He found the envelope in his mailbox upon the conclusion of his morning literature class. He herded the usual haul from the mouth of the little cubby and discovered a few student essays with hand-written pleas to be read in the top margins, as well as solicitations from literary journals and a textbook catalog from Pearson.
He recycled the junk mail, stuffed the essays into his satchel and, carrying his third cup of coffee before him like a torch, he studied the envelope all the way back to his office. It was one of those oversized tan numbers with a scarlet thread to secure the flap. It was brand new, and its sender hadn’t bothered to fill in any of the address fields.
He unlocked his office and fell heavily into his chair, contemplating putting his head down on the desk for a few moments of sleep. Instead, he gulped stale coffee and opened the envelope.
Inside, there was a single sheet of paper.
He freed the document, put the envelope aside and regarded the delivery with curiosity. For the first time that morning, he actually felt awake. Life could be like that sometimes with a new baby at home—long stretches of exhaustion peppered with moments of keen lucidity.
Someone had sent him a bar graph. It was printed in black and white, the words Prof. Emerson in bold, centered at the top of the page. There was a date—that very day’s date—next to the name: 9/10/11.
He noted the incongruity of not adding a ‘0’ before the month and then turned his attention to the graph. The ‘Y’ axis stretched to ten units, the ‘X’ axis extending horizontally to twelve.
Beneath it, a single, centered word: ENERGY.
The graph depicted a steady decrease from unit one to unit twelve, with the last bar in the row just cresting the ‘3’ mark. He put the sheet of paper on his desk, laced his fingers behind his head and considered its meaning.
The university was big on assessment. There were measurements for literally everything they did: student success, room utilization, enrollment growth or decline. It wasn’t uncommon for him to receive end-of-semester reports on those things—and many of them did include various charts and graphs. They were as regular and predictable as the tides.
But this one.
Whose energy was it mapping, and why had it arrived near the beginning of the fall term?
The ambiguity gnawed at him.
He put it aside and pulled the student essays from his satchel, opting to give them a cursory glance before heading across the street to the diner where he often had his lunch.
But before he did that, he needed another splash of coffee. He and caffeine had never really seen eye to eye. Troy Emerson didn’t like the jumpy sensation it instilled in him and, until their daughter had been born just two weeks earlier, he limited himself to a single cup in the morning. There were occasional cups of tea with colleagues, and sometimes he had a soda with lunch. Other than that, he stuck to the regimen.
But since Claire had come along and he’d been enlisted into diaper duty, he was increasing his morning caffeine intake just a little each day.
He walked to the break room in a daze, adding enough scorched brew to warm his cup, the bizarre connection between the graph on his desk and his behavior as foreign to him as three consecutive hours of uninterrupted sleep.
***
His mailbox was stuffed again the following day. He gathered its contents into a loose pile, tucked the mess beneath his arm and headed back to his office.
“Morning, Troy,” Renee called from her desk as he passed. She smiled brightly at him. “How’s the little one?”
Emerson smiled in return at the department secretary—a graduate student close to finishing her dissertation. “She’s doing well. Getting bigger every day.”
“She sleeping okay? I hope you don’t mind me saying so, but you look a little tired.”
Emerson nodded. “No problem—I’m pretty tuckered out, actually. But Claire’s doing better; she’s sleeping a little more each night. Thanks for asking, Renee.”
It was true. Claire slept for longer stretches every night. Still, he’d been cobbling together about five restless hours ever since they left the hospital. The initial euphoria had worn off and now he felt like…well, he felt like a shaky facsimile of himself. Like an image on an old television—one that would waver in and out at the whims of the storm outside and the direction of the antenna on the roof.
That morning’s class had gone poorly; he’d been uncharacteristically terse with a couple of students who hadn’t finished the reading prior to their session. He chastised himself, an interior warning not to become one of those cynical assholes he’d carefully avoided throughout his own education.
He set the mail down and sorted through it. There, in the center of the pile, was another interoffice correspondence envelope.
Inside was another bar graph.
The graph was identical to the previous day’s, as were the labels at the top. But on this one, the ‘Y’ axis stretched to seven, the ‘X’ axis out to nine.
Beneath the chart: TRANSFORMATION.
He stared at the document, its very presence stirring a surge irritation inside of him. He frowned. Who was sending them, and where did they get off? He put it with the other graph, banishing it from his thoughts.
He sipped his coffee and focused on grading some essays, his comments and corrections growing increasingly scathing as he worked from paragraph to paragraph.
