First Impression (A Shadow Maven Paranormal)

by Pauline Creeden

  Mr. Scott hops to his feet and slaps me with the back of his hand. My teeth cut the side of my cheek, and I taste the blood even before the side of my head slams the ground again. I whimper and spots close in on the periphery, narrowing my vision.

  “No screaming. It’s not allowed,” Mr. Scott says while he pulls my chair back to upright position once more. His knife returns to its position against my chest, and this time, that doesn’t seem so bad.

  I’m calmer somehow. Maybe this is why they call it slapping sense into someone. I always hated that expression.

  With an excited twinkle in his eye and the ghost of a smile on his lips, Mr. Scott’s knife moves to the end of my sweater and pulls upward, ripping through the fabric.

  Blood and saliva pool in my mouth, and I wait until he’s at the v-neck of my sweater and he grins up at me. And then I spit the full collection into his face. He leaps back and swipes at his eyes with his flailing hands, the knife flashing in the light before he falls into the shadow.

  My heart beats faster.

  “You’re going to regret that.” He strides back into the light with blood smeared from his eye across his cheek and spots of red across his forehead. “Maybe you’re not such a good girl after all.”

  His hand switches position on the knife so that it points downward in his raised fist. Fear makes my blood turn cold. He pulls his hand back and slams his fist into my stomach.

  My breath comes up so fast that it engages my gag reflex, and I dry heave. Pain sears through my abdomen and chest, burning me from head to toe. More tears cloud my vision.

  “For a smart girl, you sure are stupid.”

  A huge bang causes him to stop and stare toward the ceiling and behind him. Deep voices intermingle and stomps sound above.

  We are in a root cellar. And as my eyes have adjusted to the meager light, I barely see the stairs that I’d caught earlier when the light danced around the room.

  I fill my lungs to scream again. Mr. Scott rushes over and slaps his hand so hard against my mouth, my teeth cut into my lip again. More blood pools. He pulls a silver roll of tape from his pocket and rips off a four-inch sized piece with his teeth. He smashes it over my mouth before I can squeak.

  A thumping sound at the stairwell catches his attention, and he backs up to hide against the wall at the bottom of the stairs. Light floods down the steps when the door at the top opens, and the shadow of a tall man with disheveled hair enters in.

  My heart leaps. Ben.

  He sees me in my pool of light and starts rushing down the steps.

  Mr. Scotts lifts his knife above his head.

  My eyes grow wide, and I panic, hopping up and down in my chair, trying my best to warn him. I dart my eyes and jerk my head to the left in a morbid game of charades.

  He stops just before he reaches the bottom step and turns toward Mr. Scott.

  Our geography teacher plunges his knife toward Ben’s chest.

  In my panic, the chair tips, and I fall over for the fourth…fifth time? I’ve lost count. But my head slams the ground, and the stars and spots return to my vision. Another set of footsteps stomp down the steps, and Matt yells an expletive.

  The knife skids across the floor and spins in front of my face, reflecting the pale light of the overhead bulb. Fingers wrap around the handle of the knife, and panic ignites my skin. I struggle automatically against my bonds.

  A hand rests on my shoulder and a voice tickles my ear. “Stay still, Chira, I’m going to cut the tape.”

  Matt. Thank God.

  I sit still and the knife slits the sticky bond at my hands. The moment they are free, I whip them in front of me and push myself up a bit. I pull the tape from my mouth. Ben and Mr. Scott still struggle in the shadows, and I can’t see what’s going on.

  Matt frees my legs, but my head spins when I try to stand. I plop back down again on the packed earth. I shake my head to try to clear it. Matt stands over me with the knife in his hand and watches the fight. He looks unsure of what to do. I grab his khakis by the leg to get his attention. When he looks down at me, I point at the mattress hidden outside the circle of light.

  “Stacy,” I say, my voice husky.

  His eyes go wide, and he darts in that direction.

  A grunt comes from the shadows at the stairwell, and I watch one body fall, a limp hand reaching into the light. The other man rushes up the stairs. When he reaches the top, he turns back with a sneer. Mr. Scott.

