Chapter XVIII: The Snakes in the Quadrangle Get Even

Morgenthau was once blessed with the region’s finest academic faculty, a talented and dedicated student body as well as one of the most scenic landscapes in all of collegiate America. In the years after it closed, the college had become cursed with ruthless and vindictive landlords, an untalented and deviant homeless population and landscapes so overgrown and unkempt that an alumnus returning home would not even recognize the place.

It was not a place for people with a wide variety of phobias. Claustrophobics would feel very nervous in the cramped dorm rooms we were forced to inhabit. People with fears of heights would dread the walk up the steep, slippery, dark staircases. The spiders, rats, roaches, and tiny bloodsuckers would give nightmares to those with various vermin fears and the vast array of ghosts and monsters—both real and imagined—could stricken the most extroverted individual with agoraphobia.

But to top it off, Morgenthau’s quadrangle was infested with about two- or three- dozen snakes that were perhaps the most awful curse cast upon us. The snakes had been on campus longer than anyone except The Professor, and they seemed to assert a rightful ownership over the place. Their habitat rested in the quad’s jungle, but there was no place that they considered off limits. War had been waged against the slithery beasts for close to seven years, and just we thought the winter had cast them into oblivion, they would return every spring in seemingly greater numbers.

Like most of the bad things that plagued Morgenthau after its untimely demise, the infestation was the result of the Grasso’s buying the school from the board of trustees and the rapid slashing of programs and academic funding. Before the college started dipping into the red, the science building on the south side of the campus was conducting a series of investigations and experiments involving the venom of some poisonous snakes and how effective anti-venoms were in treating snakebites in both humans and animals.

Grover knew a couple biology majors during his time at Morgenthau, and when I asked him to explain the origin of the snakes, he wouldn’t shut up about it. His knowledge of human anatomy combined with a curiosity for the inner workings of other species had inspired him to sit in on a few lectures to learn more about the department’s experiments.

“What happens is that neurotoxins block action potential propagation through the myelin sheath of the neuron,” he said when I asked him why the young scientists were conducting their studies on poisonous snakes. My only reply was a dumbfounded expression.

Grover took a breath and continued. “Meaning,” he said, cutting to the chase. “That your synapses don’t fire.”

“So it stops the venom from doing it’s dirty work to a victim’s nervous system?” I asked thinking that I had figured it out. Grover shook his head in frustration.

“No, no, no, that’s what the toxin does,” he said. “The anti-venom opens the potassium channels to allow for the gradient of positive and negative ions to balance—hence—allowing the action potentials to fire. It binds to those areas.”

I let out a slight chuckle after he finished explaining it. I wondered how such a talented mind could be wasting away in an awful place like Morgenthau.

“Grover,” I said with a laugh, “You are a fountain of useless information.”

“Yes,” he replied, “and one day I might just save your life.”

Whether Grover’s friends in the science building were making any true progress in their research I never really found out. One thing was certain, they were working with a number of snakes and other kinds of animals and they needed a lot of money to keep the project up and running. The Grassos put a stop to that.

So many programs went under so fast, it was as if rogue U-Boats were torpedoing sailboats at a regatta. They pulled the rug out from underneath everybody, including professors and staff who lived at the college and were forcefully evicted.

One of them was Dr. Rahma Bolli, who had emigrated from India was emotionally invested in the department’s research after losing his cousin to a snakebite while traveling through his home country as a child. Unlike many other members of the faculty, Bolli had nowhere to go once his tenure at Morgenthau was up. He had no family on the east coast who he could stay with and he had no second job lined up after the school closed.

According to Grover, many residents believed the legend that Nolan, Simeon and their father set the snakes loose as an effort to intimidate residents and force any squatters to leave. However, according to Grover, Professor Bolli had attempted to save the animals, but he ended up accidentally setting them free. For whatever reason, the beasts managed to survive off the cute critters that lived in the woods later occupied by the addicts. Over time, they started coming over to the abandoned dorms because they feasted on small mice, rats and other vermin. As it was, the dorms had a bit of a rat problem because of all the food that was left outside by the residents.

Grover said that they didn’t really become a problem until the second winter he was there. Many of the snakes were not used to the cold temperatures in the northeast and they went wherever they could to stay warm. The warmest places, of course, were in the dorms where the new homeless population was living. According to Grover, it was not uncommon to return to a room and find a snake hiding out under the covers or between the wall and mattress.

Wherever the squatters moved, the snakes followed. When people started living under the bleachers in the fieldhouse, the slimy bastards moved in too. For the most part, wherever the snakes went, the residents fled. After Alistair moved to Morgenthau he did his best to invent little devices that would keep them out of the area, but none of them seemed to work.