***
“Do you suspect anyone in particular?” Bethany asked him over dinner. They were eating spaghetti in the kitchen, Claire asleep in her bassinette at tableside.
“No. I mean—I don’t know where to begin, I suppose. I don’t want to flip out and just…well, just jump to conclusions.” He paused. “It’s just…”
Bethany waited him out. “Just what, hon?”
“Well, today’s chart shook me a little. Transformation. It’s a funny coincidence, Beth, but I’d just finished scolding myself for acting like one of those curmudgeons I swore I’d never become.”
She smiled across the table before covering his hand with her own. “It’s just stress, Troy. That’s all. We’ve had a big change, and we’re both tired.” She stood and retrieved the bottle of red wine, topping off his glass. “Have another glass of wine and read something for pleasure tonight. I’ll take care of Claire.”
He smiled and sipped his drink, a sudden and nebulous weight lifted from his shoulders. “Thanks,” he said. “I think you’re right. I just need a little rest, that’s all.”
She nodded and they finished dinner in companionable silence, wary of waking the baby.
When he retreated to the kitchen to clean the dishes, he finished the bottle of wine.
***
The following day’s chart was labeled: GLUTTONY.
It was appropriate, given the morning’s lecture on the topics of original sin and the works of Nathaniel Hawthorne. He’d driven to work in a bit of a haze—his stomach raw after the previous night’s indulgence.
He’d been careful to stow the empty bottle at the bottom of the recycling bin before climbing into bed and falling into a deep and dreamless sleep.
On this latest chart, the units were much larger. There was a single column, shaded in dark black, that stretched most of the way to an upper limit of 800.
He put the graph on top the others, aware that he was now accumulating quite a file, and locked his office before heading across campus to the Domino Diner for lunch. He was almost finished with his bacon cheeseburger when it occurred to him what the graph was charting.
Milliliters. He’d finished a 750 ml bottle of merlot the previous evening. Gluttony.
When he returned to his office, he checked the label below the graph: REFUGE, it said. That sealed it. He snatched up the charts and graphs and headed down the hall to speak with the department chair.
“Can I have ten minutes of your time, Barry?” he said from the doorway.
“Of course,” Barry said, without looking up from his computer. He finished the sentence he was typing and turned to face his guest. “Ah, Troy. Have a seat. What’s on your mind?”
Barry Kinsella—thick white hair and a bushy silver beard. Two years from retirement. Fiction writer, teacher, department chair and all-around good guy.
“What do you make of these?” Troy said, handing him the papers.
Kinsella read through them. “Can’t tell. What the heck are they measuring?”
“Yeah—weird, right? I’ve had one of these every day this week. You think it’s some kind of joke?”
“Could be,” Kinsella agreed, handing them back. “You check with the math department?”
In his state of fatigue, it hadn’t occurred to him that someone in the math department had created the vague tables.
“Huh,” he said with a laugh. “It’s a start, I guess. I know Joan Kitzhaber pretty well. Maybe I’ll see if she has an idea where they might come from. Thanks, Barry. Good idea.”
“Think nothing of it. How’s the little one?”
“Doing fine. Getting bigger every day. Thanks for asking.”
“Enjoy these days, Troy. They pass all too quickly, my man.”
Emerson felt only a little guilty for secretly hoping Kinsella knew exactly what he was talking about.
***
“Well, just based on these, I’m afraid I can’t help you, Troy,” Joan Kitzhaber said. She was studying the fourth in the series, this one a line graph that read HONOR. “They were made with standard software. It comes with the Microsoft Office package—probably forty profs here at the college using it any given time.”
“I just thought—you know—that maybe you might have a bead on who might play a joke like this. Personality wise. I mean, it’s getting kind of old.”
“I bet,” she replied, handing them back. “It would seem you’ve got a genuine mystery on your hands.”
“Well…shoot. Thanks for taking a look, Joan.”
“No problem. Hey, Troy? Get some rest, okay? You look exhausted.”
Emerson nodded and took his charts and graphs and left. He stopped off on the way home at a pool hall called Deluxe Billiards for a glass of red wine, drinking it slowly in the dim light of the bar, forestalling his return to the chaos of the life taking place in his home.
***
“It’s just not like you, Troy. It’s not in your character,” Bethany said. She’d been crying, her tears blurring the little bit of mascara she still applied in the mornings. “We need to be partners in this.”
“I know, I know,” he replied, slurring the words just a little. He was on his third glass of merlot, beyond what he’d had at the Deluxe. “It’s just. These charts! I don’t know what’s happening, Beth.”
