Nightmare (18 page)

I clicked back a page on the computer screen to look again
at the Boston Herald article. Written by one Pierre Ravenwood.
Seemed to be an editorial more than an actual report, and it was
buried on the back page of the Local section. But this reporter
seemed to have pieced together the strands of the same strange
happenings that Derek and I had stumbled onto. The article mentioned the rash of dropouts at major universities across the
East Coast, and suggested that the dropout rate was significantly
higher there than at other colleges throughout the country.
Ravenwood's article stopped just shy of suggesting that these
"dropouts" weren't dropouts at all, and slyly joked that it was
"almost as if some complex conspiracy were at play."

After quickly running a search for his email address, I sent
Pierre Ravenwood a brief note:

One of the "dropouts" mentioned in your article is a friend
of mine. I have reason to believe that she and the others who've
disappeared are in terrible danger-if they're still alive. If you
have the means to investigate a company called Durham Holdings International in Copenhagen, I think you should do so.
This "complex conspiracy" of yours may come into focus if
you dig deep enough.

There. That seemed to sound good and juicy. Just the kind
of thing an ambitious reporter wouldn't be able to ignore. I hesitated, but then as an afterthought ended the email by adding:

The nightmare is coming, Mr. Ravenwood.

I thought it might be hours or days before I heard back from
him, but I received a reply before I even logged off.

I already suspected a connection to DHI. The question
is, what do you know about it? Can you meet me in person to
discuss? I promise to keep you an anonymous source if that's
your wish.

I had just replied with an affirmative suggesting he call to
set up a meeting when Derek reappeared. His head popped up
over the cubicle barrier separating my computer station from
the one next to it.

"Found it," he said.

I'd had him working on a separate task related to the second
thing I wanted to do today.

"Columbia has a visiting professor in the Department of
History and Archaeology. Sounds like exactly what you're looking for. Apparently the guy's pretty famous. Name's Dr. Ronald
Eccleston."

I looked at my watch. It was four o'clock already. We'd both
missed our entire day's class schedule, which still bothered me,
even though the last few days-not to mention what happened
in my room Monday night-had proven that I was caught up in
something a lot more important than my studies.

"Where is he now?"

"Last lecture of the day," Derek reported.

"Where?" I asked, quickly rising from the desk.

We made it to Eccleston's classroom just as he was wrapping
up his lecture. Not wanting to interrupt, we waited out in the
hall for the room to clear, which took a surprisingly long time,
as Eccleston seemed to have quite a few admirers who felt the
need to offer their praises of him after the class ended.

Once we were satisfied that the last student was gone, we
headed inside. Eccleston was still up at the front of the large
room, which had stadium-style seating and a huge old-fashioned
blackboard that stretched across the entire front of the room. The professor had written across a good three-quarters of it during his
lecture, and was now taking the time to erase all of it himself.

A classy leather briefcase sat open on the room's desk, beside
a black golf hat. The professor himself wore an all-black suit and
tie that made him resemble a Mafia hit man. He looked like he
might be in his late forties, which meant a slightly sagging stomach and a light gray goatee that was so full it looked like fur.

"Dr. Eccleston?" I began, approaching him from the side
entrance to the room.

"Yes," he said absently, not turning around to acknowledge us,
"thank you, dear. I'm glad you enjoyed the lecture, but I really have
no more time for personal requests today, thank you." He had an
American accent, though he spoke with the unnecessarily formal
diction so often used by a lot of highly educated professors.

He was still erasing the chalkboard as I drew near, Derek
right behind me. "I'm sorry, sir, we weren't in your lecture today.
I was just hoping-"

"Ifyou weren't in my class," he interrupted, his back still to us,
"you really have no business being in here, now do you, dear."

All right, I admit it. I didn't like the way he kept calling me
"dear." It probably seemed like a quaint, charming little affectation to him, but it rankled me.

"Look, Professor," I started again. "I don't have time for
your-"

"Sir," Derek jumped in, seeing the irritated look on my face.
"If we could just have a moment-"

I rolled my eyes and walked up to the professor until I was
standing right over his shoulder.

