The Missing Professor— Episode Three

𝗔𝗿𝗸𝗵𝗮𝗺, 𝗠𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗮𝗰𝗵𝘂𝘀𝗲𝘁𝘁𝘀. 𝟭𝟵𝟯𝟴

Today he was Cody again.

Or close enough.

He sat at the kitchen table pushing the last of his cold eggs around his plate.

It was the only thing she had been able to get him to eat since they returned from Danvers Pointe.

When she had come home, he’d been standing at the white enamel stove holding an egg and staring at the frying pan.

“Oh good, you’re home,” he had said calmly. “The pan has wings, and his eyes are gone.”

She didn’t have the time or energy to get into another weird conversation with him.

She had guided him to one of the mismatched dining chairs and started dialing.

First call— ringing, but no answer.

“Come on, Jackson… pick up.”

Darla lowered the receiver slowly and stared at the wall. Cream-colored. Dulled by years of radiator heat. The landlord had painted over the wallpaper underneath, leaving raised seams and ugly blotches.

The radiator hissed like an irritated animal. Somewhere in the building a baby cried, then stopped. There was a tension in the air she couldn’t place. Her chest felt heavy. Outside, wind rattled loose leaves along the fire escape.

Fine. Jackson worked cases. He couldn’t hover.

Second call— still nothing.

Behind her Cody had begun whispering to the egg.

She had cooked a full plate just to quiet him.

Partly for him.

Partly so she could think. Suddenly the sand irritated her. It was everywhere. In every single crevasse. She scrubbed the counter and picked at the grains with her nails.

“Would it kill you to help me around here,” she asked, as if he heard her.

He didn’t.

Now the apartment smelled faintly of grease and eggs. Her father’s flannel shirt still hung by the door.

She picked up the receiver again.

“Majors.”

Relief nearly buckled her knees.

She leaned against the wall, forehead resting on her forearm.

“Oh God. You had me scared. Jackson… are you... alright? You don’t sound right.”

“Long day, doll.”

His voice dragged. Slow, thick as molasses.

Not whiskey.

Something worse.

“You know I hate that tone. Can you come over?”

“Right now?”

“Yeah, soon as you can.”

“You okay? The kid alright?”

She winced. Cody was a year older than she was, though lately he seemed both younger and somehow, impossibly old.

“Yes. We’re okay. But there’s something else. I need you.”

A pause.

“I’ll be right over. Just remember, it’s been a long day.”

The knock came sooner than she expected.

Cody was mashing eggs into strange shapes on the tabletop.

She’d long given up trying to stop him.

She opened the door.

“Oh my God… Jackson.”

His face looked like it had gone one too many rounds with a freight train. One eye swollen shut, the other dangerously close. Purple bruising swallowed half his jaw. He leaned against the jamb like it was just another Monday. Maybe it was to him.

Somewhere down the hall a radio played 𝘉𝘦𝘨𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘉𝘦𝘨𝘶𝘪𝘯𝘦.

The trumpet’s blaring notes marched down the corridor. The clarinet followed — wheedling, nosy— coiling into the room and perching in the center, like an uninvited guest.

“Long day,” he muttered. It looked like he had started to clean up but given up early in the process. Blood smeared across his cheek from nose to ear.

“Sit down. Don’t argue.”

He didn’t.

As soon as the springs began to protest, Cody fixed his gaze on Jackson. “Father doesn’t approve of drinking. Must keep our shoes clean.”

“Hush, now,” Darla scolded, as if he even heard her.

Jackson stared at her brother. Cody still sat at the table with a towel tucked into his shirt like a bib. He wore the black gloves she kept forcing onto his hands whenever he started tracing at the empty air. Whether they protected him or only made her feel useful, she could no longer tell. He moved the fork in the same slow arcs he had been drawing ever since Danvers Pointe.

Mashed bits of egg dropped to the floor.

He watched them fall, studying them.

Jackson looked like he might say something. He focused on her instead.

Darla brought ice wrapped in a tattered dishtowel. She laid his head in her lap. She pressed the ice gently to his cheek without complaint.

“Hyde,” he said with a lopsided grimace. She couldn’t tell if he was trying to smile, or it was just the swelling. “How was your day?”

Her throat tightened. She blinked away the tears. It was something she was getting good at, or at least she thought so.

“I feel terrible asking you here like this… but it’s urgent. I think Professor Reed has been kidnapped.”

He tilted his head to look at her.

“Talk.”

He shifted. A sharp breath hissed between his teeth.

“Just a busted rib. It’ll heal.”

She told him about Miskatonic. About Helen. About the letter.

About the word.

“Sabbaticol.”

He listened with his good eye now half-closed.

“How do you know it was a forgery?” he slurred.

“My father taught me to notice details. Professor Reed would never misspell a word. Not in a letter to the dean.”

Jackson nodded faintly. He reached up and repositioned the ice to his jaw. Their hands touched and she could feel his hesitation to pull away.

“Makes sense.”

“I was going to ask you to investigate… but look at you. I don’t know what to do.”

“Tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll make calls. See what shakes loose.”

His words blurred at the edges.

“Tomorrow, I’ll...”

Sleep dragged him under mid-sentence.

She looked down at him.

At the man who had helped her drag Cody back from something unspeakable.

At the bruises blooming across his face. The dried blood on his shirt.

Cody shuffled over, bits of egg still clinging to his scraggly beard.

He stared down at Jackson with a wide grin.

He put his gloved hands on his hips. Tilted his head.

“Is he dead again?”

Darla stared at Cody, something was different. His eyes had changed. His irises and pupils had changed from brown to very light milky tone, they blended with the whites almost completely. He looked like an elderly blind person. Since when? She couldn’t remember looking at him in earnest today.

“Cody—” She began.

“He’s with Eleanor now.” His head moved as if he was tracking something moving across the room.

“Cody, stop it. You’re scaring me,” she said through tears. Eleanor, who knew her father. Eleanor who she’d pushed into the tear in the mill.

The tear, void, whatever, took her. Instantly. But before that, it showed her her father. It gave her hope and just as quickly tore it away.

The same void had touched Cody, his mind had been changed, but it left his body intact. She was grateful he didn’t vanish like so many of the others that chaotic night.

Instead, he stood over her with burnt fingers and milk white eyes.

And her only real hope for him was gone.

___________________________________________________________________________

Thanks again for reading. I hope you've enjoyed this installment.

Until next week...