X
2023
CONTENT WARNING: Homage to Edgar Allan Poe
1
Dear students,
I regret to inform you of the passing of two members of our community. I trust that you will all cooperate fully with the authorities. Classes will meet as scheduled.
Regards,
Headmaster Roderick
From the tone of the headmaster’s email, you might be inclined to believe this was the sort of thing that happened all the time at Lightborne Academy. If you’d ever had the misfortune of driving by the place, you’d be sure of it, even if you hadn’t caught a glimpse of the wastes, the burnouts, and the rest of us lowlifes that make up the student population.
To be clear, no one comes to Lightborne by choice. Even its benefactor, a presumably well-intentioned billionaire unaware that converting haunted old mansions into homes for wayward youths had fallen out of favor around the turn of the previous century, had stumbled into the Academy in an act of desperation, hoping to address not a public health crisis, but rather a public image in dire need of resuscitation.
I always found the name of the school rather ironic. The benefactor undoubtedly intended to cast it as a pathway out of the darkness of the surrounding urban blight, yet a not insignificant portion of the students had found their way to Lightborne following an episode in which a team of desperate EMTs or police bullhorns demanded that they not go into the light.
I had arrived under less dire circumstances, largely because my downfall occurred when I was too young to have been aware of the alternatives. Twelve years later, I was yet to depart, staring down my impending eighteenth birthday with mild alarm—not necessarily at the prospect of leaving Lightborne, but at the burden of freedom that would be thrust upon me the moment I decided to forego my second attempt at the eleventh grade and cross into the world beyond the gates.
The symbolic significance of crossing the threshold into adulthood was not lost on me, but the literal act of stepping off of Lightborne property was my more pressing interest. For twelve years, my life had been confined to the hulking, Gothic monstrosity of Lightborne itself, plus the surrounding claustrophobic lawns that filled half a city block and were flanked on all sides but one by high stone walls.
The final side, Lightborne Academy’s supposed façade, was edged by wrought iron fencing, and for weeks, my only thoughts had been of the day that I would step up to that fence, not to press my face between the bars, but to watch the gate swing wide and step through it a free man—for that’s what eighteen would make me, a man.
Of course, the fatal incident that would occupy my mind for years to come made me forget all of that.
2
The brevity of the headmaster’s message did nothing to delay the spread of information. Community isn’t the right word for Lightborne, but we’re a rather small collection of lost souls, and no secret is ever kept for long.
The body in the dormitory belonged to Lacey Monroe, a girl two years younger than myself, who, despite the Academy’s herculean efforts to keep us all clean, always had the faint look of a junkie about her. Her shadow-rimmed blue eyes left me with the impression that she could have been pretty, once, or even still, if not for the various ways life had intervened and left her on a crash course with Lightborne.
They found her in her own room, still dressed in her uniform: blazer, tie, and all. The tie around her neck was an interesting detail in my mind, because her head was located separately, not on the floor with everything else that used to belong to her, but laid out, almost lovingly, on her pillow. White sheets, red blood, black hair, and those blue-blue-blue eyes closed to the world forever.
Like most of us around here, I doubt she’ll be missed.
The other victim’s identity took longer to ascertain. There was no second body, just a trail of blood across Lacey’s windowsill, and a horrific spatter fringed by yellow police tape on the sidewalk four stories below. We all heard the sirens, I’m sure, but you’d be hard pressed to find a night when you don’t hear sirens in this part of town. The crime, the violence, the deaths of despair all hung over us figuratively, having led us to the Academy, and I suppose it was well within the city’s rights to hang them over us literally as well.
It would have taken a deliberate leap to clear the strip of lawn and stone wall separating the dormitory from the city streets, so the consensus was murder-suicide. A call to the local hospital confirmed that a lost soul in a Lightborne uniform had been picked up in the early hours of the morning, and despite the medics’ best efforts, had departed this world not long after Lacey.
