Ivy League Illusion, Part 2

Being Watched

Need an earlier part?

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Igor Kovalchuk/Shutterstock

I woke up the next day feeling a little weaker than normal. I couldn’t remember anything that had happened after noon the day before—but I did still remember being attacked near Wobach Hall. For some reason, I’d resisted the whispered command to forget that part.

“I think I got bitten by a mosquito,” I said to my roommate, Carlos Ramirez, mostly to make sure he could see the bite on my neck. I had to put the hallucination theory to rest once and for all.

Carlos squinted at my neck for a second. “It looks like you got bitten twice. There’s definitely some redness and swelling. You might want to stop by Health Services and have yourself checked out. Mosquitos can transmit some pretty nasty viruses.”

I nodded, though even something as bad as West Nile Virus wasn’t my biggest worry at the moment. Anyway, I doubted vampires transmitted diseases in the same way mosquitos did.

I knew that sounded crazy, but I had been bitten by something. There were sometimes mosquitos near the Charles River, where a lot of my rowing practices took place, but I would have felt the bites hours ago if I’d gotten them that way.

I thought for a minute about telling Carlos what I’d experienced. He was a good guy, as far as I could tell, generally friendly, always willing to listen. We got along well with each other. But I didn’t say anything for two reasons. First, because there was no way to tell yesterday’s story without making myself sound crazy. Second, because, if something sinister was going on, I couldn’t be sure who Carlos really was.

Insane as it sounded, the best theory I could come up with was that I wasn’t really at Harvard. My surrounding were just a carefully crafted illusion, the purpose of which I could only guess. But if that were the case, what did that mean for the people around me? Were they just innocent people trapped in the same illusion I was? Or were they not people at all, but just part of the illusion? Or, worst-case scenario, were some or all them my jailers, for lack of a better word? If this was an illusion, someone would have to have created it in the first place. The recent glitches suggested that it probably needed someone to maintain it.

I looked out the window and saw only morning sunshine, not dark skies or oversized blood moons. It looked as if the maintenance crew had taken care of that particular problem.

No one had jumped me yesterday morning when I saw the wrong reflection in my mirror. I’d only been attacked when I was showing much more obvious and more extended signs of panic. That suggested someone was watching me to make sure I was still in the illusion’s grip.

If I didn’t want to be attacked again, I needed to be careful. Talking to Carlos was just too big a risk.

Instead of starting a conversation, I went to the bathroom for my morning shave. But this time, I was much more interested in watching the mirror than I was in shaving. I needed to see the stranger—who was probably the real me—again. Maybe I could tell something about where I really was and, much more important, who I really was.

At first, I only saw my usual reflection. I stared as hard as I could at the mirror, trying to drag the truth out of it by sheer force of will.

After an annoyingly long wait, the image flickered in response to my unspoken demand and became the stranger again. This time, though, I kept my facial expression carefully neutral, and I didn’t drop the shaving cream. Instead, I looked diligently for details I might have missed.

The face in the mirror was older than mine, though not so much older that it couldn’t have belonged to a college student. But it was the face of a graduate student rather than a freshman. I looked into his eyes and felt unsettled. Their gaze wasn’t all-consuming, like that of yesterday’s vampire. But those eyes belonged to someone who had known both great joy and great suffering. If I was truly looking at myself, my life had been much more complicated than my imaginary life as a college student.

Though the reflection was pale, just as he had been yesterday, I noticed an even lighter patch of skin on his ring finger. He regularly wore a ring, though he didn’t have it on right now.

A wedding ring.

I wasn’t sure where that idea came from, but it felt right. I—or whoever I was looking at—was married. But just like every other detail of my hypothetical real life, I had no memory of it.

The only other thing I noticed was that the reflection also had bite marks on his neck. Did that mean the vampire was real? Hell, I didn’t even know whether the reflection was real. Faced with the possibility that the life I was living was totally imaginary, I began to back away from that idea. It would almost be easier if I were just crazy.

But I knew in my heart that I wasn’t crazy.

When I got back to my room, Carlos was already gone, so I finished dressing and hurried off to breakfast. Unlike the situation in some universities, Harvard freshmen had to do a little walking for their meals. For me, that involved leaving Thayer, my residence hall, walking roughly northeast, crossing Cambridge Street, and entering Memorial Hall, with its Victorian Neo-Gothic, churchlike facade, through an elaborate gate on the southwest corner. A few more steps, and all I had to do was turn right into Annenberg Hall, where all first-year students took their meals.

That was what I usually did. This morning I stood near the door as other students flocked in. The simple act of walking the same path I did every morning had caused my memories of yesterday’s vampire attack to recede into something less real and more dreamlike. I felt as if doing mundane things would enable me to banish those unpleasant memories and unnecessary fears. After all, I had a great life, so why was I letting what must have been a nightmare cause me so much worry?

