by K. F. Breene
“Are you listening to yourself?” Cliff laughed. “You’re as bad as Fella.”
“It’s true,” I said with clenched fists, shaking all over. “Only an idiot would go into that house where children have been disappearing for over a hundred years, Leo. Cliff. Think about it.”
Cliff dramatically rolled his eyes. “That story is crap. You heard Miss Potters the other day. That Old Woman stuff is all made up. Fact is, no one knows what happened to those people who disappeared. They all could’ve fallen into the same sinkhole.”
“They all could’ve fallen into a mysterious sinkhole no one knows anything about…in the middle of the night?” Emily asked sarcastically.
“That sounds more plausible than a dead old lady somehow convincing kids to follow her to the mansion in the middle of the night.” Cliff quirked his eyebrow at Emily.
“He’s got you there.” Buffy snickered.
“Whatever.” Cliff waved it away. “I vote for checking that place out. What’s the harm in it?”
“Well, for one, you might die,” Scarlet said.
“We’re not going to die.” Leo checked his watch. “I gotta go. Look, a lot of us are going together. I’ve always wondered. And like they said, if it was so dangerous, it would be boarded up and closed off. Nate and I have been talking about checking it out for years, haven’t we, Nate? Nate?”
The group turned to look at Nate, slightly removed from the others and staring silently at the mill building. He shook himself out of his reverie and faced everyone with haunted eyes. “Huh?”
“Dude. You really did a number on him, Fella,” Cliff said with a delighted smile. “I wish you’d waited so I could hear.”
“We’ve always said we wanted to go up to McKinley Mansion, haven’t we, Nate?” Leo persisted. “I bet DJ would go, too. He’s talked about it with us.”
“No.” Nate shook his head and started walking back toward town. “No way. I’m done with this stuff.”
Scarlet shrugged at me and followed her ride home.
Leo watched his friend go before turning to Braiden. “He’ll go. We’ll all go.”
“Except for them.” Dirk nodded at me. “Leave her and her friend behind. They’d only slow us down.” He nodded again before turning. As if on cue, the others dispersed, probably heading back to their cars, the girls talking quickly amongst themselves.
I grabbed Braiden’s sleeve. “You’re not seriously considering going to the mansion, are you?”
His deep blue eyes roamed my face. They settled on my lips. “It sounds like they’ve been threatening to go for a while now. I guess it can’t hurt to have a look. But I’d have to agree with Dirk—you should stay home for this one.”
Chapter Eighteen
“They’re the crazy ones, Ella,” Scarlet said the next day, walking closely by my side. “It’s not up to you to cure crazy.”
I’d taken the bus to school as normal, and the shiny red Corvette had pulled out in front of us in a repeat of Braiden’s first day of school. Dirk wasn’t far behind him, though he didn’t gun it to get in front of the bus. Instead, he stared through the window at me as we took off, his eyes narrowed.
I shook off the memory. “Braiden’s new here.” I stared at the steps leading up to the front entrance, full of students. For a moment, I considered walking around the side to avoid the inevitable traffic jam caused by the popular kids’ new hangout. It seemed they wanted to stay stuck in the way. “He needs to be given a dose of reality.”
“But you tried that yesterday evening on the way back from the old mill, right?” she asked.
I batted the hair from my face, a curled, teased mess that unfortunately looked nothing like a Madonna music video. “I told you. He kept changing the subject.”
She shrugged as we entered the throng of people, shuffling toward and up the steps. “His mind is set. You aren’t going to change it. Nor is it your job to do so.”
“But I have to, Scarlet. He’ll get himself killed.”
“Ow.” Scarlet shoved a smaller girl away and rubbed her side. “She had sharp elbows.”
“How about this?” I moved around a boy who’d bent to pick up something he’d dropped from his backpack. “How about I warn the ringleaders one more time? If they insist on going, I give myself free license to watch from the sidelines.”
“The definition of crazy is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting different results.”
“Not crazy, tenacious.”
