Magic Men

From the day Laurie arrived at the small liberal arts college, a freshman from Evanston, Illinois, she’d been hearing about the Magic Men.

This upstate New York school, with its sandstone buildings and glass-domed gymnasium, seemed dull so far: pale-skinned blondes wherever you looked, no different from the people Laurie had gone to high school with. Week two, things started to look up. In her drama class, Laurie had been paired with a junior named Helen, and after their improv skit got laughs even from the prof, Laurie hoped things might get a little more interesting.

A week before leaving for school, Laurie had massaged a deep, shocking—just to her parents—purple into her long, sooty-blond hair. Yet Helen’s hair drew greater wows: magnificently bushy it was, and cauldron black. Helen was impressive to Laurie in other ways, too. She was big: big chest, big butt, big limbs, big personality. She wore spaghetti-strap leotard tops that revealed her booming cleavage. An impressive history of cutting—self-harming, as the counselors liked to call it—ran up and down the inside of her left arm. Laurie had heard about cutting. Who hadn’t? No one she knew would have been brave enough. Helen’s tidy line of cuts frightened Laurie. Yet she found herself wondering if they had been Helen’s way of keeping some sort of score.

It was Helen who revealed some specifics about the Magic Men, though what she said was all over the place. Helen didn’t filter the stories. She didn’t try to make them add up. The Magic Men lived in a stone house off campus that was a fraternity. No, it wasn’t a fraternity, but it had been one, until the Magic Men got kicked out of the chapter. Twelve guys lived there. Not so—there were six. No—there was only one, a sort of Erlking who ruled from under the mountain. Females were only allowed in the stone house between midnight and six in the morning. Females were never allowed in the stone house by rule, but it was always full of them. The Magic Men made a potion that changed you. “It’s magic,” Helen said. “It makes your virginity disappear.” (Laurie was not a virgin, not really.) The stone house was haunted. The basement. Helen said it again more ominously: the basement. There were parties all the time. All the first-year girls wanted to go to the parties. They were all afraid to go and none did. A very tall Black man who called himself Satan stood at the door and denied entrance to all but the most beautiful. Those who entered were forced—forced—to drink potion.

By the end of week three, Laurie had become half obsessed with the Magic Men. One day after drama class, she and Helen were walking across the groomed lawn of the main quad when Helen pointed over toward the bell tower. “That’s one,” she said. “That’s one of them there.”