Something had died in the walls, and it was rotting

Lester Graham was possibly the third worst graduate student she’d ever had, Susan Forrester, Ph.D., thought gloomily as she walked to Dunpher Hall.

The second worst was Phoebe McGrieve, a middle-aged housewife who’d come into the program under the auspices of that great fat idiot, Morris. McGrieve had some faint idea about wanting to get a Ph.D. Only she’d been, basically, dead from the neck up. She couldn’t decide on a dissertation topic, and finally Morris had given her one. He’d discovered some obscure local politician who’d gone to jail for some half-witted bit of underdone graft in the nineteenth century and he’d told her to go research the man. That was three years ago. To the best of anyone’s knowledge, she was still researching.

The very first worst had been Martin Jackson Taylor, who’d been a complete pain to everyone. Oh, he was bright enough, but he’d been older—he’d been fifty. He’d been a journalist or something, and had written a book or two, and so he thought he knew everything all ready. Or, worse, that he knew enough to be treated with something like respect. Which, naturally, isn’t how the game is played at all. Not with graduate students. So, he had to be slapped around a little, in a supportive and mentoring sort of way, of course. Alas, the treatment had been ineffective, and the man had left the program with a curse.

But Lester . . .

Lester was simply dim. There was no way around it. He just wasn’t mentally up to the challenge of graduate studies. “He cannot uphold the standards which we hold dear,” was the way that Linda had put it. She liked that phrase. The Standards We Hold Dear. She rolled it silently off her tongue. How profound it sounded.

Truth to be told, she was both a little intimidated and a little in awe of Linda Putridrine, even though Putridrine was technically her subordinate, as well as nearly thirty years younger than herself. The fact of the matter, though, was that the younger woman had graduated from an extraordinarily influential program in New York, where-as she had only graduated from a state school. It had been a good state school, but it was . . . well, second tier. Not to be compared with Putridrine’s Manhattan credentials.

So it was that she had let Linda more and more set the tone for the department. When, as second reader on Lester’s proposal, she had announced that it wasn’t even mediocre, Forrester quickly agreed. Yes, she had passed his work before, but if Linda Putridrine said it was bad, well, clearly, there was something wrong.

Besides, to be honest, there was another issue.

Forrester had recently remarried. After many long, uncomfortable years alone as a single mother with two children, and an ex-husband who combined total irresponsibility with a certain touch of mental illness, she had found herself unexpectedly in love with a lawyer from out of state. They’d married over the summer, and, frankly, he was a lot more interesting than the University.

She was on track for retirement, and easing out of the situation before hand seemed a perfectly good plan. If Linda wanted to run things, well, great. Let her.

She came to the doors of the Hall and trotted up the main stairs. This wasn’t going to be fun, she knew. But, best to get it out of the way.

She waved at the department secretary through the glass door on Floor Two and continued up the stairs to the conference room on Floor Three. Odd. There was some sort of smell in the place. It was like . . . like . . . well, like something rotting. Or, like fetid water.

Where is it coming from? She glanced around. The walls? Yes, that was it. Probably something in the walls. A rat or something had died in there and it was rotting.

Right. She turned her thoughts back to Lester. What would he do when they made him rewrite the proposal again? Get violent? Kill himself? It had happened before . . . though, he didn’t seem to be the type for the former, and she doubted he had the courage for the latter.

She came to the landing of Floor Three and glanced around. No sign of Lester. There was only a tallish, thin, rather handsome young man leaning against the far wall. She hadn’t seen him before. She wondered who it was.

Then she looked again.

Lester?