Laundry was yet another thing I realized I wasn’t doing that someone else had to be. I only thought this because each time I came back to the room, my dirty clothes were gone and my bed was made. There had to be a maid around here somewhere, unless this place had ghosts frolicking about, doing the housework—which was ridiculous, because ghosts weren’t real, no matter how creepy this place was.
Still hadn’t seen any of the kitchen staff, which I thought was weird. Never saw any cars coming and going from the property, either. Every time I saw Lucien I meant to ask him about it, about who worked in the kitchen, why it felt like Grimmstead was so closed off from the rest of the world, but each time it was like my mind moved on to something else. Almost forcefully. Kind of like something else guided my mind.
Like, what kind of place had walls that blocked out signal? It was crazy. Absolutely crazy, and it reminded me of a time when cell phones were not as well-loved and often-used.
Heck, I couldn’t even remember a time like that.
No TV. No WIFI. Seriously, this place had nothing. An overabundance of books, which I read from every night, studying up on things I should be in college learning. An endless supply of old books was literally the only thing this place had, along with handsome faces and creepy kitchens.
Today was my first day off, and I planned on taking my phone outside and trying to catch a signal. I hadn’t done much exploring of the grounds since I arrived here, having been too busy, trying to drown myself in my work for as long as I possibly could each night until I passed out. And bathed, but, uh…I’d rather not think about my time in that bathtub, because each time it was like something came over me, and I…
I touched myself, okay? There. I said it—er, thought it. Admitted to myself that I put my hands between my legs and rubbed one out. It was the twenty-first century; girls masturbated too. It wasn’t just guys. And me being around all these handsome faces—whether they were off their rocker or not—drove me a little mad.
Madder each day, I thought, because sometimes the thoughts I had were extremely inappropriate.
There were no baggy jeans and t-shirts around, so I had to change into yet another one of those dresses. They weren’t so bad; it wasn’t like they were uncomfortable or anything. The more I wore them, the more I grew used to them. I couldn’t complain too much. At least I had a job. At least I was away from father and his withering looks.
I did wonder, though, if Lucien knew what happened at my college, if he knew the trouble I’d gotten myself into. With what I’d done, you’d think having me in a teacher-like position with these troubled men would be the last place I should be.
But here I was, and as the days blended into each other, more and more I firmly believed I was going nowhere. Grimmstead still didn’t feel like a home to me, but I was acclimating to its sudden temperature changes and its confusing, dangerously attractive men. The off-limits parts of it, well…I hadn’t done much investigating yet.
I grabbed my phone once I was ready, opting to skip the breakfast we normally shared and head straight outside. I was out of the stone halls within a few minutes, my feet taking me down the front stone steps of the large building.
Above me, the sun shone brightly. It was not overly warm, but just right, with the gentlest, sweetest of breezes blowing past, not enough to knot my hair, but enough to caress my cheeks and make me sigh. A perfect spring day, no clouds or rain showers to be seen.
Letting out a sigh, I gazed around. The property was a verdant green, a single driveway of concrete paving the way to the front gate. It was almost a different world than the one I’d walked into all those days ago, when it was raining so hard I’d gotten drenched immediately. Still had no idea who took my clothes, but it seemed their pranks had stopped. I didn’t want to simply let it be, but…sometimes it was hard to remember to be upset about it. Sometimes it just slipped my mind.
The property was a wide one. Most of it was now grass, but I could easily imagine other buildings being here, attached to the main one. A few large trees were scattered amongst the land. It had to have multiple acres in all directions. The neighboring properties were out of sight, and I imagined the tall iron fence went around it on each side.
I took a few more steps away from the building, my feet bringing me into the grass, off the concrete pathway. I glanced down at my phone, hoping and praying to find at least one tiny bar—but still, no signal. No signal at all.
Okay, so it wasn’t just the walls of the building that blocked the signal. This place was a literal dead zone, something you hardly saw anymore, because cell phones and towers and satellites were yesterday’s news.
