The campus was silent at nine o’clock on a Tuesday night in early December, the kind of stillness that James Wentworth had come to treasure. Most of the students had retreated into their dorms, and the few who remained in the library were the dedicated ones, the ones who actually cared about their education rather than merely enduring it. As an English professor, James appreciated those students. In his four years at the University of Alaska, Anchorage, he had found more of them than he’d expected.

He sat in his office, a stack of essays on Wordsworth spread across his desk. His current area of study was the Romantic poets, and he was always grateful when he could return to his favorites. Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads about the quiet beauty of nature, his focus on the incidents of common life, his mourning poems where he commemorated those he loved, well, that was what appealed most to James. 

But oft, in lonely rooms, and mid the din

Of towns and cities, I have owed to them,

In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,

Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart,

And passing even into my purer mind

With tranquil restoration;—feelings too

Of unremembered pleasures; such, perhaps,

As have made no trivial influence

On that best portion of a good man’s life;

His little, nameless, unremembered acts

Of kindness and of love.

Outside his window, darkness had fallen hours ago—one of the particular gifts of an Alaskan autumn. By mid-November, there would be barely five hours of daylight. For someone like James, it was almost perfect.

He had just finished writing a comment in the margin of an essay, “Consider the relationship between memory and imagination in ‘Tintern Abbey,’” when he heard footsteps. Purposeful and coming toward his office. He looked up a moment before the knock came.

“Come in.” He dreaded what was coming. Was it premonition? Intuition? He stiffened, waiting. 

The door opened, and Dr. Annaliese Chen stepped inside. She was forty-five, perhaps, with sharp, intelligent eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses, her dark hair pulled into a practical bun. She taught post-modern American literature and had always been cordial to James in their interactions at departmental meetings and the occasional hallway conversation. This time the expression on her face was not cordial. 

“Doctor Wentworth, do you have a moment?”

James gestured to the chair across from his desk, though she remained standing, her hand on the doorknob, one foot in his office and one foot in the hallway as if she needed to flee. 

“I’ve been thinking about something.” Doctor Chen’s voice was steady, though James heard the underlying tremors. “Actually, I’ve been thinking about it for a few weeks now and trying to convince myself I was wrong.”

Doctor Chen met his eyes and James saw fear there, yes, but also a fierce curiosity that reminded him of why she was a good scholar. “You’re never here during the day. You never eat in the faculty lounge. You never attend any daytime events—not graduation, not faculty meetings that aren’t held in the evening, not guest lectures. You’ve been here four years, and you look exactly the same as the day you arrived. I’ve gained a few more gray hairs in the past four years myself.”

James stayed quiet. He had learned that when this happens it’s always best to say little or nothing at all.

“I looked into your employment history, and before you were here you were at a community college in Washington state for three years. Before that, nothing. In fact, nothing for years until I found you in a brief stint at a university in Oregon. Then nothing again for a long time. Years, in fact. The gaps don’t make sense. There’s nothing wrong with your letters of recommendation, and we accepted them at face value, but when I called the numbers you provided I discovered that they’re disconnected.”  

James closed his eyes, steeling himself. “Doctor Chen…”

“I saw you.” The words came out in a rush. She had been holding them back too long. “Last week. Thursday night. I was working late and I saw you through my window, crossing the quad. You moved too fast. Too fast. And when you looked up, just for a second, you looked up, and your eyes…” She trailed off, shaking her head. “I told myself it was the streetlight. A trick of shadow. But I can’t stop thinking about it.”

James pressed aside  the essay he’d been grading and set down his pen. The movement gave him a moment to think, though there was only one way this could end.

“What would you like me to say?” 

“I want you to tell me I’m crazy.” Her shoulders slumped and her voice broke. “I want you to laugh and explain it all away. I want there to be a rational explanation for why you never eat, why you have no current references, why you move like something that isn’t entirely human.”

“And if I can’t tell you what you want to hear?”

