“Do you... Do you think he's haunting the academy?” I suggested, fear creeping up on me with every passing second we stayed here.
“William? Oh, I doubt it. I didn’t know you believe in ghosts, Scared-y Cat?”
“I don’t. At least, I didn’t. But it seems to me as if you do, or at least did at some point if you had Cora digging up all she could find on the house’s history.” I turned to face Dante.
“Hmm.” Dante looked slightly amused, as if I was a stand-up comedian performing a moderately good show. “I thought at some point that I was clairvoyant. But alas, no such gift. Turns out I'm just a simple composer after all.”
His eyes met mine, and a shiver of electricity ran along my arms, a warm feeling that sent heat through my entire body.
“Come on, guys!” Cora yelled, disrupting the peacefulness of the graveyard, and the intensity of the moment. “Want to visit something really spooky?”
I laughed nervously, turning away from Dante. What the heck was that just now? Am I falling for him? Great. I finally managed to make a male friend and then, at the slightest notion of him standing close to me or saying something considerate, I turned into a love-smitten freak.
Although my entire mind screamed I didn’t really want to see anything spooky after all the crapload of creepy things I had experienced so far, I yelled back yes anyway, and even managed to look excited when we chased down Cora to the mausoleum. With the initial cold temperature of the cemetery rising a few degrees, I felt slightly more comfortable.
“Here you go,” Cora said, leading us through an overgrown passageway and straight to the strangest mausoleum I had ever seen. Strange, because it was made entirely out of black stone, and on the outside were decorative markings of angels fallen from the heavens and people burning forever in hellfire. Not exactly the peaceful ending I had in mind when I thought of passing on to heaven.
The large doors to the mausoleum were closed shut with an iron chain, and a key was nowhere in sight, so thankfully going in was out of the question.
“Why would anyone put those images on their mausoleum?” I wondered out loud.
“Beats me,” Cora said. “But I can tell you one thing. It wasn’t built on holy ground. When we dug around for info, we came across a deed asking a local priest to christen the ground of the cemetery, but no such thing for the mausoleum, although we did find something about a request to have the mausoleum built to a local craftsman.”
“Where the heck did you find all that info?”
“Internet. And the archives. In the basement of the academy, next to the tailor shop, are the archives detailing everything about the academy’s history. They meant to turn the east wing into a museum, so they kept all the information about its previous owners,” Cora explained.
“Why didn't they? Turn the east wing into a museum, I mean.”
Cora shrugged. “For my assignment to pick a song about the academy, I’m going to focus on its history, the previous owners, their love affairs, their sometimes-tragic ends.”
“I thought only William Gray was murdered.”
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean others didn’t die in peculiar circumstances. It was the eighteenth century. Hardly likely you’d die from old age in your bed at night. Tuberculosis, scarlet fever, all those illnesses pierced through the land and through this house. Unwanted pregnancies. Suicides.”
“Stop,” I said, feeling sick to my stomach. Behind her, the mausoleum, grand and grotesque, threatened to swallow me, turn me into another name in the long line of people who passed away on this estate. The house, previously a possible home, hardly sounded as inviting anymore.
“We should go,” Dante came to my rescue.
Cora ignored both of us. She pulled the chain closing the mausoleum, and sighed. “Too bad we can’t get in. I do enjoy a good scare. Besides, if we find out who’s buried here, we might discover a lot more about the academy’s history. Maybe even something I could use for the assignment.”
“Well, it’s closed,” I said sharply, my voice shrill. It sounded as if someone else was talking, someone on the verge of panic, an alien version of myself I barely recognize. “So, let’s go. It's getting late.”
“All right, no need to get your panties in a twist,” Cora said. She looked a little hurt, and I felt instantly sorry for snapping at her, but this place radiated evil, much alike the attic door of last night. Without thinking about it, I reached for Dante's hand, like I did last night. To my surprise, he let my hand slip into his, and gave it a soft, reassuring squeeze.