A survey of the common area led to an unsettling conclusion. The second body must have belonged to X.
X was an enigma, even here, among Lightborne’s eclectic and ever-expanding collection of the dregs of humanity. I can say with near certainty that none of us knew a single fact about X besides that which was outwardly visible.
New arrivals at Lightborne are never met with great fanfare or even formal introductions, but I happened to be on my way out of the headmaster’s office as X was completing the requisite arrival paperwork. Two images from that scene, from my first encounter with the mysterious X, have stayed with me to this day.
One, the impeccable penmanship, the looping, black-inked cursive that answered every prompt on Headmaster Roderick’s questionnaire with, simply, none. Name, none. Age, none. Education, none. Pronouns, none. In place of a signature, entirely at odds with the rest of the meticulously drawn letters, was a broad, childlike scribble of the letter X, traced over so many times that the pen must have torn through the paper. It was as close to a name as X ever admitted to having, so that was what we called X.
Two, though. Two. Two scowling amber eyes glaring out of the most haunting face I’ve ever encountered. From first sight I knew, without a doubt, that X was the most attractive human being I would ever meet in this life. Those features were like an ever-shifting mask, vaguely feminine and beautiful in one light, masculine and handsome in another—but always intense, hawklike. And those eyes. Those were eyes that would never leave your memory, would never let you go.
X, though, had evidently been let go.
Had escaped, to put it properly, and if it weren’t for Lacey, I think we all might have been almost happy for X. It’s not the ending you’d wish on anyone, but nothing at Lightborne is, and at least it happened on X’s own terms.
But the murder portion of the murder-suicide put a bit of a damper on things. Even among us degenerate youths, there was an understanding that murder, at least, we were better than. Violence, theft, and substance abuse could all be understood and tolerated, but none of us were killers.
Then again, none of us were X.
3
The evening after the news broke, I was sitting in my dormitory, letting my eyes drift over the open textbook before me on my scarred wooden desk while my mind remained fixed upon the fatal incident.
Impossible. That was the only word for it. Not Lacey’s death; she was easy enough to justify away. If it hadn’t been X, it would have been a current or former lover, no more than five years down the road.
X, however, was impossible in life, and even more so in death.
I must admit I had developed a fondness for X, a mystification that warped itself into admiration the longer I knew X—and the less I knew about X. The perpetual mystery of X provided a much-needed break in the monotony of life at Lightborne. Our uniforms, our schedules, our habits, even our vices were as regular as clockwork. But not X.
For one, X was always late. Impossibly late, given the regimented nature of our lives, but never without a compelling excuse.
X would burst into the dining hall, eyes blazing with a fire the rest of us had either never possessed or forgotten long since. Blazers and ties were required for all meals, but X would invariably arrive underdressed, with shirtsleeves bunched up at the elbows to reveal a pair of lean, muscled forearms and fists clenched tight around whatever fury was burning in those eyes.
When interrogated about the day’s tardiness, X would scowl and hurl snarling one-line excuses that presented more questions than answers. “It’s going to thunderstorm tonight.” Or, “The new laundry detergent smells like a hospital.” Or even, “The gargoyle on the west end of the roof is covered in bird shit.” X’s excuses were invariably true, but how the information had been obtained, and what it had to do with a late arrival to breakfast remained a mystery.
In the scant few hours of unstructured time that we were granted each day, X would seem to float in and out of existence, appearing at intervals to pass silent judgment or occasionally deposit a gift of a baggie of marijuana, a domesticated rat, or even once an unlocked phone not subject to the same stringent “parental controls” that plagued our Academy-issued devices.
It was as if X was haunting us, not a fellow student, but a ghost not of the past or even our own time, but of a future filled with secrets and ambiguity. A ghost fueled not by vengeance or unfinished business, but internally by whatever fire burned behind those amber eyes.
