Grimmstead Academy: Defiant Rebellion

by Candace Wondrak

  I left my spot on the stone steps, heading into the house. I ended up in Lucien’s office, just as Koda hurried away. Yes, that was not shocking to me. If it was Bram, he wouldn’t have snitched; but then again, Bram might just try to kill me for fun, so I had to look at this with a level head.

  Lucien ran a hand down his chest, ordering me, “Close the door.” As if he had any right to take that tone of authority with me. The bastard.

  I bit back my harsh response, shutting the door before standing near his desk. He might be a bit taller than me, might be wider and stronger, but I would not be intimidated by a man I helped this place create.

  He stared at me with hazel eyes that were not unlike my own, his wide jaw coated in a beard. “I assume you know what this is about.” He gestured to the chairs facing his desk, but I made no moves to sit in either one.

  “I do.”

  “I’m the last person you’ll have to worry about if you hurt Felice,” Lucien warned. “Each and every man under this roof cares for her, and they won’t sit idly by and let you take her away.”

  Ironic that Koda assumed me trying to research in the library for Felice was because I wanted to hurt her or take her away. The idiots. She was the one person in this entire, despicable world that I would never hurt, myself included in that number.

  Shaking my head once, I barked out a chuckle. “You still don’t understand. You’ve been inside that room, haven’t you? You’ve seen her time and time again, and yet you still have no idea—”

  Lucien slammed his hands onto his desk, getting to his feet with a deliberate slowness. “I understand all I need to. You’re a madman.”

  I lifted my arms. “Aren’t we all a little mad here, Lucien? What you don’t understand is why—why this place is like this. Why everyone who steps foot on its grounds disappears from history and fades from memory. Why it’s a constantly revolving door, spitting out the lost souls who will create the most havoc.”

  His gaze narrowed at me, his rough, scratchy voice muttering, “And you do? You understand it all?” His arms flexed under his suit, his wide chest shuddering with heavy breaths. He was an intimidating fellow, I’d give him that, but I would not back down. Not about this.

  “I understand more than you.”

  His hands clenched into fists on his desk as he visibly restrained himself from lunging at me. “You want her for yourself.”

  That was true, but deep down, I assumed every man here felt the same. She was so connected to these men…because of my connection to them. What I’d done to these ones. A devil’s bargain indeed. “I want what is best for her,” it pained me to say, “and what is best for her is to leave Grimmstead.”

  Of course, watching Felice leave Grimmstead was the absolute last thing I wanted. I wanted to wrap her up in my arms and never let her go, but sooner or later every man in love learned that love itself changed you. And me? I’d been in love with Felice since the day I started dreaming of her.

  In fact, all those years ago, those dreams were what led me here.

  Lucien frowned at me, saying, “She tried to leave before, and it wouldn’t let her. I agree that this place is only harmful to her, but there is no way out—for us, or for her.”

  “That’s where you’re wrong. Every place that has an entrance has an exit—it simply might not be in the same place.” If only it was that easy. It wasn’t. If it was, surely we all would be long gone by now, Grimmstead in our pasts.

  He stared at me for a while, his lips thinning into a line beneath his beard. “I don’t trust you.”

  “I never asked you to,” I told him. “I simply would like for you to call off my shadow.” It was clear to me that, during my time away, Lucien had become the man of the house, and he took his role very seriously. I supposed I did too, at one point, in the very far, distant past.

  Lucien glowered. “And why the fuck would I do that?”

  The last thing I wanted to discuss with Lucien was the fact that I was having the most difficult time reading—my mind was so frazzled with confusion and anxiety that I could not even bring it up.

  What was a well-read man without his eyes? What good was a door when everyone was too blind to see it?

  I was about to answer him, though truthfully I wasn’t quite sure what I would say, when I heard the creaking of a door behind me. Whatever words had been forming on my tongue died in my throat as I turned to glance over my shoulder, at the boy who had followed us inside and now poked his head in where it didn’t belong.

  His whole body, really.

  And…he wasn’t quite himself, either.