After a few years or so, the snakes stopped coming into the dorms and stuck to their overgrown jungle, which had developed into its own ecosystem. They had enough food and space to live on their own and it was very clear that everything except the dorms was their territory. Despite the fact that a number of these beasts carried nervous system-killing venom, there were few cases I could remember of people dying from snakebites. Usually the drugs or the cold would kill them first.

I suppose that they truly were more afraid of us than we were of them, and that’s saying a lot because I’m fucking terrified of them. The snakes, much like the addicts, maniacs and ghosts served as a control for the real menaces on campus. Most of the crime and nastiness went down at night, and when you knew that there were some real creepy things roaming the pitch-black walkways, the tendency was to remain inside rather than to tempt fate.

However, not everybody who ended up at Morgenthau had the luxury of receiving an orientation like I got from Grover, Kendra and others. Like my run-in with the addicts in the woods one night after returning from the Tri-Towns, a few lessons had to be learned the hard way. Some people were just inexperienced and did not know the rules of engagement, especially when it came to the snakes, addicts and maniacs.

There were others who felt that they were above the law of the land. The Watcher, for instance, had been ordained with certain immunities by Nolan and Simeon, and as a result, he walked around the campus as if he were a demigod of some kind.

The Watcher didn’t act the slightest bit guilty about the murder of Kendra in the months following his vile act. In some ways, his handlers had rewarded him for finally getting rid of Kendra and beating The Professor into such a bloody pulp that he was practically catatonic. His shadow now stretched farther and more menacing than it had in the months before Kendra’s death. He was like the villain in some bad western—an outlaw that walked into town and caused the women and children to shutter the windows and take cover in the attic.

Whenever he reared his ugly head, the residents of the former college darted into their homes and hoped that he was not looking for them. As the summer following Kendra’s death wound on, Winston was falling deeper and deeper into his depression and his work was suffering. Winston was able to make rent by going down to the park in the Tri-Towns and painting caricatures of people for money. He brought a few of his lesser paintings down and put them on display on a park bench hoping that he could attract some buyers. He was very talented, and no one else in the area would charge as little as he did for work that was far superior.

However, without Kendra there to be his source of inspiration and therapy, Winston was not going down to the park, and he was not making enough money to live in his library residence with ghosts. He had been hiding in the library for week after the rent was due, and he had refused to leave the building knowing that The Watcher could be waiting around every corner.

By that point, Nolan had been scared stupid by The Steve and the other addicts in the woods, which meant that his younger brother Simeon would be coming around to collect rent from the residents. When Simeon came around to collect money, he would always ask us to pass along a threatening message to Winston. “Tell that crazy son of a bitch that he could run and he could hide,” said Simeon. “Eventually, he’s gonna have to pay the price. Everybody has to pay.”

On a humid night in August, The Watcher had been ordered to get payments from Winston or evict him forcibly. He paced around the building for an hour or so, knowing full well that the footsteps from his heavy boots would resonate as a terrifying rhythm. The Watcher could smell the blood in the water, and just as if he was hunting an animal that hid in a cave, he knew that it was only a matter of time before Winston had to emerge from the darkness and face the music.

Winston knew he was out there, and as he circled around the building for the sixth or seventh time, Winston snuck out through an emergency fire door and eluded the brute’s surveillance. He knew that he could hide out in the rubble of the fieldhouse until dawn. The Watcher might have been an evil monster, but eventually he had to sleep.

Watcher had no idea that Winston had skipped out of the library to go hide. In fact, as Winston headed towards the fieldhouse, the evil murderer heard a few crackling sounds and turned around in the opposite direction. Watcher followed the noises around to the front of the building and looked into the windows. Winston had left a few of his candles burning and his unfinished paintings were visible in the dim room. As The Watcher peered in, he thought he saw Winston’s shadow move past the light and towards the door. Eager to inflict some pain into something defenseless, The Watcher salivated the impending slaughter and moved towards the library’s entrance.

Watcher had been a bit spooked about the idea of encountering a ghost in the library, but his blood lust was insatiable. The hunger turned off any receptors of logic in his brain and turned him into a dedicated, uncontrollable machine. He wouldn’t stop until he got that which he craved.