“Screw the charts, Troy! Who cares about charts and graphs? This is your family we’re talking about here!”
He took a heavy swallow of wine and nodded his head slowly. His silence just made her angrier. She stormed out of the room, their daughter cradled in her arm like a football, and slammed the door to the nursery.
The commotion woke the baby, and he heard the siren wail of his daughter’s cries as he worked the corkscrew in the kitchen.
***
That Friday he lectured on history for an hour before letting the students out early. He hadn’t shaved—hadn’t prepared a coherent lesson plan. When he stopped to check his mail, he felt his chest tighten as he approached the cubby.
There was a pie chart waiting for him: INDIFFERENCE.
According to the numbers, he was at 100% on that one—the circle completely shaded with gray toner.
He added the chart to his growing stack, put a note on his door and fell into the embrace of the weekend, getting roaring drunk that night before sleeping on the sofa in the living room. When he awoke late the following morning, his mouth was lined with fur. Bethany wouldn’t respond to his attempts to talk, so he went into the college to try to get some work done.
He graded thirty composition papers before he felt the mailroom’s tug. He never went into the college on weekends if he could help it, and he never checked the mail if he did.
Still—he had to look.
The chart he found there was the most scathing yet. It was a line graph. DEPENDABILITY, it said.
It measured nineteen units, the downward trend sharply angled toward zero.
He choked back a sob. When he regained control, he dialed home.
“I don’t understand what’s happening to you, Troy. I just…I just don’t know. I don’t feel like I can count on you right now. I’m taking Claire to my sister’s for a little while. I’ll call you when I’m ready.”
“But Bethany, please! If you…if you’d just let me explain. These charts! My god, they’re getting worse. I think…”
“I’m sorry, Troy,” she interrupted, “but I’m going to hang up now. Get yourself together and we’ll talk. Goodbye.”
The line went dead. He stared at the receiver until the automated voice scolded him. He replaced it in the telephone cradle, tears glistening on his cheeks.
When the gravity of it all came to rest on his shoulders, he scooped up the charts and jogged down to the copy room, where he stuffed them into the shredder. When he was finished, he locked his office and hustled out to his car.
He set a new record for the commute home, praying that he might catch his wife and daughter before their departure, but when he turned the key in the lock, he knew the house was empty.
There was no life in the house. No family.
He got into the liquor cabinet and spent the rest of the afternoon sipping kamikazes and watching the Cubs play baseball on WGN.
***
Despite his hangover, he awoke the next day feeling optimistic. He shaved and mowed the lawn; he cleaned the house and reorganized the garage.
It was a good day.
He thought about calling Bethany and decided against it. The time spent with her sister would do them all some good.
Best of all, the mailroom at the college was locked. There could be no Sunday delivery!
Monday dawned hopefully, and he led a spirited discussion on ghost imagery in southern fiction. It was a good morning, right up until he paused in the doorway of the mail room.
He saw his mailbox from across the room—old 174. A pair of tan envelopes poked out of the opening.
He swallowed thickly, retrieved them, and managed some idle small talk in the hallway before slipping into his office and closing the door behind him. He switched on his desk lamp and opened the first.
LOSS, it said. It was a line graph, showing a decline from three to less than one. It bore the previous day’s date at the top. Jesus. How had it arrived in his mailbox?
The next one was labeled EFFICIENCY, and showed a pie chart with about 10% in black, the remainder in grey, like some obscene pac-man figure.
He crumpled the documents, tossed them in the garbage and feverishly set about grading the essays he’d collected that morning. There were twenty-eight in total, but he could only get through three before his head hit the blotter.
He was snoring in almost no time at all.
***
“It’s not acceptable, Troy. You know I respect you, but this has got to stop.”
“Yeah! Yeah, it does, Barry! I need to find the fucker sending me these charts and…”
“Your voice, man! Control yourself.”
Troy became instantly silent. He crumpled into the chair opposite the department head. “Will you look at these?” He clutched a stack of charts and graphs.
IMPOTENCE. HEALTH. INTELLIGENCE.
“I did look at them, Troy. They’re not kind, but they’re not a scapegoat for all of your personal problems either. Your performance here…well, it’s suffering. Have you and Bethany even spoken lately?”
His family situation was common knowledge in the English Department. Troy stared at a spot on the wall, shaking his head that they hadn’t.
“Look, we can get an adjunct to finish the term for you. There’s just three weeks left anyway. Take some time to patch things up. The birth of a child can certainly change things, Troy. You just need to make the adjustment.”
“I don’t need time off. I need to find out where these things are coming from! I mean—have my students complained about my performance in the classroom?”