As I sat at my desk, I struggled to convince myself I would never see those glowing eyes again, never watch that angular face slip in and out of shadow, never—
My musings were interrupted by a sharp rap on the door, which was unexpected at any hour. Despite my many years at Lightborne, I had never made what could be considered a proper friend, nor had I devolved into the sort of enemy who would need to be kept close. I was an institution of sorts, and perpetually held at arm’s length, as so many institutions—respected or otherwise—must naturally be. So a knock on my door, especially past dark, was at the very least intriguing.
More intriguing was my next observation, as I rose and swung open the heavy wooden door, that the narrow hallway was deserted. Not so much as the creak of a floorboard awaited me there, only silence and the flickering of the dying lights overhead.
Yet as I peered into the hall, the rap repeated itself. My pulse quickened as I turned to face what I was then certain was the source of the noise—a hurried knocking, not against the door, but at the pane of the single window overlooking the gates below and the city beyond.
Through the darkened glass, I could just make out the visage of a ghost. A battered, bloodied ghost clinging to the narrow stone ledge and eyeing me imploringly with that unmistakable burning stare.
4
I flung the window open and watched, dumbstruck, as my visitor crawled over the sill and collapsed upon my bedroom floor. The ghost was barefoot, draped in a long, black coat and baggy pants at least two sizes too large, shaking horribly from cold and overexertion. The dark, clotted blood that marked the apparition’s face appeared to have originated from a sizeable gash beneath its right ear, and blood was soaking through its coat as well.
At first, the shock was too great for my reeling mind to wonder what had happened. It seemed no more unlikely for X to appear to me in death than in life, though as my trembling hands lowered the window to shut out the chill night air, it occurred to me that I must, naturally, be dreaming.
Then X spoke: “Alden.”
My own name sounded alien when pronounced by those thin lips, by that voice perpetually defiant and accusatory, now shaking with a desperation I recognized immediately. I knew at once that this was no coincidence, that I had been chosen for whatever was to come next. “Alden,” X repeated, struggling to rise. “You have to help me. Someone is after me.”
On instinct, I extended a hand, which X grasped firmly with a hand at once weathered and divine, callused and rough but with a delicacy of build that called to mind artists, sculptors, musicians of a long-lost time. After a struggle, X rose—still clutching my hand—and took two lurching, wobbling steps before releasing me and collapsing onto my bed.
Had X not continued to stir, to fight against the pain and weakness closing in from all sides, I would have been convinced that X had come to me to deliver this final message, and to die. I had long since proven that was where my greatest potential lay, as a blank slate, a witness, and nothing more.
But death was evidently not the mission at hand. X stifled a moan of pain and began to peel back the sodden coat, revealing an underlayer so thoroughly soaked with blood it took me a moment to register that this was what remained of X’s Lightborne uniform, that crisp white shirt stained a grisly red, dripping from a ghastly wound somewhere in the area of X’s left collarbone.
“A—a towel.” It was a statement, an instruction, and I complied immediately, moving unsteadily in my rush to the chest of drawers in which my linens were stored. I returned to X’s side, extending a threadbare bath towel, mesmerized by the resigned determination in those burning eyes as X shed the bloodied coat and began to dab at the wound, scowling and white-knuckled but otherwise stoic.
“Can you sew?” X asked without looking up from the bloody mess.
“Can I—?” I heard myself repeat uselessly.
“Sew.” X’s glare turned on me with its full burning intensity. “Alden, I’ve been stabbed. I’ll bleed out if I don’t get this stitched up. Can you sew?”
Through the daze of unreality, I felt myself nod, and my legs, unbidden, carried me to my nightstand, to the hidden contraband I’d been certain was a secret known only to myself. In my younger years, I’d proven less untrustworthy than many of my peers, and had been put to work in the laundry, mending sheets and uniforms—and pocketing a small collection of needles and thread that I was certain would later prove a vital asset. In the intervening five years, they had lain untouched in the bottom of my drawer, but somehow X had known they were there and—as I suspected—had chosen me for a reason.
