HDA - Coping With Darkness by WintersRose Chapter 7

Thursday, September 21 7:45 AM

“Where did your roommate go?” Michael Freedman asked Frank as Frank leaned back against an unknown car behind him to await the return of his roommate. “How did you get outside?”

“Connor thought he saw someone in Joe’s room,” Frank said to Michael. “He went up to look.”

“Is he insane?” Michael demanded. “He’s going to get killed! Oh, great, I’m going to be in so much trouble.”

“Nice of you to worry about what’s important, Michael,” Frank told the RA. “Really have your priorities straight, there.”

“You know what I mean,” Michael protested. “You know what they’ll tell me if they find out Connor ran back in after we had the floor evacuated. They’ll ream me a new one!”

“Is the dorm always this exciting?” Jase Aleman asked, interrupting. “People collapsing in the Hall, smoke bombs or the like?”

“You don’t know that it’s really a fire,” Frank said, softly, in answer to Michael. “Do you actually see any fire or is it all smoke? And we try not to make it this exciting, Jase, but… sometimes…”

Frank didn’t hear any crackling or feel any amount of heat coming from his dorm. In fact, all he smelled was a slightly sulfuric smell made by some kinds of smoke.

“Well, no fire that I can see,” Michael admitted a moment later. “But it’s still a huge chance, isn’t it? Just because we can’t see it yet doesn’t mean it’s not there. Besides, what else would make so much smoke like that? It’s probably the electricity, it’s so old it was probably put in when Benjamin Franklin was still alive.”

“It’s not electrical,” Frank said with certainty. “Electric fires have a very distinctive smell. I would know if it was electrical. And a lot of things can make smoke. It could be something like tear gas or just a regular smoke bomb. In fact… I wouldn’t be surprised if this wasn’t a practical joke.”

“I’ll kill Maidlin,” Michael vowed. “If it’s him, I mean.”

“Stand in line, Michael,” Frank said, grimly. “You’ll have to beat Connor to it if it is.”

“Uh, can I ask a totally newcomer question?” Jase asked. “Just who or what is a Maidlin? And why do you talk about him with such reverence in your voices?”

“Maidlin is a force of nature,” Frank told Jase. “He’s someone you have to almost experience to really understand. He’s the biggest pain in the rear in the whole dorm.”

“He’s worse than Housen?” Jase sounded dubious. “I didn’t think anybody could be worse than Housen.”

“He’s the dorm prankster,” Michael said to Jase. “A total pain, like Frank said. He’s done everything from sudsing cars to short-sheeting beds to turning a room upside down. Last year he figured out how to move my furniture from my dorm room out into the middle of the parking lot.”

Everything else they were about to say was cut off by the sounds of fire engines approaching. Frank grimaced and put his hands over his ears until the sirens were cut-off. He heard the firemen yelling for everyone to get back. Now he wished Joe were here so Joe could tell him what was going on.

“There they are!” Michael called out and Frank clamped a hand over his ear again and glared at the RA. “Oh, uh, sorry, Frank, didn’t mean to yell in your ear.”

Frank sighed and shook his head. Loud noises did not a happy Frank Hardy make. In fact, it made him very unhappy. He was already growing used to listening harder and smelling harder and feeling harder, anything that distracted that was not good.

“Are you two OK?” Michael demanded. “You look like you were hip deep in an ash-pit.”

“It’s just a smoke… bomb…” Connor said in between coughs. “We’re fine. Someone decided to toss it into the hall right outside of Eric’s room.”

Connor coughed some more after he finished that little tidbit.

“A smoke bomb you say,” Michael said in a cold voice. “Where is Maidlin at? He’s gone too far this time!”

“The little pipsqueak was running away when I was heading up the stairs to get Eric,” Connor said. “But don’t worry, Michael, I’ll take care of him later. He can’t run far enough and the admin people are going to want to have words with him. I just hope someone actually saw him do it this time.”

“I know it’s not going to make the firemen happy,” Michael sighed. “This always happens on my floor.”

“Frank?” Mandy’s voice drifted through the mayhem to him and he felt an arm on his elbow. “I came to take you to class. Sam’s got an upset stomach or she would be here. What happened to your dorm?”

“Smoke bomb,” Frank told her. “Life as usual in Tauhausen Hall is what I call it. What’s wrong with Samantha’s stomach? Is she all right? Should I go see her later?”

