Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction

by Candace Wondrak

  And then it hit me. “Grimmstead?”

  He took his hand back, nodding once. “Yes. This…academy has been in my family for generations. Anytime it falls, somehow it always gets rebuilt.”

  Ah, so when it was no longer used as an asylum, they tore the whole thing down and started from scratch? His family must have money. A part of me wanted to tell him that the place could use a little updating—nowadays light colors were all the rage, along with natural light, which this place hardly seemed to have—but I kept quiet.

  Wouldn’t want to insult the man before my first day. Didn’t seem like a smart thing to do.

  This was not the introduction I wanted, but at least I was here. At least the letter hadn’t led me to a dead end. It was probably too much to hope for, but I wanted Grimmstead to give me a purpose again. After what happened…

  No. No, I would not think of my past right now. Today, I looked toward the future.

  Chapter Two – Lucien

  It was almost inexplicable, how these walls made you feel. I hesitated to call it a house, but that’s what it was. Every so often the sign attached to the high fence changed, but inside, nothing ever did. Not in my recent memory. Not in a long, long time.

  You fell into a routine, and you let that routine consume you, lest you finally gave into this place and let it take what it wanted from you.

  What did Grimmstead Academy want from you? So many things, most of which you would never give freely. It wanted your mind, your heart, even your blood. It sought so many things, and even if it received them, it was still ravenous.

  This was not a place for saints. This was not even a place for sinners. Grimmstead was and would always be the place those too dark and twisted come because no other place would have them.

  As I stood there, staring out of the window, losing myself in my own thoughts, I couldn’t stop myself from thinking of that room. And then…then everything changed. Then I heard a soft voice speak, I turned around, and I saw her.

  You should not be here.

  It was my first thought as I gazed at her, studying the way the water traveled from the tips of her hair, down to her clothes—her shirt of which was see-through. It took everything in me to avert my eyes; I’d like to say this place had created a madman where once there was none, but that was the thing about this place.

  It didn’t change you. It only helped you be who you were always meant to be. It lowered your inhibitions, your morals, until you no longer knew what was right and what was wrong.

  When she offered to hand me the letter, I took it, glancing at its wet parchment quickly. Too wet, but I did see the header for Grimmstead Academy. Ah. So that was what we were now, an academy.

  We were a church once, a mental institution too. The list was long, and yet these halls never seemed to change.

  I set down the letter and shook her hand, introducing myself. In my head, the words played on repeat: you should not be here. You shouldn’t have come. You’ll die here. Not a threat, but a promise, and not one of my own.

  This place…once you stepped inside, leaving was no longer an option. This was, however, the first time a woman had been here. No, not even a full woman. She was young, barely out of her childhood. Beautiful in the way a flower was, innocent and alluring, the kind of flower some people wanted to take care of, while others just wanted to tear it apart. Felice Fairday would not last long here.

  And that was something I couldn’t allow. I knew it the moment I took her small hand in mine, when I gazed into her warm, amber eyes. This place had made me so cynical, exhausted and weary, but I had to keep going. I had to keep going for her, to keep her safe for as long as I could.

  Her hand—it was unbelievably soft. So soft that my mind instantly wandered to inappropriate places, and I tore my hand from hers, trying to get ahold of myself.

  I never expected to see her. I thought…I thought a lot of things, but time and time again these walls proved me wrong.

  “It is a beautiful place,” Felice spoke, holding her hands before her. Her purse hung over her shoulder, and I tried my best not to stare at her chest, at the black bra visible beneath her soaking wet shirt. “Seems big, though. Where are the others? I know the letter mentioned tutoring, but…” She paused, gulping down whatever insecurity she had. “I don’t have a teaching degree. I don’t even have any degree, I…”

  So I was to throw her to the wolves immediately, was I?

  No. If I had a say in it, we would play this game how I wanted to play it, and that was keeping Felice safe for as long as we possibly could, maybe even finding her a way out. A more foolish person would tell me to just send her back outside, but things weren’t so simple here.

  You’d walk out, only to find you walked right back in when you weren’t looking.

  “Don’t stress,” I told her, glancing down at Midnight on my desk. The cat’s head was turned toward me, its eyes half open, slits glaring. “This is not an academy in the strictest of sense. There are no children here.”

  “Oh. Then who—”

  “Grimmstead is home to…” How should I put it without sounding too certifiably insane? If there was one person I wanted Felice to trust, it was me. I had my secrets, but the others here did as well, and their secrets were much worse. “…many lost souls. Most of the men here haven’t been out in the real world in years.”

  If she was spending any one-on-one time with the men here, there must’ve been a plan. What I told her, I practically pulled out of my ass.

  “They need someone to help them readjust.” Ah, yes. That sounded…normal, didn’t it?

  “So this is like a halfway house?”

  It took me a while to figure out what she meant. “Yes and no. These men were never charged with anything, but…let’s just say society did not want them as they were, so they came here to help change themselves.” Yes, make themselves better people, less homicidal. That was something I could not tell her.

  Everyone else should be on their best behavior around her. I would have no less.

