The New Newbridge Academy

by Amber Benson

  Happy with her decision, Noh gestured to Caleb DeMarck and he began to set her plan into motion. He took out the two pieces of matching paper, each covered with equations. Next he pulled both sets of wires out of the electrodes and switched them, so that the wires now crossed each other before going back into the base of the machine.

  When the physics teacher gave her the thumbs-up, Noh flipped the switch on the machine. Instead of the room getting colder as it had before, it now started to get hotter and hotter until Noh thought she was going to melt.

  “I think it’s working,” Trina said, and Noh could see that the heat was affecting her ghostly friend, too. Ripples of heat poured from Trina’s ghostly essence, making Noh feel even hotter. She looked over at Caleb DeMarck and saw him wiping beads of sweat from his forehead. He gave her another thumbs-up.

  Suddenly a flash of light filled the room, making Noh’s vision swim with color. When she opened her eyes again, she saw the orb floating in the middle of the room, except now it wasn’t glowing anymore. Instead it was the color of the midnight sky.

  “Trina! You have to guide him out!” Noh screamed over the rush of air that was being expelled out of the orb. She had been right! Reversing the polarity had created an anti–black hole, sending out energy instead of sucking it in.

  “Henry!” Trina called, her arms outstretched. “Follow my voice!”

  To her surprise, it wasn’t Henry who popped out of the orb but her friend Nelly, holding hands with Thomas!

  The other ghosts quickly moved to Trina’s side.

  “Henry’s in there too,” Nelly said, her voice high and frightened. Trina thought it was the first time she had ever heard fear in Nelly’s voice.

  “Henry!” Nelly and Trina called together over the rushing air, their voices blending into one.

  “There’s not much time left!” Noh cried. She could feel the machine starting to tremble beside her. She was afraid that if she didn’t pull the switch soon, it might explode.

  “Henry!” Nelly and Trina called again, but still he didn’t appear.

  “Henry!” Noh cried. “Henry! There’s no time!”

  Noh let go of the switch and started to move toward the orb. Maybe if she could get close enough, she could make Henry hear her.…

  She felt a strong hand clasp her shoulder, and she turned to see Caleb DeMarck standing beside her.

  “I don’t see any ghosts yet!” he shouted over the roar of the machine, his eyes dark with frustration.

  “My friend needs my help first—,” Noh began, but the words caught in her throat when she felt a surge of heat bloom inside her fist that was clutching the evil eye stone. The heat instantly shot up her arm, pooling at the place where the physics teacher’s hand was grasping her shoulder. There was another flash of light, this time so bright it made Noh’s eyes double blink, but not before she witnessed something shoot out from inside the orb, bypass her, and slam right into the physics teacher’s chest, engulfing him in a pale, golden glow that slowly faded away into nothingness. Still gripping Noh’s arm, he made a funny, gurgling noise low in his throat and then lurched forward, almost causing her to lose her balance.

  “Mr. DeMarck!” Noh cried, steadying herself against the wall. It took all her strength to keep them both from being flung backward by the flow of energy the darkened orb was expelling.

  The machine let out a loud hiss, and Noh realized that one of the circuits had blown. Now the machine started to tremble even harder, its metallic body clanging so loudly the sound hurt Noh’s ears.

  “Who are you?” the physics teacher asked, his voice groggy as if he’d just woken up. Noh looked over at him, surprised at his question, but before she could answer, the physics teacher’s eyes popped wide open and he pointed at something behind Noh’s head. She followed his gaze to where Trina, Nelly, and Thomas were huddled together by the base of the machine. “Two little girls, a boy in a cap… and an orb, pitch-black in color. Am I right?” he asked.

  “That’s right,” Noh said, the heat from the stone coursing up her arm. She realized that she was acting as some kind of human conduit. As long as Caleb DeMarck was touching her—and through her the evil eye stone—he was able to see the ghosts.

  “Are they… real ?” the physics teacher asked, his voice full of amazement.