“I think its nerves,” Mandy admitted. “She’s all nervous about this dissertation she has to give in her Principles of Law class today and I think she worked herself into hysterics. Besides, since we have English Comp together, I may as well walk you. Hello, smudgeboy.”

That last had to be addressed to Connor. Frank heard Mandy kiss Connor.

“Nothing exciting ever happens in Eldridge, unless one of the cheerleaders breaks a nail or something, then you’d think someone had set her hair on fire,” Mandy moaned. “You guys have all the fun! Can we borrow whomever is making all the trouble?”

“Uh, hon, that’s not exactly what I’d call it,” Connor told his girlfriend. “I’d do with a ton less excitement if I meant I’d get a full night’s sleep. As it is, I’m surprised I don’t fall asleep in class. And speaking of class, I’d better scoot or Doctor Berkman is going to have me for breakfast. I promised him I’d help him set-up for class today.”

“We’d better scoot too,” the sound of Mandy kissing Connor was unmistakable. “All right, big brother, we’re off to class, let’s get there while the getting’s good. I just know how much I’m looking forward to the latest of Professor Binkle’s treatise on the workings of “Death of a Salesman.” Why is it these really depressing books are considered ‘Great Works of Literature? I think ‘Outlander’ is a great work of literature!”

Connor laughed at that. “I don’t think you’ll convince the English Faculty of Bayport U to add Diana Gabaldon to their curriculum, Mandy. Nice try, though.”

Frank said good-bye to Jase and Michael. Then he nodded to Mandy and she placed his hand on her arm. She preferred the upper arm method of guiding, rather than the shoulder method and since she was almost a full foot shorter than her older brother, she walked slowly enough that Frank didn’t get all turned around like normal. She kissed him on the cheek as she escorted him to his chair in his classroom and settled herself in a seat next to him.

“I’m going to run to see Joe at five, do you want to go?” Mandy asked him. “Your classes should be done by then, shouldn’t they?”

“Sure,” Frank said in agreement. “I’ll be in finishing my Chemistry Lab by then. Do you want to meet me outside of the Science Building after that?”

“You sure about that?” Mandy asked him.

Frank nodded, feeling not so confident about it but agreeing, nonetheless, that he should at least try to get out of class on his own for once. They turned their attention back to their English Professor and tried to learn all about Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman.

*******

Joe Hardy rolled over in bed again, finally warm for the first time in hours and clutched the blankets more tightly over himself so as not to allow any of his hard won heat escape. The various aches and pains he felt had dulled to a more tolerable twinge of pain thanks to the various antibiotic and pain meds and bandages applied in the right places. The only thing that really hurt now was his feet. His feet still stung in enough places that Joe was not looking forward to trying to walk on them again.

The night had been terror for him, a night filled with uncertainty and more fear than he ever remembered experiencing. He knew, positively, that he had been in more scary situations than last night. He’d looked into the faces of cold-blooded killers before and managed to feel no more than a mild concern for his safety. Joe Hardy did not allow fear to get the better of him. If people needed him to see them safely, he went without batting an eyelash.

Now, however, something was different, something that left Joe wanting to hide under his blankets like a small child. The face of the man who caught him, covered by a mask as it had been, had not really been that frightening. The low-pitched voice that promised sure-death if Joe dared to interfere in the man’s business again was no worse than the voices of a hundred or so others before him who had promised him the same thing. He had laughed off those threats without hesitation and without any remorse.

Deep down, somewhere inside himself, he knew exactly what it was that caused his fear and yet he did not want to admit it, not even to make himself feel better. He knew, just as he knew the man had meant his threat, that his fear was not based on anything the man said or did to him but on something else almost totally unrelated to the man’s threat. Joe knew and, in a way, the feeling shamed him.

For the whole of his detecting career, from high school and now into college, Joe had been a part of a team. In the team, his place had been clearly defined and accepted without reservation. Joe was the brawn to Frank’s brain, the bravado to Frank’s cautious, the instinct to Frank’s list of facts. Joe had always, in every situation he had faced before now, been able to rely on one fact and one fact alone. No matter what he got himself into, no matter how badly the odds were against him, his big brother, his partner in detection, would be there to get him out of it. If anyone had ever suggested to Joe, before, that he actually needed Frank to keep himself sane, Joe would have laughed it off. Joe didn’t need anyone. He enjoyed the company of others, sure, but he was independent and he could get along just fine by himself.

