Shadow Hills

by Anastasia Hopcus

  The nightmares are so vivid now I’m afraid to sleep. I feel my energy dragging constantly. I’m a walking zombie. I have to find a way to go to Devenish Prep; maybe there I’ll be able to figure this out.

  I ran my thumb over the fading navy-blue ink. There was something at Devenish. I could feel it in my bones. I didn’t know what it was yet, but I was going to find out. I owed that to Athena.

  It hadn’t been that hard to convince my parents to send me to Devenish—in fact, they were probably happier without the reminder. My dark blond hair and green eyes, my slight build and heart-shaped face—the features I’d always been so happy to share with my amazing older sister—were now tarnished. I couldn’t look into a mirror without a part of me feeling like Athena was there staring back. It was comforting, but it was also awful, like salt in a wound.

  Hot tears needled at the corners of my eyes, but I pushed them down. There was no sense in crying in my dorm room. I had gotten here a day earlier than most of the students so I could “settle into a structured routine.” My shrink had told my parents it would be best for me, and I was happy to have a little time to check the place out before everyone else started arriving.

  But before I could go poking around, I had to change. I felt seriously conspicuous in my uniform. As I unzipped my skirt, I noticed a bright red mark just below my left hip. Drawing down my waistband, I looked to see if I had a bite or something, but there was nothing on my skin except for a small curved line that resembled a crescent moon. I rubbed my finger across the mark, wondering how I’d gotten it. Something about it gave me a weird feeling in the pit of my stomach.

  Once I’d slipped on some worn-in jeans, a shrunken Clash T-shirt, and my old checkerboard Vans, I felt much better.

  I was about to be on my way when I remembered that I was supposed to hang out with Graham later. I grabbed my makeup case out of my bag and went to look for the bathroom so I could freshen up.

  It was easy to locate the open doorway in the center of the hall.

  After I put my toothbrush back in my toiletries bag, I glanced at myself in the mirror. Apparently my hair was not going to take well to the Massachusetts humidity. It had gone from straight and sleek to wavy with uncontrollable body. I pulled it into a high ponytail, then headed back to the dorm room to get my purse and lock up.

  I filled my lungs with the pristine, smog-free air as I took in the campus. The sprawling grounds were shockingly green, with rolling hills and a blue-tinged ridge of mountains in the distance. For every group of four or five buildings, there was a large open quad with flagstone paths crossing in a diamond pattern. My school in L.A. had been much smaller; this place looked more like a college than a high school. The grass was freshly cut, and without city smells getting in the way, I could actually pick up on its sharp, citrusy aroma.

  There was a crescent of woods at the edge of campus, and impossibly huge trees dotted the grounds. They looked perfect for relaxing under, their thick crawling roots forming natural steps to sit on. Green ivy clung to the sides of almost all the buildings, reminding me of seaweed wrapped around my ankles in the ocean.

  It really was a pretty place, with the “historical university” look, but I didn’t know if I would ever get used to it. I preferred the garish pink apartment buildings of West Hollywood, the Melrose area bungalows, the birds-of-paradise at my old house in Los Feliz.

  As I walked the rocky gray paths that wound in and around the school, I noticed a distinctive building up on a hill. It looked to be about a mile away. I started toward it, drawn by the imposing white stone walls and grand stature. When I got nearer, I could see the stone was marred by several decades’ worth of green water-damage stains. A strange familiarity washed over me when I came to a stop in front of the building. It was tall and thick—a fortress. The parking lot next to it seemed strange and out of place, the modern ambulances and new cars in stark contrast to the old-fashioned architecture.

  I wasn’t surprised to see a historical plaque near the front entrance; the place looked like it was hundreds of years old. I quickly scanned the metal script: SHADOW HILLS MEMORIAL HOSPITAL … BEST DIAGNOSTIC UNIT IN THE U.S. … ORIGINALLY AN ALMSHOUSE IN THE 1700S …

  I noticed a discreet sign that had been placed next to the plaque. YOU ARE INVITED TO LEARN MORE ABOUT SHADOW HILLS HOSPITAL. PLEASE VISIT OUR HISTORY MUSEUM LOCATED TO THE LEFT OF THE FRONT LOBBY.

