by RuNyx .
“The driver who dropped me here told me the castle is rumored to be haunted,” Corvina asked, changing the topic. “Is that true?”
“The town,” Ethan scoffed, “likes to demonize shit up here. They think we all have orgies and worship the devil or something. I’m not surprised they’d think it’s haunted too.”
“They have good reason to,” Troy pointed out.
“It’s a load of bullshit,” Ethan argued back. “You know better than to believe some old wives’ tale.”
What tale? Corvina looked at them both in confusion, seeing Troy pull out the grass at his feet, and Ethan looking at his roommate with agitation as though it was an argument they’d had before. Why?
Before she could speculate, Jade abruptly brushed her shock of white hair back, glaring at Ethan. “Whatever you believe or don’t, you have to admit it’s weird.”
“Wait,” Corvina interrupted, bringing up a hand to silence whatever Ethan had been about to say. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”
“I’m equally confused, girl,” Erica chimed in, looking around at them.
“And me,” Jax agreed.
There was pin-drop silence for a long moment before Jade sighed. “I forget you don’t know half the mad shit circulating around here sometimes.”
Her roommate looked down at her pink nails, worrying her lips as she began. “It’s one of those crazy stories kids tell around the bonfire, you know? One that makes most people here very uncomfortable.”
“Those who believe them, you mean,” Ethan corrected.
Corvina nodded for Jade to go on, intrigued enough to discard Ethan’s commentary.
Her roommate took a visible breath. “They say there was a group of students at the university about hundred years ago, a good few years after it was founded.”
“Okay,” Corvina encouraged when Jade hesitated.
“It’s all hearsay but this group of students... they’d go down the mountain to the village – that’s the town now – and take someone into the woods with them for ‘fun’,” Jade emphasized the word with finger quotes in the air.
“For real?” Erica exclaimed from her side, disbelief evident in her voice. “Why?”
Troy shrugged, picking out more grass. “Who the hell knows? It’s a story.”
“The story,” Jade picked up again, giving them a glance, “says they did terrible things to their hostage for a while before finishing in some kind of sacrificial orgy. I don’t know the exact details or anything,” her voice trailed off.
“No one does,” Troy supplied, looking up at Corvina. “But it’s said that after a few times, people at the university found out what was going on and decided it was enough.”
Corvina listened with rapt attention, the light in the lawn shifting as a cloud passed over the sun, the tower behind them casting long, eerie shadows on the ground.
Jade looked at her with her solemn green eyes and swallowed. “A different, larger group of Verenmore students followed them into the woods one night and found them surrounded with the blood.”
“What happened then?” Corvina asked, invested in the tale.
“They lynched them.”
A chill stole over her.
The sensation of ants crawling over her skin returned tenfold. Corvina gripped her arms as a shudder wracked her frame.
“Jesus,” Jax muttered from his place, exchanging a look with Corvina. “That’s... something.”
“Yeah,” Troy threw the grass. “They’re said to haunt these lands, the woods, the castle, everything, still looking for their killers. It’s said that they still take a sacrifice on the night they were killed.”
“Don’t tell me,” Erica voiced her thoughts as Corvina felt her jaw slacken in realization.
Jade nodded, holding her own arms. “Yup. They were all murdered in the woods on the night of the Black Ball.”
CHAPTER 6
Corvina
The aftermath of learning that little legend had been a thoughtful silence. Ethan had insisted that it was just a story, a piece of oral history that had been passed down student to student, a legend to explain the mysterious disappearances of people. Jade had agreed, even as she’d swallowed and fidgeted, her body unable to comply with her words.
They had gone for dinner and Corvina had let the myth settle in.
She’d never been afraid of ghosts, never really encountered any. Her mama had told her they were real, that they were good and bad, helpful and harmful, and that she needed to be aware of that if she ever encountered one. Corvina never had, and she didn’t even know if she believed her mother about it. All she’d had were the voices, and those whispers in the dark didn’t scare her; they were familiar. At least, they had been.
But something about this story unsettled her. Maybe it was the voice she’d heard in broad daylight in the woods, or the constant flickering of light in the corner of the room wherever she was. Something about this legend unnerved her. Maybe it was the legend itself – it clearly made everyone uncomfortable.
Hours later, she did her prayers and turned off the light, still unsettled. Jade had gone with Troy after dinner, so Corvina had finished some of her reading for her classes and decided to turn in early.
The tower began to settle in for the night with some groans and creaks. A cloud of bats flew outside her window on their way somewhere, nocturnal and creepy. Shadows weaved around the room from the little light outside.
Something made the hair at the nape of her neck prickle. Suddenly alert, she lay on the bed silently, keeping her body still as her mind tried to understand what was going on.
A flicker.
She watched quietly as in the corner of her room, the one where she’d lit the incense, the smoke flickered softly, once, twice, before the shadows and smoke began to sway together.