  Noh nodded, but her attention was quickly pulled back to Henry’s plight. “We have to help my friend,” Noh said, looking over at the trembling machine. Caleb DeMarck nodded at her words.

  Noh knew time was of the essence. She had to get Henry out before the machine exploded. She swallowed hard and took a tentative step forward, ready to call Henry’s name again, but before she could go farther, she felt the physics teacher’s hand grip her shoulder.

  “Let me try,” he said, pulling her back from the orb. “You’re too little. You won’t be able to get close enough without being blown away. And the way this machine is behaving, we might only have this one chance.”

  Noh didn’t trust the physics teacher one little bit, but what he said made sense. The orb was sending out so much energy that she could barely stand, let alone fight her way inside it.

  Without waiting for an answer, Caleb DeMarck released her arm and began to make his way toward the pitch-black orb. Then Noh remembered that the physics teacher wouldn’t be able to see Henry without the stone. She had to give it to him now before it was too late!

  She opened her mouth to yell at him to wait, but a dark and slimy thought twisted around inside her head, making her hesitate. It hissed at her, reminding her that if she gave Caleb DeMarck the stone, she might never get it back from him once he understood its power—and that meant she would turn back into a normal girl again, without the special ability to see her new ghost friends.

  With a sinking heart, Noh realized this was the hardest decision she had ever been asked to make: She could either save Henry or keep her ghost sight, but she couldn’t do both.

  The Truth Hits Hard

  Wait!” Noh cried, causing the physics teacher to stop in his tracks.

  She took a deep breath and stuffed the evil eye stone into Caleb DeMarck’s hand. He seemed surprised as his fingers closed over its warmth.

  “Are you sure… ?” he asked.

  “It’s how I can see the ghosts,” she said.

  The physics teacher instantly understood.

  “Thank you, my dear. I wouldn’t have stood a chance in there without this.”

  Noh was surprised by the physics teacher’s choice of words. Until now he had never called her “my dear,” but before she could linger on what this new twist might mean, the machine gave another horrific shudder.

  “Just save my friend Henry, please,” Noh said, smiling weakly.

  Caleb DeMarck nodded.

  “If I get stuck inside and can’t get back out, pull the lever before the machine explodes,” he said as he turned back toward the orb. “It’s the only safe way. Promise?”

  “Promise,” Noh forced herself to reply. She would say it, but that didn’t mean she would do it.

  Noh felt empty as she watched him go. She had just given away the one thing that made her special. She wanted to cry, but tears would do nothing to get the evil eye stone back. She only hoped her sacrifice had been made in time to save her ghostly friend.

  “Henry, my boy?!” Caleb DeMarck yelled. His voice was louder than hers, loud enough to be heard over the rush of energy from the orb.

  Suddenly Noh felt a sharp yank on her arm, like she was being pulled forward. She realized that the heat in her arm wasn’t dissipating like she had expected, but instead was only getting hotter. It seemed that the closer Caleb DeMarck got to the orb, the more Noh felt the pull on her arm. It was like she was somehow connected to the evil eye stone by an invisible cord of energy, so that wherever it went, part of her went with it.

  Transfixed, Noh watched as Caleb DeMarck took a few more steps, getting as close as possible to the orb without actually going inside it. The force of
the energy surrounding the thing was so intense that it almost blew the physics teacher off his feet, but he held his ground.

  “Son?!” he called. “Can you hear me?”

  Still there was no answer. He reached his hands into the heart of the blackened, swirling energy ball. Noh felt the heat in her arm intensify, making her cringe a little from the pain.

  “I think I can see him,” the physics teacher called. “I’m going in!”

  Before Noh understood what he intended, he had disappeared inside the pulsing orb. As soon as he crossed the threshold Noh’s arm began to burn like wildfire, forcing her to grit her jaw against the burning ache. She closed her eyes, hoping to make the pain go away, but instead it only got worse with every passing second.

  The machine began to shimmy and shake next to her, but Noh’s arm hurt too much for her to take any notice.

  “Noh, the machine!” Trina cried. “It’s smoking!”