But that wasn’t true and last night, Joe had learned that lesson in the worst way possible. The whole time the man had forced him, at knifepoint, to walk through the forest and even while Joe tried to force himself into action, Joe knew one thing. His big brother wasn’t coming this time. His brother couldn’t come this time. Half the things that lay in the mysterious darkness of night and tree cover would be a complete hazard to Frank. Even if Frank could somehow figure out where Joe had been taken when Frank couldn’t see the clues for himself to put them all together, Joe knew that no rescue would come in time. The bravado that sent him pitched into battle with the members of the gang the day before had been fought without the realization that his brother would pull him out if he got into deep. Frank had pulled him out at one point.

There was no way, now, that Joe could always rely on his brother to be there. He knew Frank would, as much as Frank could figure out how, be there when he could. Joe knew, too, that his thoughts and fears were uncharitable. Frank never asked to be blinded and he certainly never asked to be the bearer of Joe’s fears. Frank was making the best of his situation, a lousy as it was. Joe knew that if he were the one blinded, he’d be far less patient as Frank had been and dealing with it a lot less nobly. In fact, Joe was fairly certain that if he were the one blinded, he’d be screaming at the world right now, demanding that something be done to fix the situation right now.

Frank, however, merely made a mental change in gears and worked with what he had. Frank didn’t wait more than a day or two before he was learning how to deal with being blind. Joe had spoken to the teacher who taught the classes at the hospital and he had learned that most people accepted their blindness a lot slower than Frank had. In fact, three or four of the people in Frank’s class still hadn’t come to grips with what happened and some of them weren’t as blind as Frank. Frank had no way of determining if it was day or night, unless he could feel the sun on his face. The other people in Frank’s class had at least partial vision, not enough to be declared sighted, but enough that they could determine day or night and two of them could detect shadows, indicating people.

No, it wasn’t fair to Frank but Joe felt just as strongly that it wasn’t fair to him. Doctor Rich had not only altered Frank’s life forever, he had altered Joe’s, their parents, Mandy’s, Connor’s and Samantha’s. In a way, he’d even changed Vanessa and Chet’s lives too. They all had to make adjustments to see that Frank got to class, to see that the things Frank couldn’t do for himself were done for him.

But Joe couldn’t quite get himself into that mindset about their detective work. Frank’s brain still worked and well. He would still know all of the right questions to ask and be able to put two and two together and normally come up with something equaling four. But the physical aspect, the narrow rescues, the well-placed karate chop when a villain was about to blow them away, Joe didn’t see those coming.

Joe realized, as the shakes began anew, that last night, he still expected his brother to come to the rescue. The whole time Joe sawed on his ropes with the rock, Joe expected to look-up and see his brother smiling down at him while removing the ropes around his wrists. Joe had expected, right up until he freed his own legs, for his big brother to ride to the rescue and when no rescue was forthcoming, Joe’s outlook on life made a drastic change.

And the change sent fear right into his very soul. He started shaking as he lay in his bed and he curled up into a fetal position, drawing his long legs up under himself as best he could. The shaking went away only by force-of-will and he forced himself, as well, not to cry. He had to get past this, right now. He was Joe Hardy, the impetuous Hardy brother and no criminal was going to make him feel less-than-adequate.

“Anyone home under that blanket?” a cheerful voice said somewhere above his head, just as he got the last of his shivers to go away and Joe pulled his blanket down to see the face of his twin sister smiling down at him from her lofty height of five foot three. “Ah, there he is. I knew I had a brother in there somewhere.”

She settled down beside his bed and smoothed back his lanky blonde hair, a radiant smile on her face. Mandy had that particular ability to see right through Joe with a single look, something she had been able to do since very early childhood. It had always been a bit disconcerting to Joe to not be able to keep secrets from his twin. It wasn’t that he minded her knowing everything, not really, but sometimes a guy just wanted to keep a few things to himself.

“Frank came with me,” Mandy said as she kissed him on the cheek and sat up, motioning for Joe to sit-up. “But I left him out in the hallway, talking to Doctor Carlisle.”

Mandy regarded Joe for a moment, until Joe squirmed a little under her gaze. He knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it. They weren’t psychic, not like he heard some twins were, but Mandy Hardy could say volumes of things to her twin with a single look. That look told Joe, quite clearly, that he was going to give, now, or the consequences would be dire. And Joe, who had years of knowing just when to fake out his sister and years of knowing when faking her out might just get him hurt, hesitated only for a moment.

“Frank will stay gone until I tell him to stay gone,” Mandy told him a moment later. “So, get it off your chest.”

