Book of Shadows by Alexandra Sokoloff Page B

could tell because of the candles, nothing but black. He got into using different bizarro oils, I think for spells. He had all those creepy books—I swear, I didn’t evenlike sleeping in the same room with them.” Bryce looked off toward the curtained wings. A single ghost light on a tall pole shone on the stage like a torch, a halo of light. “And then things started to go really weird,” Bryce said softly.
    “Weird how?” Garrett prompted.
    Bryce paused, and the reluctance suddenly seemed genuine. “There were these smells in the room, even when he wasn’t there,” he said slowly. “Like, burning. I could feel these—drafts—even when the windows and door were closed. And sounds. I would wake up in the middle of the night because there was this whispering.” He stopped, frowned. “Babbling. Like a lot of voices all at once, on top of each other. But there was no music playing, no TV, no iPod, nothing. He’d be sitting cross-legged on the bed, just him, staring into space . . .” Bryce shivered, and Garrett thought of Jason’s black, dilated eyes. “And then he’d look at me . . . and his eyes . . . his eyes were so empty.”
    Despite himself, Garrett felt a chill. Bryce exhaled smoke and touched his lip before he continued.
    “Okay, and I do props, right? And I’d been collecting some stuff for a bill of one acts: Pinter, Beckett, Ionesco. Well, one night I was studying alone in the room and I heard a phone start to ring behind me. Not a cell phone, but one of those old-time phones, a Sultan?” He looked at the detectives and lowered his voice.
    “It was the prop phone. It was ringing in the closet. But it was a
prop phone
. No cords. No wires.”
    Garrett and Landauer eyed each other, and Bryce stiffened at their obvious skepticism. “I swear to God, it’s true. That’s when I packed up, right then and there. Whatever he was into, I wasn’t going to live in the same room with it.”
    “So you felt in danger?” Garrett suggested.
    “
Yes,
I felt in
danger,
” Bryce said, affronted. “What do you think I’ve been saying?”
    Garrett tried to steer the interview back to something solid. “Did you ever see Jason with Erin Carmody?”
    Bryce shook his head, hair flopping.
    “She never came to the room?”
    “Not that I knew of.”
    “Did Jason ever speak about her?”
    “No. It’s not like he talked a lot, though. Mostly he acted like I wasn’t there. He was always off on his own trip.” Bryce stared off toward the stage and shivered. “My dad was batshit that I moved off campus and lost the whole semester deposit. But look what happened.” He looked at the detectives with wide eyes. “What if I’d stayed?”
    As they walked out the dark hall toward the red light of the EXIT sign, Garrett looked to Landauer, who was tapping out a cigarette. “What do you think?”
    Landauer grimaced. “Drama queen. Literally.” He widened his eyes like an ingénue. “ ‘The phone was
ringing
in the
closet,
’ ” he said, fluttering his hands as he mimicked Bryce’s voice. He dropped the lisp. “The phone is definitely the only thing in the closet.”
    “If you’re finished—” Garrett began.
    “I’m makin’ a point, here,” Landauer growled, holding up a warning finger.
    “Which is?”
    “Moncrief doesn’t like having a gay roommate and he hazes Tinker Bell till he leaves. Moncrief’s a musician. Sound effects: babbling voices, ringing in the closet.”
    Garrett stopped and looked at his partner, who stood with the unlit cigarette in his hand. He had the strong feeling Landauer was trying to explain away something he didn’t want to look at.
But we both saw it, Land: Jason’s stretched-out face and black basketball eyes. We heard that rasping, inhuman voice . . .
    Garrett suddenly felt the hair on the back of his neck rise, the same absolute sensation of being watched that he’d experienced at Cauldron.
    He turned sharply and stared into the dark of the hall.
    They