Friday the 25th did not begin especially well. With Mercury in retrograde, my day was filled with those everyday complications that build to growing frustration. There were simple computer problems and bizarre communication errors. IDs forgotten in dorms and printers out of order. Splenda missing from the dining hall and professors twenty-five minutes late to office hours.

The signs were clear: atmospheric conditions were not ideal for exploring campus after dark.

If only I’d known what I was in for during one innocent trip to Hamilton last night. Upon entering the hall, I was received by walls coated in yellow slime, mysterious and particularly opaque. Out of the depths, a hysterical CC classmate rushed by—out of breath, heaving the haphazard weight of one very large backpack onto the marble floor, he grasped my arm and met my eyes.

He mumbled something about destiny and being cursed and frantically whispered his UNI thirteen times over and over in my ear but what was truly behind those glassy blue eyeballs…I will never know. He dropped his gaze and left me, as abruptly as he’d arrived, departing to whence he’d come. His sudden appearance whispered warnings at me, “Get out; do not return until midnight strikes on the first of November.”

My coat sleeve yet bears the fine imprint of that ’16 boy’s desperate grip. My mind yet retains a clear image of his twitchy, maybe-just-stressed, maybe-very-recently-driven-insane-by-a-haunted-Hamilton pair of eyes. My soul seems to yet hold the key to the truth behind the Hamilton seepage.