Dead Beautiful

by Yvonne Woon

  “I was walking past the dormitory when I saw her stumble out the front door. She could barely walk. I caught her just before she fell,” Dante said calmly.

  “It’s been a week and a half, and we still haven’t been able to drain that place,” the maintenance worker said with exasperation. “The water is still almost up to the ceiling. Who knows how she managed to find a crevice to breathe in. How she even survived is beyond me.”

  The headmistress narrowed her eyes, which were darkened with eyeliner. “Curious,” she said, her lips red and pursed. She turned to Dante. “Why were you outside the girls’ dormitory?”

  “I told you. I was just walking past on my way to the dining hall,” he said. “Right place, right time.”

  The headmistress didn’t look like she believed him, but gave up questioning for the moment. “See me in my office tomorrow morning,” she said, dismissing him.

  “And do we know how Eleanor Bell ended up in the basement?” she asked the maintenance workers.

  They both shook their heads. “We just work the plumbing,” the older one said. “The flood was caused by a series of broken pipes on the first floor. They were clean breaks, though, not made from freezing or bursting. Broken on purpose, if you ask me.”

  Headmistress Von Laark flinched.

  “Disgusting business, whatever happened down there,” the man said, spitting a wad of chewing tobacco on the ground. “But I guess there’s only one thing that matters.”

  The headmistress had started to walk away, but stopped on his words. “Which is?”

  “She’s alive.”

  The headmistress frowned. “Let us hope.”

  CHAPTER 12

  The First Living Room

  ELEANOR SURVIVED. SHE SPENT A WEEK IN THE nurses’ wing before being transferred to a hospital in Portland, Maine, and then home over winter break to recover. Between the panic that ensued after her discovery and final exams, I barely saw her before she left. Nathaniel and I visited her every afternoon, but most of the time she was delirious. The nurses said that she was technically fine; they couldn’t determine if anything traumatic had happened to her other than malnutrition and a slight case of pneumonia from being in cold water for such a long time. But there were a few complications. Her skin was freezing yet she refused to use any blankets or sheets; she was hungry but turned away all of the food given to her; she was tired but she never slept. Eleanor didn’t know what had happened either. She told Mrs. Lynch that the only thing she remembered was going to the library to study. After that, everything was blurry.

  The news only made people more uncomfortable. Had she been attacked? Was it an accident? I obviously thought the former, though the fact that she wasn’t afflicted with any sort of heart failure did disturb my theory. And even though I was happy she was safe, I was also more confused. Mrs. Lynch reopened the investigation, looking for new leads, new evidence. But just when they were ready to begin, winter came in full force, burying the campus—and all of its secrets—beneath three feet of snow.

  But let me rewind. After Dante carried Eleanor out of the girls’ dormitory, he came and found me in the bushes. “This is a nice spot,” he said over my shoulder into the evergreen shrubs. I all but screamed at the shock of him suddenly behind me.

  “How did you find her?” I asked him.

  “You said you thought she was in the basement. So I’ve been going to the dorm every day to check.”

  I gave him a curious look. “I didn’t tell you that I thought she was in the basement,” I said. “I told Eleanor’s father that.”

  Dante stared at me. “You didn’t?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  Dante looked troubled, but I didn’t care.

  “Cassandra is dead,” I said bluntly, because how else can you say something like that? “I saw her file. Which I found in Gideon’s room, by the way.”

  “How did you get into Gideon’s …” But his words trailed off. “Wait, her file? You have it?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Suddenly he stood up. “Show me.”

  I led him to the third floor of the library. On the way I told him about the rest of the files and their contents, and the real reason why I’d wanted to find them. But when we got to the oversized book section, the files were gone. I double-checked the decimal numbers, even took half the books off the shelves and shook them by their spines, but the files were unmistakably missing.

  “They were here,” I said. “I put them back the other day.”

  “Did you show them to anyone else?”

  “Only Nathaniel, but he wouldn’t have taken them.”

