January 8, 2017

CW: References to serious bodily injury and mild gore

As humans, even if we acknowledge death as a part of life, we loathe to confront it. It’s hard for me to feel any emotion, good or bad, about Caleb’s death. Obviously I should feel sad—even if I didn’t know him very well, he was still someone I enjoyed being around. But something stranger stops me: Caleb never died.

I got to know Caleb throughout the fall semester. It was my second year at the University of Vermont, where the sidewalks are slicked with frost all through October on, and a biting chill permeates all of Burlington. I was one of a dozen-or-so students enrolled in a residential support program for young adults on the spectrum. I didn’t particularly get along with any of my peers; even among kids my age with niche interests, mine were especially niche, and I found most of my cohort hard to talk to. Even if we could agree on a topic, those who managed to tolerate me spoke in a hard-to-tolerate monotone, and they tuned out whenever I wanted to bring up metal, or the occult, which was often. At least the staff feigned interest.

During my high school years, most of my friends were older adults, ones who grew up with my artsy-yuppie-parent-enforced media diet, and showed me wisdom so often lacking from my school chums. As a sixteen-year-old, my best friend was a twenty-five-year-old museum tour guide I’d see every Friday, and I transferred this camaraderie over to the perennially rotating cast of characters staffing my residential program, from upperclassmen at UVM to older millennials.

Caleb started working in the fall of 2016 as a student intern and “left” January 8, 2017 when he “died.” I feel weird using that word, but there’s nothing else that accurately describes the experience. An unassuming, good looking young man from New Jersey, Caleb was always receptive, and easy to talk to, even if he couldn’t tell A.E. Waite from Samuel MacGregor Mathers. People in the program loved him: he was at most a year older than the oldest of our peers, and he was always organizing hikes, games, and movie nights.

Distinctly I remember when, in the earliest slice of October, he took five of us for a walk through the cemetery. By that time, the leaves had burst bloodred, leaving piles of their dead siblings strewn across the street. The sun was starting to set earlier, but this hardly mattered for a post-prandial stroll at 6:30.

Burlington is a “city” defined by its hills. Our hall was at the foot of one, leading right to the mouth of UVM; the cemetery sat at the bottom of one, and while only a handful of plots stood tall and somber, smothered by moss, its tininess and spareness was more inviting than foreboding.

Caleb rested his hand against a particularly tall and phallic headstone. “Beautiful day for a walk, eh?”

“Caleb, don’t!” My roommate, Mitch said. “You’ll tip it over!”

“Or you’ll disturb the dead,” I said.

Caleb rapped his fingers against the headstone, lightly enough so he wouldn’t damage his knuckles. “Nothing’s inside.”

“That’s because he’s buried underneath you, not in the headstone,” Sydney said. Sydney lived upstairs and I figure most of the guys—our program was 75 percent male—had a crush on her. I thought she was whatever, to be honest; definitely not my type. Most of her time was spent with Dallas, and even if Ms. Australian City and Mr. Texan City swore they weren’t a couple, they behaved as if they’d been married for years.

“Stop being such a smartass,” Dallas said, right on cue.

Sydney playfully shoved him. “Better a smartass than a dumbass,” she said.

Caleb pretended he didn’t hear them and continued to rap on the grave. He stuck his tongue out, I stuck my tongue out, and Mitch gave us a weird look.

`Looking back, I want to say Caleb tempted fate by rapping on a gravestone, but that’s too convenient. In all likelihood, the spirit of a long-dead New Englander had no particular vendetta against a WASPy college boy from New Jersey; it wasn’t like the cemetery was full of Puritans or anything. I’ve read a lot about cemeteries in occult lore and can comfortably say the interred dead have greater things to worry about. Life doesn’t always wrap itself in gilt-leaf paper and tie a nice little bow on top; it comes at you like an eighteen-wheeler skirting horizontally on the freeway from forest to forest as if it were a deer. There is a certain level of wanton chaos to life, and I’ve grown to appreciate at least a bit of this chaos.

The problem, of course, comes when the senseless violence happens to you, or people you care about. All of a sudden, violence is no longer an aesthetic, it’s your life.

I spent more time with other staff, like Sven, who was also studying classics, or Julian, who used to listen to the bands I currently listen to in high school, from Iron Maiden to Iron Butterfly, but Caleb held the fort down on Monday nights, when I really wanted to go out and see some local heavy bands play at Nectar’s. In addition to getting X’s markered on my hands by an unenthusiastic security guard, I had to tell Caleb whenever I was coming or going. This was a marked improvement over the first year, back in ye olde 2015, when I wasn’t allowed to be outside the dorm after ten at night. I remember going to a death metal show and halfway through the second set (not even the headliner) I got a call from my former coach, Joe, an ex-military police officer who left our program as soon as it began, telling me to, “Go the fuck home or suffer the consequences.”

