“Film, huh?” said Jeremiah. “Need any actors for upcoming projects?”
I laughed nervously, but Inaya spared me from answering as she said, “Tell them about your YouTube channel! Your investigations!”
“Investigations?” Victoria rested her chin on her palm. “Are you, like, a detective?”
I smiled tightly, bracing for the incoming weird looks. “Well, kind of. I do vlogs, talk about local legends, creepy stories…I do paranormal investigations.”
“She’s a ghost hunter,” Inaya said.
I was relieved to see both Jeremiah and Victoria look intrigued, instead of repulsed. "Oh, yeah?" Jeremiah leaned forward on the bench. "Have you caught stuff on camera? Ghosts?”
"I mean, I've caught some weird voices. Orbs, shadows." I shrugged, and plopped down on the bench beside Inaya. “I’m still hoping for that big sighting: a full body apparition, or, shit, I’d take some vaguely human-shaped mist.”
“Well, you’ve come to the right place for spooky shit.” Victoria narrowed her eyes as she looked at me, her nails tapping on her vape. “You were born around here, right? Like, your family is from here?”
I nodded. “Yep. My dad’s side, the Lawsons. They’d lived here for, hell, probably a century.”
“Just like our family.” Victoria smiled, but the expression seemed a little too tight to be real. Weird. “Then you probably already have an idea of just how interesting this place can be. Ghosts, poltergeists, demons, cryptids" — she glanced to the side, behind me, toward Calgary Hall — “even murders now, apparently."
The five of us glanced back. Calgary Hall would have looked so normal if it wasn’t for all that caution tape, and the painfully hot asshole standing guard in front of it. I hurriedly turned back around.
“Rumor is they’re just keeping the building closed because they can’t get all the bloodstains out of the stone,” Victoria said. “Some freshmen found the body and called the cops. He was a sophomore — ”
“Junior,” Jeremiah corrected. “Marcus was a Junior.”
“Okay, yeah, Junior, whatever," Victoria waved him off. "A guy named Marcus Kynes. He was stabbed eight times — "
"Nine times," Jeremiah interjected.
"Ugh, God, Jerry, would you let me say it? He was stabbed nine times. There was blood everywhere, the kid's body was just destroyed. Someone even got a video."
"Of the murder?" I gasped.
"Oh, no. No one knows who did it…or at least, they’re not giving names yet." She smirked. "No, they got a video of the body when it was found, before the cops showed up. It was so gross.”
“I have it saved on my phone if you want to see it,” said Jeremiah, pulling out the device. “It’s crazy how much blood there is in people.”
“Oh my God, you guys, don’t be so disgusting!” said Inaya, shoving Jeremiah’s phone away as he leaned forward to show me. “Too soon, okay, way too soon. The poor kid is barely in the ground.”
Jeremiah sat back, staring at his phone in such a way that my morbid curiosity only increased. “He must’ve really pissed someone off,” he muttered. “Right in the middle of the hall.”
I dared another glance back. Right there in that unassuming old building, someone’s life had come to its brutal end. Why? What could spur such a rage to stab a person nine times?
I frowned. The security guard, Leon, was still standing at the foot of the building’s steps, and I noticed the students walking past gave him a wide berth. Even from all the way across the quad, as I pushed my glasses up my nose, I could have sworn he was looking at me. At that distance, his pale green eyes caught the light peeking through the clouds and flashed, like gold leaf caught in the sun.
In French, there’s a phrase for the random urge to jump from high places, the irrational desire to swerve into traffic despite imminent destruction: l'appel du vide, the call of the void. Those sudden feral impulses tend to be shoved away immediately, but humans still experience them. What if you jumped? What if you touched the fire? What if? What if?
When I looked at him, staring at me, the void called.
What if?
“Oh, shit. I gotta get to class.” Inaya jumped up, staring at the time on her phone. She gave me a quick hug, and Trent helped her gather her things before he took her hand to walk her to class. “I’ll see you guys later! Rae, text me, we gotta do something fun soon.”