There was sadness—and maybe even a little pity—in Kinsella’s nod. “And it’s not just them. You know, I stopped by your office the other day and you were sleeping on your desk. Go get some rest, Troy. We’ll start fresh when the next cycle of classes begins.”
Emerson gave it some thought. Maybe it was for the best. He stood and shook the department chair’s hand. “Okay. I guess I could use some time away from that…that fucking mailroom. Thanks, Barry.”
“My pleasure. You know, if you ever need help, it’s okay to ask for it.”
Troy wore a weary grin. “Good to know.”
“Don’t forget to vote for faculty senate president before you start your time off. There’s a couple of candidate descriptions out on the big board.”
“Will do. Thanks again, Barry.”
The big board—advertising everything from writing workshops to rooms for rent—hung in the lounge outside the mailroom. Despite its proximity to the place that had caused him so much grief, he went to it without trepidation, thankful that he would be shut of the place after that afternoon.
He was searching for the descriptions when he saw the notice: COMPETENCE. At the top of the line graph, which showed a precipitous drop, was the name Professor Losco, followed by that very day’s date.
“Jesus,” he whispered, turning his attention to the candidate descriptions. Bertram Losco was a math professor, a twenty-two-year veteran educator who now wanted to guide the faculty senate.
Someone, obviously, had other plans for him.
Losco’s opponent was Beverly Atkins, a psychology professor who was very popular with the students. He knew psychologists compiled loads of stats. Was Atkins responsible for the charts and graphs?
He pulled down the graph and left the English building in a hurry, light-headed with possibilities. Thankfully, Beverly Atkins was in her office.
“Can you explain this?” he said, slamming the paper down on her desk.
She studied it and handed it back with a bemused smile. “I can not, Professor Emerson. Given the nature of our platforms, though, I can’t say that I disagree with it.”
Troy’s stomach lurched. He’d been sure he’d figured it out.
“Damn,” he muttered.
“Are you…are you okay?” she asked, eyebrow arched.
“Yeah,” he replied absently. “I’ve been getting stuff like this in my mailbox. I thought…I thought maybe I’d figured out who was sending them.”
“Sorry, but I can’t help you there. I hope I can count on your vote for the faculty senate though, Professor Emerson. Elections are in two days.”
Troy nodded, thanked her for her time and headed home.
The Cubs were on television again. He was tanked by the seventh-inning stretch, missing Bethany’s call while he snored in the afternoon sunshine.
***
He went into the college each of the next two days. There were charts in his mailbox—that hadn’t changed. But there were charts on the big board as well.
On the day of the faculty election, a simple bar graph was posted there: WINNER.
The left column belonged to Atkins, the right column to Losco. Atkins’s column stretched to just over 130, Losco’s to barely over 100.
Not surprisingly, when the results were revealed later that week, Beverly Atkins had won a convincing decision in her race against the math professor.
***
“Pauline Dutro,” Losco said. They were drinking beer at the Rialto, a bar the kids frequented on the outskirts of campus. “That bitch has had it in for me since I revised the college algebra curriculum guidelines.” He quaffed his beer, his thin lips twisted into a disgusted sneer at the mention of the woman’s name.
“Dutro…Dutro,” Troy said, combing his memory for a face with which to match the name. It was familiar. Had he actually served on a committee with the woman somewhere? A shadowed figure emerged in his mind. “Short? Brown hair?”
Losco nodded. “You said you found these things in the English Departnemt? Jesus. What a vindictive bitch.”
Troy couldn’t quite conjure an image of the math teacher, but at least he had a name. He was happy he’d contacted Losco for a meeting. He wanted to know who might have it in for the senate candidate and, without a moment’s hesitation, the white-whiskered man had produced Dutro’s name.
They talked about college affairs and the university’s football team and proceeded to get very drunk indeed, a couple of well documented failures enjoying each other’s company at the bar.
***
He recognized her instantly. She was short, and she did have brown hair. She was a little heavy and there was a gap between her front teeth.
“What are you doing here?” she said.
Troy held his ground in her doorway. “Professor Dutro?”
She nodded and motioned to the nameplate outside her door. “Can’t you read, Professor Emerson? I thought that was an important aspect of teaching writing.”
Oh, yeah, he thought, here’s the bitch!
He sat across from her. “You need to stop this shit right now, Dutro!” He pushed a stack of charts and graphs onto her desk. “Just stop it. What on earth did I ever do to you?”