Joe sighed and found himself stumbling over the whole sordid story, beginning with the kidnapping in his room and ending with his revelations of a few moments ago. As much as he hated admitting to his weakness and fear out loud, he had to also admit that he felt better, especially when Mandy wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him tight, rocking him slowly back and forth.

“I thought it was something like that, when Frank told me that he thought you were more scared than he’d ever seen you,” Mandy said, softly. “I didn’t tell him that, but I think he’ll figure it out on his own in time. But Joe, there’s nothing wrong with being scared or feeling the way you do. You have always relied on Frank a lot and now, well, none of us are quite sure what he can and can’t do. He’s not even sure. I’ve seen it on his face, whenever someone has to take him to class or drive him here for check-ups or bring him to see mom and dad. I’ve seen it on his face when we have to tell him where his food on his plate. None of us know what to think. And it scares all of us.”

“I want to hide,” Joe said. “Mandy, I want to hide! I’ve never wanted to hide in my whole life but that’s what I want to do now. Don’t you see? I don’t know… I don’t know if I can get past this. When mom and dad bring me home, I may just want to stay there and never go back to school.”

“But you will go back,” Mandy told him, confidently. “Because that’s what’s right. We all know you will. Don’t worry about being scared now.”

She lapsed off into their silent speech, their gestures and looks that told Joe, more clearly than any words that Joe would get through it and be strong again. If there were no other reason for it, then he would do it because Frank needed him to do it. And he would do it because, for Joe Hardy, there was no other answer.

Joe found himself in her embrace again when she was done and she patted his face, much like their mother would have done. He laughed and squeezed her hand as she wiped the tears from his eyes.

“Better?” she asked.

He shrugged then nodded. If it wasn’t completely better, he felt like he could live with himself again.

“Good,” Mandy stood and went out into the hallway, coming back in a moment later with Frank. She sat Frank in the spot she’d been sitting in on the bed and took a position on the other side of the bed for herself.

“How are you feeling?” Frank asked Joe.

“Better,” Joe admitted, truthfully. “In more ways than one, actually. What have I missed today?”

“Besides your line drills?” Frank said, grinning. “Someone set off a smoke bomb on our floor. The odds are on Maidlin, though I hear the secondary pool thinks it was one of the frat-pledges.”

“In our dorm?” Joe protested. “They’d get their heads ripped off. The girly frat boys wouldn’t come anywhere near Tauhausen!”

“Well, it is pledge week,” Frank said. “And if hazing is illegal, well, it’s still not enforced, at least not totally. You don’t get caught, no harm no foul, right?”

Joe grinned. “I suppose so. But I’d rather it were Maidlin. I’m sure we could come up with a good reason to tie him to the flagpole in the quad.”

“I’ve always thought Maidlin would make a rather interesting science lab specimen myself,” Mandy interjected. “Oh, did you hear he actually wanted to model for one of my art classes? If the teacher had chosen him, I think I would have skipped classes until it was done. Have you ever heard anything so scary? Makes me want to toss my cookies just thinking about it.”

“Eww, a nude Maidlin,” Frank grimaced. “Now there’s a thought I could have lived without for about a thousand years. By the way, Connor is voting for lighting rod. He has it on good authority that there really is an entrance out to the roof of our dorm and he figures he could tie Maidlin to the lighting rod up there without any problem. Now there’s a sight I’d pay good money to see.”

Mandy and Joe looked at each other, then laughed a little quickly in response. Well, if Frank wanted to make sight humor, they weren’t going to stop him.

“Are mom and dad coming to get you? Doctor Carlisle told me that he’s releasing you as soon as they get here,” Frank said a moment later.

“Yeah,” Joe said with a sigh. “I can’t go back to school until Monday. That means I’m missing yet another game. Coach is going to roast me for dinner by the time I can play again. I may as well kiss my position good-bye.”

“I don’t think it’s going to be all that bad, Joe,” Mandy told him. “Connor said Coach is more of a pussycat than he let’s on. Besides, you missed games last year and never lost the position then, what makes you think he’ll take it away from you now when you’re worlds away better than Coonby ever will be?”

“I still hate missing games,” Joe muttered.

“Joe,” Frank said, slowly. “Can you tell me anything about the guy that kidnapped you? What he looked like? What he sounded like?”

Joe looked at his brother for a moment, aware that Frank couldn’t see the expression on his face and grateful of the fact for once. He looked over at Mandy. She shrugged but gave Joe an encouraging nod to answer Frank’s question.