  Trina’s words caught at the edge of Noh’s consciousness, and she looked up to find bright orange flames licking the side of the machine. Distracted from her pain by this new dilemma, her brain spun around like a hamster wheel. She could usually figure anything out if she thought hard enough about it, but this problem only had one very impossible answer.

  “Pull the lever, Noh!” Trina yelled, leaving Nelly and Thomas cowering on the floor to float over to where Noh stood. That was the exact impossible answer that Noh had been afraid of.

  “I know I promised, but I can’t,” Noh said angrily, tears pricking her eyes. “If I do, they might never be able to come back again!”

  Without realizing it, she had made a decision—and there was no going back. She was Henry’s friend, and friends didn’t leave each other behind at the first sign of trouble.

  “We’re staying too, then,” Trina said with a nervous smile, and Nelly and Thomas nodded their agreement.

  “Friends stick together,” Nelly said, her voice barely loud enough for Noh to hear, but it was like getting a shot of feel-good juice. It was hard to believe that she had come to New Newbridge with no friends and in only two days she had made four new wonderful ones. If she hadn’t been in such a dire situation, Noh would have said it was the most incredible two days of her entire life.

  Right before her eyes, the whole machine was being engulfed in flames. Noh could see them licking around the edges of the machine’s metal body. Smoke poured out the top of it, making Noh’s eyes water and her throat burn. She tried to cover her face with her shirt to keep the smoke out, but it didn’t help one bit.

  She thought about her dad and her aunt and how sad they would be when they discovered she’d disappeared. She knew they’d think that she was upset about having to go to New Newbridge and that she had run away to spite them. They would have no way to discover the truth. She doubted anyone else knew about this secret place, so no one would ever think to look for her here. Besides, she’d be a ghost just like Trina and Henry by then, so it wouldn’t matter anyway.

  Until that moment, Noh had never realized how much she loved her family. Now she felt that love like a fist around her heart, squeezing the muscle so hard her chest ached. Tears pricked her eyes, but she fought against them. If she was going to die and become a ghost, then she was determined not to cry about it: Worse things could and might happen to her than just becoming like her friends.

  “Henry!” Trina and Nelly cried in unison, and Noh looked up to find Caleb DeMarck’s head re-emerging from within the swirl of the orb.

  “Mr. DeMarck!” Noh said as she watched him extricate himself from the pull of the swirling energy, a near comatose Henry in his arms.

  Suddenly a loud bell-clang, signaling the ignition of the school’s fire alarm, filled the air, and a shower of cold water burst from the sprinklers in the ceiling, instantly putting out the flames that had been threatening to consume the room.

  The burning ache in Noh’s arm fizzled to a more manageable level, and she sighed with relief, tears of pain and happiness sliding down her already wet cheeks. She ignored the bites on her legs as the ant venom began to make them itch like crazy, everything forgotten in the wake of seeing her ghostly friend in one piece again.

  But wait, Noh thought as she peered through the droplets of water cascading from the ceiling, that can’t be right. There was something strange about Henry. Something she couldn’t, at first, put her finger on—and then it dawned on Noh what that something strange was: Henry wasn’t a ghost anymore—he was physically solid!

  Suddenly she understood exactly what Eustant P. Druthers had been doing when he had built the mysterious machine: He had been trying to make ghosts real again. Electricity was just the unforeseen by-product of an even more ingenious invention!

  With the answer to the machine’s true purpose excitedly swimming around in her brain, Noh threw the switch on the machine. Instantly the orb disappeared and Henry became ghostly again, the machine’s power no longer exerting a hold over him. He floated down through Caleb DeMarck’s solid, living arms just as the machine let out a low growl, spit out a plume of thick gray smoke, and whined to a stop.

  As suddenly as the fire alarm had started, it stopped, and the sprinklers slowed down to a trickle. They all stood in silence, waiting for the machine to do something else, but it seemed to be finished. Trina, who was never at a loss for words, spoke first.

  “Well, that wasn’t so bad—,” she began brightly, but before she could continue her thought, the lightbulb above their heads unexpectedly fell to the floor and exploded into a million pieces, flooding the room in darkness.