  I crawl over to Ben. Is he hurt? Unconscious? Oh please, don’t let him be dead.

  My fingers still feel numb, half asleep from their binding, and the remnants of the silver tape glint on my wrists. I grip the outstretched hand I find there, and his fingers are cold and lifeless. Oh, dear God, please be alive.

  Matt collapses at my side and grabs Ben by the arm, pulling him into the light. Blood oozes right along Ben’s hairline and drips toward his ear.

  Matt places his head on Ben’s chest. “His heart is strong, and he’s still breathing.”

  Relief floods me. Thank God.

  “I’m going after Mr. Scott.” Matt nods and rushes up the stairway with the knife still in his grip.

  A shadow falls on me, and I flinch away, but look up and find Stacy standing over me. Her arms are wrapped around her chest, barely covering her bra. Her eyes are wide and staring at nothing. She has to be in shock. I try again to get to my feet and succeed this time. I pull my sweater off. It is open in the front like a cardigan, and I wrap it around Stacy’s shoulders.

  Her gaze finds me for the first time, and tears well in her eyes. She wraps me in her arms and squeezes so tightly that my ribs ache. I pat her back, unsure of what else to do. A groaning from the floor causes her to release her embrace. I drop back to my knees.

  “Ben, are you okay?”

  His eyelids flutter and then snap open. He jerks himself upright and then winces and places a hand to his forehead. Blood runs faster and harder from his head injury.

  I rip off a shoe and pull my sock free. After balling it up, I put it to his head.

  He puts a hand to mine and laughs, saying, “Uh…thanks.”

  I shrug and pull my fingers free. “I couldn’t think of anything else. Hopefully it doesn’t stink.”

  He shakes his head. “No. It’s fine. Thanks, for real.”

  A curse and a shout from the top of the stairs break the awkward moment. Matt yells, “Come on guys, hurry. It’s a fire. The place is on fire. That son of a—”

  Something above crashes and bright light flickers across the horrified look on Matt’s face.

  Stacy whimpers.

  I struggle to my feet and give Ben a hand to get to his.

  The three of us fight our way up the steps to the top of our earthen prison. The landing is a small room with shelves on both sides and the door wide open to a kitchen. Flames dance along the wall of the kitchen, licking the ceiling, and my face burns with the radiant heat. The ghostly glow of the room is familiar. The Old Schoolhouse.

  Fire blocks the only other doorway to the room.

  “How are we going to get out of here?” I shout over the crackling flames, looking to the only one of us who could possibly have a clear head on his shoulders.

  Yellow-orange light flickers wildly in Matt’s wide eyes. He searches the room, and my eyes follow the same path as his. Light glints in the window over the sink—but didn’t someone say all the windows to the building had been nailed shut long ago? Matt darts back down the steps to the root cellar and drags a large object back up with him. The chair.

  He braces himself and releases the chair against the window. The shattering sound barely overcomes the constant chatter of the flames. Matt shouts. “It’s about a six-foot drop to the other side. I’ll go first to help everyone out. Stacy next. Then Chira, okay? Ben make sure everyone gets out okay, right?”

  Ben nods, the blood soaking clear through my sock, and dribbling over his right eye.

  “No,” I say. “I’ll go last. Ben is hurt
and may need help through the window.”

  Matt has climbed onto the sink and has his sweater wrapped over his hand. He’s knocking out the remaining pieces of glass left in the window. He glares at me. “We don’t have time to argue. Let’s just all get out, okay?”

  I nod, and he hops out the window, disappearing into the darkness on the other side. A siren wails in the distance, and I only hope that it might be approaching.

  I climb up to the sink and reach down a hand to help Stacy. She gives me a terrified, tight lipped smile as she drops out the window, screaming as she falls into Matt’s waiting arms.

  Ben tosses my sock aside, and his one open eye meets mine. We clasp hands, and I pull him up into the sink with me. He shakes his head. “You first.”

  I frown. “We don’t have time to argue, remember? You go!”