  “Could anyone else have known that you took them?”

  I shook my head, until I remembered running into Gideon as I was leaving the boys’ dormitory. By now he must have realized that someone had been in his room and that the files were gone, but could he have known it was me, and followed me to the library? I swallowed. “Yes.”

  Finals came and went. I studied for them in a blur, meeting up with Nathaniel during study hall, where we talked briefly about Minnie’s story. Nathaniel brushed it off. “Everyone knows she’s crazy,” he said, looking up from his geometric proof. And somewhere between exams and my study dates with Dante, I tried to do research, starting with the cryptic phrases on the school files, because it was the only evidence I had. This time Dante helped me, though by help, I mean sat next to me in the library scouring Latin books without telling me how they were relevant to figuring out why Gideon had had the files and what the files actually meant. But all of my work yielded nothing. When I asked Dante if Non Mortuus meant anything to him, he replied, “Not Dead.”

  “I translated that too,” I said over my book. “But does it have any significance to you?”

  Dante shook his head. “No.”

  “What about Undead?”

  He laughed. “Like revenants and zombies?”

  I sighed. “That’s all I could come up with too.”

  There were virtually no books or documents on Gottfried Academy, just like the article had said, and no matter how many times I searched “Undead” in the library catalog or online, I couldn’t find a single legitimate piece of information other than the expected Web sites about the general category of vampires and ghouls and zombies. I tried “Non Mortuus, Gottfried,” and then “Sepultura, Attica Falls,” and then various iterations of “Cassandra Millet,” “Non Mortuus,” “Two Deaths,” “Benjamin Gallow,” and “Deceased,” before I gave up.

  By the Friday before Christmas, everyone had already started to leave campus. Cars lined the half-crescent driveway in front of Archebald Hall; chauffeurs were packing luggage in trunks while everyone said good-bye for the winter holidays.

  Dustin came, just like he said he would, in my grandfather’s Aston Martin. I was standing with Dante beneath the lamppost in front of the building, my luggage resting at my feet as large flakes of snow floated down on us. When I saw Dustin pull up the path, I threw my arms around Dante, breathing in the woodsy smell of his skin for the last time before break.

  “I don’t want to go,” I said. “I want to stay here with you.”

  “It’s only a few weeks,” he said, checking his watch. “See, we’re already five minutes closer to seeing each other again.”

  “Come with me,” I said. “It’ll be so much fun. We’ll explore the mansion, play croquet in the snow, sneak into my grandfather’s cigar parlor....”

  Dante shook his head and laughed. “As tempting as that sounds, I’m not sure your grandfather would like me.”

  I sighed. “Okay, fine. How about this: on Christmas Eve, I’ll sneak into my grandfather’s library, and you sneak into Copleston Library, and it will almost be like we’re together.”

  Dante raised an eyebrow. “And on the night in question, what kind of book should I be reading?”

  “A love story. And not a tragic one. I hate those.”

  “It’s a date.”

  I heard the engine
turn off and the car door open. “Miss Winters,” Dustin said with a smile, stepping out of the car in a three-piece suit. Against my protests that I could do it myself, Dante carried my luggage and packed it in the trunk, while Dustin held the door for me.

  “Bye,” I whispered through the window as we backed down the path, my breath leaving a foggy imprint on the glass where Dante’s face had been.

  After a long snowy drive through evergreen forests and quaint New England towns, we arrived at the Wintershire House. Its sprawling lawn was now covered in snow, the trees naked and glazed in a glassy sheen of ice. As we meandered up the driveway, the black lampposts turned on, one by one, until we reached the crescent entry of the mansion.

  Dustin opened the car door for me, and I stepped into the graying December dusk. The windows of the mansion glowed warmly, and I walked inside, past the frozen fountain and the topiaries, which lined the front of the yard like faceless statues.

  “Your grandfather will be arriving for dinner shortly. In the meantime, I’ll take the liberty of bringing your luggage upstairs to Miss Lydia’s old room.”