Odd. Very odd. So odd I decided to take a short walk around the property and keep checking my phone. With any luck, I’d find one stray bar somewhere. There had to be a trick to this, but then, maybe that was why I could hardly find anything about Grimmstead Academy online. I’d found its history, some of it anyway, but nothing recent. It was almost as if this place was completely sealed off from the real world.
Nothing around the front of the property, so my legs took me to the back. Behind the building, it was like a maze of evergreen trees, their branches so thick and their stumps so wide they nearly blocked out the entire sky. It was like stepping from a grassy plain to an eerie, unsettling forest.
I dropped the hand holding the phone, still not having any signal. A part of me told me that I should turn around and not head deeper into the forest, the logical part. The illogical part of me told me to keep going, to push further, that I needed to see what lay within these woods.
Deeper and deeper I went until I could no longer see the stone walls of Grimmstead. I felt like I was transplanted in a fairytale, the creepy woods where the old hag or witch lived. My boots crunched on the broken sticks under them, my lungs refusing to fully fill.
This air…it tasted wrong. Not only was it too cold, but it also felt heavy, a certain extra weight to it I couldn’t place. When I breathed in, I could taste it. Old, rank, nasty. The opposite of clean air. It felt suffocating, and my throat itched and burned with a need to turn around and leave this place.
But I couldn’t.
I kept going.
I kept going until the grove of trees seemingly opened around me, and I stood smackdab in the center of…a graveyard?
It wasn’t a cemetery per se, but the trees had been cleared from the area, though branches still blocked out the sun overhead. A few rays did pierce through, illuminating the area, creating a thin mist that shrouded the entire place. No headstones, but dozens of small stone piles, all arranged carefully.
What in the world was this?
If this wasn’t a graveyard of sorts, I had no idea what the heck it was. All I knew was that I’d never seen something creepier. Except maybe that guy who’d disappeared down the hall—and the dusty kitchen.
Okay, you know what? There were a lot of creepy things around here. They just kept piling up and up.
“You shouldn’t be here,” a voice came out of nowhere, causing me to jump in fright, twirl around and hold out my phone like it was some kind of weapon in disguise. When I saw who it was, I relaxed.
Out of everybody in Grimmstead, Dagen was one of the better ones. A bit paranoid, a little erratic, but he seemed to be genuinely kind and caring. He and Koda were the only ones I trusted, but even saying that, I didn’t really trust them.
I didn’t trust anyone here but me.
Dagen was a handsome man, although most of the time it looked like he’d forgotten to shave or even run a comb through his black hair. His eyes were a matching color, and in the shadows of the forest, he looked downright menacing.
But then I saw the way he’d missed a button on his shirt, and the menacing factor went down a bit.
“Dagen,” I said, sighing out his name. “Are you following me?” Lucien had told me to act like an authority figure. Sometimes it was hard, because these guys were older than I was. If they didn’t want to listen to me, they didn’t ha
ve to. They could simply turn their ear the other way and leave.
“You weren’t at breakfast, and some of us were worried,” he said, glancing around. A shaky arm reached for his glasses, adjusting them on his nose. He looked like a nerd that had gotten lost in the library stacks and came wandering out, just as confused as he’d been when he’d first gotten lost, only a heck of a lot more attractive.
I didn’t think I’d been aimlessly walking around for that long, but I supposed I did skip breakfast without telling anyone. Every man who lived here needed his routine, that much I’d learned already.
“Yeah,” I said, running a finger along the side of my phone, no longer holding it as a weapon. Not sure what I would’ve done with it if I’d needed to use it. Chuck it at his head like a bullet-less gun like John Wick? These guys probably wouldn’t even understand the reference, which made me sad. “I was just trying to find some signal here, and then I…” I paused, glancing behind me at the mounds of stones. “I found this place.”
Dagen gave me a sad look. One hand was in his grey pants’ pocket, the other hung limply at his side. “You always find the places you’re not supposed to.” His black eyes shifted, and he looked to his side. His head tilted, as if he heard something. “You…you don’t hear that, do you?”
It was not the first time Dagen had asked me that question, and I doubted it would be the last.
“What do you hear?” I asked, again, not for the first time. Dagen had shut down after I asked the last time, so I was hesitant to try again, but I had to. These men…they were all lost in their own way, and maybe it was stupid, but I felt like I was here to help them.
