The Dorm: Book One, The Beginning

By TE Dora

The Dorm (The Beginning) is the first book in a series. LA based artist Candace McCoy must delve into a painful past before she can move towards her future. The only thing standing between her and happiness is a deep, dark secret she harbors five years after attending a prestigious university. She is tormented by sleepless nights in which the image of a woman shrouded in a cloak, limps up and down the corridors of the Dorm. Candace fled the dorm in the still hours of a climactic night, but not before she was able to save her best friends. The horrors she thought she’d left behind in the Dorm, follow her across the ocean to sunny Southern California five years later and she discovers that the evil forces that terrorized her still walk the earth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: TE Dora
• Release date: Feb 26, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458091727

TE Dora

Hello! I breathe, I read and I write. I draw on my passion for music, dance and history to weave lyrical coming of age stories and poignant portrayals of love, loss, despair and joy. I live on Long Island, NY with my wonderful husband and three darling sons. We are a close knit family and enjoy soccer, baseball, movies and family trips. I’m an attorney by profession, and a writer by passion and squeeze time between work, community service and soccer practices to write. I’m currently working on a number of other projects, so please stick around for more great stories. I’d like to hear from you. Kindly visit me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter. I appreciate your support!

Book preview

The Dorm

Book One - The Beginning

TE Dora

Published by Theodora Egbuchulam at Smashwords

Copyright 2011 Theodora Egbuchulam writing as TE Dora

Other titles by TE Dora at Smashwords.com:

The Dance http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/43940

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Cover by Jeremy Taylor

Cover photo provided by Monika Wisniewska, Dreamstime.com

The versions of Emily Dickinson poems used are those within public domain and are published online as Published June 2000 by Bartleby.com.

