Gothicana

A laugh bubbled out of Corvina as she looked at her friend. “Many cultures around the world would beg to differ.”

“Please don’t make sense at this ungodly hour,” Jade groaned, finally pushing herself off the bed and gathering her things to take to the bathroom. “Wait, why are you already dressed?”

Corvina looked up to see her friend looking at her black skirt, shoes, and the shawl around her shoulders. She shrugged. “I went for a walk.”

Jade’s eyes widened. “In the woods?”

“Yes.”

“Please tell me you weren’t alone.”

Corvina hesitated. “I wasn’t alone.” Well, she hadn’t been for half the time, and it was entirely possible the news of her being spotted leaving with Mr. Deverell would reach Jade’s ears by lunch.

Her roommate exhaled and rushed out of the room, muttering under her breath.

Corvina stood and went to the arched window, looking out at the dark green forest from above. She watched the students milling around, unaware of what lay in the woods. She wasn’t entirely aware either, but she sensed something.

Her eyes went to a darkly dressed figure striding across the campus at a brisk pace. The silver-eyed devil. Perhaps he knew more about what lay in those woods. Because she couldn’t ignore the fact that the first time she heard a foreign voice was immediately after her interaction with him.

It could be a coincidence, but she didn’t believe in them. Unless the voice she’d heard there wasn’t real. Her response to the ugliness it brought with her had been very, very real though. And if it wasn’t real, that meant she’d imagined it.

That wasn’t good, especially not for her.

She’d been tested. Mo’s voice that she’d heard her whole life, the doctors had written off as her subconscious’ way of filling in for an absent father figure. But the voice she heard in that forest wasn’t her subconscious. It couldn’t be. Or could it? Because if it was truly in her head, Verenmore posed bigger problems than mysterious woods and mysterious men. It meant her descent into madness had begun.

**

Dr. Kari was one of her scariest professors in the semester. He had down tilted dark eyes and a fierce white beard, and he was strict. One time a girl got late to the class and he made her stand outside in the corridor in full view until she had gone red in the face from humiliation. Students were scared to ask him a question. But it didn’t end there. He also seemed to enjoy looking at young girls too much in the class, all eighteen-year-old first-years except an older Corvina.

He taught the elective Psychology class, the one class she had without Jade, one she had wanted to take because she was curious about understanding the mind. But as she sat at the back trying to keep herself as small as possible, she wondered if Dr. Kari was worth the bother.

“According to Jung, sexuality can express deep levels of the psyche’s symbolic, archetypal and mythic elements,” he walked around with his thickset frame, his eyes passing over the class, lingering on the girls for an extra split second that gave Corvina the creeps as she took notes.

“Jung’s perspective on the nature of libido was different from Freud’s and not only sexual,” Dr. Kari went on. “He believed libido was desire or impulse unchecked by any kind of authority. To quote him, it is ‘appetite in its natural state’.”

A movement at the door brought her eyes to find Mr. Deverell leaning against the threshold, dressed in black, hands in his pockets, watching her with those eyes. Appetite in its natural state. Oh yeah, she could see what Jung was talking about. And she wanted the utmost to sate that appetite, to satiate her own. A part of her, one that didn’t care for rules, wanted to follow this newfound lust and see where it led.

“Would you tell the class what has you so fascinated, Miss Clemm?” Dr. Kari’s hard voice jolted her attention back to his lecherous eyes, her own lust extinguishing. 

It was such an odd moment for her to mull over, two men watching her with desire in their eyes, one giving her the creeps and the other giving her the butterflies. 

“I’m afraid I distracted her, Dr. Kari,” the deep, gravel voice from the doorway made her stomach flip.

Dr. Kari looked at the man half his age with an odd look of apprehension. It was a look Corvina didn’t understand the reason for.

“Mr. Deverell?” Dr. Kari swallowed.

“Can I have a quick word with you?” Mr. Deverell didn’t wait for his reply, simply gave Corvina another intense look that made her stomach tighten, and walked out.

Dr. Kari followed and the two men stood in the hallway, speaking for a quick second, their body language alone telling Corvina who had the upper hand in whatever conversation they were having – Dr. Kari was agitated, defensive; Mr. Deverell was relaxed, authoritative.  

Dr. Kari came back to the room, looking angry.

But he didn’t look at Corvina all through the class again.  

And she wondered, in a dark recess of her mind, if it had something to do with the silver-eyed devil.