“Just let it go, Ella. I know you. You’ll get frustrated that they aren’t listening and end up chasing after them to drive the point home. This is really dangerous. For you more than anyone. You need to steer clear.”
But I couldn’t. And come fourth period, after Braiden made a conscious effort to avoid looking at me in the cafeteria or running into me in the hallways, I was nearly bursting with the need to get my way. I didn’t even glance at my old seat. Didn’t care that Odis stared at me imploringly. I took a seat at my new desk at the back and waited semi-patiently for Braiden to come in and take his seat.
Except he never did.
The bell rang, the door closed, and the seat in front of me remained empty.
Worse, Buffy’s seat was empty, too. And Dirk didn’t happen by after class.
They’d cut school, probably to keep me from telling on them, as if anyone would believe me. Even the people who pretended they didn’t believe knew a trip to McKinley Mansion was basically suicide.
I stood outside my last period of the day, my heart thumping and a cold sweat drenching my body. They were probably already headed to the mansion. Maybe even already there. Broad daylight had to be the safest time to go, but safe was relative. The sun wasn’t armor. Not for something like this.
“Where are you going?” Scarlet called after I’d turned around, my decision made.
“I have to keep them from making the last mistake of their lives.”
A large shape, round in the middle, interrupted the light streaming through the end of the corridor. Mr. Morris strode toward me with a set expression.
“Ella,” he said as he stopped in my path. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Miss Potters fill her doorway. “A word?”
“Oh.” I pointed at the classroom I had been intent on abandoning. “But I have class.”
“Yes, you do. So then why are you walking away from that class?”
“Bathroom?”
“Come with me, Ella. You too, Scarlet.”
“M-me, Mr. Morris?” Scarlet froze near the door and touched her pointer finger to her chest. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Both of you. Come on. Miss Potters, excuse the interruption.”
Miss Potters crossed her arms over her chest and shifted her weight until she was centered in the doorframe, her stance defiant. “I have a lot to go over.”
Scarlet’s mouth dropped open. I agreed. I’d never seen teachers have a standoff before. That Miss Potters would do it over us talking to Mr. Morris was…peculiar.
“It’ll only take a moment, Rose,” Mr. Morris said, gesturing us on. “They are smart girls. Usually. They’ll be able to catch up.”
Scarlet and I looked between the teachers, each of their faces etched in hard lines. Finally, Miss Potters turned away, grabbing the edge of the door and closing it behind her. It was just Mr. Morris and Scarlet and me, standing in the empty corridor like a remake of the O.K. Corral. Except we didn’t have any power. Or weapons.
“Come on, girls,” Mr. Morris said in a tone that brooked no argument. He turned and walked from the hall, ensuring that we followed him like a couple of whipped puppies.
His office was ten degrees too cold, making me fold into my sweater to conserve heat. We lowered slowly into the worn fabric chairs facing his desk, waiting for the other shoe to drop. He settled into his desk chair after he closed the door, the seat groaning under his weight.
“So,” he began.
Scarlet fidgeted in the resulting silence.
�
��There have been some rumors going around school,” he continued, his eyes darting between us.
Scarlet fidgeted harder.
“Do you know anything about that?” Mr. Morris lifted his brows.
“I know about all sorts of rumors, Mr. Morris,” Scarlet said before I could get a word in. “A great many. Why, just last period I heard that Mrs. Philips—you know, the lunch lady?—chews her fingernails and spits them into the mac ’n’ cheese. But don’t worry, sir. I don’t believe that for a second. I told Bi—” Her face turned red as she swallowed the name. “I said as much. He…or she wasn’t doing anything but rumormongering, if you ask me. I think it was just boredom—”
“That is not the rumor I mean, Scarlet,” Mr. Morris said.
