Myth

by Terri Todosey

  Little did I know Tina happened to be in one of the stalls and caught me red handed with wet toilet paper in one hand and a camera in the other. She didn’t say a thing, just washed her hands and left. I should have known she’d cause problems, but was still shocked when she cunningly brought the whole thing up during my art presentation.

  “How’d you get permission to bring a camera into the girl’s washroom?” she had asked.

  I hadn’t gotten permission and had no idea how to respond.

  “Doesn’t it totally go against the students’ privacy rights of having no cameras in washrooms or change areas?” she continued. Clearly her quest was to have me expelled, and after briefing the art teacher on how she had every right to sue the school for allowing this injustice, I was sent directly to the principal’s office where I was immediately suspended for the rest of the day and ordered to return with a note signed by my parents.

  Luckily for me Justin had an uncanny talent for forgery. He came to my rescue and convincingly imitated my mom’s signature. The hardest part was having to pretend I was grounded so that Tina would leave the matter alone. I nearly got busted all over again during the school’s spring concert, when Mr. Palouzie casually brought up the incident with my parents in an effort to defend my creative actions, and I had to quickly distract them all with a requirement question for college. I had no idea that lying could be so stressful, but on a positive note, the Instagram pic of a dripping wet TP face got over five hundred likes in the first hour and my Tumblr account now had more followers than Tina’s.

  “Well, detentions aside,” Tina sighed. “I was simply trying to let you know that we’re planning on having a seance in the attic upstairs to summon up the old mad man. Thought you and four-eyes might want to join us... that is, if you’re not too scared,” she smirked.

  “I don’t think we’re allowed to go up there,” said Emily with the worst timing ever.

  All eyes, including Justin’s and mine, shifted to her in disbelief. It was as though one of our own squad members had just shot themselves in the foot.

  “And you are?” sneered Tina.

  “Emily Shen,” she smiled, holding her hand out, clearly expecting a formal handshake.

  All five of them burst out laughing.

  “Nice to meet you Emily,” Blair stepped in, taking her hand and pulling her towards him flirtatiously. “How ‘bout downstairs in the dungeon? Do you think we’re ALLOWED to go there?”

  They all laughed, and before she could respond and further embarrass us, a man entered the library and broke our conversation with a couple of short claps.

  “Children!” he started.

  “Children?” muttered Tina. “Is he clueless?”

  “Who’s that?” whispered Justin.

  “Dave McGraw,” replied Emily. “He’s the new Headmaster for Lockhart Academy. My mom and I had a meeting with him when I registered for grade twelve after we moved here.”

  “Children, please gather around,” Mr. McGraw’s long fingers beckoned, motioning for all of us to come closer.

  I sighed, as we reluctantly drew in towards him.

  “Now, which of you have so graciously come to help today?” he asked with lips that seemed to protrude in speech helping him to pronounce everything with precise clarity. It took a moment for any of us to answer.

  Not surprisingly, Emily raised her hand ready to help, putting Tina and her friends in stitches. Justin looked at me with horror and embarrassment.

  “Ah yes! Our newest student Emily,” he peered down at her. “Perhaps you can ALL help Emily,” he continued with a smile, “See this box of books I’ve brought up? There are plenty more where this one came from in the cellar below. Please go get them, and bring them to the library. You’ll find the stairs in the front foyer.” He patted her on the head as though she were a preschooler and then turned and disappeared down the north hall.

  “Greasy,” I exclaimed once I knew he was out of earshot.

  “V e r y g r e a s y!” Justin said with his lips curled out, mimicking Mr. McGraw’s pronounced speech.

  “Wow! What a fail,” Tina scolded Emily. “Volunteering yourself is totally lame, and obviously SO your thing, but volunteering someone else is unforgivable.”

  “Unless,...” Blair interrupted.

  “What’s that?” asked Tina.

  “Emily’s obviously new and clueless to the way things work around here. She just needs some time to get to know us a little better,” he said brushing up next to her. “I’d be cool with giving her a lesson or two.”

  Justin stepped forward, “I think she’d prefer...”

  “YOU THINK?” interrupted Tina. “Well isn’t this a remarkable feat! Four-eyes Littler THINKS!”

  “I think too,” smiled Blair, “but I don’t think you want to know what I’m thinking,” he winked coyly at Justin, while casually placing his arm over Emily’s shoulder.

  “Ugh please,” I said, having had my fill of the male hormones that seemed to spasm out of control at the sight of any new girl they saw fit to dominate, as though there was suddenly a new territory to conquer.

  “Help us, or don’t help us, I really don’t care.” I was done with Tina, Blair, and Emily who seemed lost in it all, and decided to end the conversation by simply leaving the library and heading to the foyer myself. It must have taken Emily a beat to realize what had just transpired, as it was a full minute before I heard her scurrying to catch up with me. Justin followed closely behind.

  “Are they your friends?” she asked, walking fast to keep up.

  “Yeah,... best!” I replied sarcastically. “Listen,” I said, stopping and turning towards her. “I don’t know you, or what your motives are. The problem is that Justin invited you to hang out with us, and that puts us all in a bit of a predicament doesn’t it?”