  The flash of a dark shape caught my peripheral vision. My nerves clattered like cans dragged across asphalt, and I turned to see the shadow streak across the grounds and disappear behind the hospital. Without thinking, I followed it around the corner.

  The building seemed to go on forever, becoming less weathered and more contemporary as I walked. After a few minutes, I reached a large courtyard. There were several dirt paths winding through patches of overgrown gardens and continuing back into a dense stand of tall trees. Instinctively, I followed the central trail leading into the woods.

  There were several patients in hospital gowns milling around and talking to doctors dressed in scrubs. It made me feel a little safer just knowing there were people nearby. I could call out if I got into trouble, and as long as I stuck to the main path, I probably wouldn’t get lost. I had always prided myself on having an excellent sense of direction.

  Green ferns carpeted the earth beneath my feet, and the air felt cool and wet. Soon I came upon a dilapidated iron fence. The gate lay on the ground, and judging by the snaking vines that entwined it, it had fallen from its rusty hinges long ago.

  My heart pounded with a strange mix of dread and excitement. Once you cross that threshold, there’s no turning back. I didn’t know where the thought had come from, but there was no way I could leave now. I wouldn’t allow myself to be a coward. Cautiously, I stepped through the entrance.

  The trees opened up into a circular plot of exposed land. My hands were suddenly cold as ice. Directly in front of me were the ghostly ruins of an ancient graveyard.

  My breath caught in my throat, and my vision swam. This place wasn’t like the graveyard in my dream: it was the graveyard in my dream.

  It was filled with both upright and flat gravestones—the standing ones broken and crumbling; the ledger stones flush with the ground, overgrown by weeds and tendrils of ivy. The vertical slabs tilted toward and away from one another at different angles, the result of one side or the other sinking deeper into the earth over time. It gave the impression of a foul set of teeth: green and rotting, crooked and overcrowded, jabbing out in all directions with gaps where the ledger stones were.

  I edged closer to the first row of tightly packed graves. It looked so familiar that it sent a tremor through my body. The stones that were flush with the ground were small and plain, with just a name and death year. The majority of the upright gravestones were similarly unadorned, though a few had an eerie skull with wings at the top. The markers were obviously very old—some so weathered that the engravings had been completely rubbed away, while others were obscured by the moss clinging to them.

  I squatted down and ran my hand over one of the slabs that still had discernible carvings on it: ANNABELLE MARTIN, 1690–1736.

  I stood back up and wound my way through the maze of stones, inspecting all the ones bearing inscriptions. GEORGE COOPER, 1704–1736. ESTHER GARRETT, 1712–1736. JOHN CATCH-POOL, 1693–1736. My hands tingled as the blood flowed through them, warm and urgent. HERBERT HICKS, 1715–1736. ELIZABETH CHURCH, 1719–1736.

  A sick feeling slithered through my insides when I saw the next headstone. It held two names and sets of dates: RUTH MOORE, 1707–1736, and RACHEL MOORE, 1709–1736.

  They were buried in the same plot. I checked the next row and the next; it seemed the more I looked, the more there were. Dozens of headstones with as many as three or four names on them. Almost like the mass graves of the bubonic plague.

  Each of these people had died the same year. I surveyed the vast burial ground. There must be at least three hundred graves. I walked up and dow
n the rows more slowly, looking for a death date after 1736. There were a handful from before then, but I couldn’t find even one from 1737 or later. Something had happened here—a battle or a plague. I’d never been greatly interested in history, but I was more than a little curious about what had killed hundreds of people in the span of one year. A thought sparked in my mind. This is exactly the kind of thing they would have information about in that hospital museum.

  “Hey. Are you okay back there?” My heart almost stopped at the sound of the dark velvety voice. It couldn’t possibly …

  I turned around, moving in slow motion while my thoughts raced so quickly I couldn’t make sense of them.

