I didn’t say anything. My initial impression was that the guy was both extremely tall and extremely drunk; he had a half-empty bottle of Maker’s Mark gripped in one hand. He was also a Dover student, that much was obvious, but not like the others. His heavy blond hair had been styled into a Kennedy-esque swoop, and he wore ridiculous clothes for the occasion: a tweed jacket and dark tie and brown leather oxfords, all of which were the antithesis of the equinox celebration, both in overall spirit and basic common sense. Who the hell wore oxfords to the beach?
It took a moment before the stranger became aware of my presence, but when he did, he sprawled his large body across the sand like a walrus, rolling onto one side with a grunt so that he was facing me. He reached his hand to shake mine.
“Hollis English,” he boomed.
“I’m C. J.,” I replied.
“C. J. what?”
“Perez.”
“Well, C. J. Perez.” He offered me a roguish hint of a smile. “As luck would have it, you’re just the person I’ve been looking for.”
* * *
This was about the last thing I expected to hear. “You’ve been looking for me? Why?”
The stranger pushed himself up to sitting, so that we were both facing the ocean, the swell and suck of the rising tide. “Because tonight of all nights, I need what you’re offering.”
“And what would that be?”
“Safety.”
“Oh.” I relaxed a bit. “Well, sure. Yeah. Whenever you want, we can walk back up together. That’s what I’m here for.”
Hollis held up his whiskey bottle and shook it. “In the interest of self-disclosure, you should probably know that I’m really fucking drunk.”
“That’s okay. It’s sort of expected.”
“Want some?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“What? Don’t you drink?”
“Nah.”
He scoffed. “Why the hell not? And don’t start in with some virtue argument. I see that gold cross hanging from your neck, C. J. Perez. If you’re guilty of one sin, you’re guilty of them all. And we’re all fucking guilty. Even you.”
“I just don’t like it. Plus, I’m working.”
“Boring.” Hollis waved a disinterested hand. “Tell me what year you are. I’ve never seen you around before.”
“I’m a freshman.”
“Figures. I’m a sophomore, by the way, so my wisdom about this school is infinitely greater than yours. Anything you need to know, I’m your man. What house are you?”
“None.”
“None?”
“I’m not pledging.”
His eyes gleamed with boozy admiration. “Then you’re one smart fucking kid. First year, and you already know there’s no sense fighting tradition in a place like this. Hell, I only pledged Pike because my asshole dad did it before me. He really is an asshole, by the way. Guess that means I’ll be one too. But such is life, right?”
I didn’t answer.
Hollis leaned back on tweed-covered elbows. “How old does that make you? Eighteen? Seventeen, even? Tell me you’re a goddamn adult.”
“I’m twenty,” I said.
He snorted. “Who the hell goes away to college when they’re twenty?”
“A lot of people.”
“Really?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
I pushed my fingers into cold sand, savoring grit. “For me, it was mostly a matter of money. I spent a couple years working after I graduated. My family, well, we were going through a hard time. I couldn’t afford to leave. Until now.”
“What happened?”
“My father died.”
“Shit.” Hollis frowned, pushing his perfect hair back. “Well, that fucking sucks. I’m sorry, man.”
“Don’t be. He was in a lot of pain.”
“But I am,” he insisted. “Losing a family member like that . . . It changes everything. It’s not easy to keep going, to keep doing what you’re supposed to do, when something happens to make it all feel pointless.”
“True. But you don’t always know how tragedy’ll change things. Because, in a way, my father dying was lucky.”
“Lucky?”
“I don’t mean it wasn’t awful. I just mean, well, we had nothing, really, after what happened, so I ended up working down at the yacht harbor, trying to save money. But it was my boss there who nominated me for this citizen scholarship program. That’s why I was offered the spot here at Dover Springs. Full ride. Room and board. It wouldn’t have happened otherwise. So, you know, fate, mysterious ways, and all that.”
“Still,” Hollis breathed, “that’s a steep price to pay for college.”
“Everything has a price.”
“I guess. What was he like, your dad? Were you close?”
“He was brave,” I said after a moment. Then: “Yeah, we were close.”
“Did you grow up around here? In Dover?”
“Yup.”
“Me too.”