Phantom ants crawled over her exposed arms.
Clutching her blanket to her chest, she watched as the smoke took a shape and drifted away towards the door. She closed her eyes, shaking her head.
No, it was an illusion of light, or perhaps even her mind playing tricks on her.
‘Find me.’
The soft, feminine voice echoed in her head, followed by that ugly coating on her tongue and that rotten smell. Heart pounding hard in her ears, Corvina opened her eyes.
The corner was as it had been, undisturbed, lit by the moon. The ants had fled her skin. The coating had washed off her tongue. The scent had gone as quickly as it had come.
Who the hell was this voice?
**
Corvina left her bed as the first light of dawn filtered in through her windows. Sleep had eluded her the entire night, her mind warping around questions and theories of everything odd that had been happening in the few weeks she’d been there. She’d tossed and turned the whole night, unable to relax her brain long enough to grab a few minutes of sleep.
She needed air.
Taking a quick shower and donning one of her thin black sweaters and a long dark maroon skirt that flared when she turned, Corvina left her wet hair to air-dry. Adjusting her crystal bracelet that her mother had made for her when she was four – with an obsidian, a tiger’s eye, an amethyst, a labradorite, a red garnet, a malachite, a turquoise and a moonstone – she settled it over her pulse, letting the weight and the warmth seep into her. It had always been an anchor for her, something Dr. Detta had told her she could train her mind to use to focus and settle in times of stress. Her mother had said it was for protection and for amplifying her elemental sensitivity. She didn’t know about that, but she knew it made her feel better.
Hooking on the pendant she’d made herself, a silver star on a long chain that nestled between her breasts, along with her ribbon choker, she put on the white feather danglers in her ears, and felt ready.
Grabbing the biscuits she’d taken during dinner, she swiped on a deep maroon lipstick that matched her skirt, and picked up her bag, walking out of her room, leaving her slumbering roommate behind.
She had to.
Starting down the incline, feeling the wind blow over her wet hair, she headed towards the left of where she’d entered the woods last time, not wanting to end up at the lake again.
The foliage thickened around her as the castle disappeared from the view at her back. The air felt heavier, somehow more sinister with the knowledge of everything legends said had happened in the woods decades ago. There was a natural order to the world, a system that could not be inverted. Taking a life was unnatural, something against the very basic cycle of life and death. An act of such severity tainted the energy around it.
She walked on, seeing the thick, roughened barks of tall trees, lush with dense growth, webbing through the overhead sky like splinters, cracks in a glass barely holding together jagged edges, ready to bleed anything it touched.
She didn’t know if she was overly sensitive or had an overactive imagination or both, but after learning of the legend, she could feel something different in the air around her skin. It was entirely possible that she was imagining it. She didn’t know. Her own mind was unreliable.
Minutes later, the woods cleared, making a natural path towards what looked like some old ruins. Corvina made her way towards it. A lone, broken wall of stones crumbled to the soil, roots winding themselves around it, binding it to the bosom of the earth.
Corvina walked slowly to the remnants of the once-tall wall, taking in the open area. It was squared off by two stone walls, one with a tall arching window still intact. The other two walls were completely missing. Instead of the third wall, what looked like a broken gargoyle tipped over the far left, a dried, crusted fountain with something resembling lion heads screaming up at the sky beside it.
A tree stood right beside the gargoyle, a tree unlike any she’d ever seen before. In the middle of a thicket, it was the only tree without leaves, its branches naked and weathered and browned, webbing out into the sky in a scary, twisted shape. But that wasn’t what made Corvina pause. It was the eye carved into the trunk of the tree, one single eye so realistic it looked like the tree was watching her, the eye moving as she moved. It gave her the creeps.
Turning around, she came to a stop at the rows of crude, unmarked stones on her far right.
Graves.
A shudder finally stole over her.
The cawing of a crow broke her out of her trance. She watched a crow – not the one who’d been with her by the lake, this one was larger – perch himself on one of the stones.
Shaking herself, she smiled at the crow. “Hello,” she spoke softly, crumbling one of the biscuits in her hand and trailing it on the wall. “Aren’t you fearsome? I met your friend the other day by the lake. Surprisingly, I don’t see you guys on campus at all. Why don’t you come to the university area? Is it because of other people? Or do you have a nest in the woods and like to stay close?”
As she spoke to the bird in soft, soothing tones, she watched him tilt his head at her before flying to the wall and pecking at the crumbs she’d left. He looked up, cawed again, and began to eat. Another crow flew in, hopping on the wall beside the first, and gobbled up the biscuit.
Corvina crumbled another in her hand and put it on the wall as another crow, the one she recognized from the lake with his slightly bent beak, flapped his wings at her and ate.
“What place was this?” she mused out loud, crushing the last of the biscuits in her hands and giving it to the birds, one of whom took a large piece between his beak and flew away, probably to his nest for the little ones.
