the electric kettle, got out two mugs, put the tea bags in them. Wendy noticed that she kept tilting her head to the right as she went about the task. When she sat back down, Christa just stood still for a moment as if giving Wendy the chance to examine the damage. Her face was, quite simply, horrific. The scars blanketed her from forehead to neck. Ugly, angry lines, purple and red, tore across her skin, raised up as though on a relief map. In the few spots with no lines there were instead splotches of deep red, badly abraded, as if someone had taken steel wool to the skin.
“I’m contractually obligated to never discuss what happened,” Christa Stockwell said.
“Dan Mercer is dead.”
“I know. But that doesn’t change the contract.”
“Whatever you say to me will be held in the strictest confidence.”
“You’re a reporter, aren’t you?”
“Yes. But you have my word.”
She shook her head. “I can’t see why it matters now.”
“Dan is dead. Phil Turnball has been fired from his job, accused of stealing. Kelvin Tilfer is in an asylum. Farley Parks has had recent troubles too.”
“Am I supposed to feel sorry for them?”
“What did they do to you?”
“Isn’t the evidence clear enough? Or should I turn up the lights a little?”
Wendy leaned across the table. She put her hand on the other woman’s. “Please tell me what happened.”
“I can’t see what good it will do.”
The kitchen clock above the sink ticked. Wendy could look out the window and see the undergrads walking to class, all animated, young, with the clichéd rest of their lives waiting around the corner. Next year, Charlie would be one of them. You could tell these kids that it will go faster than they think, that they will blink and college will be gone and then ten years and another ten, but they won’t listen, can’t listen, and maybe that’s a good thing.
“I think whatever happened here—whatever those guys did to you—started this all.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. But somehow I think it could all be traced back to it. Somehow, whatever it was took on a life of its own. It is still claiming victims. And I’m caught up in it now. I’m the one who nailed Dan Mercer—rightly or wrongly. So now I’m part of it.”
Christa Stockwell blew on the tea. Her face looked as though someone had turned it inside out, like the veins and cartilage had all been dragged to the surface. “It was their senior year,” she said. “I’d graduated the year before and was getting my master’s in comparative literature. I’d been a financial hardship case. Like Dan actually. We both had jobs while going to school. He worked doing laundry in the men’s phys ed department. I worked here, in this house, for Dean Slotnick. I babysat his children, did some household chores, filing, that kind of thing. He was divorced, and I got along great with his kids. So while I got my master’s, I was actually living here, in a room in the back. As a matter of fact, I still live there.”
Outside the window two students walked by and one laughed. The sound crossed the room, melodic and rich and so out of place.
“Anyway, it was March. Dean Slotnick was out of town for a speaking engagement. The children were staying with their mother in New York City. I’d gone out to dinner that night with my fiancé. Marc was in med school, second year. He had a big test in chemistry the next day, otherwise, well, there are so many what-ifs, aren’t there? If he hadn’t had that test, we would have gone back to his place or maybe, with the house empty, he would have stayed here. But no. Marc had taken enough time off for dinner. So anyway he dropped me off and went to the med library. I had some school-work to do myself. So I brought my notebook right here—I mean, I placed it right on this kitchen table.”
She stared at the tabletop as though the notebook might still be there.
“I made myself tea. Just like today. I sat here and was about to start my essay when I heard a noise coming from upstairs. Like I said, I knew no one was home. I should have been scared, right? I remember one time I heard this English professor asking the class what the world’s scariest noise is. Is it a man crying out in pain? A woman’s scream of terror? A gunshot? A baby crying? And the professor shakes his head and says, ‘No, the scariest noise is, you’re all alone in your dark house, you know you’re all alone, you know that there is no chance anyone else is home or within miles—and then, suddenly, from upstairs, you hear the toilet flush.’ ”
Christa smiled at Wendy. Wendy tried to smile back.
“Anyway, I wasn’t scared. Maybe I should have been. Another what-if. What if I had just called the campus police? Well, it would have changed everything, wouldn’t it have? I would be living an entirely different life. On that night, I was engaged to the most wonderful, handsome man. Now he’s married to someone else. They have three kids. They’re very happy. That’d be me, I guess.”
She took a sip of tea, holding the cup in both hands, letting that what-if roll over. “So anyway, I heard the noise and headed toward it. I could hear whispers now, giggles even. Well, now I knew, didn’t I? Students. If there had been any fear, it was gone now. It was just some mischief makers, playing a prank on the dean. Something like that. So I went up the stairs. It was silent now. Earlier the voices had sounded like they were coming from the dean’s bedroom. So I headed that way. I entered the bedroom and looked around. I couldn’t see anyone. I waited for my eyes to adjust to the dark. Then I thought, What are you doing? Just turn on the lights. So I reached for the light switch.”
Something caught in her voice. Christa Stockwell stopped talking. The scars on her face, the red ones, they seemed to darken. Wendy reached out again, but something in the way Christa stiffened made her pull up short.
“I don’t even know what happened next. At least, I didn’t then. I do now. But then, right then, well, simply put, I heard a loud crash and then my face exploded. That’s what it felt like. Like a bomb had gone off on my face. I put my hands to my cheeks, and I could feel the jagged edge of glass there. I actually cut my hands. Blood was streaming down, going in my nose and mouth, choking me. I couldn’t breathe. For a second, maybe two, there was no pain. And then it came in like a rush, like my face had been stripped raw. I screamed again and fell to the ground.”