Of course he had. This fact didn’t surprise me, even though our paths had never crossed. Hollis and I came from different worlds, after all. Like everyone I’d grown up with, I was the product of both public schools and public housing, whereas he’d clearly been raised on prep school and trust funds. Dover was funny that way, a dimorphic sun-baked beach town, populated mostly by working poor struggling to hold on to declining jobs in tourism, agriculture, and manufacturing. But there was also the Other Dover, the part that sat separate from the rest of us, an oceanfront enclave of gated communities that housed the ultra wealthy, the powerful, the influential. The people living in those communities rarely ventured to other parts of town. They never had to. And when it came time for their Ivy League–rejected offspring to flee the nest—or more accurately, hop out of it—Dover Springs was the obvious choice. Never mind that the school’s notorious exclusivity was based solely on tuition price, not reputation—the end result was the same; they could afford what others couldn’t.
“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, so
rry 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.”
Hollis offered a begrudging nod. “Decent choices. I approve.”
“But you know, I think Psycho might be my favorite of all. I figure if someone can make you empathize with a killer, they must’ve done something right.”
“Empathy,” Hollis echoed. “Can’t say that identifying with a killer is ever what I’m looking for in a film. Or in anything.”
“What are you looking for?”
“Justice.”
I laughed. I couldn’t help myself. “When has justice ever been the source of horror? Isn’t it usually the opposite?”
Hollis scowled. “I don’t mean law-and-order-type justice. I mean more of a spiritual kind of thing. Karma or whatever. Like The Ring. Or I Spit on Your Grave.”
“You’re talking about revenge,” I said. “That’s different. Those aren’t stories about fairness.”
“Then what are they about?”
“Punishment, I guess. Retribution.”
He shrugged. “Sounds like justice to me.”
I didn’t answer. We’d reached the dirt trail that would take us into the trees and out of the town proper. The fog haze grew thicker, the shadows darker, gloom closing in on all sides. I switched on my flashlight.
Hollis grabbed for my arm. “Hey, turn that off!”
“What?”
“I said turn it off!”
“But I can’t see!”
“I mean it!”
“Fine!” He kept grabbing at me until I shoved him back; Hollis was significantly larger than I was, but he was too drunk to be very coordinated. I held on to the flashlight but finally switched it off like he asked. “What the hell?”
“I don’t want anyone to see us.”
“Like who?”
Hollis peered over his shoulder again. “Like anyone.”
“What?”
He walked faster, leaving me to catch up with him. Soon I was sweating from the effort, the trail growing steeper as we trudged upward through the night.
“You ever hear about Danielle Bradford?” Hollis asked after a moment.
I glanced at him. “She someone you know?”
“Not exactly. She was a student here back in 1915. That was the fourth year Dover Springs was in operation.”
“What about her?”
“Well, Danielle was a local, like us. She came to study music—played flute and cello, although from what I’ve learned, she wasn’t particularly talented at either. Anyway, when she was in her sophomore year, on a foggy September night, just like this one, Danielle finished practicing and left the conservatory. She was trying to make it back to her dorm before the ten o’clock curfew, according to witness reports. Only . . .”
“Only what?”
“Only she never got there. They found her body the next morning, in the bushes right outside her own room
. Her throat had been slashed with a razor.”
“Jesus. Who did it?”
“They never found out. Two years later . . . it happened again. Only this time the victim was a guy. Samuel Forsythe. Also a sophomore. He didn’t show up to class after visiting with his family for a weekend in March. I guess his friends assumed he hadn’t returned to campus. Well, two days later he was found hanging from a tree in the woods behind the chapel, which used to be on the north side of campus, by the way, down by the stream. They moved it in 1956 due to flooding.”
“So he’d been murdered too?”
“That one was harder to tell. But a third student, Graham Keller, was killed the year after that, also on a night with particularly dense fog—this time in September again. He’d gotten separated from his girlfriend while hiking and was found in a clearing the next morning. He’d been stabbed in the neck repeatedly with an ice pick—so clearly murder. This sparked rumors of a serial killer in Dover. Our very own Jack the Ripper, but someone with a taste for college students, not prostitutes. And because of the fog and the mysterious nature of the deaths, it wasn’t long before the killer was given a name.”
“The Dover Phantom,” I said.
“Exactly. But you want to know what happened next?”
“What’s that?”
“The murders stopped.”
“Stopped?”
He nodded. “For over twenty years. The next killing wasn’t until March 20, 1939. Mary Downing. She was found strangled near the tennis courts. And there were two more murders. In 1941 and ’42. They stopped again until ’65, and it’s been like that ever since: three murders approximately every quarter century. We’re up to thirteen dead students now, including one a few years back, which means we’re due two more for this cycle. And sure, people know about some of these deaths, obviously. Maybe they’ve even heard of the Dover Phantom. But no one’s put all the pieces together the way that I have. No one sees it for what it really is. A pattern.”