This book is dedicated to my mother Mrs. Patrica O. Egeonu, my husband Stanley Egbuchulam, my sister Josephine K. Egeonu and my three sons, Stanley, Patrick and Matthew, all of whom love and encourage me with no end.

~~~000~~~

Chapter One

Bereaved of all, I went abroad,

No less bereaved to be

upon a new peninsula,

The grave preceded me,

~Emily Dickinson

Candace did not trust Therese on sight. After the two women greeted at the door of Therese’s office, Therese sat a desk that seemed over large for her. Her blond bangs fell over baby-blue eyes. She was young and pretty. These were not qualities Candace wanted in a psychiatrist, even one highly recommended by Robyn, her power-house agent who refused to take no for an answer.

Robyn had insisted that Candace meet Therese and when Robyn insists, she usually got her way, which was why Candace appreciated her as an agent, but as a friend, she was a pain in the butt.

Over the last two months, Candace could tell Robyn’s patience was wearing thin with her continued refusal to include certain drawings in the upcoming exhibit. Even last night when they met at Rusty’s on Santa Monica pier for drinks, an argument broke out.

Candy there’s a market for your work, Robyn said as she dug into her cowabunga burger. Buyers will fall over trying to outbid each other.

I’ve told you, I don’t want to show those drawings, Candace said. She picked at her seared Ahi salad. It was delicious, but she’d lost her appetite. She stared at Robyn’s plate. In addition to the giant burger, it was loaded with hot wings and chicken nachos. It never ceased to amaze her how much food Robyn could fit into her 5’2", size four frame.

Dammit Candy. Why are you so god-awful stubborn? Robyn demanded.

Candace refused to be provoked.

We’ve gone over this a hundred times before, she said, If I’m so awful to represent, you’re free to find another artist. There’d be no hurt feelings.

Candy I swear, you got something I haven’t seen in long time. Please, please let me include them. You can’t hide those drawings forever.

Rob I am not hiding them, it’s just there are issues surrounding them I’m trying to resolve.

The minute the words left her mouth, Candace knew she’d made a mistake. Robyn seized on them and refused to let up.

Since you won’t talk to me, she said which is okay, sorta, all that dark motivation will give me nightmares, there is someone I think you should see. Whatever is bumming you out needs a fix. Okay?

Okay.

Promise?

Promise, Candace said and waved a waiter over for her fifth strawberry margarita. The choice was simple. While she wouldn’t show her old drawings, she’d appease Robyn by seeing a shrink. Hence, here she was in this small cramped office with Therese. Candace meant this to be the first and last visit. She glanced at a plaque on the wall behind Therese’s head, tried to read the graduation date, but couldn’t see and did not feel reassured. Anyone can buy a degree from anywhere nowadays. She’d google Therese when she got home.

She furtively glanced at the young woman sitting across from her and looked out the window with a frustrated sigh. There was something oddly familiar about Therese and it irritated her that she couldn’t pinpoint what it was.

In the silence that dragged, Therese sensed Candace’s hesitation and cleared her throat. She wanted to convey authority. Rent was due and she needed a paying patient. She’d taken two free cases for her boyfriend’s mom and volunteered at a woman’s shelter, but bills were mounting and doing pro bono work wasn’t going to pay them.

Why don’t you tell me about the recurring dream you have, she said.

Candace bristled, but replied calmly. Her calm was made possible by the two tablets of valium she popped in the parking lot.

It’s not a dream, she said. I am wide-awake. I see everything.

Therese tried to ease the tension that followed Candace’s words.

Would you like a glass of water? she said and prayed the other tenants, other sole-practitioners in the shared office, hadn’t drunk the gallon of water she placed in the kitchen.

No, Candace said. She poked around in her purse for a few minutes, pulled out a crumpled pack of cigarettes and looked up with a start.

"Oh, can I smoke in here?

Therese hesitated. She hated cigarettes, but hated being broke more. The weight of student loans bore down after eight years of medical school and training.

Please go-ahead, she said. I’ll just crack the window a tad.

Sure, whatever, Candace waved her hand. With the other she fished out a lighter.

Therese opened the window and offered a ceramic cup as an ash-tray.

Candace took a drag and inhaled. She leaned back against the sofa. It was big and roomy and she felt secure nestled between its wide arms. Whoever decorated the office did a good job. It had cozy charm.

She took another long drag, closed her eyes and began her story in a low, steady voice.

*********

It is midnight yet again. Save for the sliver of moonlight streaming into my room, everywhere is pitch black. I lie in bed, in my tiny studio apartment in Santa Monica California, too afraid to close my eyes and too weak to rise. My condo rests on a promontory overlooking the Pacific Ocean and I hear the swish of surf lapping on the beach below. The sound is like the soft shush of a mommy to her baby. On a good night, the calming whisper can almost lull me to sleep. A soft wind flutters the gauzy drapes leading to my balcony and I smell the salt air. I should be asleep. Most people are. After all, there’s the soothing ocean hum and the cool night breeze. But I never sleep. I can’t, not while I am revisited by inexplicable horrors.

While the rest of the world is asleep, in the claustrophobic silence of my bedroom, huddled under heavy comforters, I hear the slipping, sliding sound of the woman who walked with a pronounced limp. Even with the aid of a cane, she had a tendency to drag her bad leg behind her as she prowled up and down the hallways of a dormitory. Her shadow, long and gaunt, jumped ahead, urging her towards their evil mission. The heavy black cloak she wore shaded her from sight and she had an eerie way of blending into the dark and gloom of the inky menacing night, only to materialize without warning. She was the angel of death and she still haunts my waking hours and torments what little sleep I manage to wrest from the night.

Years ago in a series of frightening incidents, I came face to face with her. Now, wide-awake in bed, with the moon casting gray shadows on my wall, I imagine I see a dark, hooded figure pause ever so brief on the balcony. In my darkest, most terror-filled moments, I swear I hear cries in the night. Cries of young girls scared out of their wits, fighting to hold on to their sanity and their bodies before the tap, tap tap of the cane topped at their door. As a young American residing in the girls’ dormitory of a prestigious university in Chali, a beautiful West African country, I witnessed events still too disturbing for me to think, let alone talk about. That it all happened five years ago matters not. Even now, I flinch at the slightest shadow, my heart still races at strange sounds. Not one of my family members or friends believes my story.

Maybe you will.

~~~000~~~

Chapter Two

I was 17 years old when I arrived at the University of Chali on an evening easing into night. Within a month, my curiosity was piqued by a ritual at the dormitory, a place we called The Dorm. Every Friday evening, as the sun lowered, a convoy of luxury cars arrived on a road hidden under a canopy of flame-of-the forest trees. The chauffeur driven mercedes, bentleys and jaguars drove on a carpet of red petals and stopped at the dorm’s fortress-like gate. On cue, as if a silent bell rung, veiled girls like butterflies, flew from their rooms, down steps of the dorm towards the cars. Uniformed men escorted girls into vehicles, shadowy figures moved in and out of the headlights, fireflies hovered and cicadas whispered. For about twenty minutes, as activity unfolded below even as the skies threatened rain, I watched the quiet spectacle from a balcony. The display of grace and power mesmerized. When the last car door slammed, the fleet of cars revved their powerful engines and whisked their cargos away.