  Bram—you could tell by the way his mouth was constantly caught in a frown, his eyes squinted. Ah, but alas, those eyes were not the bright, vivid green they should’ve been. No, as Bram pushed into the room, staring at both Lucien and me, his eyes were anything but normal.

  The child who stood no taller than my stomach looked like the devil himself, his eyes nothing but blackness, whispers of death and destruction, two orbs that revealed nothing but the void itself. Where there should’ve been white was all black, too.

  He looked, quite frankly, like a demon possessing a boy’s body. It was extremely unsettling, and as I stood there, meeting his eyes, I couldn’t help but feel trepidation in my gut. I was not a man who gave into weakness, but Grimmstead had a habit of pulling you down when you thought you were strong.

  I glanced at Lucien, finding that he now stared at the black-eyed boy, too. Neither of us knew what to tell Bram.

  If it even was Bram.

  The boy’s lips started to move, and a flurry of voices came out, all fighting for control. Nothing he said was coherent, not until one voice emerged above the rest, drowning out the others as it spoke, “Victor, I gave you everything you wanted, and this is how you repay me—by trying to leave me? I thought we were friends.” A voice so low, so deep, it was near inhuman. Definitely not a boy’s voice.

  My heart, if it beat in my chest, froze. Every part of my body grew cold as I stared at the boy, the realization dawning on me.

  Bram who was not Bram, grinned, his black gaze unsettling. “You’ve forgotten me. Pity, because I’ve done so much for you.”

  Lucien did not address the boy, staring at me as he asked under his breath, “What is he talking about?”

  “I’ve always watched, you know.” Bram reached out, moving to set a hand flat upon the stone wall nearest him, his fingers splaying over the smooth stone. “These walls are made of my bones. Why would I ever let any of you leave? Continue on your path and face the consequences, as dire as they may be. I suppose, in the end, it’s up to you.”

  The young Bram blinked, the abnormally deep voice abruptly halting. Just like that, his eyes were black no more; they were back to their normal green hue, and he swayed on his feet slightly, glancing between Lucien and me. A look of annoyance crossed his face.

  “What the hell am I doing here?” his prepubescent voice spoke, his cherub mouth forming a frown. He had no idea what just happened, which shouldn’t surprise me.

  “You followed us inside,” I spoke, glancing at Lucien before adding, “you should return to Felice. I’m sure she’s looking for you, as you were in the middle of a lesson.” As Bram let out a groan and a swearword, stomping away, the unease in my gut only grew.

  The strangest thing was, I did forget. I forgot the beginning of this whole mess, and at the same time, I didn’t. My mind was not my friend here, but my enemy. I could trust not even myself here, which made me wonder if it was all for naught. If, no matter what I did or what I tried, none of us would ever leave these grounds.

  As he’d said, these walls were his bones.

  If that was true, the rooms were his organs. The windows were his eyes, and that crack in the basement…was his heart.

  Alas, even I did not know how to stop a heart so hellish.

  It was a long time before Lucien broke his silence, asking me, “Who was that?”

  “That,” I spoke, dread cr
awling up my spine and enveloping me in a slow, careful, lung-crushing hug as I imagined what I was going to say. Even if I was wrong, even if it wasn’t true, it was the closest thing to it. After all, who could hand out bargains like the one I’d made all those years ago beside the great tempter, the demon that sat on every shoulder? “That was the devil himself, I fear.”

  And this…Grimmstead truly was hell.

  Chapter Seven – Felice

  Dinner was a wild affair. The children were loud and boisterous, instantly giving me a headache. I hardly ate, though I supposed that was also because I wasn’t quite hungry. An air of uneasiness settled around each and every one of us, and I detected new tension between Lucien and Victor. My headache stopped me from paying too much attention to them, though.

  My headache got so bad I had to excuse myself from the dinner table and leave to return to my room early. With one hand hanging limply by my side and the other rubbing my left temple, I hastened my pace up the stairs, turning to head toward the wing where my room was.