  Dinner was served promptly at seven o’clock. I barely had to time unpack my bags when the grandfather clock downstairs chimed. Minutes later, Dustin knocked on my door, wearing a dinner suit and bow tie. He led me down through the foyer, where two men were standing on ladders, stringing lights around a twenty-foot-tall Christmas tree.

  My grandfather was already seated at one end of an excessively long table in the main dining room, which was decorated almost as lavishly as Gottfried’s Megaron. He smiled and stood up as I entered. “Renée,” he said warmly, giving me a stiff hug before unbuttoning his dinner jacket.

  His face was pink and weathered from the cold, his nose and ears even larger and droopier than they were last summer. A heavy chandelier hung over the middle of the room, and candles decorated the center of the table. Dustin bowed as he pulled out my chair for me, and after a flurry of swift swoops, I was suddenly sitting down, my chair pushed into the table, a napkin draped over my lap, a bowl of salmon-colored soup in front of me.

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to decide which spoon to use.

  Dustin made a modest bow and retreated to the kitchen to bring out our meals. My grandfather smiled from the seat beside me at the head of the table. He had a mustache now, bushy and white like a mop, and I watched it expectantly as he took a mouthful of soup. Our places were set with an elaborate array of china that included far too many forks and spoons. I chose the smallest one and dipped it in my bowl. All at once, the flavors and textures unfolded in my mouth: salty turning to bitter, and then tart and sweet.

  “It’s cold,” I blurted out. “And bitter. But also kind of fruity.”

  “It’s supposed to be cold, my dear. And that’s the goat cheese you’re tasting. Potage effrayant de figue, tomate, et fromage de chèvre. And quite delicious,” my grandfather said, raising a glass of scotch to Dustin. “Thank you.”

  I managed a smile as Dustin replaced my soup with the second course, a delicate arrangement of asparagus, stuffed figs, and duck confit. We ate in silence.

  “I was informed about your roommate,” my grandfather said, working at his duck with a fork and knife. “I’m glad she has recovered. I’m told she’s doing well?”

  “She was trapped in a flooded basement for over a week,” I said.

  He stopped chewing. “Yes, I was aware. I’ve already spoken to my contacts at the school.” His knife scraped the plate. “So how are you finding your classes? Stimulating?”

  I put down my fork. A giant moose head stared at me from over the mantel. “I know what you were,” I said, watching him eat.

  My grandfather coughed, choking on a fig. After pounding his chest with his fist twice, he composed himself. “What’s that, you said?”

  “I know what you were.”

  My grandfather exchanged a glance with Dustin, who was standing in the corner of the room with a napkin draped over his forearm. My grandfather put his fork down and let out a sigh of relief. “You must have questions. I knew you would come to it on your own once you started at Gottfried. Though I did not think it would be this quickly. Your mother didn’t figure it out until she was elected to the Board of Monitors in her third year. That’s how she met your father.”

  I sat back in my chair. My parents were Monitors? “What do you mean she didn’t figure it out until her third year? Wasn’t it obvious when she saw you around campus?”

  “Surely you must have realized it when you began Horticulture?”

  I shook my head, confused. “Horticulture? What does that have to do with you being headmaster?”

  My grandfather considered my words. “My being headmaster? This is the matter that you wished to discuss?”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  Picking up his glass of scotch, he sat back in his chair, the ice cubes clinking as he took a sip. “I am sorry,” he said slowly. “It must have slipped my mind.”

  “Really?” I said skeptically. “Because it seems kind of convenient that you would remember to tell me that my parents went to Gottfried, but forget to mention that you were the headmaster for over thirty years and that my parents were Monitors.”

  The candlelight flickered. “I’m glad to see you’re getting a good education,” my grandfather said, finishing his drink in one gulp. “Dustin, could you fetch me another scotch?”

  “What caused the heart attacks?”

  My grandfather narrowed his eyes. “Heart attacks?”

  “I know you know what I’m talking about. The Gottfried Curse.”

