Nocticadia: A Dark Academia Gothic Romance

According to the syllabus for Professor Bramwell’s class, I was to wait outside of my dorm for the campus bus to pick me up. At ten-to midnight, I got a little antsy, because damn it, I did not want to be late to that man’s class. On the verge of abandoning the bus idea and walking across campus, I caught the flash of headlights coming toward me. A small shuttle bus with purple, interior lights rolled to a stop. Painted along the side of the bus in black letters was Nocticadia, and below it, Midnight Lab.

Nocticadia?

The whole thing seemed a bit too theatrical for Professor Bramwell, so I guessed it must’ve been something arranged by the students, or the college itself. I climbed inside, finding about two dozen students, and Spencer who waved to me from the back.

Swallowing an internal groan, I made my way to the seat across from him. “I was getting nervous for a minute there,” I said plopping into the cushy seat.

“Griggs is never late.” He canted his head toward the driver. “Not even when it snows. The guy always gets us there on time.”

“You’ve taken this class before?”

“Pretty much. I took Bramwell’s pre-req last semester. Lab was the same.”

“What’s Nocticadia?” I asked, glancing out the window, as the bus rolled to a stop for two more students outside of Hemlock Hall.

“It’s what we call the Midnight Lab. A play on Noctisoma.”

“Ah. Right. So why midnight?”

“That’s when the parasites are most active.”

Somehow, that made sense. I remembered in my mother’s illness that she’d always seemed to be most active at night. Wandering for food, or staying up watching TV. I once awoke to her eating raw hamburger and just about lost my mind. She’d always seemed to get weird cravings like that after we’d all gone to bed.

Two stops later, the bus arrived at Emeric Hall, where everyone piled out. I followed the group that obviously knew where they were going down a flight of stairs. We descended three levels before we finally arrived at a set of double doors and filed into a room with a high-domed ceiling and wooden benches where candles had been lit. I’d never been in a lab lit by candles before. Bunsen burners, sure, but never candles.

Books and specimen jars, flasks and beakers lined the walls of the room that carried a soft purple glow, given off by large tanks situated around the room. Scattered over the benches sat domed mesh cages that housed bright purple butterflies fluttering about. While it held modern amenities, the place didn’t look like any lab I’d ever worked in before. It reminded me of something out of a sci-fi movie.

“Welcome to Nocticadia.” Spencer said from beside me, as I took in the strangeness of it all. “This is where we study the Sominyx moth and propagate Noctisoma.”

“Sominyx moth?” I swung my gaze back toward the cage domes. “Those are moths?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh? They used to be black. But when they’re infected with Noctisoma, they turn purple. They’re nocturnal, so they sleep during the day.”

“That’s why the lab is so late at night.”

“That, and like I mentioned earlier, the parasite likes to party when the sun goes down.”

Fascinated, I veered toward one of the domes on a bench, staring in on the moths inside. Yes, I could see it up closer, the thicker, fuzzier traits that differentiated moths from butterflies. Purple wings practically glowed against the thin, black vein-looking lines. In the dimness, I could hardly see the detail, and I turned on the flashlight of my phone for a better look.

A quick hand covered it, and I turned to see Spencer standing beside me. “They’re sensitive to light.”

As soon as he’d said the words, I looked back to see the glowing reflective eyes of a moth staring back at me, while it jabbed a long slender appendage that I guessed to be a proboscis through the mesh holes. It reminded me of the way my mother’s eyes had changed toward the latter stages of her illness, and the way she’d almost hiss when I’d turned the lights on in her room.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t realize.”

“It’s why we have candles. Natural candlelight and bioluminescent light is okay, but anything fluorescent, or ultraviolet, phone lights, that’s a no-no. They tend to get aggressive, making it hard to handle them.”

In the corner of the dome sat a dish containing what looked like a small piece of steak.

“Is that … meat?”

“Yeah. They’re not much for sweets. These guys like their steak rare and bloody.”

Like my mother’s cravings. Strange.

I stared down at the proboscis, wondering if it was strong enough to break through gloves and skin. “I’ve never heard of such a thing in a moth.”

“Happens with infection. Otherwise, they tend to be pretty docile in nature.”

“They’re infected with Noctisoma worms?”