The Fall 2016 Semester granted me newfound freedoms, and while I was only 19, and the Nectar’s security guard seemed to always give me a bad time, I enjoyed at least having freedom on paper. Despite this, Trump’s first election campaign and eventual victory cast a somber spell on my cohort, myself included. Politics discussions with Mitch would devolve into shouting matches, and usually the higher-ups would have to send Sven to calm me down, where I’d tell him about the latest Sophocles play we had to read for class until I felt better.

It was hard to navigate the post-Election Day landscape, but we tried to make the most of it; Julian and I would watch cartoons in the living room, and Sven would help me clean my suite, much to Mitch’s delight. Sometime around then, Caleb told me he was going skiing.

I was never a sports person. In fact, I must’ve been the only college student in Vermont who didn’t want to ski. Truth be told, I only picked UVM for the town: Burlington was large enough to be a city, but small enough to be cute. Here I could put my proclaimed hatred for Phish and the Dead aside and enjoy a scoop of Ben and Jerry’s while jamming to the buskers on Church Street. As my family’s from Washington, and I didn’t feel like splitting the airfare with them to return to a drab and dark Seattle, I begged my parents to let me stay. Being the permissive parents they are, they agreed. It was then I learned the hard way that no one loks forward to a Vermont winter.

Snow smothered the sidewalks, and whenever we’d be so lucky as for it to melt, black ice would swallow any hopes of walkability. At least the brutal winters in Vermont were pretty; in Washington, snow hardly stuck, and if it did, it’d be in February when we were sick and tired of the dreary skies and lack of sun. In January I ached for classes to begin, because at least I’d be able to keep busy.

Now we’ve come to the part that matters. On January 7th, 2017, Sven called us to the meeting room, telling us something horrible happened. Many of the students were still on vacation, so it was me, Sydney, Toshi (an exchange student from Japan) and Wallbanger, who was so named because his roommate could have sworn he saw him dry humping the drywall. As expected. Our meeting room faced a window looking out at the snowscape Burlington became. It was sub-zero outside, and no one was in any mood to leave. The staff who stayed with us for the winter lined up against the window, from Sven, to Molly, to Judith, all with grave expressions on their faces. Sven stepped up front and center and said: “I’m sorry to bring you guys together like this, but the worst possible thing has happened.”

The room erupted in murmurs. What could have happened? And to whom? Anxiety carved a niche in my bones and made it its home.

Sven continued: “Caleb died in a skiing accident,” he said.

“What?!” Wallbanger said, but the rest of us were silent. It’s a surreal thing, when life happens in front of you. Yes, I was never close with Caleb, but by all means I should have felt immense grief having someone you know die. Instead, the anxiety left and an emptiness took its place. I want to say the emptiness was better, because at least it wasn’t a negative emotion.

Sven told us that if anyone needed help, they could contact counsellng at Champlain, UVM, or CCV, and let us know that we didn’t have to be alone in our grief, and then the meeting was over.

I didn’t speak to anyone else that day.

#

A week went by, and I seemed to be dealing with it all right, all things considered. Caleb never occupied a constant part of my mind, but what I remember more about that week was getting into arguments online over whether Aliester Crowley was problematic, overrated, or a genuine genius. I’m of the camp that considers themselves too cool for Crowley, but I couldn’t deny his impact in the occult world. More students filtered in, including Mitch and Dallas, and whenever I was in the common area I would never see Dallas or Sydney without the other. More staff filtered in, too, including Julian, who still tolerated my constant blathering about NWOBHM, and Zadie, who didn’t.

A couple of days before classes began, I woke up to a text, and to my surprise, it was from Caleb.

Caleb: Hey, David, can you help me with something?

How could this have been possible? Did someone grab his phone? With the generic phishing-esque tone, this very well may have been possible, but it continued.

Caleb: I’m having trouble getting back in touch with the program.

I wrote back: Aren’t you dead?

Caleb: Yes, but I’m still around. I’m in Burlington right now.

Me: How is that remotely possible?

Caleb: I don’t know; I just came back like this. So can I still work here?

Me: Why are you texting me? Can’t you text staff?

Caleb: I have been texting them, it’s just

Caleb: You’re the first person to have responded.

Me: So you’re still dead?

Caleb: Yeah. Accident was nasty. My neck is snapped like 90 degrees.

Me: This isn’t a joke?

Caleb: No, this is completely serious.

To nail his point home, Caleb sent me a selfie. He looked like the same goofy college student, but his head was dangling from his neck at a 90 degree angle, just like he said. The tip of his spine was exposed, and sprayed with gore. He was outside, in a snowy landscape.

Me: what the fuck

Caleb: Can you help me out?

Caleb: I might lose my job, I can’t believe this, man.

