“Hey, look at that,” Hollis said.
I turned to see him pointing at the hills above us, at the exact spot where the school sat, high on a distant bluff, hidden behind trees.
“What am I looking at?” I asked.
“The fog,” he said a little breathlessly.
Hollis was right. Dover Cove faced south, which meant the wind rattled our backs, blowing down from the north. Heavy gusts pushed swirling sheets of fog straight off the ocean and into the hills, where it would gather in clumps and cling to the earth until sunrise. This soupy claustrophobic gloom was a defining feature of our town. It seeped into your pores and through your mind, and even if you lived in a place with triple-pane windows and an air-purifying system to keep the fog from slinking inside and playing host to mold spores and chronic illness, there was no way to escape it completely. It was pretty much the one thing everyone in Dover had to reckon with on a fairly regular basis.
“I like the fog,” I said. “I know it’s shitty to drive in, but it always feels so familiar. Like it’s meant to be here. Like it has purpose. Yet at the same time it reminds me of things I couldn’t possibly know. A different time period, perhaps. Or a different life.”
“You mean déjà vu?” Hollis asked.
“I guess. It’s weird, but it’s something I feel a lot. This sense that I’ve been here before, on this beach, watching this fog.”
“Maybe you have,” he said softly.
I turned to look at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe there’s more to the fog than people realize. You’ve heard of the Dover Phantom, haven’t you?”
I laughed. “Of course. Everyone’s heard of the Phantom. He’s our local legend. Our town monster. Our cautionary tale.”
“But a tale against what?”
“You tell me.”
Hollis’s eyes glittered in the moonshine. “You don’t believe he’s real, do you?”
“The Phantom?” I asked. “Yeah, sorry for the shocker, but I have a hard time believing there’s a serial killer who can materialize from the fog stalking the town of Dover.”
“Well, you should believe it because I can assure you he’s absolutely, one hundred percent real. And by the way, it’s not Dover he’s stalking.”
“It’s not?”
“Oh no,” Hollis English told me. “It’s us.”
*
I watched as he downed more whiskey. “Us?”
He gestured at the party, at the staggering hordes of college students.
“You mean everyone on the beach?”
“I mean our peers. Our fellow students. You and me. All of us. You think ’cause you’re at some fancy private school now, you don’t have to worry about watching your back?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“Yeah, well, our precious school’s not as safe as it’s made out to be. Doesn’t matter how much our daddies pay to send us here. There’s some dark shit going on. Did you know someone broke into the admin building last night and stole some stuff?”
“What’d they take?”
“Don’t know. But the point is, even with people like you around—”
My spine stiffened. “What do you mean, people like me?”
Hollis gestured at my vest. “This. This whole useless thing you’re doing. You’re a goddamn safety escort. You’re supposed to make me feel good about being drunk and stupid and letting my guard down, but let’s be real—the world’s not any less dangerous just because you’re in it.”
“Then stop drinking,” I snapped. “And while you’re at it, find your own way back to campus.”
“Fuck you.”
Whatever. I turned my back on him and the fog and the murky hills and instead set my gaze once again on the ocean, that rippling vastness stretching toward the horizon. The drum circle—now accompanied by wasted students howling at the moon—pounded on, and while the water was somewhat calm, everything on the beach was pure chaos. The Feast of Avalon was intended to honor the balance of light and darkness, that fleeting moment of harmony on Earth’s wild tilt around the sun. But for Dover students, most of whom had never known true darkness, it was their chance to throw harmony to the wind, to raise as much as hell as they dared, so long as they woke up the next morning with their gilded futures still intact.
I’d had enough. I jumped to my feet, brushed sand from my knees. Began to walk away.
“Wait,” Hollis called after me. “Where are you going?”
I paused long enough to stare down at him, at his perfect hair and stupid oxfords, which were soaked and ruined and cost more than anything I’d ever owned. “I’m getting out of here. I’m sick of this shitty party. I’m sick of everything.”
“But you can’t leave me.”
“Sure I can.”
“Your job is literally to help me.”
“Oh, so now you care about my useless job?”
“Yes!”
“Why?”
“Please, C. J.!” The haughty expression on Hollis’s face had shifted into one of sheer panic. “I’m sorry I said that, all right? I told you I’m an asshole. But I need you. I do. Or I need someone—anyone—who’s willing to keep me safe tonight!”
*
It’s fair to say I can be swayed by emotion. I guess that goes a long way in explaining how I was able to shove aside my resentment toward Hollis and the fact that he genuinely believed his safety was worth more than my own. That he genuinely believed I might agree with him. But it was the Dover way, after all, to assume that things like financial aid and scholarships would generate gratitude, not enlightenment, on the part of the recipient. In that sense his attitude was hard to take personally. So Hollis English and I ended up walking back to campus together, although he refused to tell me what it was he was afraid of and why he didn’t want to be alone.
“You have to tell me something,” I said as we left Dover Cove, walking up the rickety beach steps and past the boardwalk and the tributary that was lined with pussy willows and croaked with peeper frogs. From there we cut through the north end of town, zigzagging through the fog-hazed streets, heading for the access trail that would take us into the woods and back up to campus. “It’s going to be a long walk if you don’t talk. And I already told you about my family.”
Hollis dipped his head as we strode across the macadam. Something was jumpy and odd about him—he kept looking over his shoulder—but slugging more whiskey and smoking a clove cigarette seemed to lift his mood. “You like horror films, C. J.?”
“Yeah, sure. Sometimes, I guess.”
“What are some of your favorites?”
I thought about this. “Well, I don’t like gore. So nothing with a lot of blood.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes, seriously. I guess what I like are stories that don’t just make you scared of what’s out there, waiting to get you. I like the ones that make you scared of what might be hidden somewhere inside of yourself. Not knowing one’s own secrets, never mind anyone else’s.”
“Give me an example.”
“Jacob’s Ladder. Also Stoker The Invitation. The Exorcist, even.”