“Yeah. Bramwell will go over that in lecture, but they’re the primary host, like his morbid little crickets. Don’t worry, though. We only handle them with gloves. It’s the larval stage we’re interested in, anyway.”

“Have you seen them? The worms?”

“Yeah. C’mon.” With a jerk of his head, he led me to a tank along the wall, which glowed a bright purple. “There’s bioluminescent bacteria in the water. Doesn’t harm the worms, at all.”

About a dozen long, black, skinny worms squirmed over the floor of the tank, and my jaw hung open as I leaned in to get a better look.

The worms. The exact worms I’d seen expelled from my mother.

Real.

Strange, how differently they looked at home in the tank. Less like the monsters I’d made them out to be in my head.

Help me!

Mama!

At a flash of memory, I flinched and looked away to find Spencer pointing at something.

I followed the path of his finger to a moth sitting at the bottom of the tank. The occasional flutter of its wings told me it was still alive. “Doesn’t it drown?”

“Only the males do. Females submerge themselves in water to lay eggs, as a general rule. If the eggs are deposited quickly, they actually live to see another day.”

Frowning, I stepped closer and watched as tiny clusters of eggs emerged from the moth to be deposited on the glass surface.

“Once they hatch, they’ll make their way to the noxberries on the surface.”

I glanced up to see what looked like little water lilies on the water’s surface, where tiny berries stuck out from the petals. “That’s how the larvae disperse, isn’t it? The moths eat the berries.”

“Yep. Unless Bramwell sweeps through and grabs all the infected berries.”

“For what?”

“All right, class, find a seat so we can begin!” Ross, the guy I remembered from Professor Bramwell’s lecture stood toward the front of the room unloading a stack of notebooks from his messenger bag onto one of the empty benches, before he passed them out to everyone.

I opted for the bench at the back of the room, from where I could easily see the glowing tank and the moth that fluttered her way to the water’s surface.

Ross tossed one of the journals onto the benchtop, and I flipped through the pages to find empty boxes for dates and descriptions and notes.

“You will record everything in detail.” The sound of Professor Bramwell’s voice dragged my attention back to the front of the room, where he stood with an air of authority that tickled my stomach.

I rested my hand over the irritating sensation, annoyed with my reaction.

“Failure to update your journals will result in automatic dismissal. Ross will lead the lab, so any questions are to be directed to him. Not me.” His eyes found me, lingering for a moment, before he stepped around the desk. “I have separate office hours for general inquiries. I encourage you to make your appointment in advance, or you will be turned away.”

Without another word, he breezed through, his gaze locked on mine as he passed. A delicious mixture of coffee and spicy cologne trailed after him.

As Ross began with his lecture, I turned to see Professor Bramwell exiting through a door at the back of the room.

“Where does that door go?” I whispered to Spencer, who sat at the bench in front of me.

“Basement level. That’s where his research lab is. The morgue is down there, too. Off limits.”

“You mean to tell me no one’s ever snuck down there before?” I couldn’t have been the only one curious enough to even consider such a thing.

“Can’t. There’s a steel door that he keeps locked at all times.”

“Why so secret?”

Spencer threw a smile over his shoulder. “Depends on who you ask. Theories span the gamut. Some think he’s got a Frankenstein shop down there. Reanimating his corpse friends.”

Snorting a laugh, I lowered my gaze, when Ross flicked his attention my way.

“Others say he’s working on some secret government project. No one really knows.”

“You said he takes the larvae down there, though?”

“Yeah. Every so often, he grabs a few berries and disappears with them.”

“Interesting.” So, it wasn’t just him cutting up corpses in the basement. He was studying the parasite, as well, leaving me to wonder if he was working on a cure for it.

If so, I needed to be part of that. Since my mother’s death, my entire reason for studying science and medicine centered on finding out what had ailed her in those weeks before her death.

As the hour passed, I kept stealing glances at that door, wondering if Bramwell would return. He didn’t, only prodding my curiosity and distracting my thoughts. It turned out, watching the moths took only a small fraction of lab time. We spent most of the hour prepping stains, viewing Noctisoma fragments through a microscope, and filling agar plates. Not the most thrilling time of my life.

But it did inspire one objective for the semester:

To find out what Bramwell did in that lab.