Boy in the Water

Hawthorne crouched down in the closet as LeBrun went up and down the hall whispering his jokes. “Hey, professor, what’s the difference between a Canuck and a three-day-old turd?” Then LeBrun chuckled. His footsteps faded away, then returned. Why is a Canuck like a tampon? Had he heard of the Canuck who had to use three rubbers at once? LeBrun’s laugh was a noise deep in his throat, half laugh, half growl. Several times he came into the room where Hawthorne was hiding, bumped into a desk, knocked over a chair, then went out again.

“Hey, professor, did you hear about the Canuck who shoved two aspirin up his dick so he wouldn’t get the clap? How about the Canuck who went to Paris and jacked off the Eiffel Tower? Where are you, professor! Answer me! You lousy fuck, you’re not making me feel good. I got work, professor. You’re making me waste the whole fucking evening! I don’t need to kill you easy, I can kill you so it hurts!”

LeBrun came into the classroom again, stumbled into another desk, and swore. He picked it up and threw it so it crashed against others. Something—a window—shattered. He went back into the hall. He had stopped telling jokes. Hawthorne could hear his boots tramping up and down the hall. He imagined him pausing at the doorways and listening. Ten minutes went by. At last Hawthorne heard LeBrun walk down the hall and open the fire door. Hawthorne still didn’t move. He imagined LeBrun taking off his boots and sneaking back. Another ten minutes went by, then ten more. Hawthorne crawled out of the closet and moved quietly to the hall. He was afraid even to breathe. A cold wind blew through the broken window. Hawthorne listened at the doorway. Then he began to move down the hall in the opposite direction from where LeBrun had gone, making no noise. The darkness seemed full of shapes. At every doorway he expected LeBrun to leap out at him. He had no weapon, not even the flashlight. When he reached the fire door leading to the stairwell, he paused to listen again. There was nothing. Quietly he opened the door and hurried down the stairs, continuing past the first floor down to the exit. Hawthorne pushed open the door and the cold air was like ice against his sweat-drenched shirt. He ran out into the snow.

Twelve

The left-hand side of the double doors of Stark Chapel stood open and indentations led down the steps through the snow. Hawthorne was sure the door had been closed when he had passed by sometime after six. It was now after eight and the snow was falling as hard as ever. The electricity still hadn’t come on but there was a reddish glow from the chapel windows, a circle of radiance through the stained glass. Without his glasses, Hawthorne’s sight was blurry. Objects had lost their precise edges and seemed to merge with one another. His spare pair was in his desk in Emerson but he lacked the courage to go back and get them.

He was breathing heavily. He had thought he would die up there on the second floor of Emerson Hall. LeBrun’s raving, his intensity, his madness, had nearly paralyzed him. Hawthorne’s body felt as if its very center had been ripped away. For nearly an hour after the terrifying encounter with LeBrun he had stayed in Adams Hall—not even in his apartment but in a dark classroom on the second floor—trying to recover. He thought of Be

Hawthorne worked his way up the chapel steps. Because of the light, he assumed somebody was inside. When he reached the top of the stairs, he looked back along the driveway at Emerson. Up in the attic he saw a dim glow that shifted from one window to another. LeBrun was prowling up there; most likely that was where he had Fritz and Jessica. Even the suggestion of LeBrun’s presence in the attic of Emerson Hall made Hawthorne’s heart beat faster.

Hawthorne entered the vestibule outside the chapel and kicked the snow from his boots. The noise was loud and he started. Cautiously he opened the door and stepped inside. The steeply banked rows of wooden pews descended toward the apse. At the foot of the center aisle, in front of the altar, a bright light pointed up at an angle toward a stained-glass window where a bearded disciple in a blue robe held a fishing net. Hawthorne’s nearsightedness transformed the light to a blurred shimmering, and it wasn’t for another moment that he saw a figure sitting in the front row facing the altar, slightly bent forward as if praying or meditating.

Briefly, Hawthorne was afraid that it might be LeBrun, but the coat was not LeBrun’s and the person seemed smaller. Hawthorne made his way down the steps of the aisle, which were carpeted, so that his boots made no noise. When he had gone halfway, he saw that the light on the floor was a flashlight and that the figure in the front row was a man sitting completely still, as if his whole being were concentrated on the altar and the silver crucifix that stood upon it. The chapel was silent. Not even the wind made a noise and it seemed to Hawthorne that he could hear his own heartbeat. As he drew close to the man, he saw that the flashlight was his own, the one he had dropped when he had been struggling with LeBrun, and a second later he realized the figure was Roger Be

“Roger,” he called, “it’s me, Hawthorne.” He squinted, trying to make the figure and the light at his feet come into focus.

Be

“Roger,” said Hawthorne, and he reached out to put a hand on Be

At first Be