“Alden,” X repeated my name, closing those fiery eyes and tipping back that exquisite, angular jaw to more fully expose the wound. “Hurry.”
I felt myself shaking with anticipation, not just at the task I had been given, but at the mystery, that lovely contradiction of a body laid out before me, that even now, with that collared shirt unbuttoned, parted to reveal a jagged knife wound just above X’s heart, answered none of my burning questions: about sex, about beauty, about innocence and sin.
My fingers trembled as I fought to thread a coarse fiber through the needle’s taunting eye, but as I leaned in close, feeling the warmth of X’s aura envelop me, a feeling of peace washed over me.
After all, wasn’t this what I’d dreamed of? Wasn’t the promise of this moment—this impossible moment that had so long been denied me—what had carried me through the past few years, shaping the course of my every action for longer than I’d allowed myself to admit?
Wasn’t this what had clouded my thoughts the last time our bodies were this close, as I drove that knife into X’s chest?
Wasn’t this love?
5
For quite some time, neither X nor I spoke. My clumsy needlework had succeeded in staunching the flow of blood, and X seemed to be resting comfortably. Too comfortably, seeing as the final bed check of the evening was due any minute. I was still uncertain as to X’s motives, though I sensed that being discovered, particularly in this state, was not a desired outcome.
Just as this thought crossed my mind, X spoke. “You’ll let me hide here, then? Until we figure out who did this?”
Oh, how the unseen meaning of that question nearly choked me. “Of course,” I replied, keeping my voice as even as possible. Yes, X would stay with me for as long as the identity of the attacker—murderer, I suppose, seeing as Lacey’s end was my doing as well—went undiscovered.
Our heads lifted simultaneously at a sound from beyond the door, as the approach of bed check became at once an imminent, physical danger. “You—” I cut myself short as I turned back to X, who, impossibly, had disappeared from the bed and, I could only assume, lay in the shadows underneath. All that was left to do was bury the bloodied coat and towel in my chest of drawers, climb into bed myself, and extinguish the light.
The door swung open, an approving “hm” was issued from beyond, and we passed into the safety of night, a relief that should have slowed my racing heartbeat, but instead left me acutely aware of the dangerous secret—no, secrets—I was harboring. It was an exhilaration unlike any I’d experienced in my brief, sheltered life, and it was, perhaps, the first moment in which I found myself truly happy. Terrified, but proud, and undeniably happy.
Who else could lay claim to X’s life the way that I had? Who else had ever possessed, so fully, an enigma as rich and astonishingly beautiful as the one that lay trapped beneath my narrow bed? And who else had ever, or would ever, experience the rush of intoxication of feeling a nudge from below, followed by a low, rasping whisper of, “Move over. I’m coming up.”
I had done it.
Perverse though it may have seemed, and winding though the path had been, I had done it. I then lay in bed with the most breathtakingly mysterious human imaginable.
“You have to find who did this,” X murmured, settling gingerly beside me in a supine position.
“How?” I whispered, shifting aside to make room for my companion. I felt X’s hand brush against my thigh, and that gentle touch set my world aglow, told me everything I had done to lead to this moment was right, that in the presence of such beauty, the ends would justify even the most heinous means.
“You know, investigate.” X was silent for a few moments, then added, “Unless you know who it was.”
I froze, panicked. My blood ran cold. “What—what do you mean?”
X let out a long, slow breath before replying, during which my anticipation was agonizing. How could I be known? Why would X have come to me if even the slightest hint of suspicion were present?
“I guess… you’re like me,” X said, and all at once, everything within my body relaxed. “Don’t participate much, watch from the outside. Only difference is, you seem to care what the rest of them are doing. I figured you might’ve been onto this one already, is all.”
“No,” I gave a little shake of my head that rustled the sheet around me—around us. “But you’ll be safe here.”
