Dark Academy
by
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“ . . . Try to remember I own this place, lock, stock and . . . tenure. I own the land, the buildings, the furnishings – such as they are – everything. I also own the positions each of you seem to claim as yours . . . No one here has tenure, no one . . . If you don’t like the policy, go find another college with a tenure nipple to suck on.”
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“Two months ago, this college was broke . . . That was probably why your former president took his own life. He was at the helm when the ship began taking on water and he did nothing to stop it from sinking.”
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He . . . had faced unhappy employees before – Longshoremen, Teamsters, Steelers. Compared to them, the tender academicians entering this ancient auditorium should be pushovers. Still, he was nervous. Maybe it wasn’t these people, maybe it was this place. Whatever it might be, he knew he couldn’t allow his nervousness to show. That could signal weakness and Ross Michaelson never appeared weak – never.
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Once again the magnolia-sweet personality turned on. With a sultry smile and a sensual wave of her body, she moved closer.
“Ross, don’t do this to me. You don’t know how much being close to the president means. I’ll do anything you want me to do, anything.”
Ross stared at the garish female. She reminded him of a secretary bird – long eyelashes, long legs, gaudy raiment. He didn’t forget that the strutting, comical-looking species was a bird of prey.
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“These are Cassinger’s accounts. I used the same color codes as Chambers’s . . .This guy is either dumb or he has a death wish.”
The man laughed – an annoying, nasal-toned guffaw that sounded more like an air horn on a 16-wheeler truck than a human.
“He consolidated them . . . If I can find them, the police can too.”
Several thousand synapses in Jake’s brain quietly snapped shut in less than a nanosecond. It was a rush of electricity, blasting on city lights after a blackout. He remembered where he’d heard the name Cassinger . . . The police? Cassinger was the police. He was the Davis County Sheriff!
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Ross stopped speaking for a moment and stared at Zipinski, making the statistics professor fidget nervously.
“I want you to take over the management of Southern Institute. I want you to take over SIAS as President.”
“But . . . you hate me.”
“No I don’t. I just don’t like you.” . . . He paused to gauge Zipinski’s reaction. It wasn’t what he expected. Zipinski was grinning, almost gleefully. He had been appointed President over . . . practically nothing, and Walter Zipinski was happy about it.
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Southern Institute Administration Building looked like a dark, foreboding castle in the half-moon glow of the night. Clouds passed by the earth’s night light, giving an eerie haze to it. Shadows faded and then altogether disappeared as the hovering clouds thickened and gathered. Turning the cycle back to the beginning, the mists dissipated allowing the moon to shine again. Shadows thickened, taking on a life of their own.
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Ross shuddered . . . If it were true, as Zipinski believed, that Southern Institute was alive, then Ross Michaelson was SIAS’s worst enemy. And now he was entering her sleeping body, invading her bowels.
Darkness glowered back at him . . . They were not in the safe. Ross glanced around the vault room. They were nowhere insight.
This wasn’t supposed to be. The paintings should have been here.
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His returning dream and his uncontrolled love for the woman crashed together at the speed of light. They fused into a monster of such hideousness and grotesqueness that Ross could not withstand its face. Yet he had to look upon it, for it was his own child.
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About the Book
Money drives Ross Michaelson’s artless existence until his sterile world is infected by a strange dream of a stately, gothic building. When Ross sees a photograph of the structure on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, he finds out that the building is part of a financially strapped college up for sale. Not only is the institution in fiscal trouble, its previous president is dead – and not from natural causes. Realizing he must choose between making a foolish investment or enduring the dream’s incessant recurrence, Michaelson takes the unsound risk and buys the college. Once acquired, he attempts to quickly sell some civil war era paintings, shut the place down, and then escape back to New York. But a few faculty, led by an eccentric statistics professor, challenge Michaelson’s plans. Dragged into court, Ross hires a private investigator to find out what has been going on. What he discovers will change Southern Institute of Arts and Sciences and Ross Michaelson forever.
About the Author
“I like to work, and I like to play. Fortunately, writing lets me do both at the same time.” Dennis Allen produces fiction that captures the reader in a most intimate and personal way. His broad experiences gathered from education, military, church, family and university settings have prepared him to be the fine novelist of books such as this one.