“I didn’t really see him that well,” Joe said. “He was wearing a mask, for one. I know he had green eyes. They looked like the specter of death, if you must know. He’s taller than me, too and strong as an ox. He half carried me into the woods with a knife at my throat. He had one of those low-pitched voices, he worked very hard to sound as scary as he could. Oh and he spoke a little formally. He kept calling me ‘Mr. Hardy’. I know he knew my first name, he called me ‘Joseph Hardy’ once, all formal like again.”

“A lot of the professors call students by Mr. or Miss and their last name,” Mandy commented. “You don’t think it was one of them, do you?”

“What are the chances that we’ll have two bad professors in one year?” Joe commented back. “And within two weeks of each other? I don’t think he was a professor but I can’t tell you why I think that. He could have been Tom Cruise and I wouldn’t have a clue, for sure.”

“Well, I would,” Mandy grinned. “Tom Cruise has blue eyes and he’s not six foot something tall.”

“Oh, fun-ny,” Joe said, drawing out the word in sarcasm. “You are sooo funny.”

“One tries her humble best,” Mandy said as she twiddled with a lock of her long, blonde hair.

“I didn’t really notice anything else about him,” Joe said after giving it some more thought. “Of course, I was freezing, aching and scared out of my wits too so I may be forgetting some things.”

“That’s enough to go on for now,” Frank said. “There can’t be that many taller than you men with green eyes floating around campus.”

“Planning on giving them all a personal inspection, big brother?” Joe asked.

Frank was silent for a moment and Joe wanted to bite his tongue for his flippancy.

“Not personally,” Frank said at last. “But I have all of these friends, you see, who might do the job just as well.”

“Good idea,” Mandy said, quickly. “Because if you don’t keep Connor out of trouble, he’s going to spend all of his time working on his list of a hundred and one ways to deep-fry Jackson Maidlin and I’d just as soon he used his time a little more productively, if you don’t mind.”

They both laughed at that, breaking the tension. They talked and carried on for almost another hour, chit-chatting about anything from Aunt Gertrude’s fried chicken to football to Arthur Miller and how much they all hated “Death of a Salesman.”

“Oh, bother,” Mandy said, finally, after she took a look at her watch. “I hate to cut bait and run on you, Joe, but I promised Connor I’d meet him after football practice. We’re going to try and go see a movie.”

“Uh, oh,” Joe said with a wicked grin for the benefit of his sister. “Make sure you fasten your seatbelt extra tight, Frank. You know how she drives when she’s in a hurry.”

“Hmm, I wonder if it’s too late to just walk back,” Frank said with a grin, also for the benefit of his sister.

“Oh, ha, ha,” Mandy told them both. “The problem with the both of you is that I never get any respect from either one of you! I swear you’re both like ten-year-olds!”

“Get out of here,” Joe told them as he swatted her on the arm and motioned for the door.

Mandy kissed Joe on the cheek again before she went around the bed to take Frank’s arm and lead him from the room. Joe sighed as he leaned back in his bed. Come Monday, some bad guys were going to be looking for a serious world of hurt.

He rolled over and got comfortable again to wait for his parents to come and get him. He was more than ready to get out of this hospital, even if it meant Aunt Gertrude mothering him when he got home.

“Joseph David Hardy!” Gertrude Hardy watched Joe as Joe came out of his room, hobbling along with the pair of crutches the doctor had insisted he take to help him with his walking. “You are supposed to be in that bed, young man. Get right back in there, I can get anything for you that you need.”

Joe smiled down the steps at his Aunt Gertrude and waved a couple of fingers at her. She stared at him for a moment as he turned again and went two steps down the Hall to the stairs.

“I tried calling you, Aunt Gertrude,” Joe told his Aunt. “But, when I didn’t get an answer, I decided to come looking for you. I wanted to know if you could bring me a glass of milk.”

“Of course, of course,” Gertrude said. “Sorry, I fell asleep for a few minutes. I’ll have your milk right up to you, now go lay back down. You boys really should try to stay out of trouble, it does worry your parents so.”

Yadda, yadda, yadda, Joe thought as he went into his room and lay back down on his bed. His feet had protested the whole standing up thing but Joe was thirsty enough that he wanted to risk his feet’s wrath to get up and find something besides water. Anymore water and he was going to turn into a water park.

Gertrude arrived a few minutes later, not only with some milk but a plate of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Joe grinned up at his Aunt as she settled the tray on the stand beside Joe’s bed.

“Thanks, Auntie,” he said. “I’ll be a good boy, I promise!”