  “Legend and lore created by idle townspeople and failing journalists.”

  “But last year two students were murdered.”

  “Just one. Benjamin Gallow,” he said. I gazed at my grandfather in astonishment. “Yes, I was made aware of his death and Cassandra’s...disappearance.”

  I blinked, baffled that he wasn’t more disturbed by this information. “Why did you send me there if you knew it wasn’t safe? Even if the Gottfried Curse is a legend, you knew about it.”

  “Your parents died; you were far less safe in California.”

  “Why not send me to a different school?”

  “Our family has been attending Gottfried for centuries,” my grandfather said loudly. “There are no other schools.”

  Infuriated, I stood up. Dustin rushed over to my seat to pull my chair back for me. “My roommate is in the hospital and my parents are dead. Cassandra Millet is dead too. I read it in her file, her official Gottfried file, which means the school is covering it up. Minnie Roberts claims that the headmistress and the Board of Monitors are behind it.”

  My grandfather set his fork down on his plate. “That is preposterous,” he said quietly. “You trust the words of a girl you barely know, without any other proof, and against the words of the headmistress and the Board of Monitors, at an institution in which your parents placed their utmost trust. And here I thought you were intelligent.”

  I went silent.

  “You’re here, and you’re safe. Or as safe as one can be in this world. Now, I want you to listen to me very clearly. Education is safety. Knowing what’s out there is safety. Knowing how to fight and protect yourself is safety. So sit down. We still have one more course.”

  With no better option, I obliged. Dustin pushed in my chair for me. “Thanks,” I mumbled over my shoulder as he retreated to the kitchen to bring out dessert.

  “I was the headmaster at Gottfried Academy for thirty-two years, during which time your mother and father attended the school. That is where they met, as you already know. The Gottfried Curse is a legend, nothing more. While I was the headmaster, there were no accidents, no deaths. I became familiar with many of the faculty members that teach at Gottfried today. Professor Lumbar was a colleague; as were Professors Starking, Mumm, and Chortle. Annette LaBarge was a classmate of your mother’s, and a good friend of both your parents. And while Headmistress Von Laark wa
s a new hire when I was reaching the end of my last term, I have reason to believe that you are in the best of hands at Gottfried.”

  “But they’re just … they’re just teachers. What could they do? They obviously couldn’t protect Eleanor.”

  “Some things in this world, as you know, are unpreventable. It is my belief that if it were not for the current professors, the students at Gottfried would be far less safe. As is the case with most other schools.”

  That evening, while I was looking through my mother’s papers, trying to find out more about who she and my father were when they were at Gottfried, Dustin knocked on my door. He was holding a tray with a note on top. “A phone call for Miss Renée,” he said properly, with the twinge of a smile. I picked up the note and unfolded it. Mr. Dante Berlin.

  “He’s on the phone? Right now?”

  Dustin made a little bow in reply. Unable to contain my excitement, I ran downstairs to the sitting room.

  “Hello?” I said, barely believing that he was on the other line.

  Dante’s voice reverberated gently through the phone. “I had to hear your voice.”

  I coiled the cord around my fingers. “So I guess that means you miss me already.”

  I expected him to laugh, but to my surprise, he was serious. “I do. Very much. I don’t like being away from you.”

  Smiling into the receiver, I sat on the chaise longue, cradling the phone. “Well, hi,” I said softly.

  I imagined his dark, pensive eyes staring into mine. “Hi,” he said in a hushed tone. “So tell me what I missed.”

  I told him about my grandfather, about our conversation over dinner and how my parents were Monitors, about the long table and the moose head and the cold soup, which I still wasn’t certain I liked yet.

  Dante laughed. “No cold soup, no goat cheese. I’ll make a mental note. And no Gottfried Curse.”

  “And for you it’s no food at all. No sleep. And no tunnels.”

  “I’m low maintenance.”

  “Is that what you are? Because I’ve been trying to figure it out all semester.”