  Scary Trouble

  The nasty thing that still refuses to be named had been waiting for a long time. It had tasted something big once upon a time, and now it was hungry for more.

  It had followed the teacher (and the ants) and the two girls (one alive, one dead) down into the hidden room, but it hadn’t shown its hand. It had waited patiently while the machine had tried to suck up the ghost’s soul, and it waited even more patiently as the machine—rewired now—had released the three other ghost souls it had originally sucked up.

  It had waited as the teacher—who wasn’t what he appeared to be, the nasty thing knew for a fact—pulled the ghost boy to safety, and it had waited as the lightbulb, the only source of illumination in the room, had shattered into a million pieces on the floor.

  Then, with the room in complete darkness, the nasty thing made its move.

  Noh Indigestion

  Trina? Is that you?” Noh said, feeling something brush against her shoulder. She whirled around, thrusting her hands out before her, searching for the someone or something that might explain the horrible feeling she was having deep in the pit of her stomach.

  It might’ve been dark in the secret room, but a little darkness had never scared Noh before. What scared Noh now was the terrible sense that something large and scary was trying to swallow her whole. She flung her hands frantically into the air, pushing the bad feeling away, but the more she struggled, the more the feeling took over even more of her body.

  She tried to call out for help, but her throat didn’t seem to be working. She wanted to cry, but her tear ducts didn’t seem to be working either. She was having trouble breathing, and her body was beginning to feel like it was weighted down with lead.

  Then, as quickly as the feeling had overcome her, it got worse.

  “Help me!” Noh screamed, the darkness increasing her fear. Suddenly she wasn’t standing anymore. Instead, she was free-falling through black emptiness, her stomach halfway to her throat, just the way it felt when she was on a roller coaster at the fair. She opened her eyes, but there was only blackness as she continued to fall farther and farther into nothingness.

  As she flew through the nothingness Noh had an idea. She reached around in her pocket, her fingers struggling to grasp the smooth surface of the evil eye stone—but then she remembered that it was gone. She had given it to Caleb DeMarck to save Henry.

  Help me, she thought, wishi
ng as hard as she could on the evil eye stone that was no longer hers. Somebody help me!

  Then, abruptly, the free-falling stopped and Noh felt herself suspended in the air, floating. She looked around her, but the only thing she could see was a tiny white light shooting toward her. The closer it got, the larger it got until Noh was able to see that it wasn’t a light at all… but a boy.

  “Who are you?” Noh asked, even though she didn’t need to. She knew exactly who he was.

  The boy didn’t reply. He just looked at her with his sad blue eyes, then looked down to where he was holding out his hand for her to take. And that’s when she noticed it: four missing fingers displayed for all to see.

  “Hubert?”

  The boy looked up at her and grinned, surprised that she knew his name. Noh realized that he looked exactly how she’d imagined he would look: short blond hair; wide, sad blue eyes; and a cute turned-up nose.

  “Where are we?” she asked, but Hubert wouldn’t or couldn’t tell her. Instead, he offered her his hand again, and this time she took it. Instantly she felt her body being pulled up, up, up, and away from the darkness.

  As she let the ghost boy guide her toward what she hoped was safety Noh realized something important—something that made her heart sing with joy: She could see Hubert—and she didn’t need the evil eye stone’s help to do it!

  Why Ants Aren’t King

  Trina and Nelly saw the nasty thing attack Noh. Thomas, scared completely out of his wits, covered his eyes with his cap. Henry was still out like a light, but neither of the girls would have expected him to be of much help even if he had been awake.

  The nasty thing was huge—the size of a small elephant, with large saber-tooth tiger teeth and great big furry arms that had wrapped themselves around its unsuspecting victim. Unlike Noh and the physics teacher, Trina and Nelly didn’t need the lightbulb hanging from the ceiling to see what was going on around them, but they were both so shocked by the sight of the nasty thing trying to eat their friend that it took them a moment to understand what needed doing.