He pushed the thick doors of the library open as if he kicking open a screen door. As he entered, he saw the shadow of his prey stop in its tracks and dart towards the rear of the library. The monster lunged forward, following the target. He followed the shadow into the library yelling his name. “Win-ston… Win-ston…”

As he searched for the painter, he kicked empty paint cans and threw chairs across the room, slamming them into the old furniture that was stacked high against the walls. He threw a chair into a pile of books and saw the figure dart back towards the rear of the library and the old typewriter stations. The Watcher followed the footsteps and stopped in frustration as they suddenly vanished. The Watcher hunched down in an attempt to sneak up on Winston, crouching to a height shorter than the top of the typing stations. He could hear heavy, panicked breathing around the corner. He had trapped his prey in a corner in the rear of the library and now he was ready to move in for the kill.

He slid around the corner with his fist cocked back, and swung it with force into thin air. There was nobody standing where The Watcher had heard the heavy, rapid respiration only moments before. He could feel the body heat and smell the fear of Winston. The presence was there, but now it had vanished.

A sudden loud noise stunned the brute and he dropped to the ground in a defensive panic. Every typewriter in the room—which had been without electricity for more than seven years—suddenly began typing at break-neck speed, slapping letters to blank pages with the speed of a machine gun. The noise set off a cacophony of clicks, pings and scratches. The Watcher covered his ears until the machines suddenly came to a screeching halt. As he stood up, an eerie silence filled the room. The heavy breathing he had heard moments before was gone, but a new sound could now be heard. Audible above the rapid, terrified thumps of his own black heart were long, deep breaths swooping across the cavernous main room of the library.

As the disembodied breaths continued, cold bursts of air came flowing through the room. The Watcher had been filled with bloodlust and anger, but suddenly, the evil monster was feeling an alien emotion creep up his spine—fear. He had always been in control, even when he was in prison. Now, he felt as though the entire world was spiraling out of control. To hell with Winston, he needed to get out of this awful place. He turned to run for the exit and stopped cold.

“Boo,” said Kendra’s pale, bloody ghost.

The Watcher screamed and ran in the other direction, crashing through chairs, desks, old paintings, books, boxes and broken glass. He ran towards the light, but every light was flanked by new visions of the countless people he murdered, raped and tortured.

“Do you like it when we watch?” they whispered in a ghostly unison.

He batted back and forth like a pinball in a haunted house arcade machine. He was spun around, bounced about and shot through the terrible sequences that he had been a part of. He could hear their screams for help and their terrified weeping. He could feel their agony and their perpetual fear. He tried to block out the noises, but they were overpowering. The ghosts had found their way inside his head.

Somehow, he found the exit and bolted through the doors and towards the Main Residence Hall. Inside the dorms, we had all heard him calling Winston’s name, and we had kept watch of the building with great worry, hoping that we would not hear Winston cry out in pain. When we heard The Watcher’s screams, we had assumed the worst. I, for one, was shocked to see the tall, bald monster rush out of the library screaming with a horror that he had never experienced in his life.

As I said earlier, not everybody at Morgenthau was given a proper orientation upon moving here, and The Watcher did not fully understand the new terrain of Morgenthau as well as he should. Had he received Grover’s welcome tour, he would have known not to go walking around the campus’ pathways at night, and he would certainly know never to take a shortcut through the tangled weeds in the quadrangle.

But The Watcher was not that bright. He sprinted out of the library and was looking over his shoulder to see if any of the ghosts and demons had chased him. Had he been looking forward and not backward, he may have noticed that he was about to step on one of Alistair’s pipes that he had carelessly left lying around. The Watcher stepped on the pipe in full stride and it tripped the beast, sending him flying face first into the jungle of weeds. He landed with a tremendous thump and opened up a man-shaped crater in the thick brush.

Before he opened his eyes, The Watcher was greeted by the most hideous sound that he could possibly imagine. He had landed in the comfortable nest of one of the snakes that inhabited the quadrangle, and his uninvited presence had drawn great ire from this slithering fiend. It let out a deep, angry hiss that we could hear all the way up in the main residence hall.

The last thing John Scuzzi ever saw was a big, angry snake swooping down at his face, delivering a half dozen savage blows and a tablespoon of fatal venom. He popped up from the attack and let out more terrifying screams, but the attack had already weakened him. He stumbled forward through the weeds and stepped on more snakes, getting bit on his ankles, hands, calves and forearms. He finally let out a shriek and collapsed into the center of the quadrangle where the hisses of the snakes would continue all night long.

In the dorms, a mix of horror and relief filled the residents of Morgenthau. We knew that we had just witnessed the end of The Watcher, and it set off a slew of emotions. His death was welcomed and quietly celebrated, but despite his bloody, awful departure from the ranks of the living, our thirst for revenge remained unquenched. Kendra was still dead and the grief in our hearts still choked all the happiness from our lives. We wanted to put his head on a pike out by the entrance to the campus to show Simeon that we too meant business, but his body was so deep in the quadrangle that it was never recovered.