I heard the faint rustle of X’s nod in return, and as my heart swelled with pride yet again, added, impulsively, daringly, “I promise.”
6
The next several days passed in a blur of secrecy and excitement. By day, I resumed my normal activities, often pocketing an extra apple or slice of bread in the dining hall, but otherwise returning to the routines of Lightborne as if nothing had happened. And perhaps nothing had happened. Perhaps this was how life had always been meant to be lived, and everything up until now represented a grand interlude designed to occupy me until the moment presented itself for my life, truly, to begin.
I excelled in my interview with the police detective who pulled each of us students aside to ask where we’d been the night of the fatal incident. I, of course, had positioned myself in the common room just long enough to be spied by at least half a dozen of the Academy’s finest young wastes, before retreating to one of my preferred corners where I could eavesdrop unseen, where I’d been discovered on so many occasions it didn’t occur to anyone that I could have been anywhere else for the remainder of the evening.
It was almost a shame the detective didn’t know. If prompted, I could have offered quite a story that now, I suppose, the police will never learn.
Questioned regarding my motives, I could have detailed the furtive glances cast in X’s direction at every opportune moment, the questions, the longings, the impulses building up inside of me. And the jealousy, the rage, the suffering as I realized this impossible human would never be mine, would instead belong, albeit loosely, to the world, and to an inner self so opaque I was certain I could not be the only one driven mad by desire.
As for my plans, I could have discussed the realization that X had to die if I was to have any peace in this life. Furthermore, the blow had to appear self-inflicted to avoid too grand of an investigation, and a fellow victim had to be involved to villainize the deceased, who would consequently live on, beloved, in my memory alone.
Finally, on the subject of execution, I could have recounted the moment things began to go wrong. Lacey had been dealt with swiftly and easily, but X proved more of a challenge. I was certain the threat of a bloody knife—especially given the proximity of Lacey’s headless corpse—would be enough to force X through the window and out of this life, but no, I was forced to fight, and fight hard, at one point realizing that it would be X’s life or my own. There was to be a second body, clearly, and if slitting X’s throat or plunging a dagger into X’s heart was the only way, I was prepared to carry out the heinous act. Eventually, my strength prevailed, and I forced X to the window, and waited for the tell-tale crash.
Yet the story did not end there, as I had naively assumed. X, it seems, had survived the supposedly suicidal leap, and had even had the presence of mind to stuff a resident of the nearest street corner, mid-overdose, into the blood-spattered Lightborne blazer that would transform them into a compelling body double.
Most thrilling, though, was the final outcome: X was at once dead and very much alive, and above all else, mine alone.
By night, I took full advantage of this fact, returning to my room with tales of the motives and weapons that presented themselves to me at every turn. It wasn’t difficult to craft a compelling story; the beauty of a place like Lightborne is that everyone you meet seems vaguely capable of stabbing you in the heart, if slightly hampered by their malnourished body and shattered nerves.
X would coldly dismiss my suspects one by one, observing that one attacker’s height was wrong, another’s left-handedness would have reversed their motions, and a third’s secret fondness for Lacey would have precluded the entire incident.
Those nights, I was the happiest I had ever been, yet as I settled down in bed beside X, a realization gnawed at me. This cobbled-together secret existence was all predicated on my ability to buy time, to stall the investigation—for once the truth became known, it would all come undone. Even my perfect capture of X was nothing but a momentary blip, ephemeral as the flames that danced behind those haunting eyes.
7
“I’m starting to wonder if it was you, all along.” X scattered the words at my feet one night as I slunk back into my room following a midnight sweep of the dormitory—an act necessary to maintain the illusion of my ongoing investigation.
“Me?” I hardly needed to feign surprise. At once, my heart was racing, my hands beginning to shake. It didn’t help that X sat cross-legged atop my desk, dressed in a borrowed undershirt and pair of boxers that did nothing but invite more questions and inspire more imaginations of the lean, angular body they concealed. X’s wounds were healing, and only a faint blot of blood had soaked through the shirt.