She froze with her mouth open before slightly tilting her head. “No? Well, sir, there are just oodles of rumors out there. This is high school, after all. In first period I heard that we don’t take showers at school anymore because the well under the school was poisoned by a dead body. I mean, that’s just silly, isn’t it? I didn’t even waste my breath debunking that one—”
“This is about your foray into ghost hunting yesterday, Scarlet.” Mr. Morris leaned forward against his desk. “I am talking about the rumor that Ella led a group of students through the town and told them various ghost stories.”
“Oh.” Scarlet swallowed noisily. “That rumor.”
“Yes, Scarlet. That rumor.”
“I was invited to help show Braiden the town.” I paused before adding, “Sir.”
That hard, brown-eyed stare swung to me. “And did you tell a story so frightening that Nate soiled himself?”
A grin fought my lips. I hadn’t heard that one. I’d just heard that I’d scared Nate so badly he’d collapsed to the ground and whimpered like a baby. Half the school wanted to hear me tell that ghost story, and the other half thought I was even weirder than they’d always suspected.
Regardless, the student body at large wasn’t talking to me any more or less than normal.
“I did not,” I said with a mostly straight face.
“I heard that one,” Scarlet said. “I really should’ve said something to quell it, Mr. Morris. That was my fault. Ghost stories are just a bit of fun, after all. Completely made up. I wasn’t thinking—”
“And what about the rumor regarding that same group of students heading up to McKinley Mansion this evening?” Mr. Morris clasped his fingers together.
“This evening?” I asked.
Mr. Morris studied me. “Yes. This evening.”
“I hadn’t heard the part about this evening,” Scarlet said. “Just—”
I kicked her, and at her grunt, Mr. Morris quirked an eyebrow at me.
“I tried to warn them away, sir,” I said demurely. “They have ignored and avoided me. More than usual.”
“The popular kids always avoid Ella,” Scarlet said. “More than me, even. Dirk the Jerk—I mean, Dirk Curry says it’s because they don’t want to catch her weird.”
If only she’d just stop talking, it would help everyone out.
“So you’re not trying to lead this expedition onto private property to earn popularity points?” Mr. Morris asked.
I jerked back as though slapped. “No way. Are you kidding? That is the last place I would willingly go. There is my history to consider—” Mr. Morris’s lips thinned. I changed course. I was already slated for a few detentions starting Monday. “I don’t want my rep for weirdness to get any worse.”
“Not that it really could, at this point.”
I kicked Scarlet again.
“And do you have any idea where they have gone?” Mr. Morris asked.
I stared off into nothingness, thinking.
Why would they need to cut half the school day if they were headed to the mansion in the evening? That didn’t make any sense. Unless they were getting supplies or something, but really, what would they need? Weapons wouldn’t work on spirits.
I shook my head, refocusing on Mr. Morris. “I honestly have no idea.”
“They probably wanted to avoid you, Ella,” Scarlet said. “They must’ve known you’d try to talk them out of it. Or…” She bit her lip. “Actually, you know what? I bet they took off because word got out. They didn’t want to stick around and get detention like Ella always does.”
Mr. Morris watched us for a moment, the lines in his face so deep they looked etched in. He pushed back from his desk. “Okay.”
“Oh…kay.” I started to rise.
“No.” He held up his hand. “You stay here. You can wait in here for the rest of the day.”
I froze halfway out of my seat. “Wait…what?”
He walked around us to the door, his gaze sweeping his office for a moment before pausing on a filing cabinet with locks on it. Apparently deciding it was safe from us, he grabbed the door handle. “I don’t need you girls to cause any more trouble. You can do your homework in here until the bell rings. After that, you will go home and stay there. Do I make myself clear? I’ll be calling your parents to ensure that happens.”
“It’s just that…” Scarlet raised her hand shyly. “I think you are overstepping your position as a principal, Mr. Morris.” Under his scrutinizing glare, she continued with a red face. “I mean, you can certainly confine us to your office during school time, however strange that seems, but what we do after school is well and truly beyond your control. The final bell is where your jurisdiction, as it were, ends.”
His hard glare bored down into her and she shrank back.
