A Nest of Nightmares

‘I’ve got to go,’ Corey said, glancing at a wrist on which there was no watch. Anything not to see the misery on his face. She walked away quickly, deliberately crunching through fallen leaves. If he spoke again, or called after her, she might not hear him above the noise she made.

When the letter came, it had been five days without a word. Corey was so excited that her hands shook, and she tore the envelope in getting it open.

It wasn’t very long. Just one page written in Philip’s precise hand. She read it through to his signature without understanding, and then read it again, her mouth going dry and her stomach beginning to hurt.

He was releasing her from their engagement, he said. Their parents were right – they were too young to make such a momentous decision. He did love her, but he felt they should both date other people and get to know their own minds better. He was sure she would agree with him, but they could talk this over at greater length when they saw each other at Thanksgiving.

Corey dropped the letter on the floor and walked across the small room to stare unseeing at the wall. Less than two months they had been apart. He hadn’t been able to last even two months.

She clenched her fists and pressed them against the sides of her head. Her mouth open wide, she breathed in ragged, tearing gulps, feeling as if she were drowning. She wept.

It was beginning to get dark, and still Corey remained slumped on the couch where she had spent most of the day since reading Philip’s letter. She had tried to call him, and had left a message with his roommate. She didn’t know what she would say if he returned her call, but she had to talk to someone, and she could think of no one else to call.

She had come to this distant, northern town, this first-rate university, under protest, in order to satisfy her parents. She saw her agreed-upon year here as a time of trial, something that must be undergone before she could be united with Philip, and so she had taken a certain grim pleasure in refusing to do anything that would make the time easier on herself. She hadn’t joined any organisations or tried out for plays, as she would have back home, and she had not made any friends. What was the point? She would be gone at the end of the year. Why should she pretend that this lonely interval had anything to do with her real life?

She didn’t need dates, she didn’t need friends, so long as she had Philip, no matter how far away he was. That was what she had thought. And now that she longed for a friend, anyone with a sympathetic ear, she had nowhere to turn.

She thought of the people from her classes who had spoken to her, and how she had always turned aside whatever gestures they had made towards friendship. She thought of the boy in the cemetery. He was as alone as she was now. Remembering how she had deliberately cut him, she felt deeply ashamed.

Abruptly she stood up. She had to get out. She had done nothing but sit and brood and cry alone all day, until the walls and furniture were so saturated with her grief that she could scarcely bear to look at them any longer.

She decided to go to the cemetery. It was a good place for walking, for brooding, for being alone. It was nearly dark, but that didn’t bother her. She suspected a cemetery would be safer after dark than the campus.

Corey’s apartment was one of four in an old house on the west side of the university. As she crept cautiously down the dark, narrow stairs, she hoped she wouldn’t encounter any of her neighbours. Although she had heard them coming and going, she had never actually met any of the other occupants of the house; she wasn’t even certain how many of them there were. They were only heavy footsteps on the stairs to her, and voices muffled by walls.

She walked quickly through the empty evening streets. The air was grey-blue with dusk and very still; she felt as if she were walking along the bottom of a deep, quiet pond. When she reached the cemetery she made her way towards the familiar bench and statue.

‘You came.’

He didn’t startle her this time. It was as if she had known he would be there, sitting on the stone bench and waiting for her as the day faded.

He stood when she approached. ‘I knew you would come,’ he said quietly. ‘I knew that if I waited long enough, and thought about you hard enough, that you would understand and come to me.’

‘How could you know?’ Her voice was gentle.

‘Because I needed you. I’ve come here every day, and hoped to see you. Today – I didn’t know how much longer I could go on. Today I concentrated on you. I thought about you. I really needed you . . . and so you came. If you hadn’t, then I would have known that it was all over, that what I needed didn’t matter. But you came.’