  She stared blankly at me with doe-like eyes, delicately lined with blue mascara and sparkly eyeshadow.

  “Personally I don’t think you can keep up, but hey, I’m all for trying, and any friend of Justin’s is a friend of mine. But,” I paused. “Whatever we do, shall not, and I repeat, SHALL NOT ever be uttered to anyone. Not one detail, so help you God. Where we go and what we do remains here with the three of us, lest you be ousted from our motley crew and the three shall return to two. Do I make myself clear?”

  She quickly nodded in affirmation.

  “A little harsh don’t you think?” whispered Justin.

  “I can’t afford to be grounded over the summer and I’d ask for an oath in blood if we had more time, but I’ll trust your judgement in having invited her,” I concluded and continued towards the front entrance.

  We entered the foyer and I realized there was a reason why I hadn’t remembered any descending stairway. It wasn’t there.

  “I thought he said the stairs were here?” I asked.

  “Maybe we should go ask him?” suggested Emily.

  “Hang on,” and remembering the small door in the study, I began scanning the cracks in the paneled wall.

  “What are you looking for?” asked Justin.

  I looked along the seams between the panels and then saw it. “Watch and be amazed!” I smiled, and cleverly pulled out a small brass latch. Like magic a panel door creaked open. The small, dark entrance revealed a narrow flight of stairs leading downward.

  “That can’t be the stairway he’s talking about,” said Emily.

  “Why not?” I asked, “Do you see another way down?”

  “No, but it doesn’t look like anyone’s gone down there in years. Don’t you think we should maybe ask first?” Emily’s cautious voice was beginning to nauseate me.

  “To be honest,” I said, “I could care less if this is the right way or not, because all I really want to do is explore. You in? Or out?”

  —

  The air was thick and stuffy
as we started our decent down the creaky old stairs with Emily reluctantly taking the rear. The light from the foyer drizzled in hesitantly behind us, not nearly bright enough to show us the full distance down.

  A faint rustling sound floated up from below.

  “Shhh,” I whispered. “Did you hear that?”

  “Hear what?” whispered Justin.

  “I think someone’s down there.”

  “Stop it Tali,” whimpered Emily, “you’re freaking me out!” She started to back up the stairs, but just then, the little light that we had was extinguished as the door snapped shut.

  “I think I’ve decided NOT to help!” Tina cackled from the other side of the door, and we could hear her friends cruel laughter fade away with their footsteps.

  “I can’t find the door knob!” cried Emily, as she fumbled in the pitch dark that now surrounded us.

  A low thud suddenly called our attention below.

  “What was that?” said Justin.

  “I’m not sure,” I said squeezing my way in beside them on the top step. “But it sounded like it came from down there.”

  Chapter Four

  And So It Begins

  “They locked us in!” Emily banged on the door. “Let us out!”

  “Shhhh,” I grabbed her arm to stop her. “They might hear you.”

  “Isn’t that the point?”

  “Don’t you see...”

  “I can’t see anything!” she squealed.

  “They WANT to scare us,” I said.

  “Well, it’s working!”

  “If they think we’re scared, we’ll never hear the end of it and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather meet up with Frankenstein than live our entire last year of high school with that over our heads. Besides, what are the chances they’d let us out anyway?”

  I couldn’t see Emily or anything else in the pitch-black stair hall we were trapped in, but I hoped she had grasped what I was saying.

  “Well what are we supposed to do, just sit here in the dark until someone finds the little latch and decides to open it?” she asked. “And what about that noise down there?” she added. “Aren’t you guys afraid at all?”

  The strange noises we heard did sit uneasily in the back of my mind, and the darkness that made it impossible to see anything didn’t help ease those fears, but I refused to admit it. Besides, there had to be some logical explanation for the noises we heard - at least that’s what I told myself.

  “Aw, come on, Em,” Justin cut in, “isn’t this what we came here for?”

  “To scare ourselves silly?” Emily’s voice squeaked.

  “No, to explore! This may be the only chance we have to get away from all the parents.”

  “Exactly!” I said. “We may as well just improvise and make the best of our situation,” I added, already feeling braver with Justin backing me up. “All we have to do is find the light switch and we’ll all be less frightened.”

  “Duh! There’s no electricity!” she huffed. They hadn’t invented it back when this house was built.”

  “Good point,” I admitted. “So, how the heck did they see anything down here?”

  “They used candles or lanterns,” she sighed.

  My foot stumbled down to the next step and I reached my hands out to the wall beside me to steady myself. It was pitch black and even with my eyes adjusted to the darkness I was blind. It was pointless to continue downward if we couldn’t see.

  “Anyone happen to have a candle and match?” I said sarcastically, but then a thought came to me. “Wait a sec,” I reached into my back pocket and pulled out my phone. I pressed the power button and when the screen lit up I put it under my chin, giving my face a ghostly glow.

  “See Em! Improvise.” I smiled a wide grin at her.

  Justin laughed.

  Emily took her phone out of her pocket and shone the dim light up under her chin. “Yeah, whatever,” she said impassively.