“I could put you in detention after school. That would be within my jurisdiction. Would you rather have that?” he asked.
The color of her face rivaled a ripe tomato now. “No, sir,” she squeaked.
“I didn’t think so.” He pulled the door open. “Stay here.”
And then he left, shutting the door behind him.
A strange feeling turned my stomach. “What is going on?”
“If I had to guess, I’d say that Mr. Morris has been corrupted by power.”
I stood from my chair and went to the window. Out front, two kids were ambling by on the grass, heading to the sidewalk. “We clearly aren’t involved in what Braiden is doing. If we were, we would be gone like they are. Nor do we know anything.”
“Any more than anyone else, you mean.”
“Right, right.” I chewed my lip. “So why is he locking us in his office?”
“I don’t think he locked us in…”
I rounded on her. “Are you trying to be unhelpful?”
She had reached down to grab a binder from her backpack, but she paused mid-action. “What am I supposed to be helping with? Honestly, Ella, I really think we should just ignore this whole thing. The ghost chasing, the rumors, the weird situation in which we have been left unsupervised in the principal’s office…”
“There.” I jabbed a finger at her. “It is a weird situation. Why wouldn’t he let us go back to our class? Miss Potters would keep an eye on us. She could raise the red flag if we tried to leave.”
“Unless he doesn’t trust her.” Scarlet resumed pulling out her binder.
“Why wouldn’t he trust her to keep an eye on two students? That’s her job.”
“Well, I mean, they’ve always had a rift, haven’t they?”
I leaned against the filing cabinet. “What rift?”
Scarlet rolled her eyes. “Do you never listen to Shana?”
“Not if I can help it, no.”
“Mr. Morris nearly had Miss Potters fired a long time ago for dereliction of duty.”
“What did she do?”
“I don’t know. It was before we got to this school. But it had something to do with her getting dumped by a fiancé and letting her work suffer because of it. The superintendent made Mr. Morris give her another chance. She’s had it out for him ever since. You saw her when Mr. Morris wanted to take us away—she’s always like that with him.”
It added up that Mr. Morris w
ouldn’t trust someone who held a grudge against him to go along with his less-than-regular decision regarding our situation.
“So Mr. Morris doesn’t trust, or maybe just doesn’t like, Miss Potters. Fine. But he does trust us to hang out in his office and not rifle through his things? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“No, it does not.” She grabbed a pen from her backpack. “But I’m not complaining. Miss Potters’s class is a serious bore. All you have to do to keep up is read the textbook.”
“You read the textbook?”
“You don’t?”
“No. She tells us everything. Why would I read the information again?”
Scarlet gave me an incredulous look. “Aren’t you worried she’ll miss something?”
“Well…I wasn’t until this moment.”
Scarlet shook her head and bent over her book. “And that is why I get better grades than you.”
“No, you get better grades than me because you’re way smarter.” I turned back to the window, seeing a pile of gray clouds in the distance. “Something feels wrong about all this.”
“I don’t know about feels, but the logic is off.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, for one, you always get in trouble for talking about ghosts or the Old Woman. So why would he assume you’d want to open up about it now? And then there’s this whole deal with the mansion. If he doesn’t believe in ghosts or the Old Woman, he shouldn’t believe in the dangers of the mansion. So then, outside of his students ditching, why would he care where they went? Why would he want more information at all?”
“To send the cops after them for truancy?”
She tilted her head. “Oh. Yeah. That could be it. But still, why would he command us to go straight home and stay there?”
“So that we don’t get up to mischief and possibly help the others deface historic property?”
“Oh. Yeah. Another good point. Well, you’ve got me. It does line up logically after all.”
But as I stood there, gazing at the gray clouds drawing closer, I couldn’t shake the feeling that something was very wrong. That Braiden and his crew were about to disturb something that should be left alone. And despite the teachers of this school having no tolerance for ghost stories and talks of the Old Woman, they seemed to share my worry that unlocking the mansion’s doors would plague the whole town.