She flipped through the charts, a grim little smile on her face. “This one’s my favorite,” she said, indicating an empty pie-chart. It was supposed to measure MANHOOD. She put the stack down and fixed her visitor with a glare. “You don’t remember, do you?”
Emerson leaned forward, perplexed, his palms up. “No, I honestly don’t.”
“College-prep council? 2009?”
Troy’s incomprehension was complete. “What about it?”
“You interrupted me, Professor Emerson. We were talking about exit test scores and you interrupted me when I was…”
Troy Emerson sprang from his chair like his ass was on fire. “That’s what this is about!” he raged. “An innocent interruption at some shitty meeting! Fuck, Dutro! My wife left me!”
“Of course she did. Wasn’t that outlined early on for you? I know it’s difficult for you English types to read hard data, but…”
“Jesus!” Troy shouted, hands pressed to his temples in disbelief. “Are you serious?”
Dutro just smiled back at him.
“Okay,” he said, slumped in the chair. “What do you want from me? How do I stop all of this?”
“Simple—leave the university. Let this be your last term.”
He stared, mouth agape. He shook his head in stunned disbelief. “I’m floored here, Pauline. All this because I interrupted you at some committee meeting?”
“December 16. Make that your last day.”
Troy fell back in his chair. “When did you find out you had this kind of power?” he asked softly, “And why use it for such…such petty bullshit?”
“See, that’s the difference between people like you and me, Troy. You call this petty bullshit. But this is our life—this place, and this job. Or at least it should be. You should be thanking me for helping you get some rest…”
Troy couldn’t bear to listen to the rest of it. He fled, slamming her door behind him, rattling the walls of the entire math department. A few startled academics poked their heads into the hallway as he passed, but he paid them no mind.
There were preparations that had to be made.
For the first time in weeks, he didn’t feel tired at all.
***
Three days. It had taken him three days to locate the text that held the promise of a remedy.
He’d considered going to the authorities, but quickly discounted the idea. What good could come from that?
Officer, I’d like to file a complaint. Oh, sure! It’s simple, really. A colleague is ruining my life with charts and graphs.
No, the traditional channels didn’t make any sense, so he’d consulted with a friend in the department. Julia McIntyre was a bit of an eccentric, but Troy had always valued her intellect and open mind.
That she was well-versed in the occult had merely been a collateral benefit, given his situation.
“It’s called the Foundational Lexicon. There are many ways to give words power, Troy. Ways to make them do what you ask of them.”
They’d discussed it at length late on a Friday afternoon, the quiet calm of the department making Emerson a little uncomfortable. Still, McIntyre had been sympathetic to his situation. She refused to touch the charts and graphs he showed her, but had expressed sincere empathy for his plight.
“It’s a very difficult text to acquire, but try an e-mail to this address. His name is Colt Milton. He trades in rare books.”
Troy fired off an e-mail the first thing upon returning home, mentioning his colleague’s name in the message. Milton had indeed agreed to arrange for the delivery of the book, but the terms of the exchange had been steep.
Still, Troy missed his wife and daughter and wanted to return to his life so, although he was still adjusting and the bandages seeped all day and needed to be changed often, he was able to use the keyboard despite his missing digits.
He created an anonymous e-mail account, authoring a username that was just so perfectly typical of the modern student: sexybunny69@hotmail.com.
In the subject line he typed: hi prof. dutro i need help…
He reclined, considering what he was about to do. Did she really deserve this? His eyes panned across the desk to a picture of him and Claire and Bethany in the hospital; they tracked down to his damaged hand.
He sighed and began to type.
Her name was Pauline Dutro and, while many who knew her thought it was poetic justice, the woman herself had never considered that she might meet her end at the fangs of a serpent in the bottom drawer of her desk…
***
Two things happened: the charts and graphs stopped coming and his family came home.
***
“Oh, my,” Bethany said, later that weekend. “Did you know about this, Troy? I know she’s in the math department, but still.”
She turned the metro page to face him. The headline, a small one tucked away in the corner, read: Coral Snake the Culprit in Professor’s Death.
Troy looked at the news story and linked eyes with his wife. “Huh. I guess I had heard something about someone at the college suffering a freak accident. Must be in season around these parts.” He held up his mangled left hand, the thumb and index fingers missing.
Bethany made a pouty smile before going to her husband and wrapping her arms around his shoulders. “I’m so sorry, baby. Who would have thought the lawnmower could just take them right off? I’m glad you were able to get it treated. I feel so terrible that I wasn’t here for you.”
“It’s okay,” Troy replied, patting her forearm, “it wasn’t your fault, dear. None of it was ever your fault.”