  My mouth almost dropped open when I laid eyes on him. He was about my age, well over six feet tall, and absolutely gorgeous. His strong features had a certain sweetness to them, and his unruly black hair curled into his eyes in an endearing way. And those eyes. They were light and sparkling—green and blue and gray all at once—but that wasn’t why I was so stunned.

  The real reason I couldn’t tear my gaze away, the thing that turned my muscles to ice even as my skin burned, was the one and only thought running through my mind: That’s him. That is the guy from my dream.

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t feel the strap of my purse slip from my grip, but as the contents of it spilled onto the ground, I heard my cell phone skitter across one of the flat headstones.

  The guy who had been staring at me in stunned silence, looking almost as surprised as I felt, immediately snapped to attention and started gathering up my things.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled as I knelt next to him, scooping up my stuff.

  “Sorry if I startled you.” His high cheekbones were stained pink. “I was standing in the courtyard, and I saw you disappear into the trees. When you didn’t come back after a few minutes, I thought you might be lost.”

  “Not lost, just checking things out.” I tried to smile at him, but my expression felt stuck. His eyes were unfathomable, pale yet vividly intense. His strong eyebrows and thick black lashes drew even more attention to the strange lightness of his eyes. I was so entranced watching them that it took me a few seconds to register that he was speaking again.

  “… and I live in town. Shadow Hills, I mean. Are you a new student at Devenish?”

  “Yeah.” I grabbed a magazine that was lying a few feet away and stuffed it in my bag. I was very aware of how close we were, and my body practically vibrated with an inexplicable feeling of anticipation.

  “I’m Zach, by the way.”

  “I’m Persephone, but I go by Phe.” I busied myself by returning my makeup to its travel case. Thankfully I didn’t have my period right now. I was embarrassed enough as it was, but having a guy as hot as Zach handing me back my tampons would’ve been absolutely mortifying.

  “Do you have a standing lamp in there, too?” He nodded at my purse.

  “I’m sorry?” I picked up my sunglasses case, a small can of pepper spray, and a pack of tissues that had wound up behind me.

  I wasn’t sure why I was so immediately drawn to this guy. Of course, on the surface it made sense. He was so striking, even more attractive than Graham, but it was something else. I avoided his eyes, afraid if I looked in them again I would do something terrible and embarrassing. Like grab his face and kiss him.

  “You know … Mary Poppins? When she’s pulling all that stuff out of her bag? Those were some high-tech special effects for back then.” Zach grinned at me, and a warm glow spread through my body.

  “I faintly remember that. It’s been a while.” I grasped one end of the iPod he was holding out to me, and the screen lit up.

  I frowned as the charging battery symbol came on. It was strange enough that my iPod was even working since it had died in the middle of my flight to Boston, but it was impossible for it to be charging without being plugged in. Zach followed my gaze down to our hands, then let go of the device like it had scalded him. A split second later the screen went black again.

  “Zach!” A girl’s voice filtered back through the trees. “What are you doing?”

  “I’ll be there in a second!” he called over his shoulder before turning back to me. “That’s my sister; I gotta go.”

  “Hurry up! I’ve got five million errands to run before dinner, and we’re already late for testing!”

  “Okay, I’m coming!” Zach stood up, brushing dirt off his jeans. “It was nice meeting you, Phe.”

  “Yeah. You too.” I watched him make his way through the trees and disappear from sight.

  I looked at the iPod in my hand—it couldn’t have come on. It was dead. It must have caught the sun for a second and reflected the light, making the screen appear to glow. Just to make sure, though, I flipped the hold switch to off and pushed the power button. The iPod came on, battery fully charged. My stomach dropped out like I was on the downswing of a roller-coaster.

  If I was looking to find something weird here, I’d certainly succeeded.

  I started back toward the school, my steps hurried. Something teased at my spine, a sense that I was being watched or followed. It was the same cold prickling I’d had when I first saw the graveyard.