  Scanning through the icons I found the flashlight app, tapped it and just like that there was a beam of light leading us down the wooden steps, casting long, eerie shadows around us. “Follow me closely.”

  As we inched our way down, the cool air filled my lungs with a dank, musty smell and the fine hairs on my arms stood up, observant to the slightest movement of air. My ears rang with an alerted sense of preparedness, listening for anything out of the ordinary. But now everything was quiet. Even our footsteps and breathing seemed muted in anticipation of something about to happen. The light from my phone should have eased some of my apprehension, but the dancing shadows it created seemed to have lives of their own, detaining the fears that still swirled in my mind. I scanned every inch and dark crevice of the stair hall, but all I saw were the cold plaster walls that hedged our way down.

  It was at about the fifteenth step when the stairway finally ended, and I felt my foot step down to an uneven dirt floor.

  “We’re at the bottom,” I whispered, shining the light around the room. The low wooden timbers that supported the weight of the mansion above rested on four stone walls, which were crowded and obscured by many objects. My light glanced off some old bottles and tin containers that stood on a shelf beside an antique armoire. A wooden workbench sat on the floor, its surface cluttered with dusty scrolls of paper and a puddle of dribbled wax where once a candle must have stood. The floor was littered with wooden boxes and stacks of books and then, in an instant, through the moving beam of light, I caught a glimpse of a face.

  “What was that?” my heart jumped and as quickly as I had seen it, I lost the face out of the moving light.

  Emily let out a short high-pitched screech as she crawled back up a step hiding her head behind Justin’s back. Frightened and flustered I raced to find the face again, bouncing my phone’s beam all over the area I had just scanned, and suddenly there it was again. A face so small and hideously childlike. It was creepy.

  “Who’s there?” I called out, the ray of light glued on the creature that peered out from within a large box on the floor.

  “Who is it?” whispered Justin.

  “Please go away, please go away, please go away,” Emily whimpered holding onto Justin.

  “Owww!” Justin cringed. “Stop digging your nails into me.”

  The glassy eyes stared straight at us, not blinking or moving.

  “What the heck?” I took another step closer, fear now taking a back seat to curiosity.

  “It’s a doll!” I scoffed now seeing its small porcelain hands hanging down at its side.

  “Wow!” laughed Justin. Walking over to it, he lifted it up by its hair and turned it upside down so that the eyes rolled back into its head. “Scared the hang out of me.” He tossed it back into the box upside down.

  “Me too,” Emily opened her eyes and managed to let out a small giggle.

  After a thorough perimeter check of the cellar we settled in, realizing it wasn’t as scary as we had imagined.

  “Hey guys, check this out!” said Justin, holding up a weird shaped object that held a card in a slot at one end.

  “It looks like an old view finder,” said Emily. She took it from him and put it to her face, adjusting the card in the slot.

  “It’s kind of hard to see the pictures though,” she said. “It sorta looks like a tree.”

  “Here let me see,” I said taking it from her and directing it towards my phone light, I looked through the eye piece. The picture was dull and scratched, but Emily was right, it was a tree.

  “Looks like a weeping willow,” I said, clicking forward to the next picture. “I think this one’s an oak.” I clicked again. “Some sort of evergreen.” Click. “They’re all trees.”

  “Wow, I can’t handle all the excitement!” Justin mocked and turned to dig into another box.

  “Yeah, they must have been bored back in the old days,”
I said.

  “Can you imagine no TV or cell phones?” said Emily.

  “No skateboards or gaming!” said Justin.

  “Ahh, but they had trees!” I laughed and tossed the viewfinder back into the box.

  The rubble of items soon had us all distracted as we delved in, full heartedly looking for treasure.

  “Help! My brain is being sucked out.” Emily and I both shone our phone light on Justin, who had put on a funny looking helmet with springs that exited each earflap and curled upwards to make a point at the top of his head.

  “AHHHHH” he started shaking with convulsions, which caused a clear visor to slip down over his face and made us all laugh.

  “What do you think they are going to do with all this stuff?” giggled Emily.

  “The government will probably confiscate it, once word gets out this place is filled with alien artifacts,” said Justin now diving into the rubble for more treasure.

  Even Emily found herself distracted from her misgivings as she opened the armoire. “Check out these dresses!” she said propping her phone up to freely hold an old Victorian dress against herself. Its poofy shoulders and yellow linen skirt smothered her in fabric. She placed a wide brimmed hat on her head, fastened the ribbons below her chin, and began scavenging for a mirror.

  Seeing an odd-looking contraption off in the corner of the room I decided to make my way through the maze of boxes to investigate. I stepped around a tall pile of books, nearly tripping over something laying on the floor between all the stacks of stuff. It was an old leather book with a hand-written letter stuck to the cover. Picking it up I shone the light on it and started to read...

  Hi! It’s me, Tali. Tali Jacobson.

  I stopped. ‘How can this be possible?’ I thought. ‘I’ve never been here before.’ I blinked, struggling to make sense of what I thought I was seeing. It looked like my hand writing, but I couldn’t understand how. I rubbed my eyes and looked back down at the page, where my name remained clearly there, and I continued to read.