“Ah,” Cora said, looking at both of us. Her eyes were fixated on our hands, entwined together, and an angry scowl appeared on her face. “I see.” Her voice was low, dangerous.
“Cora.” I yanked my hand back. “It’s nothing, listen…”
“No,” Cora replied, shaking her head. “I think I’ve heard and seen enough. For some silly reason, Alanis, I thought you liked Nate. Maybe you don’t, but I thought we were friends and you could’ve at least told me. Same goes for you,” she said, looking at Dante accusingly. She then turned and ran away, through the overhanging trees, through the graveyard, leaving us alone in the shadow of the mausoleum.
I started to go after her, but Dante grabbed my arm and stops me. “Let her go. She’ll feel bad she overreacted like this by tomorrow morning.”
“She’s our friend,” I countered. “We should make sure she’s okay.”
I couldn’t exactly pinpoint when ‘my’ and ‘I’ had turned into ‘our’ and ‘we’, but I decide not to think about it.
“Let her go, Scared-y Cat,” Dante said. “I have something I need to show you.”
For a second I look at him, stunned, but then roughly pull my arm out of his grip. “I’m going after her.”
“Fine then. Go do that. She won’t talk to you anyway until she’s calmed down. Besides, nothing is going on, and she knows that. If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go talk to her tonight. After all, I’ve known her for four years, give me some credit here.” Dante scratched his neck. “If you want me to, I’ll tell her about last night and the noises from the attic.”
“No.” I shook my head, imagining Cora going upstairs to investigate. That closed door wouldn’t keep her out. She would break the lock, regardless of what I or Dante would say. “It’s too dangerous.”
“That’s exactly why I don’t want to tell her.” Dante looked grim; his eyes dark. “I’ll tell her a vague version of last night. We thought we heard a burglar on the attic, turned out it was nothing, then today you thought you'd heard something again and had a fright. I’ll stress nothing is going on between us.”
“Good. Because nothing is.” Even though that felt like a lie.
“Indeed. Besides, you already like Nate. Just tell her that and she’ll be too busy finding out how to set you up with him to worry about anything else anymore,” Dante reassured me. He gave me a lopsided smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes.
“Okay.” I hesitated for a second, and then asked: “What was it you wanted to show me?”
“Come along,” Dante said, “let’s get out of this godforsaken place. It’s at the cemetery.”
We walked back to the graveyard. I couldn’t help but cast a look back at the mausoleum, half afraid the doors would have suddenly opened by themselves, half terrified I was losing my mind. By the time we reached the cemetery, my stomach growled stubbornly, wishing for a hearty meal.
“Here it is,” Dante said, stopping in front of one of the more richly decorated gravestones. I looked at the marking on the grave. Elizabeth Mary Gray. Born in 1868 and died in 1884. Beloved daughter and sister.
“Yes…” I began hesitantly, wondering what he wanted me to see. The grave looked rather ordinary, besides the girl’s young age when she passed away.
“Do you feel anything?” he asked. “A faint scent of recognition?”
I shook my head softly. I focused on the gravestone, the engravings, the decorations, but there was no
thing, not even the faintest hint of recognition. “No”.
“Hm.” Dante looked disappointed, and he didn’t even try to hide it. The dark shadow was back to cloud his eyes, and he suddenly looked as tired as I did this morning.
“Why? Do you?” I asked him.
“Like I’ve seen that name before. And the gravestone.” He shrugged, as if it meant nothing, although it was clear from the distant look in his eyes that it did. “I thought maybe you did too, considering you also heard the attic noise. Guess not.”
He was all melancholy and self-pity, but it actually made me feel sad for him. It must be so tough to be the only one who heard noises no one else did or saw something others didn’t.
I reached forward to let my hand slide over the engravings. Maybe touching it would help me remember something. The writing was old, worn, barely recognizable, but when I leaned closer, I saw there was something written below the date. I narrowed my eyes and focused on the writing, but I couldn’t make out what it said. When I let my hand trail over the writing however, I could make out some syllables. Slowly I went over the first letter. An 'M', with its second part missing. I did the same for the entire sentence, taking my time to make out each one of the words.