  Despite my sincere efforts not to, I couldn’t help but casually glance over my shoulder a few times. Well, maybe not a few. More like five. Or ten. I kept expecting to see Zach again. It was too surreal—this specter appearing before me, flesh and bone—I had no idea what it meant.

  A beep came from my purse and I fished through my jumbled bag until I found my cell phone. I had one text message: Ready to go. Meet you in the main parking lot.

  Graham. I had almost forgotten about my dinner plans.

  When I reached the gravel parking lot, Graham was unlocking the door of a rusted-out 1970s-era Buick.

  “Is this your car?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

  “No. I thought I’d steal one and drive it into town. Think anyone will notice?” Graham reached across to unlock the passenger’s-side door, then pushed it open. “You wouldn’t know how to hotwire by any chance?”

  “Very funny.” I slid onto the torn vinyl seat.

  The Buick had a musty scent that I found comforting, like an old movie theater or a library. After a few unsuccessful tries, Graham got the car started. The radio appeared to have been ripped out, not that you would have been able to hear it very well with the racket the engine made.

  “Will you grab me my iPod? It’s in the glove compartment.” Graham pointed, as if I didn’t know where a glove compartment was located.

  I handed over the iPod. It was encased in a portable docking system with small attached speakers. Graham fiddled with it before pulling out of the parking space. I could faintly make out the song over the jet-plane-like rumbling of the car; thankfully, it wasn’t some awful frat boy crap, but “Save It for Later.”

  “You like the English Beat?”

  “Yeah. I’m guessing you do as well?” Graham asked, turning out of the parking lot.

  “I’m into some of the early ska revival,” I said.

  “Me, too. Maybe it’s a California thing.”

  “So where are we going to eat?” I asked after a moment.

  “I was thinking about something very Shadow Hills, Massachusetts. To get you into the whole vibe of the town. Maybe McDonald’s?” He cut his eyes at me.

  “I’m not really much of a junk-food person.”

  “I was only kidding about the McDonald’s. I figured we’d go to this market and deli … wait, you don’t like junk food?” A doubtful frown was etched into Graham’s brow.

  “Took you a while to register that comment.” I laughed.

  “Well, you can imagine why. That is quite possibly the weirdest thing I have ever heard anyone say.” He shook his head. “How can someone not like junk food? It’s scientifically engineered to be addictive.”

  “What can I say? I guess I’m just strange.” I lifted one shoulder in a half shrug. “So what weird quirks do you have?”
r />   “Like what do you mean?”

  “How’d you get the chipped tooth?”

  “Surfing under the Golden Gate Bridge.” He grinned proudly. “A tugboat went by, causing this huge wave that knocked me off my board. Then while I was struggling to get back on, a second shock wave sent my board straight into my face and—voilà. Chipped tooth.” He paused. “Man, I really miss it sometimes.”

  “Chipping your teeth?”

  “Surfing, Lombard Street … my mom.” The longing was evident in Graham’s tone.

  “You know, I heard a rumor that those crazy flying contraptions can go to San Francisco,” I teased.

  “I have to work at the school pretty much year-round. My dad wants me to know this isn’t a free ride. Which is cool. I have the Devenish office job to thank for my trusty car.” Graham patted the cracked plastic dashboard as he pulled into a parking space.

  I got out and, with a loud creak of defiance from the rusty hinges, closed the car door. The shops in front of us were a mix of small brick buildings and old-fashioned saltbox wood houses, but they were so close together that they looked almost like a strip mall. The buildings formed a square around a quaint town park, complete with benches, replicas of gas-style streetlamps, and a small pond. I turned back to Graham and found him holding a door open for me with an exaggeratedly patient expression on his face. The wooden sign above the door read MANSFIELD’S FAMILY MARKET AND DELI.

  “Thanks.” I walked inside, blinking under the fluorescent lights. As the door swooshed closed behind us, it hit a little bell that announced our arrival.

  “This way.” Graham took the lead, heading to the back of the small grocery store, where a butcher’s counter had been transformed into a cafeteria-style food line. Graham ordered a Reuben sandwich and I got a salad. I’d barely started eating when the bell above the front door rang again.