  He shakes his head and grasps me by the shoulders and for a fearful moment, I’m afraid he’s going to throw me out the window. Instead, he pulls me to his chest in an embrace. He breathes in my ear, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  A gas explosion in the kitchen sends us both out the window at the same time. His arms are still wrapped tightly around me as we fly for a moment before gravity takes hold. We slam to the ground, and my head hits the earth in the same spot for at least the fourth time tonight. The spots behind my eyes narrow until there is nothing left, and darkness takes hold.

  STACY GRIPS MY HAND, THE oxygen mask over her face. The paramedics have covered her with a blanket and she’s finally beginning to look less shell shocked. I study her face and am glad that she hadn’t been cut there. But would she ever have a normal life again?

  “Stacy!” a female voice screams and rushes toward the ambulance.

  “Mom?” Stacy tries to sit up, but she’s already been strapped in.

  I release her hand and hop down from the ambulance. I nearly run into Mrs. Brine, a heavy set woman in pearls with bags under her eyes. Her desperate eyes meet mine, and I step aside to let her hop in.

  A paramedic frowns at me. “You need to go to the hospital, too. You’re showing symptoms of a concussion.”

  Mr. Benson steps up, his deep voice commanding. “No worries. I’ll take her along with my nephew and meet you there. He’s the one that’s going to need stitches.”

  The paramedic nods and closes the back door of the ambulance.

  Mr. Benson escorts me back to the squad car and ushers me to the passenger door. Ben and Matt sit in the back seat behind a sheet of Plexiglas with holes in it. Blood is already seeping through the bandage on Ben’s forehead.

  When I settle in the seat, Mr. Benson shuts the door and gets in at the driver’s side.

  He starts the engine and turns on the flashing lights of his Dodge Charger. After a long moment of silence, he looks in the rearview mirror. “How did you know?”

  Ben clears his throat and leans toward the glass. “Ghosts are known to leave an impression on a place, replaying their final moments over and over again. So when I’d heard about the sighting that night when we went to check out the building, I knew that someone may have been murdered there, but I wasn’t sure if it was recent or a hundred years ago. I suspected it was recent only because there are no rumors about anyone being murdered in the Old Schoolhouse.”

  Mr. Benson nods, pulling in and out of traffic right behind the ambulance. I avert my eyes to keep from feeling dizzy. I watch Ben, who leans forward against the restraint of his seatbelt.

  “Mr. Scott and the custodian were the only two known people to have a key to the Old Schoolhouse—” Ben says.

  “Mr. Scott said something about a night watchman,” I say.

  Ben eyes me knowingly. “I looked into that and found out it wasn’t true.”

  I frown. Of course it wasn’t. Murderer…liar.

  Ben continues, “I wasn’t sure which of the two to suspect, but the custodian seemed to be less worried about our snooping around than just ticking off his stepdaughter, Chira.”

  I nod. That seemed true.

  “And although there were ten of us in the building that night, it seemed that only the five in the video had been targeted. Not only did Mr. Scott mention that he’d seen the video, but he even disclosed details about Jacob’s car accident that weren’t made public yet. Uncle Matt, you had said that the lines to Jacob’s brakes had been cut, but that information wasn’t released to the press. I assumed it hadn’t been released to the teaching staff either.”

  Mr. Benson huffs. “It still hasn’t been.”

  “I wasn’t sure of the connection between the missing girls in Fairfax and the Old Schoolhouse until we found that compact and the other items in the woods. Just to be safe, I grabbed one of Mr. Scott’s Mountain Dew cans from the trash this morning and asked you to run the prints.”

  We pull into the parking lot of the Emergency Room, but Mr. Benson hadn’t put the car into park yet. “We ran those prints, and they were found on three of the items and the bottle of pills Donnie had taken when he supposedly committed suicide.”

  Ben nods gravely. “When you called me, I was sitting in the library alone, and stepped into the hallway to look for Matt and Chira. Instead I found Matt bent over Chira’s bag.”

  Mr. Benson throws the car into park and growls through clenched teeth. “Right, and I told you and Matt to wait at the school until I got there.”

  Ben’s gaze drops. “I’m sorry about that, sir. But while we were on the steps of the building waiting, something told me to go check out the Old Schoolhouse.”