  My bedroom door was closed, and I immediately froze, both hands dropping to my sides as I stared at the wooden door. A sick feeling rose in my gut, a terrible, awful buzzing sound gracing my ears and making me want to scream. My feet stumbled back, and my spine hit the stone wall opposite my door.

  Let’s talk about that door for a moment: I could hardly see it. Where I should’ve seen nothing but old, creaky wood, I saw a mass of tiny, roaming bodies, small black things crawling on top of one other with gusto, their wings rubbing against each other, the sound blocking out everything else I might’ve heard.

  Flies. A whole host of flies sat on my door, crawling along it as if it was coated in honey.

  I couldn’t look at them. There were hundreds, if not thousands. And the buzzing—it was too much. My head already hurt, but when the buzzing sound grew louder, my brain felt like it was going to explode. My eyelids slammed shut, and I prayed for the flies to go away.

  There were too many. It wasn’t normal. Flies didn’t just congregate like that.

  A light, feline sound arose above the buzzing, a loud meow that drowned everything else out. I opened my eyes, finding that I no longer stood a few feet from my bedroom door, no longer near the horde of flies.

  No, instead, I stood before the open basement door, yellow eyes staring up at me from the darkness. Midnight must’ve sat at the base of the wooden steps, beckoning me closer, and the worst part was, I wanted to go to him.

  I glanced around me, seeing no one else in the hall. The basement was supposed to be off-limits, but…would anyone really care if I went down there right now? My memory was foggy, but I knew I’d been down there recently. I knew, and yet I didn’t. I couldn’t remember.

  I tried to shake off the uneasy feeling, but I couldn’t. Instead, I did my best to ignore it as I stepped into the darkness, my feet finding the first step down into the basement. My eyes were sluggish in adjusting to the darkness, and I was slow to meet Midnight at the base of the steps. The cat said nothing else, making not another sound as it leaped to its feet and darted off, deeper into the basement.

  My body grew tired as I followed along. I did not grab the lantern near the base of the steps, preferring the darkness to try to soothe my headache. A strange, repeating sound rose in the air, a thumping that made me nearly trip on my own feet.

  That sound. That sound was Dagen’s curse, not mine. Why did I hear it? Why did it seem to grow louder the deeper into the basement I went?

  Midnight disappeared around a corner, and I followed him. It was the same corner I’d seen Payne coming around all that time ago, carrying a bucket…but not carrying a bucket. Ugh. What the heck was going on here? Why did my mind feel so jumbled? Nothing was making sense, nothing at all, and I hated it because there was nothing I could do to change it.

  Or, by all that was holy, to stop that thumping sound.

  When I rounded the corner, I found Midnight was nowhere in sight, which I immediately found odd, because there really wasn’t any place for the cat to disappear without retracing our steps and leaving the basement. The basement seemed narrower, smaller than the house upstairs. There were no extra rooms, just a dank, creepy hall whose air temperature seemed to be twenty degrees too cool.

  Midnight wasn’t here, but someone else was.

  Victor stood with his back to me, his hands in his pockets, his head downturned, staring at something on the floor. He’d brought a lantern with him, the wick burning the oil slowly and illuminating everything in a dull orange light. My gaze could only linger on the flame and its small, stark beauty for a few moments before he glanced over his shoulder at me.

  It was funny how I stood five feet from him, and it still felt like he towered over me, commanding my heart to skip a beat.

  He turned his body, taking a step toward me. “You shouldn’t be down here, Felice.” Victor whispered my name like a sweet nothing, a tender word he had to be careful speaking. Heat rose within me, but then whatever strange feelings I had for Victor simmered when I noticed what he’d been looking at before.

  Chains on the wall to our right, which meant the crack in the floor was near.

  It…almost looked bigger, which was ridiculous in and of itself. It looked like a fault line, a crack in the ground, its two sides separating but not pulling apart entirely. The rest of the house had no structural damage, so I didn’t think we had to worry.

  Although—I took that back—the crack seemed to glow.

