Lost Time

Categories: Crackfic/Amnesiafic/Grimdark

Stepping out of the taxi on the way to my dorm for the first time, I'd wondered who lived in the mansions up on the hill with the flowering hemlocks and the poison ivy that clambered up the age-old stone of the gothic edifices. In the subsequent weeks I'd asked everyone I could about the mansions that conspicuously bordered campus but for some reason, whenever the topic came up, a silence fell and the subject would awkwardly be changed.

Every morning I passed by the hill on my way to class. Every morning I felt a sense of foreboding as I walked along the tall rusted gate that separated the campus from the mansions. I assumed it was there to keep students from wandering onto private property. Some of the buildings were supposed to be abandoned so of course there were rumors of ghost-sightings and devil-worship.

My residential advisor claimed to have seen a stooped figure carrying a lantern to one of the more dilapidated houses and wearing nothing but black rags. When he turned around, she saw only two red eyeballs where there should have been a face. I'd like to add here though that by the second week of classes, I'd already seen her passed out drunk and delirious more than once after a night out.

But she wasn't the only one who told me stories. Once, when I spent the night over at a friend's dorm, he told me of the students who had wandered into the old mansions and had returned with deep gashes on their arms. Granted he wanted me to get scared and seek safety in his arms. Ulterior motives.

The more I heard about these mansions, the more lurid the tales became. Ghosts. Zombies. Vampires. Apparently all dead things congregated up on the hill sandwiched in between the houses full of the living. I scoffed at the rumors but when walking by the gate at night, I sped up almost subconsciously if I was alone. I'm sure it had nothing to do with ghosts and everything to do with being a girl on a dark and quiet college campus at night.

Then, one morning, I woke up with an envelope in my hand. The night before I had gone out with a couple of friends. We'd all spent most of the night at some sophomore's dorm mixing rum, vodka, and everything sweet that we could find in her refrigerator. Without realizing it, I'd drank so much more than I normally would. I can't tell you how many drinks I had because I stopped keeping track after my fourth. I remember wandering out into the night air, away from the stuffiness of the dorm room. I think I even walked up to the gate outside the mansions because I remember holding onto the rods for support. But everything after that is blank.

I woke up in my own bed but I was wearing something different from what I'd put on the night before. In fact, the red checkered-button down and the plaid skirt I woke up in weren't even my clothes. Fear was just starting to make itself felt when I discovered that I was clutching the envelope.

It was a heavy parchment affair with no stamps or labels: just a faded black triangle inked into the tip of the flap. Inside was a neatly folded piece of peach-colored stationary with my name calligraphed on the front. The message on the other side was decidedly cryptic. In block letters, it invited me to meet with someone at the base of the hill in two days if I wanted to find out what had happened the night before.

By the time I was done reading the invitation, my heart was palpitating and my breath was coming out in short gasps. I rushed to the bathroom and stood over the sink waiting for the gut-wrenching feeling to go away. That's when I looked up at the overhead mirror. I nearly fell over. The face reflected back wasn't mine. Well, it was, but there was something seriously wrong, my cheekbones were more pronounced, my skin color was a few shades lighter, my hair was longer than it had been when I'd fallen asleep. Even my eyes were a lighter shade of brown and my nose was thinner.

I ran back to my dorm room and found that everything else in my room was just the same as it had always been. The same picture of my family smiled down at me from my dresser mirror and the same pink stuffed teddy bear was carelessly tossed on my bed. I slowly backed out of my room and nearly jumped into the air as I felt a hand on my shoulder.

"Are you alright?" It was just the girl who lived in the room next to mine. She looked concerned but not baffled at my new appearance.

"What day is it?" I said between gasps.

"May 4th I think?" She answered, now beginning to look more than concerned for my mental health. "Hey, you want to come over and sit down? I can take you to the health center."

It had been May 3rd the night before. What had happened in one night?

"No. Just- just…get me some water, would you?"

"Sure," she went inside to retrieve a water bottle. Before she could come back, I'd already wandered outside. On the way out ,my residential advisor waved to me as if nothing was odd. As did the girls on my floor who I usually had lunch with.

Outside, the cold air restored some of good sense. I began to speculate. Maybe I'd mistakenly wandered into the midst of one of the secret societies on campus. I hadn't heard of any such societies in this college but I had heard of other colleges which had such groups. I remembered reading something about how they kidnapped you for a night and how you had to lose time before you were indoctrinated. Maybe I was about to be indoctrinated. The envelope was proof. Or maybe I was being stalked by someone who had kidnapped me for the night and done who knows what. But none of these theories explained why my appearance was so changed. What had happened? I had to find out or I would go mad and I had to do it alone because no one else seemed to realize how irrevocably I was changed. I would take up the invitation. I would bring the bottle of pepper-spray that my mom had packed in my suitcase before I'd left for college.

Two days passed in the agony of curiosity and fear but the fateful night finally came. I walked down campus to the gate and held onto the rods again, waiting for someone to come meet me. I stood there for about fifteen minutes and no one came. In frustration, I dropped down to the ground and clutched at the bottom rods of the gate. To my surprise, they gave way and a small portion of the gate swung open like a doggy flap. It was big enough for someone of my small stature to fit through. I crawled through, not really thinking about what I meant to do.

I clambered up the hill to the first mansion. I could see inside the window that a family of four was sitting around a dinner table enjoying supper. I moved on. The next building had only a very old couple lying side by side reading. I continued on. This next building was entirely abandoned and the front door was hanging off of its hinges. For some reason I felt a pull towards this building and I couldn't help but walk up the stone walkway all the way into the house. Inside, it was nothing like I had imagined. It wasn't dilapidated or unclean. There wasn't a single cobweb in sight. The only signs that the building was abandoned were the chipping the paint on the walls and the chandelier which was hanging precariously on one metal string. I looked to the center of the room and there was nothing there except for a pile of old torn-up composition journals.

When I was close enough, I could see my handwriting on the torn pages but I couldn't for the life of me remember when I had written in these notebooks. I blinked and saw a marble staircase materialize in front of my eyes. Certain that I had just overlooked the staircase before, I began to climb. It led me to a hallway that looked endless on either side. Doors marked by silver plaques lined the hallway. I saw that each plaque had a name on it. Somehow I had ended up right in front of the door that had my name on it.

I turned the doorknob and walked in. I was suddenly in my room back home. I instantly recognized the shelves upon shelves of books that I'd spent my entire life collecting. There was even the sound of a dehumidifier running in the background like it usually did in my basement bedroom. My oak-rimmed dresser was covered in so many more pictures than I had in my dorm room. Out of each one smiled either my father or my mother or my sister. I heard the sound of something drop onto the off-white tiles so I spun around to look at the bed. There was someone lying on it with a blanket pulled over the head. A hand hung off the bed and I could see that the source of the sound had been the falling of a hardcover book from that hand. Strange. The fingernails on that hand had the same nail polish I'd put on a few nights before. I looked down to see that my own nails were completely clear with manicured edges quite unlike the sloppy painting adorning the fingernails of that isolated hand.

Thoroughly freaked out, I wrenched the blanket off the figure.

There was no one there. Not a hand. Not a foot. Not a head. Not a body.

I crawled into the bed myself holding my head in my arms. I closed my eyes.

I woke up back in my dorm room staring into the dresser mirror. Except this time, none of my features were even remotely recognizable and there was not even an envelope that at least left me with the promise of an explanation.