Doctor Chen’s hand tightened on the doorknob. “Then I want you to tell me what you are.”

James laughed. What am I, he wondered? He looked at her, this intelligent, observant woman who had done nothing wrong except pay attention. 

“The first thing I need you to know is that I’m not going to hurt you, or any of my students, or anyone else, for that matter. Everyone here is safe. They’ve always been safe.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re right. It’s not.”

James stood slowly, careful not to make any sudden movements. Doctor Chen flinched but held her ground. He walked to the window and stared into the dark campus, the pools of light from streetlamps, the two security guards standing between buildings with their coats pulled tight against the frigid Alaska cold.

“How long?” Doctor Chen asked.

“How long have I been here?”

“How long have you been…?”

“Since 1692.”

When he turned back to face her, she had gone pale.

“That’s not possible.”

“It shouldn’t be.”

“You’re telling me you’re over three hundred years old?”

James could see Doctor Chen’s brilliant mind struggling to reconcile the impossible. “Was it the plague? Some kind of medical condition? Genetic mutation?”

“None of the above.”

“Then what?”

James hesitated. How he hated that word. It was overused, overplayed, something from a bad movie and too melodramatic for this quiet office with its books and papers and the lingering smell of old coffee. He shrugged. 

Doctor Chen’s laugh was high in pitch and slightly hysterical. “This is some kind of elaborate joke. Tell me this is a joke.”

“I wish it were.”

“Yo’re telling me that you’ve been teaching Romantic poetry to undergraduates while being an actual immortal creature of the night?”

“I’m afraid the irony isn’t lost on me.” 

“This is insane. I’m insane.” She laughed again, taking a step back into the hall. “I should…I need to go.” But she didn’t leave. Her hand stayed on the doorknob, her knuckles white, as if the door were the only thing anchoring her to reality.

“Is there something else you’d like to know?” James asked. 

“I don’t…no. Nothing. I don’t know.” She pressed her free hand to her forehead. “Do you drink blood?”

“Yes.”

“Human blood?”

“Not for a long time. There are alternatives.”

“The sunlight?”

“Is fatal, yes.”

“Crosses? Garlic? Stakes through the heart?”

“Stakes through the heart would kill anyone, and the rest is fiction. Mostly.”

Doctor Chen laughed once again, only now it sounded like sobbing. “I can’t believe I’m having this conversation.”

James nodded, his hands out, his palms up, a gesture of surrender. “I understand how difficult this is to accept.”

“How long have you been a professor?”

“On and off for, well, a long time. I like teaching. I like young people and their questions, their passion for ideas. I like thinking I can have some effect on helping them become lifelong thinkers and learners. It reminds me that the world keeps turning and there’s still beauty and meaning even when it seems like everything surrounding us is going off the rails.”

“Even when you’re immortal?”

“Perhaps even more so.” James quoted the Wordsworth that felt most appropriate then. When you need to express something heartfelt, James knew, Wordsworth was often the way to do it. 

My dear, dear Friend; and in thy voice I catch

The language of my former heart, and read

My former pleasures in the shooting lights

Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while

May I behold in thee what I was once…

Doctor Chen nodded. She released the doorknob, taking one shaky step into the office. “Why are you telling me this? Why aren’t you trying harder to convince me I’m wrong?”

“You’re not wrong, and lying only makes things worse. You’re one of the most talented scholars I’ve worked with, Annaliese. You’ve already discovered the truth. Denying it at this point would be insulting to us both.”

“So what happens now?”

He’d known this was coming from the moment she walked through his door.

“I leave.”

“What?”

“I resign my position, I pack my things, and I leave. Start over somewhere else with a new name, a new history. Hopefully with better references than I had here.” He smiled, though there was no humor in it. “It’s not the first time. It won’t be the last.”

“You’re running away? But why?” 

“You know now, and even if you promise to keep my secret, and even if you mean it with every fiber of your being, the knowledge is still there. It will eat at you. You will look at me differently even when you don’t mean to and others will notice. Someone will ask questions. And eventually, inevitably, the truth will come out. I know how it ends.”