  “Something?” Matt huffs. “You mean your owl. That freaking bird swooped at us crying like a hawk and took off toward Old Schoolhouse Road. Ben ran off, and I followed him.”

  Ben’s gaze lifts to mine, a grin tugging the corner of his mouth.

  Mr. Benson scrubs his hands through his hair. “Seriously? The bird. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “No, sir,” Ben says.

  Mr. Benson waves his hand in front of his face in a dismissive gesture and opens his car door. I follow his lead and hop out of mine. After opening the back door to let the boys out, Mr. Benson says, “Well, I’ve got good news for you. When the squad cars pulled up into the lot of the school, Mr. Scott nearly ran into me and Deputy Dawson with his Buick. The deputy and I apprehended him, and he’s being charged now. No doubt he will not make bail.”

  Tension I didn’t even know was in my shoulders releases, and I feel faint again. My knees buckle. I gripped the roof of the Charger to keep from falling over.

  “Hey!” Ben cries and dashes to me, catching me in his arms before I collapse.

  With his help, we make it into the emergency room.

  MY MOM LEAPS TO HER feet when Ben and Matt visit my hospital room the next afternoon. She still wears her diner uniform, but her hair is up in a loose bun instead of her usual pony tail. Even though they only planned on keeping me overnight for observation due to my concussion, my mother refused to leave my side for a moment. We are waiting for the doctor to make his rounds toward me so that he can release me. I’m already dressed back into what was left of my school uniform.

  The pale red line across Ben’s hairline is held together by invisible stitches. I wish that they had had that stuff when I’d fallen on my chin as a kid. My fingers flutter to my chin at the memory of the spiky stitches and the scar left behind.

  Matt smiles and introduces himself to my mother, shaking her hand. The two boys stand together at the foot of my bed and seem to be getting along better than they had the whole time I’d known them, even joking and accepting each other’s jabs in stride.

  “How is Stacy?” I ask when things have turned quiet.

  Matt swallows and looks at his cousin, a wordless conversation passes between them. Finally he smiles at me. “Always to the point, aren’t you?”

  I shrug. “There’s no sense beating around a bush, right?”

  The dimple on Ben’s chin deepens with his grin. “She’s fine…physically. She was dehydrated and suffered from
the blood loss, but otherwise, she’ll heal. Her parents are already considering laser surgery for her scars. But mentally? She’s taking this really hard. Beyond all the stress and loss she’s endured this week, she was taken prisoner by that monster, and it’s going to take time to recover from it.”

  Matt nods. “And her parents are talking about pulling her out of school for the rest of the year to give her a break.”

  “That’s understandable,” Mom says, her worried eyes making me feel like she might be considering the same route for me.

  I shake my head at her in a silent protest.

  She shrugs.

  I turn back to the boys. “I hope she’ll make it back. Oh! I talked to Tasha this morning. I don’t know if you guys knew that she woke up yesterday. I got the text message right before…” I trail off, not wanting to relive those memories.

  Ben gets the hint. He clears his throat and pulls my messenger bag from behind him. “Well, I got all your assignments from classes today, if you want them.”

  I nod. “So you didn’t get kept overnight?”

  He sets the bag in an empty chair against the wall. His finger flutters to his stitches. “I’m fine, just this one thing. No concussion.”

  My mom shakes her head. “But you do have a concussion. I think the school work can wait. I don’t want you to strain your brain.”

  I frown, wondering how long I’ll have to endure my mom treating me like a toddler again. Part of me is enjoying the attention, but only a small part.

  The door opens again, and Dr. Park walks in. The small Asian woman studies everyone. “Boy, it’s crowded in here, huh?”

  I smile in greeting, and the two boys slink over toward the far corner to stay out of the doctor’s way. She checks my eyes again and glances at my chart. After signing the top two forms, she hands some paperwork to my mother. “I still suggest rest. Stay at home in bed through the weekend. Only go to school on Monday if she feels up to it. No sports for at least two weeks. The last thing she needs is another head injury.”

  My mother nods at the doctors instructions, but her eyes remain on me as if she’s trying to make sure that I’m paying attention.