“What if it were you?” X mused, hopping lightly down from the desk, and beginning to cross the room towards me. The simpering embers of X’s eyes locked onto mine, and I swear it, burned straight through to my very soul.
My guilt left me no choice but to play along. “What if it were me?” I countered.
“I think it would have been a crime of passion,” X murmured, stepping closer and, a moment later, taking hold of my unbuttoned blazer with both firm, powerful, slender hands.
I was rendered speechless, both by X’s sudden proximity and the implication that struck so close to the truth as to send a shudder down my terrified, lovestruck spine. “I—I think it would have been,” I stammered, hoping desperately for my outward distress to be concealed by the shadows afforded by the dim lamplight.
“Hm,” X hesitated, considering, then continued in a low whisper, leaning in closer until our lips nearly met, “What if I had known it from the start?”
My own heartbeat was deafening, stupefying. “Why would you have come to me, then?”
“I think I might have been… intrigued. I might—”
My desperate kiss cut short whatever supposedly hypothetical truth was forming on X’s lips. It seemed to startle both of us, but X regained composure more quickly than I, murmuring, “I see,” before returning the gesture with a cold, calculated intensity that set my body and soul ablaze.
“I might,” X continued, lips still a mere whisper away from mine, “have known it was the only way.”
“The only—?”
X silenced me with another kiss, then drew back far enough to lock eyes once more. Those fiery orbs had never glowed with such passion, such fury, as they did in that moment, as X whispered, “The only way to save myself, and to destroy you.”
“To—” I heard myself stammer, as a slow wash of dread crashed over me. My perfect crime was known, undone—not deduced over time, but understood innately from the start, by the one being capable of suspending my disbelief and convincing me that a preternatural sense had intervened, had catapulted X into my life for reasons beyond my hopeless, stupid control.
“I would have died out there,” X said, placing a hand across the healing wound. “If you lived another story up, they would have found me in the yard the next morning.”
I nodded, feeling that there was nothing left for me to say, that my story had been taken over by a force equally mysterious and powerful, and with which I was, even then, hopelessly infatuated.
“I knew you’d take me in,” X continued with a faint, teasing smile. “What choice did you have? You’d give me a place to rest, to heal…” X trailed off, tearing those burning eyes from mine and beginning to drift towards the window. “And, when the time came, you’d have no choice but to let me go.”
“Go?” The word seemed to come from a great distance away, though I knew it was I who had spoken it.
X turned back to face me. “It’s time. I’m strong enough. You’re weak enough.” X stooped to withdraw something from beneath our—no, my—bed, the bloodied garments from the night of the incident. X dressed swiftly, adding, “You’re never going to forget me, Alden. And you’re never going to tell anyone about me, either. So my work here is done.”
All I could do was gape, open-mouthed, the sensation of X’s kiss still upon my disbelieving lips, as the phantom of my innocence, my sins, my every desire, silently lifted the window and disappeared into the night.
8
Ten years have passed since that night, though I wouldn’t know it from the way it still haunts my memory. The way X still haunts my memory. More than my memory—every fiber of my being is still haunted by an adolescent phantom who drove me to the brink of madness, then stood with me on that precipice, teasing me, taunting me, and abandoning me with the knowledge of what I had done.
X was never mine, I see that now. Yet I can’t help but think fondly of those stolen nights, those shared moments so warped by my own imagination that I lost sight of both the world around me and my place within it. I was never meant to possess, never meant to claim anyone or anything but myself. Lightborne should have taught me that, but instead, that lesson fell to X.
Sometimes I lie awake late at night, in the rented studio apartment that passes for my own, and think of X. I invariably find myself gazing out the darkened window, years and miles away from that night, yet sure—absolutely sure—that if I only wait long enough, those glowing amber eyes will appear.
This time, they’ll be the death of me.