May she rest forever.
I put a step back, glancing at the grave. May she rest forever? It sounded a little awkward, but not that strange. It wasn’t a far stretch from Rest in Peace to May she rest forever, although it was a tad unusual. But even though so, an unsettling feeling crept up on me. The temperature dropped, and I wasn’t not sure if it was from the cold of the late afternoon stretching into evening, or if it was from my sudden discovery.
“May she rest forever,” I said, the words coming out cold and unfeeling. “Sounds a little odd, doesn’t it?” I asked Dante.
No reply. “Dante?” When he still didn’t reply, I tore away from the gravestone, and looked around.
He was gone. I was all alone on the graveyard.
Chapter Eight
I didn’t know how long I stood there before I was finally able to move, but when I could move again, I had raced out of the graveyard as if the devil was on my heels. Now I was walking back to the academy, alone on the stone pathway, surrounded by nothing but trees and my own bad temper. If I saw Dante, I was going to kill him. Why in God’s name would he leave me alone in a place that reeked of death and decay and obviously terrified me?
I kicked against a loose rock lying on the pathway and cursed myself for ever believing I could make some friends here. Maybe I was just meant to be alone, with the exception of Sam, of course. She wouldn’t bail on me simply because I didn’t tell her I was hanging out with someone, like Cora did. Even though I wasn’t actually hanging out with Dante or anything like that. And Sam wouldn’t leave me alone in the creepiest place on earth, no matter what happened.
The sky darkened, the pale light of the early October moon illuminating the dark blue sky. In the distance, the lights of the academy’s dining room glistened. I walked slowly, deliberately stalling because I didn’t want to go back inside, even though I was starving. But having dinner meant sitting alone, if Cora and Dante still chose to avoid me.
I took the time walking back to think about my composition assignment. If I were to write it right now, my composition talking about Dante’s personality would be a furious one, angry and violent. But the guilty part of my mind also remembered last night, the soft kiss on my cheek, and today, the secure feel of his hand in mine. He had such contradicting personality: outgoing and teasing one moment, mysterious and antisocial the next. Happy and melancholic.
Reluctantly, I made my way inside the academy’s main building and to the dining area, where I asked for a bowl of spaghetti. The dining room was crowded, and a friendly murmur erupted from the other students. Even though I looked around, neither Cora nor Dante was in sight. With a sigh, I sat down alone on our usual spot and grabbed a few bites of food. The spaghetti didn’t taste as delicious as the one my Grandma used to make. Suddenly, I felt homesick. Really, really homesick. I wanted to put my head down and cry my eyes out. Grandma used to make these delicious pastas, and then my aunt and uncle and my cousins came over to have dinner. She did this twice a month on Friday evening. First pasta, then a long line of desserts and some board games and wine.
I swallowed the tears and tried to keep my thoughts on practical matters. Since I didn’t want to think about the composition, because I was kind of hating Dante right now, I thought of the strange noises on the attic, the creepy mausoleum and the idyllic yet eerie cemetery with the gravestone of Elizabeth Mary Gray. What would Dante have felt the moment he first looked at the grave? He said it looked familiar to him… But how? Why? And why the heck was I thinking about Dante again?
My thoughts were interrupted when someone put down a filled plate opposite of mine. I looked up, startled, only to see Nate. He gave me a friendly smile. “How come you’re sitting by yourself?” he asked, all cheerfulness. He looked as if he had just worked out, tiny pearls of sweat still glued to his forehead. Instead of making him look terrible, like it would in my case, it made him look even hotter.
“No reason,” I replied defensively. “How are you?”
“I’m fine, thanks.” Nate’s plate was completely stuffed with food: a hot bowl of spaghetti, a chocolate cake dessert, a small piece of bread, and fish as main course.
“So, what have you been up to this afternoon?” he asked, obviously trying to make small talk considering a giant storm cloud is hanging above my head and I probably didn’t look very happy.