"Now listen here," Eccleston said, his voice turning authoritative. As he finally turned to face us, he was saying, "I've
already told you I can't-"

But he saw something he wasn't expecting when he faced
me. I'd pulled out my cell phone and called up the photo I took
of Carrie Morris's neck. When Eccleston turned, the tiny screen
was right at eye level.

He startled for a moment but then his eyes focused on the
image on the screen and grew wide for just a brief second as he
took it in. He glanced at me, then back at the symbol, and then
at me again, and Derek, as well.

When he spoke, he was no longer looking at me as the famous
professor. All formalities had been dropped, and his tone was
one of urgency. "Who did you say you are?"

Eccleston's temporary office was a spacious room almost the
size of a classroom itself. But where I'd expected to find plenty of
"old world" wooden furnishings, huge armchairs, walls covered
in books, and a smoking lamp or two, instead it was more like
a state-of-the-art computer lab.

Not what I'd expected from a world-renowned art historian.

"Have a seat, please," he said, throwing off his sports jacket
and placing his hat and briefcase askew on his primary desk. He
walked to the wall and retrieved a rather large and impressive laptop
computer. But instead of sitting down behind his desk, he sat in
another chair next to us so that we could see what he was doing.

We'd spent the ten-minute walk to his office explaining where
I'd taken the picture of the symbol, and I could see that his scientific curiosity had gotten a jolt of excitement at the prospect
of a new puzzle to solve. The fact that someone as versed in symbology as this guy was, was this excited over what I showed
him told me that this was no ordinary symbol.

"Ms. Peters, would you kindly email the photograph from
your phone to me?" he asked, and then followed the question
with a spelling of his email address.

I did as he asked, and then Eccleston got to work on his computer, quickly retrieving the image from his in-box and opening
it in some kind of imaging program.

"Have you ever seen anything like this before?" Derek asked.

"I don't believe so, no," said Eccleston, who had eyes only for
the prize on his computer screen. "Look at the finely detailed
engravings around the edges.... It's not symmetrical at all, yet
it has a certain balance to it ... Just spectacular-it really is quite
spectacular for something so small, isn't it?" He seemed to be
descending into his own little world now. "And to achieve that
kind of perfection on human skin, of all canvases.. ."

I started to fear that he'd forgotten we were there, so I spoke up,
trying to clarify his statements. "So you don't recognize it, then?"

Eccleston glanced at me, his eyebrows raised in excitement.
"Oh no, I didn't say that, dear. This mark has telltale cultural
indicators, just as all symbols do. I'm certain I can identify it, but
it will take some time.... It almost looks alchemical in origin, but
it's much more complex...." He was talking to himself again.

Sensing that our presence was more a courtesy extended by
Dr. Eccleston than anything else, and also that we were likely to
just slow him down, I stood and nodded toward the door. Derek
agreed and followed me.

"So you'll call us then, when ... ?" I called out.

"Yes, yes! Of course, my dear, of course," he replied, leaning
in so close to his computer screen I was sure it had to be doing harm to his eyes. "Fear not-I have your phone number right
here, at the bottom of the email you sent.... I'll let you know
the moment I decipher it."

Good enough for me.

We were exiting the building when my phone rang. My hopes
jumped instantly that Dr. Eccleston had already had a breakthrough, but it wasn't a number my phone recognized.

"Hello?" I said as we continued to walk.

"Maia?" said the caller in a hollow, despondent sort of way.

I stopped walking and nearly dropped the phone on the sidewalk. I recognized the voice.

"Jordin?!" I shouted.

Derek tripped over his own feet and scraped his knees on the
pavement before jumping back up.

"The nightmare is coming," whispered Jordin. "Follow the
symbol, Maia! The symbol holds the answer."

The line went dead. My heart gave a profound thud against
my chest, skipping a very long beat, and then I gasped for air like
I'd been underwater for a full minute.

The world blinked and swam, and before I knew it, Derek had
grabbed my arm and helped lower me to the ground, where it was
all I could do to keep from losing myself to the darkness.