Brushing her hands off, she turned back to take in the ruins. They were older than old. They looked ancient. Her eyes swept over the area, going to the graves on the right, and a pile of junk she could see beside it. Intrigued, she crossed over to it, the sky grey overhead, the soil soft beneath her feet, tendrils of overgrown grass brushing against her ankles along with a low layer of mist. The grass got longer the closer she got to the graves.
Corvina looked around at the stones, counting as the wind caressed her hair.
One, two, three, four... fifteen.
Fifteen unmarked graves.
Did the school know about them? Had they been the ones to put them there? And if so, then why were they unmarked? Unless they were the students from the legend. Could they be? Fifteen of them?
Mulling over the questions assaulting her mind, she crossed the small graveyard to the other side, her eyes on the pile of what looked like broken furniture and debris in one pile, intensely damaged by the elements.
One singular item beside the pile arrested her attention, the only thing covered up in the junk. Corvina touched the cover, feeling the solid mass underneath her palm covered with a dark tarp that was completely out of place with the ancient feel of the area. The tarp was new, which meant it was recent.
Biting her lip in a moment of hesitation, Corvina inched forward and extended her hand to the side, taking a hold of the tarpaulin, and tugged it upwards to uncover whatever it was protecting. Little by little, it came up, exposing dark wooden legs at first, then the base, and finally the body of what looked to be an old, damaged piano.
It was a piano.
And there was only one person she knew who would care enough to cover a piano. It meant he’d been to this place, to this graveyard and these ruins. He knew of these graves.
Corvina inhaled deeply, trying to ascertain what his role was in all of this. One of the girls he’d been with had disappeared, another had killed herself, and he knew of these graves. Could he be responsible for them? Could he truly know what the hell was going on? The thought sent goosebumps over her skin.
Swallowing, Corvina threw the tarp over the piano again and adjusted it the exact way it had been. It was time to head back.
She headed towards the castle, taking the same route she’d taken, thinking about everything she’d uncovered since coming to Verenmore. She was halfway up the incline when she felt a presence other than her own.
Pausing, she turned, looking around, trying to place where the eyes were, but found nothing. For once, she knew it wasn’t her imagination. The hair on the back of her neck was prickling with awareness, and even as she began her ascent, she couldn’t shake off the sensation of someone watching her, no matter how many times she turned to check and found nobody.
Exiting the woods, she marched straight to the Academic Wing with her bag, intending to return some books to the library.
Verenmore had a giant, and she meant giant, library down in the dungeon. She’d finally gone to it a few days ago, borrowing two books for her economics assignment, and spent the entire day cooped up there.
While studying interested her well enough, she wondered sometimes what exactly she was doing at a university in the first place. She’d always wanted to be in a school environment with people but she had never been very ambitious about getting a degree or getting a job. It was a new start, a new chapter for her, but some days, she wondered if she wasn’t there only escaping for a while before she had to return to the life she had known if this wasn’t simply a bridge between her past and her future.
Her passion, her satisfaction, had always been in the simple things – reading, making candles and incense, finding crystals, doing readings, being one with nature. But it had become monotonous in her old town. She wondered if it would feel the same if she began somewhere else, somewhere new. However, it was because of her mother that she was there in the first place.
Her mama, Celeste Clemm, had been in college when she’d met her father and gotten pregnant. She’d been given a choice by her parents �
�� to abort the baby and finish her studies, or have the baby and be cut off. Her mother had chosen her, left everything and everyone behind with her father, and made a life for them. And then, within a year, her father had killed himself. Corvina didn’t know what he looked like. Her mama had never talked about him when she did talk. On days she had decided to talk, Corvina had been happy enough to chat about whatever made her happy. Her mama had loved her but had slowly become... different. Corvina was there for her because she had wanted something better for her.
It was a sobering reminder, one that steeled her spine. She entered the gardens in front of the Academic Wing, or what they called the back lawns, and saw a few students already milling around before classes began. A few faces from her classes she recognized nodded at her, and she reciprocated in kind as she made her way to the underground library.
“Hey, freaky eyes!” Roy’s loud voice called out from behind her amidst the following giggles.
She decided to ignore her and her clique of girls, but Roy had other ideas.
“I heard you’re practicing black magic now.”
What the what?
Corvina turned around, frowning at Roy, who sat on one of the ledges between the lawn and the corridor, wearing jeans tucked in black boots and a light top, playing with a strand of her sunny hair, surrounded by four other girls.
“Et tu, Roy?” Corvina clicked her tongue. “I had better hopes from you than to fall for stereotypes because going by them you’d be nothing but a stupid blonde bimbo.” She couldn’t believe she’d actually said that in front of a bunch of people.
Roy huffed, her light eyes taking Corvina in from head to toe. “Well, I’m just telling you what the rumor mill is churning. You’ve been doing animal sacrifices and giving blowjobs in the woods, apparently.”