  “You are safe here,” I told her, lying through my teeth. I hated lying to her, but I had to. If I told her that she was going to die here…who knew what she’d end up doing. Try to leave, and that—that would only force her to acclimate to this place fast.

  No. Had to take it slow with her. Had to inch towards the full truth, and even then, even then the truth was twisted and gnarled.

  “If you ever feel unsafe, please come to me,” I told her, hoping that I put on an air of authority.

  Her lips curled into a smile, and my gaze dropped to her mouth.

  That smile.

  That smile got me every time.

  I coughed, averting my eyes. The longer I looked at that smile, the more I wondered whether this was just a test. But, no. It couldn’t be. I’d touched her, felt her warmth. She was a bit chilly from the rain, but her body wouldn’t be warm at all if she wasn’t real.

  “Come,” I said, moving around my desk. Felice was a tall, slender woman, but she was still half a foot shorter than me. “I’ll show you to your room.” Grimmstead had a lot of empty rooms; I had the feeling I’d know which room was hers as I walked by it.

  Midnight watched us with a lazy expression, its eyes sparkling as lightning lit up the room. I did not like the cat being here, but there was little I could do. The cat belonged to this place just as much as we all did, just as much as Felice did, now.

  Leaving my office, I headed right to the stairs. Felice was behind me, saying, “Let me grab my…” She must’ve stopped the moment she glanced toward the front vestibule.

  Of course. Her luggage was already in her room.

  “Your things have been taken to your room, I’m sure,” I told her, tossing a look over my shoulder as she hurried to my side.

  We headed up the stairs, and I took her to the western side of the building. Everyone else lived on the third floor, so I hoped we’d walk by an open door and see her suitcases. If she was to room near the others�
�she wouldn’t last long.

  Hell, she wouldn’t last long anyway. Look at her. Eager. Naive. Painstakingly beautiful. And those lips…

  We passed a few empty rooms. We were about halfway down the hall when I spotted her luggage sitting inside a room, and I abruptly stopped walking, causing her to ram herself into my back.

  It was just an accident, a quick touch, fleeting in all of the ways accidental touches usually were, but I felt her touch even after it was long gone.

  She shouldn’t be here. This place was going to kill her, and I hated that I couldn’t do anything to save her. I could only prolong it. In a place like this, fate could never truly be denied. It came for you, shrouded in a veil of death, giving you what you desired most before yanking the rug out from under you.

  I liked to think I kept my sanity well, considering everything, especially if you compared me to the others. I was a Grimmstead, so this place didn’t affect me as much, but…but now, as I watched Felice walk into her room and gaze all around, taking her new accommodations in, I couldn’t help but wonder if this morning had been my last sane morning.

  “Please get yourself situated while I notify the others,” I said, my gaze lingering on her for far longer than it should.

  “Yes,” she said, smiling at me, unaware of how that smile affected me. Felice glanced down at herself, at her wet, transparent shirt and her soaked pants. “I don’t want to meet anyone else looking like this.” She ended her statement with a giggle, and I nearly lost my mind right there.

  Averting my gaze, I grabbed the door handle and yanked it shut as I walked back into the hall. She was…this was going to be harder than I thought it would be.

  My feet drew me down the steps. The storm outside continued to rage, but I wasn’t worried about losing power. A hurricane could swirl over the place, and these walls would still stand, unaffected. This place was, quite frankly, unlike any other place around.

  I found Koda standing in the dining room, watching the terrible weather outside. I could tell it was Koda by the way he stood; if you went by mere appearances instead of mannerisms, you’d be tripped up.

  “Koda,” I spoke, causing him to whirl to face me, almost like I caught him doing something bad.

  Koda was a mere boy, nineteen years old, with wide, virtuous green eyes. His black hair was cut short, the sides almost shaved down to his scalp, while the top was a bit longer, hanging over his forehead. He wore a plain white shirt and dark pants, nothing overly intimidating. He was a different animal than Bram was; you had to be very careful when you spoke to him, otherwise the other might decide to come out and play.

  And when Bram played, things got messy.

  “Gather the others. We need to have a meeting,” I said. The others would have to be on their best behavior, or at least try to. Grimmstead would be an academy. This place, though it didn’t change, always had everything you needed.

  “A meeting?” Koda echoed, blinking curiously. “Is this about that girl?”

  As far as I knew, Felice had not met anyone else yet. “How did you know about her?”

  “Not me,” he said, lowering his chin to his chest. “Bram did. Bram always knows when new prey is here.”

  Prey. I hated hearing him call her that, but that’s exactly what she was. Prey to the dark and immoral souls of this place.

  I glanced at the clock, an old-fashioned timepiece hanging on the wall. “You have until four to gather everyone here.” We did not do everything together, but we tried to eat together. We were not a family, but we did our best to fake it. Sometimes even the semblance of normalcy helped quell the insanity threatening to rise inside.

  Koda’s jade eyes narrowed just a bit, and I could tell Bram was already whispering something into his ear. “What will you be doing?”

  “I need to check on something,” I spoke, turning on my heel and leaving. Everyone here saw me as a type of authority, probably because of my ancestry. I had ties to this place they could never understand.