  A glowing crack was worse than a non-glowing crack, surely.

  A dull red color seeped from it, flickering every so often, reminding me of fire. Its color was deeper than the light coming from the lantern on the ground, and I immediately lost all train of thought as I stared at it. I…I wanted to move closer to it. I needed—

  “Felice,” Victor’s worried voice snapped me out of it, bringing me back to reality and out of whatever trance I’d been in. His lips thinned and he grabbed the lantern, quickly reaching for my hand with his free one. He tugged me along, pulling me away from the crack, away from where Lucien had Bram held for so long. “Come,” he said. “This place is affecting you, just like it affects everyone else.”

  “Affecting me?” I echoed, sounding faint. I let him lead me through the basement, stopping only when he turned off his lantern and set it down near the base of the stairs. His hand found mine again, and he tugged me up the steps, practically slamming the basement door once we were out of it.

  “It’s not your fault,” Victor spoke, eyes hard on me. He looked both worried and annoyed, as if I should’ve known better.

  “It affects everyone,” I repeated what he’d said earlier, paraphrasing a bit. “How do you know?”

  “We should talk outside,” he said, pulling me through the hall, to the side door—the same side door I’d thrown myself in while trying to hide from Bram, when I first realized how dangerous the other half of Koda was.

  The moon hung low in the sky, its silver craters visible. I must’ve missed some time, because the last thing I knew, it’d been dinner time, the sun setting and amber light flooding the windows. Now…now it was nothing but blackness, a night that felt almost eternal.

  Victor was slow to release my hand, and my skin felt the loss of his immediately. A longing I could not fight filled me, and I had to take a step away from him, put more space between us. If I didn’t, I was liable to throw myself at him right here, right now.

  What had gotten into me here? I was never like this before. Sex was nice enough, but it wasn’t everything. Here…it almost was. Being connected to these guys, it felt almost impossible to fight. I’d given up where the others were concerned, my heart feeling too much for them—even the ever-impossible Ian—but when it came to Victor, I’d done my best to refrain.

  I might not have refrained from him before, but now I would. I would not muddle things up.

  Victor and I stood on the grass, a few feet between us, the air thick with something I couldn’t name.
The moonlight danced in his light eyes, and he rubbed his clean-shaven jaw as he thought. “You,” he started, “need to stay out of that basement. I’m sure Lucien told you it was off-limits. No one should be down there, especially not you, not when you’re alone.”

  I knew he was right, and yet I chose not to address what he’d said, instead asking, “You said it affects everyone; what did you mean by that?” If there was anyone who would know how Grimmstead worked, it was Victor Grimmstead, the man who built this place up from nothing.

  “You know this house toys with you,” he said. “Where you found me is the center of it all. It is where reality and make-believe mix and form something new.” Victor paused, glancing back at the house. Its tall stone walls stood high in the darkness, most of the lights inside off. Everyone else was asleep.

  Or they wandered the halls in search of the one thing they sought above all else. I knew Koda did, as did Ian. Which made me wonder how Victor had gotten to the basement without his ever-present shadow.

  “What do you mean by it?” I asked. If we were dealing with a living, breathing entity and not a possessed house doing its own thing, maybe we could beat it. Maybe we could win and leave Grimmstead.

  Maybe.

  “Did you know I built this place brick by brick?” Victor asked, choosing to not answer my question. “I did it while dreaming of a woman out of my own time, a woman who knew the fires of passion as much as she knew fire itself. I dreamt of you for so long, Felice, so long your face was imprinted on my soul.”

  I remained quiet as I listened to him, as his words sunk in. Sure, he’d told me some of this before, but hearing it now was different. Hearing it now, being here with him—really here with him and not in my own head, or wherever our past encounters had taken place—made everything so much more real.

  “Everything I touched is drawn to you. Every single soul in this place I have laid a hand on. The walls, the glass, the dirt in the basement—even this place is affected by you. I thought once you came here things would be easier, but I was wrong. So very wrong I could not have been more blind. Things did not get easier; they became so much harder.”