Me: you should go to a doctor.

Caleb: I did and he pronounced me dead.

Me: I don’t know, you might scare the students.

Caleb: Are you available to talk? I just want to talk

I checked the time. It’s two in the morning, I wrote.

Caleb: I’m outside.

Me: In Burlington?

Sure enough, Caleb sent me his location. He was outside my residential hall. But didn’t he die closer to St. Albans? That must have been an awful trek.

Caleb: Can you come and get me please

Caleb: please??

Me: ugh, fine.

As quietly as possible I left my room, trying not to alert Mitch of my presence. He still turned over in his sleep, regardless, half aware I was going to loudly open the door to our dorm, for the doorknob made too much noise whenever you turned it.

Yes, when I departed my room and stepped into the common area, the place was silent. The curtains were scattered by the wind as far as conventional physics would allow, and a chill from outdoors slinked inside. And then, in the lobby, I saw him, still wearing his skiing clothes, and to be honest, it was hard too look at him for too long, on account of his neck. It was practically begging to fall off. And if it fell off, would Caleb screw it back on? It’s not like he could attach gorilla glue to the base of his spine and swivel the thing back on.

“Hi,” Caleb said. “I don’t want to disturb you or anything.”

“You’re trying your best,” I said.

“Thanks. I couldn’t screw this shit back on if I tried. Where’s Sven?”

“You know he doesn’t live here.”

“Well, it’s not like I can go to my parents. They buried me, and I had the courtesy not to freak them the fuck out when I broke from my grave. If they saw me, they’d swear I was a ghost.”

“Isn’t that what you are?” I said.

“I suppose, but the technical term is revenant. I’m not quite a zombie. I’m not clamoring for your brains, or anything, am I?”

“You’re not going to eat my brains, are you?”

“Honest!” Caleb’s voice took on slighted tones, and he backed away from me. If he was a malevolent spirit back from the dead, he sure did a good job of being neurotic about it. “I’m sorry. I’m just not used to this,” he said, adjusting his head so it wouldn’t wobble too much when he talked. “I guess I came back because I had some unfinished business with the staff.”

“Which is…”

“It’s simple,” Caleb said. “They wouldn’t pay me enough. Think about it. Why do you think so many of our staff come and go?”

“They’re college students?” I said.

“Yes, but it’s clear we don’t have a union, or anything. And then we have to deal with Wallbanger. No offense if you like him or anything, I can’t stand him.”

“I don’t think anyone likes Wallbanger,” I said.

“Please, just let me work here again, I swear. Even this job is better than no money at all.”

“I can’t help you,” I said. “I’m a broke college student.”

Now Caleb was starting to get pissed off. “I know, and I understand that, but you can’t help me out, and I’m sure Sven and the rest of the bunch would rather I just go back to my little hole in the ground for the rest of my life, but I can’t sleep, man.”

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

Now Caleb was starting to cry. “I don’t know. I don’t fucking know.”

I hugged him, afraid it’d make his neck snap any further. I wish I could have told you I helped him enact his revenge. I wish I could, but instead, I said, “I’m sorry, man. It’s late at night and I have to go to sleep. Truthfully, I’m not sure if you’re real or a hallucination.”

“How can you say that?” Caleb said, and stormed off into the night.

Looking back, I’m not sure if what I experienced was a lucid dream, or a real supernatural event, or anything of the sort. When I got back into bed, my messages with Caleb remained, and then I saw three grey dots.

Caleb: Fuck you dude.

Caleb: miserable piece of shit

Caleb: I’ll find a better job than this.

When I tried to reply, my messages wouldn’t send. He blocked me.

The next morning, Sven jostled Mitch and me awake.

“Rise and shine, boys,” Sven said.

“I’m up,” I said. “Can’t say the same for Mitch.” I ran over to him and gave a good jostle. “Get up you.”

“He’ll get up when he gets up,” Sven said. “Are you doing okay?”

“Me? What do you mean,” I said. “I’m fine.”

“It’s just—you’re awfully skittish for seven in the morning.”

“No. Couldn’t be any better.”

“Mhm?”

“Mhm. Now let’s get to breakfast.”

At the breakfast table, I sat sandwiched between Julian and Sven, munching halfheartedly on a muffin but wholeheartedly guzzling a mug of steaming hot black coffee, and it could have been the caffeine talking, or my lack of sleep, but I checked Caleb’s number again. I still saw the texts, the messages, all of it. They were all real. Whatever happened, that night, as illogical as it sounded, was real.

Perhaps it was out of disgust, or fear, or some other, deeper, nameless emotion, but I put my muffin down. A stream of crumbs spilled from the tip of my lips to the bottom of my chin.

Julian tapped me on the shoulder. “David? What’s wrong?”

“I don’t think you’d get it,” I said.