Zero Regrets

(October 6-7, 2017)


16: What Do We Know?

Over their meal—"My word, this is a good steak!" Stanford observed—Dipper and Wendy learned a little more about Stanford and Hazard's proposed means of attack. "The major information we need," Stanford said, "is some of the history of the attic entity. I've tracked down mentions of four different co-eds—is that the proper word these days, co-eds? My vocabulary for such things remains somewhat out of date, and I've been corrected once or twice at the Institute."

"We know what it means," Wendy said. "And yeah, it's kinda sexist these days. For general purposes, you might say 'women students' or 'female students.' Or if they're all from Colby, maybe just 'Dorm residents.'"

"They all were from Colby, actually," Stanford said. "I'll get the information to you. The first victim passed away in the spring of 1952. The dormitory was new then—it opened in the previous fall—with no history of any suspicious activity. Newspaper archives don't help much. There's a tendency to keep anything that might be thought to be distressing to the family out of the news accounts. However, we do know that she was a victim of suicide and that in the week or so before she died, the dorm residents insisted they heard strange sounds close to her room. The attic was checked for vermin, with no results. The sounds were like scratching, the students said. Those who heard them had disturbing dreams."

With a frown of concentration, Wendy asked, "And she committed suicide because of scratching? There's got to be more to it than that. Don't you have any solid information?"

"Yes, a little. Her mother and father have long since passed away, but she had a sister a few years younger than she was who's still alive. She's in an assisted-living facility in Glenn County, California. She's over eighty, and I don't know how clearly she might remember the circumstances. I would like to interview her. As far as I can ascertain without conferring with her, she's sound of mind and memory."

"I want to travel over to Willows and speak to her," Hazard said. "The people the Chief talked to said that Mrs. Bordein—that's her name, maiden name Wynant—isn't very open with men. Wendy, will you go with me tomorrow?"

"Kind of a long drive, isn't it?" Wendy asked.

"We'll fly in a chopper," Hazard said.

"I'll go!" Wendy said. "I've always wanted to fly in a helicopter!"

"You did that one time," Dipper reminded her.

"Doesn't count. I was unconscious!"

"It'll be a two-hour ride there and then two hours back," Hazard advised. "We'll plan to depart from the Agency helipad tomorrow at 0900. That will put us into the Willows-Glenn County airport by 1100. An unmarked car will be at our disposal, and it's a short drive to Cedars Center Assisted Living. We should be able to depart from Willows by 1300, back here by 1500."

"That," Ford explained helpfully, "is military time."

Wendy grinned at Hazard. "Nine AM, landing at eleven, out of Glenn County by one PM, back here by three. Pretty close?"

"Pretty close," Hazard agreed.

"Well, our hope," Ford said, "is that the woman, Mrs. Myrtle Bordein, will have some recollection of her sister's passing. The victim's name—her sister—was Opal Wynant. She was nineteen at the time of her suicide. Myrtle would have been sixteen, still in high school."

"Get to the others, Chief," Hazard suggested.

"Yes, of course. Let's see . . . we may be able to find out more about the last three. One hanged herself in the spring of 1977, a second died of a deliberate overdose in the fall of 1997, and the most recent one was a girl who apparently leaped off a bridge to her death in January 2009."

"They're getting closer together," Dipper said.

"That's one mark of a developing unbodied malevolence," Hazard said. "Snowball effect. Between the first and second, 25 years. Between the second and third, twenty years. Third and fourth, twelve years. And now it's been close to nine years since that one."

"So . . . one's due?" Wendy asked.

"Unpredictable," Stanford said.

"Getting closer, anyway," Hazard said.

"So . . . we need to try to bust this ghost to save a life?" Dipper asked.

"There's no ghost to, as you say, bust, Mason," Stanford said. "The readings Wendy and Mabel took are strong evidence against that. This is an unformed, but coalescing malignancy. It's probable that it can influence only some very susceptible minds."

Hazard said, "But it drives them to suicide."

"You're acting like the suicides couldn't be coincidence," Dipper said. "So what connects them?"

