I S A A C

Nicholas was talking to the three girls as though he had known them his whole life. Luca, however, seemed rather distracted that night, watching the entrance doors with an unreadable expression upon his complexion, clutching his glass of champagne in hand.

He was so lost in his own world that he didn't even notice that one of the three girls was watching him dreamily. She tried drawing him into a conversation a few times, but he answered her as briefly as possible, sometimes only smiling and nodding distractedly.

"... and we have even written down the names of the contestants for tonight," Nicholas was explaining to the girls, who listened to him heartily, clinging to his every word. He always had that effect on people each time he spoke. "The winners will be announced in our paper."

"When do you publish your newspaper? Every week?" Patricia asked Nicholas, looking genuinely interested. "I don't know where my boyfriend is right now, but I want to join the contest with him."

"We usually publish the Scriptores every Monday, unless a really important event or news comes up," Nicholas answered.

"Can we still sign up for the dance competition?" Mary questioned, glancing hopefully at Luca from the corner of her eyes.

"Yes, of course!" Nicholas nodded enthusiastically. "You are free to take part in the contest until the end of the ceremony. Here, let me write your names down — I left my pen and paper on our table — Okay, so who are you dancing with?"

Before the girl could get the chance to even open her mouth, suddenly a loud and earsplitting noise erupted from the speakers that were hung high on the corners of the walls around the hall. The musicians stopped playing. The students ceased their dancing. Everyone was listening, confused. And then, out of the blue, music started playing from the speakers.

Immediately recognizing the newest song of Elvis Presley, the crowd squealed and cheered loudly. The ones who were waltzing to the slow music of the piano and violin began to change their dance moves. Those who were sitting rushed to the dance floor with their partners or friends, jiving and jitterbugging. The teachers looked around at each other in confusion. The dean sent someone to find the source and the person responsible for it, but nobody else seemed to mind.

Right at that moment, Shawn and Arthur emerged from the entrance doors of the hall, mischievous grins playing on their lips.

Nicholas laughed as the boys walked inside. "Of course it was them! Why am I not surprised?"

"WOOO!" Shawn shouted and threw his hands up in the air, directly running to the middle of the dance floor. Nicholas, Luca, and Isaac made their way over to Arthur who looked more cheerful and excited than they'd ever seen him, a flush of satisfaction running over his freckly face.

"Good job." Nicholas gave him the thumbs up as they walked up to him. They didn't even have to ask Arthur whether he was the one responsible or not. They just knew.

"How on earth did you do that?" Isaac asked him, chuckling.

"Oh, it was nothing. I just connected the speakers to the radio. It was Shawn's idea." Arthur shook a hand at them humbly, though he was still smiling broadly in triumph. It certainly wasn't nothing.

"Oi! You four!" They turned around at the loud voice of Shawn, calling them from the dance floor. "What are you waiting for! DANCE!"

"Sir, yes, sir!" Nicholas saluted dramatically, laughing as he then pushed the other boys toward the dancing crowd. Luca tried to resist him, but Nicholas wouldn't take no for an answer.

The festivity was more joyous and fun than anyone had expected. It took the school authorities almost two hours to find the source and stop the music, by which time everyone was worn out from dancing anyway and dinner was being served.

A large table was now set in the middle of the hall, filled with dishes of sliders, roasted vegetables, mashed potatoes, and cheese platters, with colorful desserts. Even though the music had stopped playing, the hall was far from quiet. There was a happy chatter filling the enormous room as everyone talked, laughed, and ate the delicious meal with their friends.

But just as nothing in this world is immortal and everlasting, the happiness of that evening was bound to come to an end when a loud and piercing scream reached them from outside the hall.

At first, Isaac thought that he had only imagined it, but he wasn't alone. The chatter slowly died down. Everyone had stopped what they were doing, sitting motionlessly, listening. An eerie silence dropped among them like a curtain, darkening their hearts with fear.

Moments later, all heads turned as the room's entrance doors burst open, and a girl ran inside. Her face was tearstained, eyes glistening in horror. She staggered toward the teachers' table, panting heavily.

A few people stood up to their feet, trying to take a better look at what was happening. Isaac's table was too far to hear exactly what the girl with red hair was saying. Or perhaps it was because she wasn't speaking properly at all, throwing out the words in mumbles and stutters, still breathing with difficulty.

All Isaac managed to hear were three words.

Outside... Nancy... Dead...

A murmur ran across the hall. Horrified, all the professors and school authorities raised from their seats, gushing out of the hall with the red-headed girl in the lead.

