Page 6 of The Exorcism of Faeries

Bottom lip tucked between her teeth, Atta opened her desk drawer and pulled out the flora coated in black, diseased blood. Gingerly, she pulled back the top layer of wax paper irrevocably smudged and wondered if she had time to clean up the flower and press it. A quick glance at her antique desk clock pushed that idea away. Regretfully, she returned the flora to its hiding place for later.

Blowing a breath past her lips, Atta slipped on her softest black turtleneck, her favourite tweed blazer and comfiest pair of black Oxfords. She buckled the thin band of her watch, refusing to look at the time again because she knew it wasn’t enough. A quick run of a brush through her still-damp locks was going to have to suffice. It was still drizzling out, anyway.

Books shoved into her leather satchel, Atta snagged Imogen’s umbrella from the coat rack by the suite’s front door and rushed down the stairs of their building, wavinghulloto one of the neighbours on her way out.

Atta

Students milled about campus, walking to their various lectures and activities, still buzzing with the excitement of a new year at Trinity or the start of adult academic life at all. It was always easy to spot the Freshers. They spent the first term oscillating between pure joy, hugging their books to their chest with a skip in their step, and twitchy exhaustion, bookbags weighing down their shoulders, a wild-eyed caffeine buzz coating them like a dark aura.

A lone brown leaf crunched under Atta’s shoe and she smiled. The trees hadn’t yet changed, still hanging onto the last breath of summer, but the air was crisp and the drizzle had gone for the time being. She was one of those peculiar students who felt the thrill of academia every year, all year long. The last six years without hallowed academic halls and papers to write and books to study, she’d felt adrift. That didn’t mean she hadn’t still written papers, and conducted her own research, and read countless books, but it was different to be surrounded by a place, by a people group dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge, especially in a time such as theirs.

When Atta attended Trinity for undergrad, the Plague was but a distant scare. A sickness violently befalling a few select individuals here and there. Partway through the summer after her graduation, so many cases had popped up that the powers that be erected HPSC’s secret places of science, medicine, immunology, and research. Very little was known about this organisation and its advancements in dispelling the Plague had been minimal.

Atta was not one to accept when things were on a ‘need to know’ basis, so she’d spent a great deal of time in the fall of ‘87 researching the researchers. She wasn’t able to discover the name of the shadow organisation, only the fact that they knew very little about the origin of the Plague. What theyhaddiscovered was a peculiar spore had been found in Patient Zero during the initial autopsy prior to incineration.

A spore of unknown origin.

A spore that sent Atta into a six-year-long obsession.

She did not for one moment believe the spore was bacterial. Nor did she think for one moment that Achilles House didn’t already know that. They had to, or she’d made a grave error in taking that cadaver with the flowering lung to them.

Another student brushed past her, knocking into her shoulder without a backward glance. She was loitering in front of the lecture hall doorway after all, with only seconds left until class began.

The pain began at the base of her skull, pulsing up and forward, sliding down over her eyes in a ghastly hallucination. A young woman reclined in a cracked vinyl chair, like the kind in an old 50s-style kitchen. A small television, antennas erect, glowed with static snow. The walls were bare behind the girl, save for a slash of creeping vines. Something betweenAcanthus Spinosusand English Ivy. The hallucination wrinkled and shifted, and Atta saw the vines crawling down the girl, her hands limp at her sides, nailbeds bruised. No, the vines weren’t crawling along her—they werepartof her, making up her spine, her head pulled off her neck and held aloft by the vines, her lifeless, glossy eyes open.

Atta gasped, and the images cleared, the sharp pain receding to her temples. It would be a nasty migraine, she expected. She should have gotten more sleep. Grabbed coffee. Stolen one of Imogen’s stimulant pills.

Shaking it off, Atta bustled in and slid into one of the last seats available in the back, the worn wooden desk and chair combination groaning as she did so. She always wondered just how many students had learned at these desks over the years. If the right information was sought out—the year these particular desks were brought in and how many students had taken the classes in this hall—she could arrive at an answer, but there were more important things to think about. Namely, the professor at the chalkboard addressing the small group of students and directing them to open their Biodiversity textbooks to Page 394.

Removing her notebooks, pens, and textbook from her satchel, Atta laid them out neatly as the professor began etching out the various parts of a vascular plant on the chalkboard. The diagram on Page 394 of the textbook had a similar sketch, though more refined and really quite beautiful. Beside the fern, the professor jotted down terms, his chalk tapping against the blackboard with each new letter stroke and kicking up enough chalk dust that a girl in the front row sneezed. When the professor turned back to face the rows of students, Atta began to scribble down what he’d written before he commanded they all do so.

Xylem

Phloem

Sporophyte

The rest of the class had their heads bent low over their notebooks, scribbling furiously as the professor droned on and on about the defining characteristics of vascular plants, their tissues and phases, but Atta merely listened, letting the lecture confirm what she’d already known since she was a little girl. Since her grandfather began teaching her the intricacies of botany when he wasn’t teaching her how to autopsy a body.

By the time class let out, Atta had already drawn her own sketch within the textbook and a two-page spread in her notebook just above the assignment:a 3,000-word essay on Vascular Phases due September 12th.

At least one of her classes was a breeze. Though Intro to Biodiversity was a beginner’s course, her undergrad studies had been vastly different. To pursue her Masters in Biodiversity, she was required to have the basic courses on her transcript, and Atta didn’t mind having a refresher that directly correlated with her personal projects. Not that she had much time for those.

Back out on the green, she checked her watch. Her next class wasn’t until 2:00, and she might have enough time to grab a bite to eat before heading to the library. She had two assignments due by week’s end and one of them was going quite poorly if her desk in the suite was to be used as evidence.

Though the Dining Hall was an 18th-century stone building one would expect to see Mr Darcy lurking in while Lizzie dances, only lunch was served there, and Atta arrived at the technical time for Second Breakfast and not quite Elevensies and certainly not Luncheon.

Electing to go into The Buttery, Atta filled a cafeteria-grade bowl with the crushed remnants of Banana Bubbles Cereal and poured in a bit of milk that was probably borderline expired. She sat down at the edge of one of the long tables, only a handful of other students milling about. Something smelled delicious next door and she wished she’d gone to the library then gone into the Dining Hall for lunch instead. After stirring her unwanted cereal for a minute, she decided to just discard it and check her letterbox. It was rare to find anything in there after the first week of classes, what with all theWelcome Back!news and flyers asking students to join various clubs, so she only checked it every couple of days. During undergrad, her mother sent care packages monthly and Atta was feeling a bit homesick, finding herself hoping her mam would continue that tradition through grad school.

Alas, there was only a flyer for a student play being put on in a couple of weeks and a red envelope. Curious, she ripped it open to find it was a summons to see her student advisor, Mrs O’Sullivan, as soon as possible.

Atta sighed, folding the flyer and note to stow them away in her satchel. So much for her much-needed study time in the library.

Mrs O’Sullivan’s office was a long walk across campus on the opposite side from the Botany building. The weather was shaping up beautifully, though, a crisp breeze teasing at her hair. Atta slipped on her headphones and clicked play on her Stowaway. The mix-tape of her own making made the walk even more pleasant, the notes of Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 27, No. 2 putting her mind in the perfect place to contemplate her private research. She would go to meet with her advisor and take notes in her 2:00 lecture until her hand hurt, then she could check on her cadaver beneath Gallaghers’ Morgue in between her shift duties.

Atta was almost at the student offices building when she first noticed the new signage.

Be Vigilant. Inform HPSC of any Plague symptoms immediately, by phoning the hotline.

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