"Let me say a word more first. Colby Residence Hall was renovated in 1974-75. It reopened for occupation in the fall term of 1975. The student who was the next victim was named Catherine—with a C—Dearwood. She entered Western Alliance as a freshman in fall of 1975. The following fall, as a sophomore, she moved from the freshman dorm to Colby Hall. Then the following May, after another period of students hearing odd noises, this time with suggestions of squeaks and perhaps shrieks, Catherine was discovered in the communal bathroom one morning in May. She had hanged herself."

"We have a little more background on her," Hazard offered. "I'm assembling a dossier. You two will get a copy."

"You may, at your discretion, share it with Eloise Niedermeyer," Ford said.

Hazard resumed: "The victim in 1997 was Deana Torrence, nineteen. The same general background—inexplicable sounds from the attic, girls having terrifying nightmares, vague vocalizations, this time with distinct screams and occasional evil laughter. Deana begged her parents to let her leave school, but they thought she was just tired from the term's work and wouldn't let her drop out. Her roommate went home for the last weekend in October. When she returned on Monday morning, October 27, she found Deana dead in her bed. It was an overdose of zopiclone, a sleeping pill. No one seems to know where she got the pills—she had no prescription, but she intended to take the overdose. She had left a suicide note."

"And as in the other cases, Stanford said, "the mysterious noises diminished after her death. All right, the final one in the series occurred nearly nine years ago. Her name was Ginevra Norton. Running up to the Christmas break in 2008, the same pattern repeated—noises, voices that never were distinct enough to understand, inhuman shrieks and moans, agonizing nightmares. Once more the University inspected the attic, suspecting that some animals had nested there. Once more no trace of infestation was found Of all the girls who heard the noises, Ginevra was the most strongly affected. She seemed relieved to go home to Sacramento. Her parents report that Ginny, as they called her, was oddly withdrawn and hardly stirred from her room."

"Didn't they try to find out why?" Wendy asked.

Ford shrugged. "She'd been through a break-up with her young man just before the fall term ended. They thought she was getting over that. Her friends at the University, though, said she was living in a state of constant dread and fear. At any rate, the spring term at WAU had been scheduled to commence on Monday, January 5, 2009. The previous day, Sunday, Ginny packed her car and drove away, her parents thought, for Crescent City. That evening, the police notified them that Ginny had left her car on the shoulder of Forresthill Road, near Auburn—not on her route back to college."

Hazard added, "Three different motorists had noticed her sitting in her car. None of them stopped to ask if she needed help. There was nothing wrong with the car-she hadn't broken down. But at some point, she left her car."

"They think she might have waited until there was no traffic," Ford said heavily. "Then she ran out onto Forresthill Bridge until she was near the center—and she climbed the guard rail and leaped."

Hazard said, "Forresthill Bridge has the longest drop of any bridge in California, more than seven hundred feed straight down near the center of the span. Ginny plunged at least three hundred feet down into the American River gorge."

Ford sighed. "She had obviously taken her own life. She'd been alone in her automobile on the occasions when passers-by noticed her. There were no signs that she'd been assaulted. She had kicked off her shoes on the pedestrian walkway on the bridge. No one actually saw her leap, but the last person who'd seen her alive in her car estimated the time of the sighting as about four o'clock. At four-fifteen, another motorist saw her car still off on the shoulder of the road, with the driver's side door open. There have been other suicides by jumping there, and the driver called the California Highway Patrol to report the car. They checked, saw the shoes on the bridge, and spotted Ginny far below on the ground. It took about three hours to recover the body. The parents identified her that evening."

"So," Wendy said. "Four girls offed themselves after this ghost thing showed up. Did it stop after each death?"

"Went completely away," Stanford said. "Until the next time—at increasingly short intervals."

"There has to be more," Dipper said. "Let me guess. All the girls who died lived on the top floor of the dorm, right? I have a weird feeling, Grunkle Stan—that they all lived in the same room."

For a few moments no one moved, no one spoke.

Hazard, her dark eyes on Dipper's, her gaze intrigued and appraising, said quietly, "Agent Second Class Pines, if the Agency gave out gold stars, you just earned one. Right, Chief?"

"Each one of the suicides," Ford said heavily, "was a resident of room 439."

Wendy shot Dipper a thought: That's the one right next to the janitor's room and the ladder up to the attic.