“I wouldn’t tell anyone, James. I’d swear on it.” 

“And I believe you. But fear has a way of overriding good intentions. I don’t blame you for that fear. What other response is there when you learn that  something impossible is real?”

Doctor Chen sank into the chair. “How many times have you done this? Started over?”

“Too many.” James looked down at the essay on his desk, his calligraphy-like handwriting in the margin. “I stay somewhere as long as I can and leave when I must, preferably before anyone notices. Four years here. Three years there. Sometimes I simply exist and attempt to remain invisible.”

“That sounds exhausting.”

“The alternative is worse.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“Being discovered. Being hunted. Being turned into a specimen or a spectacle or a weapon. The worst is hurting someone because I stayed too long and got careless.”

“You said you don’t hurt people.”

“I don’t. But the risk is always there.” 

James walked to his bookshelf, running his fingers along the spines. “The books are the hardest part. I can only take a few when I leave. The rest I have to leave behind and hope that they get put to good use. Every time I move, I lose a little more.”

“Where will you go?”

“I’m not certain. Somewhere with long nights, most likely.” He pulled a volume of Keats from the shelf, feeling the weight of it. “Maybe Seattle again. Or Vancouver. Fairbanks, perhaps. Though that might be too close to here. Maybe back to New England. I’ve always liked New England.”

“When will you leave?”

“Within the week, I should think.” James replaced the book. “I’ll submit my resignation, cite a family emergency. They’ll find someone to take over my classes. Life will go on.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.”

Doctor Chen was quiet for a long moment as she watched James’ face. Finally, her eyes closed, she said,”I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For ruining this for you. You clearly love being here. Only I couldn’t let it go. The mystery of it all was too much and I had to know.”

“It’s not your fault, and I don’t blame you. This was always going to happen. You were just the catalyst. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. A student who noticed. Another colleague who got too curious. A chance encounter at the wrong moment. It always happens eventually.”

“Does it get easier? Starting over?”

“As a matter of fact, it gets harder. Every time, I think maybe this place will be different. Maybe this time I can stay. It hasn’t happened yet.”

Doctor Chen stood, gathering herself. “I shouldn’t have come. I should have just…”

“You did what any good scholar would do. You followed the evidence. You asked questions. There’s no shame in that.”

Her hand shook as she reached again for the doorknob. Standing in the hallway, she paused. “For what it’s worth, you’re a great scholar and a talented teacher. The students love your classes. You always get high marks on your evaluations. You can use me as a reference any time.”

“That means more than you know.”

After she left, James sat in silence. He should start packing, beginning the process of erasure and reinvention once again. For that moment, and for one moment only, he sat in the grief of it all.

Four years. Four years of student papers and office hours and faculty meetings. Four years of walking across this campus under the cover of darkness, of teaching poetry to young people who still believed in love and beauty and meaning. Four years of feeling nearly normal. All of it gone because someone noticed.

James’ apartment was small and sparsely furnished, a habit of necessity. Never own more than you can pack in an hour. Never accumulate too many things. Never let yourself get too attached to anyone.

He’d broken that rule here, a little. There were too many books on his shelves. A comfortable chair he’d spent a fair amount of money on. A Persian rug that reminded him of one he’d owned many lifetimes ago, it seemed. Small indulgences that would now have to be abandoned.

He pulled his black packpback from the closet and began the familiar ritual of packing. Clothes—enough for a few weeks and nothing more. Documents for his current identity, his true one, and the materials to create a new one. A laptop with carefully encrypted files. A few books, never enough, but all he could manage. After all, the most important thing he possessed was safely tucked away in his memory. 

Elizabeth. Always Elizabeth. 

He saw her in his mind’s eye as clearly as he saw her on that first day they met sitting at table together. Sometimes he thought he caught glimpses of her, a woman with her dark, gentle eyes, her smile, her way of moving through the world. But it was never really her. It was only echoes. And his desperate heart playing tricks on him.