When the dust plumes settled, the University lay empty and hollow, as if its life blood had been drained. Indeed something precious was gone. The girls carried away were beautiful creatures. Willowy and slender with sonorous voices and slanted eyes they belonged on the pages of my childhood picture-book of Ali Baba and the Arabian Nights than at an institute of higher learning. On weekdays, between classes, in groups of twos or threes, they moved about the campus laughing and talking in Arabic and sing-song English. Their names were exotic and melodious- Amina, Zulimma, Aishatu. My own name was boring by comparison. Candy sounded fine in San Diego, but meaningless in Chali and I came to appreciate father’s distaste for nick-names and started introducing myself as Candace. It didn’t stick, to my college-mates I remained plain old Candy.

I admired everything about these girls who wore silk veils embroidered with gold or silver thread and etched with images of flowers and birds in shades of lapis, vermilion, ochre, and magenta. They were sophisticated and I in my missionary daughter’s frock, sinfully dowdy. I’d been thrust into their world, yet they weren’t curious about me, an unfortunate stranger who appeared in their midst at the beginning of the school year. Unwelcomed, I hovered in classrooms and dining halls for scraps of their conversations. While laughter punctuated lively exchanges, their voices were laced with sarcasm and their rouged lips curled downwards, as if rebelling against a demureness they did not feel. Their slender hands and long tapered fingers moved listlessly, weighed down by chains of gold bangles and rings.

After their departure each Friday night, just a few college mates and I remained like unwanted toys on a store shelf. There were no luxury cars come to whisk us away and we roamed the ghost town awaiting their return.

The fathers of these beautiful college girls could afford gold bangles and perfumed cars. My father, William McCoy could not. He was neither a wealthy politician nor a businessman, but a Presbyterian pastor who felt called to serve a fledgling Christian ministry in a Muslim country. He lacked fundamental survival skills and lived a kind of dreamy Walter Mitty-like existence - his eyes glued to his worn bible, his head in the clouds. He and I had an unnatural relation - I hated his guts all the while we lived in Chali.

My mother on the other hand, was a practical, hard-working woman, who aged beyond her natural years in those five years.

The night before I was to travel from our dusty little village of tin shacks and mud huts to the university hundreds of miles away, I went to her room and asked if she’d lend me some clothes. I didn’t want anything, but needed to show her I’d forgiven her. Poor thing, she was so happy I’d asked, she dropped the socks she’d been mending and went to a pile of forgotten suitcases in a dusty corner. I dreaded what she’d find, but she hummed and looked so happy, I was glad I asked. I sat on the floor, arms wrapped around my knees and enjoyed the rare moment of peace. She let out a giggle and lifted a pair of skinny stone-washed jeans.

Candy can you believe I wore this once? she said.

The jeans were stone washed, turquoise and fashionably ripped.

I reached for them.

Wow these are hot, I said. I didn’t know you had a pair. Put them on mom. Let me see how they look on you.

O h no! She laughed.

She looked so young and pretty and was, for a moment, the mother I’d known in California.

Her face folded. I heard father’s footsteps outside. She buried the jeans in the deep recesses of the case and pulled out three dresses –pink, baby blue and green shapeless sheaths with flowers and Easter egg designs. She’d worn them in San Diego in the church’s kitchen serving sponge-cake and pink lemonade. I’d die before I wore them, but took them anyway. A long velvet skirt caught my eyes. The clingy material would taper nicely and give me curves in the all right places.

Her fingers lingered on the lush material before she tossed it aside.

Can I have that one as well?

It’s kind of frumpy Candy.

No it’s not.

She shrugged. With a slight tug, I pulled it from her fingers.

She dropped her hand and stared at me through graying lashes.

God how beautiful you’ve become Candy, mother said.

Thanks mom.

Has anyone even noticed? she said. She seemed angry.

Gee mom what’s that about?