  Grimmstead. I hated the name, just as I hated this place.

  Koda didn’t ask anything else; he simply let me go. I returned to my office, finding that Midnight had left, but where the cat had been laying were new papers. The letter Felice had given me was also miraculously dry, as if the paper had never been wet in the first place. I didn’t even blink twice at it, however I did reach for the new papers as I rounded the corner near my desk, standing behind it.

  It was her schedule, and I knew if we didn’t follow it, bad things would happen.

  I let out a sigh, knowing I’d have to go over all of this with her, along with giving her a tour of the entire place. She would have to be informed of where she could go and where she could not, what she could touch and what she shouldn’t dare set a finger on. And her one-on-one tutoring sessions? Bloody hell, Grimmstead—and by that I meant this place, not me—must have some big plans for her.

  I would deal with this later. For now…for now I had to see something.

  My hand went to the bottommost drawer on the left of my desk. Hanging on the side of the drawer was an old iron key. The locks in this place weren’t the best, but there was something special about this key. You had to have it if you wanted to get into that room.

  Once I had the key safely in my pocket, I walked through the halls, heading to the eastern hall. There were many places that would be off-limits for Felice, but this room…this room especially. It was off-limits to everyone, because it was my personal hell.

  Hell. Heaven. When you were in Grimmstead, there was no difference.

  I stopped before the door. It was about halfway down the hall, the only room that was firmly locked. You could reach the cellar from this side of the building—yet another place Felice would be banned from. Most who walked into that cellar never came out again, and if they did, they were not the same.

  Glancing both ways down the hall just to be certain no one would see, I reached for the key in my pocket, inserting it into the lock and walking in. The door closed behind me, and I locked it again. You could never be too careful in this place.

  The room sat mostly empty. No windows, and no other doors, save for the one I entered through. A chair sat in the middle of the room; red velvet cushions with gold lining. The same elegant chair I always saw. Nothing ever changed in this room. Not for me.

  With the key resting safely in my pocket, I headed to the chair, step by step, my nerves heating up in anticipation of what I would see.

  It was the same. Every single time. This room…was not a normal room.

  A sigh left me as I sat in the chair, feeling the weight of the world slide off me. Most of it, anyways. Usually coming here relieved me of all of the pressure, but today…things were different today. She was here. She was really here.

  And that smile…that smile was even better when it was real, her skin softer and warmer than I’d known.

  I’d seen her before. I’d seen her again and again. I had never known she was real, never thought she’d come strolling in through those doors, drenched from the pouring rain, and hand me a letter saying we’d hired her.

  Seemed silly. Seemed illogical, but if I knew one thing, it’s that logic had no place at Grimmstead.

  My eyes closed, and I leaned back in the chair, the air around me growing colder. I was slow to open my eyelids, knowing the room had changed. In the blink of an eye, I was no longer alone in the room. I still sat in the chair, still located in the center of the empty space, but the moment I opened my eyes, I met the strikingly familiar gaze of the same woman I’d seen for what felt like an eternity.

  Now I knew her name was Felice Fairday.

  Usually she’d be dressed in whatever clothes I liked, but today she wore the same clothes the real Felice Fairday wore: a floral button-down shirt, pants that clung to her body tightly. Her clothes were not wet, and neither was her hair. Its long, brown legs hung over her shoulders, and she took a step towards me, parting those full, luscious lips.

  “Lucien,�
�� she spoke, her voice just like that of the real Felice Fairday.

  How? How did this house know, years ago, about Felice? How did this place predict exactly what she’d look like, teasing me with her, giving me exactly what I wanted? Just…how?

  I should’ve known better. Nothing in this place was as it seemed. This room probably only existed to drive me mad, as insane as the others. Grimmstead knew my weakness, and it used it to its advantage. I might’ve been from its lineage, but that did not mark me safe from its evil mind games.

  “Why?” I spoke the question as if she could give me the answers. “Why did it have to be you?” The air around me was almost too cold, but my body was on fire as she continued to step towards me at a slow, ungodly measured rate.

  “Shh,” she murmured, reaching for the buttons on her shirt, undoing them one by one until she was able to slip that soft fabric off her shoulders, baring her stomach and black bra to me.

  Now that I knew the woman before me was real, that she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination made to taunt me, to dangle things before me I could never truly have, I grew uneasy.

  This was wrong.

  This was wrong, but I’d gotten so lost in Grimmstead I didn’t know how to be right, how to illuminate the dark area that was my mind and find the right path home. This had been the only home I’d known for so long, and the face I stared at was the only light I had.

  Felice.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered, telling this one what I should’ve told the real one. She had taken off her pants, stepping out of them, wearing nothing but her underthings. Her body was slim and curvy, not a blemish to be seen on that tawny skin. She was everything this place hated.

  Koda, or rather Bram, had said it best.

  Prey. She was prey.

  She responded by crawling onto my lap and running her hands down me. I let her, because I never stopped her. How could I? She’d been the one good thing in this house for so long, I…I guessed I just lost myself in her. It was easy to do.