When nobody was looking, I shook myself a little. What was wrong with me? I felt my neck. The swelling where the bite was remained. Earlier, Carlos had seen that bite. It was real.

And if it was real, that suggested the memories that part of me wanted so much to tear out of my mind were real as well. Just before noon, I had seen a dark sky lit by an enormous blood moon.

But if all of those things were real, what I was seeing right now wasn’t. And perhaps the attempt to purge those memories wasn’t coming from my own mind, but from the vampire’s command.

Of course, that meant I was probably being watched. Loitering here would eventually attract attention.

I forced myself to go in, though my surroundings again made it more difficult to hold onto yesterday’s memories. It made me wonder if whatever sinister influence I was under was somehow being amplified by the architecture—or at least, by what the architecture appeared to be.

Annenberg Hall, with its stained glass windows, also reminded me of a church. However, its high, wood-beam ceiling, chandeliers, and long tables made me feel as if I’d just walked into a Harry Potter book.

I wondered if Harvard really had an Annenberg Hall, and if it did, what did it really look like? Was the illusion I was living in accurate, or was it just plausible fiction?

Come to think of it, was there even such a place as Harvard University? Not being able to trust my own memories, I had no way of figuring that out.

I made a point of not sitting with people I knew. With a big chunk of the first-years grabbing breakfast before a morning class, it wasn’t hard to sit with people I didn’t know. I’d probably catch hell for that from some of my friends later. Assuming that they didn’t exist—or weren’t really friends—made that an acceptable risk.

One of the nice things about Harvard University Dining Services facilities was that they were all-you-can-eat—and as a rower, I could eat a lot and not worry about the freshman fifteen at all. As I worked on my cage-free scrambled eggs, breakfast potatoes, cinnamon roll, and pork sausage patty, I did something I should have done earlier—I tested the limits of my memory.

I had to control myself to keep from shaking when I realized the truth—I had no real memories before the beginning of this school year.

Oh, I had the bits of data that might come up in casual conversation. For instance, I “knew” that I’d graduated from Cal Coast Academy in San Diego. I “knew” I’d been on the rowing team. But no matter how much I strained for details, I couldn’t remember my graduation ceremony, my favorite teachers, my friends, any specific rowing experiences, where I lived in San Diego—

Damn! I couldn’t even remember my own parents! It was as if I had sprung full-grown from the ground right outside the entrance to Harvard on my first day here and had someone populate my memory with a few superficial details.

“Are you okay, man?” asked the guy sitting across from me. He was about the same height as me but had a much more slender build. He wore wire-frame glasses that had slipped partway down his nose. That made it easier for me to look directly into his eyes.

At first glance, they looked brown, but as I continued to watch, I noticed a momentary flash of red.

“Uh, I’m fine,” I said. My voice shook a little bit, and he looked skeptical, but I managed to get up and leave the table without him going full vampire on me.

I wanted to run—and I was a fast runner. But I knew that would attract undue attention. I was being watched even more closely than I thought. I would have to be careful.

But how was I going to pull off any kind of normal interaction? Anyone around me could be spying on me. And as for Susan, my girlfriend, now that I had reason to suspect I was married, how could I possibly continue a relationship with her?

But if I broke up with her, would that trigger another vampire attack?

Someone was obviously holding me in this illusion and suppressing my real memories, though I couldn’t imagine what purpose such a scheme could possibly serve.

I knew one thing, though. The system holding me wasn’t perfect. I had seen through the illusions a few times now, once just by concentrating hard enough. And the vampire’s attempt to compel me to forget hadn’t completely worked.

If I fought hard enough against whatever was happening, could I break free?

I went out and stood in front of Memorial Hall. No doubt, suspicious eyes were on me, but I couldn’t afford to care about that.

Show me the truth! I thought as I tried to focus my concentration. As if my thought summoned up a new kind of reflex in my body, my right hand rose and traced a pattern in the air that looked roughly like a less-than sign or an L tilted to the right. My hand traced it repeatedly, but I didn’t try to stop it. Perhaps I’d accessed some kind of muscle memory.

Flames burst from each sign. I jumped, the flames flickered, and I had to struggle to get my concentration back.

I had no idea what I was doing, but whatever it was clearly affected my environment. Everyone around me had stopped to stare, but no one tried to interfere.

“Show me the truth!” I yelled, and the flames blazed around me, burning away Memorial Hall and its surroundings. As it vanished, I once again saw the dark sky, the blood moon, and a rough structure made of stone as black as obsidian and highly polished enough to reflect my flames.

Far fewer people were watching me now. Most of them must have been illusions.

But all the ones remaining were vampires.

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Ivy League Illusion is related to the Different Dragons series. (The action falls after the end of the third book, though the connection would not be immediately obvious to readers of the series.)

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