I wasn’t sure she heard me. She was muttering to herself. Typical.

Her shoulders shook with a tremor. It could have been laughter or tears bubbling inside. I thought I heard her whisper-

Don’t laugh Marjorie don’t laugh. He’s watching.

I wanted to leave. Mother lifted her hand towards me, but let it fall. The lines on her forehead relaxed with a thought. I cringed when she spoke. I wish she hadn’t.

Candy you might meet a nice young man at the university.

Mom it’s an all girls’ school. You know that. Dad wouldn’t agree to co-ed!

I know sweetie. I know. One of the girls might have a brother. Anyway, if you do get a beau, sweetheart, I’ll make this hut look very nice indeed.

Her rough hand, coarsened by years spent sweeping sand with straw brooms and breaking soil for seeds, touched my face. I scrambled to my feet; her sentimentality embarrassed me.

Okay Mommy I really have to go now, I said. I’m gonna go try on the skirt.

At the door I glanced back. She looked so sad in the dark corner; I walked back and planted a kiss on top her grey curls.

The next morning my family entered the chaotic market-place and began a harrowing journey to the car park. As we trudged, my thoughts kept flitting between hope and growing dread- will I fit in at the sprawling campus on the edge of the Sahara Desert? Will I make friends? Plagued with the unknown, I tried to navigate my way in and around swirling masses of people.

The outdoor bazaar sat in the middle of the Sahara like a seedy, rundown Las Vegas in the Mojave Desert and like an excited gambler at the entrance to a casino, despite the heat, the flies, the sweating flesh pressing on me at every turn, I was giddy with exhilaration at the start of my journey. A chant flowed like incantation under my breath: In an hour or less, I will be free. In an hour or less, I will be free. In an hour or less I will be free! For the first time in seventeen years, I’d be rid of father and his suffocating religion. I would not wake each dawn to exhortations on death and retire at night with recitals on damnation.

Thoughts of my impending freedom buoyed me as all around villagers bartered every imaginable item under the red sun. I kept my head down and pressed on, but soon, my energy began to wane. Getting to the area for buses and taxis was itself a terrible journey. Eagerness morphed into frustration and I began to resent every extra second I spent with my parents. We did not speak as we suffered the sand, the heat and the stares, instead we clung to hurt, guilt and recrimination as we leaned against wind. The local peoples’ colorful hats and scarves mocked father’s torn derby and mother’s lumpy straw hat which screamed expatriate trash. All eyes were on us and I knew what the locals thought- there they go the deceitful devils with their dull religion and drab attire. How boring their god must be if he could clothe them thus.

By early afternoon, at a bustling car-park where once aristocratic Bentleys and Austin Healeys – crumbling relics of British colonialism died and reincarnated as taxis, I finally bid mom, dad and my little brother Zach goodbye and entered a waiting cab. I scrabbled onto the back seat of the dilapidated Mercedes, settled on the lumpy vinyl and tried to temper my excitement for mom’s sake. My insides roiled with anticipation.

Father was a shadowy figure in a window coated with generations of dust. Could he now be forgiven? When he forced us to leave California, I’d left my friends Ally and Kim behind. We had been best friends since third grade and they were the closest I’d come to having sisters. Just as we dreamed and planned, after high school they went on to Pepperdine University in gorgeous Malibu and mailed pictures in their first year, of a campus on green cliffs overlooking the Pacific; the highway dipped, twisted and flew alongside the turquoise blue ocean. It was father’s fault I wasn’t at Pepperdine with them and was instead going to a university smack in the middle of dry, dusty, nothing-happening Sahara Desert.

As the heavy relic chugged into acceleration, unmindful of the dust, I pressed my face against the grimy window and stared after my family as they shrank into the background. They faded from view, disappeared before I’d reconciled with them. When the car turned the bend, I slumped against the back seat unable to stem tears streaming down my cheeks.

The driver, a man with an oddly shaped head under a tattered cap, ignored me. He reached down, released the gears with an appreciative grunt, shifted into drive and pressed hard on the horn until it screeched in protest. The high pitched blast shoved pedestrians out of the way. I hung onto the edge of the lumpy back seat, clutched its wire springs with two hands when, suddenly, he accelerated again and the back of my head hit the window. My yelp would have stopped any driver, but the hotwired man spent a few more minutes chasing after stray