He reached his arms up toward the ceiling as though he saw her there. “I will always look for you, Lizzie. I will always wait for you. I won’t give up, not ever.”

In these moments, when he was running yet again, he wondered what exactly he waited for. She had died. He knew that as certainly as he knew he had to leave Alaska. What was it he expected to find? Somewhere, in his heart of hearts, he hoped that someway, somehow, they would reconnect. But what would happen, he wondered, if he ever did find her? Would she know him? Would she look at him as a stranger, as everyone else did, seeing only the surface and none of the centuries beneath?

James zipped his backpack closed and glanced around the apartment. It had been a good place. He’d been happy here, in his way. But happiness was a luxury he couldn’t afford for long.

He spent the next three days tying up loose ends. He wrote his letter of resignation, carefully worded to sound regretful but final. Family emergency. Immediate departure required. Deep apologies for the inconvenience. He would mail it from somewhere else, postmarked from a different city, to give himself a head start. He arranged to donate his books to the university library. The furniture would go to a charity shop. The apartment would be left clean and empty, as if he’d never been there. Erasing himself had become an art form.

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone,

Housed in a dream, at distance from the Kind!

Such happiness, wherever it be known,

Is to be pitied; for ’tis surely blind.

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer,

And frequent sights of what is to be borne!

Such sights, or worse, as are before me here.—

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn.

He walked across campus one final time. It was past midnight and fresh snow had begun to fall, turning the world ghostly pale. His footsteps left tracks that would be covered by morning, as if he’d never walked there at all.

He passed the humanities building where his office sat dark and empty, his desk cleared, his books boxed. He passed the library where he’d spent countless nights reading, researching, simply existing in the company of books and the few dedicated students who stayed late. He crossed the quad where he’d had so many conversations with colleagues and students, discussing literature and life and all the beautiful, painful things that made existence worthwhile. He would miss this place.

He’d missed other places too. Other universities, other cities, other lives he’d built then abandoned. The missing never went away. It simply accumulated, layer upon layer, until his heart was an archive of faded memories and too many losses.

James glanced up at the third floor where Annaliese Chen’s office light was on. She was working late, or perhaps, like him, she couldn’t sleep. He could go up there, say goodbye, try to explain more fully, perhaps even offer words of comfort or clarity. But what was the point? She would spend the rest of her life trying to reconcile what she’d learned with the physical world she thought she knew. His presence would only make that harder. Better to vanish, he knew. Better to become a bizarre memory, a story she would eventually convince herself she’d imagined or misunderstood.

He walked toward the parking lot where his car, old, reliable, and paid for in cash, waited. Behind him, the campus continued its quiet existence, unaware or unconcerned that he was leaving forever. By tomorrow, he would be a problem for the department chair to solve. By next week, he would be a footnote. By next month, mostly forgotten. He got in his car and sat, engine running, heat slowly filling the cold interior. Dawn was hours away, but he could feel it the way he always could, an internal clock marking sunrises for oh so very long.

Where to go? He would drive south first. Seattle, perhaps, or Portland again. Somewhere he could lose himself, regroup, and decide on his next identity. Money was no issue for him, and he had nothing but time.

As he pulled out of the parking lot, James glanced in the rearview mirror as the university receded into snow and shadow, already a memory. Driving through the Alaskan darkness toward an uncertain future, James Wentworth allowed himself to feel the full weight of his existence. The loneliness. The endless cycle of attachment and loss. The price of living forever. He would run again. It was the cost of his survival, the burden of being what he was.

James turned onto the highway and headed south toward a dawn he would never see. Behind him, the University of Alaska, Anchorage continued without him. Ahead, only darkness and the shadow of a long, familiar road. As he drove away, Wordsworth’s words rang in his ears. Intimations of Immortality.

Where will they stop, those breathing Powers, 

The Spirits of the new-born flowers? 

They wander with the breeze, they wind 

Where’er the streams a passage find.