Gertrude harrumphed. “That will be the day,” she said, briskly, as she strode from the room.

Joe ate his cookies and drank his milk quite happily, enjoying both of them immensely. Cafeteria food at college was barely edible at the best of times and their idea of a chocolate-chip cookie was a hard-baked prepackaged affair that had the ability to chip a tooth if you weren’t careful. Joe enjoyed each tasty morsel of his Aunt’s cookies and each tasty drop of milk as well, then he settled back in bed and turned on the TV to watch Sports Center.

“Tall man, green eyes,” Frank repeated to the others when they met in the snack bar later on that night. “Taller than Joe or myself, maybe taller than Connor. Joe said he was strong, strong enough to half-carry Joe through the woods with a knife at Joe’s throat. He has a low voice, though he might have been making it lower to scare Joe more. He’s got some tie-in with those gangers that Joe ran into yesterday, so we’ll need to be on the look-out for them as well.”

“That doesn’t sound too hard,” Chet said, slowly, as he munched on a bag of Doritos from the vending machine. “You think we’ll be able to find him on campus? What then?”

“What then is we keep an eye on him,” Frank said. “Or at least you guys keep an eye on him and Vanessa and I try to ID him via computer. He went to great pains to warn Joe away from investigating him, that means he’s up to something that he doesn’t want someone to know about. Do we have any big events coming up in the next couple of weeks?”

“Homecoming is in four weeks,” Samantha said after pulling something from her backpack. “Open house is next week-end. I hope we’re leaving campus for that. And, oh…”

Her voice trailed off for a moment.

“Jarod Peters is going to be on-campus as part of his campaign tour,” Samantha said. “He’s supposed to be here on October 2^nd. Do you think this might be related to that?”

Frank shrugged. “I don’t know, Sam, but it sounds possible. We’re going to need to find out as much information as we can. Just be careful, all of you. This guy, as we all know, is dangerous. He went to great pains to warn Joe, he’ll do the same to us.”

“And we can’t be sure it’ll just be a warning the next time,” Connor said, softly. “So, yeah, let’s all be very careful.”

They all voiced their agreement.

“Hi, guys,” Frank sighed as he heard Anna Phillip’s rather perky-sounding voice pipe up. “I saw you sitting here, I thought I’d come over and say hi! How’s Joe? Is he any better? I heard he got hurt?”

“Joe’s fine,” Frank heard Mandy tell her. Mandy could be nice to a porcupine about to quill her to death. “He’s at home right now and won’t be back for a couple of days. I’ll tell him you asked about him, though.”

“Do that,” Anna said. “Maybe I can come and visit him sometime?”

Frank sighed again. This girl just didn’t take a hint. You probably had to slap her upside the head to get her to see past the end of her own nose.

“You know, I’ll have to find out when he wants to have visitors, Anna, but I’ll get back to you on that,” Mandy said in a bright tone. “I’ll call you sometime tomorrow and let you know.”

“Oh, thank you!” Anna giggled. “I’d better go, my friends are waiting for me.”

Something woke Joe up about an hour later and he stared up into a semi-darkness illuminated only by the television that was still running. The late edition of Sports Center was on, telling Joe more than he wanted to know about the baseball play-offs and the upcoming games this weekend. He was very glad to hear that the BU Knights had a good shot this weekend in football. He just hoped Coonby didn’t do anything to mess it up.

Joe was about to turn off the television with his remote when he heard the faintest movement on the other side of his room and he felt a hand go over his mouth. He struggled, pushing against the person who was pushing down on his throat with their free hand.

“I warned you, Joseph Hardy,” the voice was the same as the night before and just as sinister. “You have not stopped interfering in my business.”

Joe made a protesting sound at that. He hadn’t even been back to campus since the last warning! What was this? Who was this man?

He blinked, unable to breathe, unable to fight against the man’s greater strength. Joe’s assailant continued to apply enough pressure to Joe’s windpipe that Joe couldn’t draw in a single breath of air.

“Your friends, Mr. Hardy,” the man whispered to him. “Your friends have taken up where you left off and they know things they should not know. And do you know why they know it, Mr. Hardy? It is because you told them.”

Joe struggled again, trying everything he could to tear the man’s hand free from around his throat. He finally managed to knock against the snooze button his radio; doing that caused the radio to blare on into full life.

The man glared at him, his green eyes narrowing before he raised a very large hand and crashed it down against Joe’s cheek, sending Joe’s world into a whirl of spots and lights before, finally, the darkness won