“Visited the gardens,” I said. “Went to the old cemetery.”
“Wow.” Nate looked interested, a curious light flickering in his eyes. “Not a lot of people even know about the old graveyard. And if they do, most of them stay away from there. I guess we musicians are a superstitious lot.”
“I guess. Have you ever gone there?” I took a bite of my spaghetti, but I had lost most of my appetite already, so it tasted even more vile than it did before. The cafeteria probably had some cans lying around dating back to world war two, and they decided to warm them up for the single purpose of tormenting me.
“A few times.”
“Did you visit the mausoleum?”
Nate grew a shade or two paler. “You should stay away from there,” he warned me, his voice low and trembling.
I raised my eyebrows and looked at him curiously.
He tried to take another bite, but his hand trembled so much he put the fork down again.
“Does it scare you?” I asked him, blunt as usual.
“It’s a terrible place. That’s all I know. There’s a reason it’s locked up.”
His last comment worked pretty much like someone had suddenly turned the light bulb on in my head. There was a reason the mausoleum was locked up. Just like there was a reason the attic and east wing were locked up. I was willing to bet my violin on it that all of these reasons were connected. Why did they decide not to turn the east wing into a museum? It would mean additional profit and would certainly gather some interest considering the house’s long history. Why was the attic off-limits? Because the floorboards were rotten or because they were hiding a terrible secret up there?
My thoughts rambled on, stumbling from one random thought bordering on a conspiracy theory into another.
Nate waved his fork in front of me, interrupting my trip down insanity lane. “Promise me you won’t go there. Especially not at night.”
“I won’t,” I assured him. Like I’d ever come near that place at night. When hell freezes over.
“Good. Now, how’s your composition assignment going? The one you talked about while we rehearsed?”
“Oh. It’s working out all right, I guess. I have zero notes written down, and zero inspiration, but I’m confident my muse will appear some time during the next century,” I joked.
“I had to do that assignment too, two years ago, and I thought it sucked,” Nate admitted. “I had to write
a composition based on Elise’s personality.”
“Oh.” Right. They probably knew each other for years. I stood zero, ZERO chance with him. So, it wouldn’t hurt to ask him about his girlfriend, since I was totally friend-zoned, anyway. “How long have the two of you been together?”
Nate shrugged; his expression unreadable. “On and off for about two years,” he replied, but he doesn't sound very happy about it. I knew I shouldn’t read too much into it—maybe he had had a fight with her today, or maybe he was just not that into her anymore, didn’t mean he didn’t still love her—but it made me more hopeful than I should be.
“I see.”
“So, do you have a boyfriend?” Nate asked curiously, taken me by surprise.
“Uhm, no,” I said, staring at my food. What if he asked if I ever had one? Should I answer truthfully, or make up some story? I wasn’t not good at lying—in fact, I was horrible at it—so he would probably see right through me.
“Ah. Well I guess it's for the better, seeing how you’re now overseas, and if you had a boyfriend at home, you’d have to leave him behind,” Nate said. “Do you play any sports?” He sounded as if he was hosting an interview and I was some famous actor responding to his questions.
“Uhm.” I hesitated. “I run. Sometimes.”
“You run?” he looked genuinely interested now. “I love running. We should go together some time; I know great spots here where you can run while enjoying the scenery.”
I bit my lower lip and mumbled something along the lines of “sure,” hoping he would change the topic.
“Great,” Nate said, failing to see my reluctance. “We could go tomorrow afternoon, if you’d like.”
Tomorrow?
My stomach instantly tied itself into a knot. “Tomorrow? Uhm. I’m not sure that’ll work, since I have lots of work and…”
“No excuses.” Nate grinned at me, showing perfect teeth dentists would be proud of. “None of my friends like running. Elise hates it, she says any exercise is dreadful, and Jonathan and Alan aren’t fond of it either. I’m so happy I finally found someone who likes to run as well. You’re not getting out of this one, Alanis.”
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