Soon, the students began to follow them with curiosity, though a part of them feared what they were going to see. Isaac hesitated, but when everyone else got up to leave as well, he tailed after them with dread striking against his skin like a pulse. His heart had started pounding against his chest mercilessly as they walked beneath the unnerving dark night.

He realized that the crowd was headed toward the dormitory buildings, stopping as they reached the courtyard between the West and East Residency Halls. People had gathered in the distance, huddled around something. Some were screaming, some were yelling for help and ordering others to call the police.

"EVERYBODY CLEAR OUT THE AREA! STAND BACK!" a man was shouting at the top of his lungs. The mass of people finally took a few steps back, creating a gap.

Without thinking, Isaac joined his first three fingers together to symbolize the Holy Trinity, making the cross sign with a shaky hand and a trembling body as he mumbled a prayer under his breath. He felt the air get knocked out of his chest when he saw a figure lying on the stone ground, right at the foot of the building, a circle of blood formed around her.

The girl was dead.

***

The students were ordered back to their dormitories. The five boys had gathered in Arthur and Isaac's room, which had direct view to the courtyard. None of them spoke a word. The dorm was drowned in a dreary silence, hauntingly so.

Nicholas was leaning against the window, right beside where Arthur's machine was, glancing outside with a frown. Shawn kept pacing around the dorm restlessly, lost in his thoughts. Luca had his face buried in his palms, while Arthur was staring down at a fixed spot on the floor, both of them sitting at the edge of one of the beds.

Isaac had pulled out the chair behind his desk and sat there wordlessly, as though frozen. He felt bewildered at the horror that the scene had intensified within him. Every nerve in his body felt numb. There was a pounding inside his head, where he had locked his memories away years ago. It seemed as though his old memories were trying to break through, and Isaac couldn't afford to let that happen.

"The police have arrived." It was Nicholas who broke the dull silence. Shawn went by the window as well, watching the scene bellow them unravel.

"Who are they talking to?" Shawn questioned after a while, narrowing his eyes in a hopeless attempt to see better.

"They're interrogating the girl who found the body," Nicholas whispered the words.

"The girl who died... who — who was she?" Arthur asked, finally looking up.

"I heard someone say it was Nancy Green," Nicholas replied in a remote voice, not taking his eyes off the window.

"Did you know her?" Arthur questioned, but he shook his head.

"No, but I think Luca knew her," said Nicholas. Gulping, he then slowly moved toward Luca and sat beside him on the bed, wrapping an arm around his shoulders. "Luca? Are you — are you all right?"

Luca finally removed his hands from his face and lowered his arms. His eyes were red, though he wasn't crying. He looked like he was holding his tears back with all the strength he had left.

"I — I don't understand..." Luca muttered, staring down at his lap with trembling lips. "How..."

"W-well..." Nicholas started, fumbling with the words as he desperately tried to find the right ones, which was very much unlike him. "They say that it was... I heard someone say that it was suicide."

"Her dorm window was open. She had fallen down," Arthur said, his voice wavering weakly. He looked paler than ever, almost sick.

"But — but she couldn't have. Maybe it was an accident. M-maybe someone pushed her." Luca shook his head in disbelief, or rather, in denial. "I know I didn't talk to her that often and I didn't know her well, but... she was — She would never..."

"Just because someone doesn't show it, doesn't mean that they're fine," Nicholas said softly, though his voice was shaky. "We can never know what someone is struggling with. They can smile to your face, while carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders."

Isaac recognized the guilt on Luca's face, for he was all too familiar with it. Isaac was a killer after all, in a way or the other.

No more words were exchanged between the boys, all of them feeling too shaken to speak. The body was at last removed from the scene, but the police hadn't left yet. They were now speaking with a young girl with long, blonde hair.

Eventually, as the evening began to grow darker, the others returned back to their own dorms. Arthur and Isaac retired to bed, though sleep didn't come easy to any of them. Isaac was a boy of creed, and so he whispered his prayers under his breath while he was lying in bed. At last, his prayers slowly faded into silence as he slowly drifted to sleep.

***

That night, Isaac woke up from a nightmare he hadn't had for six years, gasping for air. He'd thought that he had finally managed to get rid of the nightmares, but it seemed as though Nancy Green's death had awoken the sleeping beast within him, triggering his old and long-buried fears.

Isaac shot up into a sitting position on his bed, breathing heavily, his heart thrashing so loudly that he could hear it pound all through his body.

He had dreamt of the same rivers again, roaring and heaving.

He had heard the exact screams that used to haunt his old nightmares as a kid, saying one word, and one word only, screaming it over and over again:

Billy...