Dagen’s voice shook with tremors as he muttered, “It’s this…sound. Low, and it repeats over and over and over.” He brought his hands to his hair, running them through it, sticking its dark lengths straight up. He must’ve been sweating, even though the air here was cold. “It’s worse inside, but out here…I shouldn’t hear it. I shouldn’t—”
“It’s okay,” I told him. Telling him there was no sound was like accusing a crazy person of being crazy, so I couldn’t do that. Instead, I decided to take the focus off him and the sound he allegedly heard, glancing behind me at the arranged stones. There weren’t even many stones in the area, so I couldn’t imagine how long it took someone to meticulously place them all like this. “What is this place?”
“You’re not supposed to be here,” Dagen whispered, taking a step towards me. I wanted to instantly take a step back, but I held firm against doing so. I would not let him see how much his closeness affected me.
The strange part? They all affected me the same. Dagen, Ian, Koda, Payne, and even Lucien. My heart rate sped up any time I was near them, and my thoughts…my thoughts were the most traitorous part of me.
The things I’d thought about these men, the things I imagined them doing to me…to call them inappropriate wouldn’t be nearly enough. They were downright immoral and depraved.
“What are those stones there for?” I asked, ignoring his repeat of what he’d said earlier. “Why does this place feel like a graveyard?” His answer stunned me into silence.
“Because it is one.” Dagen blinked behind his glasses, averting his eyes, their shadowed gaze moving to the stones behind me. “Not for people, but…animals.”
“Oh,” I said, glancing back. The stones were rather close for them to belong to people. Plus, you know, when someone died, you didn’t just throw them out in the back and dig them a hole. “For Midnight’s predecessors?” I asked, believing I had it all figured out.
I didn’t. Nothing was so simple here.
“No,” Dagen said. “Payne’s subjects.”
I blinked, not quite understanding what he meant. “Payne’s subjects?”
“Payne is obsessed, but I suppose we all are.” He let out a nervous chuckle, but the sound fell flat. “I really don’t feel comfortable being here. This is his space. We should go.” He looked to me, saying, “Come on. Let’s go.”
Payne’s subjects.
What the heck did he mean by that?
I kept my jaw firmly shut as I nodded and followed him out of the forest, away from the dark, cleared circle that held dozens of mounds of stones. If those were animal graves, and if they were Payne’s subjects…did that mean Payne was running experiments on them or something? Was he killing them? Was Payne a serial killer in the making?
As we stepped out of the woods and onto the green grass, into the sun, I felt so very cold. I didn’t want to view any of these men as dangerous, but they were. They were so dangerous it was impossible to deny.
Payne’s subjects. I’d have to talk to him about it. He and I were discussing ethics. Was his subject matter chosen on purpose? Was I meant to convince him that certain things were indeed wrong? That experimenting and causing pain on other living beings on purpose, ignoring their cries of agony, was wrong?
No one should have that responsibility, but here I was, apparently.
Dagen started walking around the building, but I stopped, turning my gaze back to glance at the woods. It was literally like night and day, between here and there. Heads and tails, two completely different worlds, shoved so close together.
Payne’s subjects. I had to talk to Payne. I had to see just what I was dealing with. If I was supposed to help these men, I needed to know all of the details.
“Thank you for finding me,” I told him, causing him to stop and look at me.
Dagen gave me a long look. It wasn’t a hard look, or even a judgmental one. It was merely a look that told me he was tired. A look that asked me, wordlessly, why I’d bother to thank him. Maybe he’d never been thanked before. These guys…it was clear they’d each come from some kind of broken home or traumatic childhood. This academy was less like an academy for students and more of a halfway house for men who couldn’t truly belong anywhere else, not yet. Not until they learned what was right and what was wrong.
He said nothing else as we walked side by side back into Grimmstead. I gave him a warm smile before leaving his side, off to find Payne.
It was probably a stupid idea to approach and confront him, so perhaps I should find Lucien first instead? Hmm. Decisions, decisions. It was times like these when I wished I automatically knew what to do.
I wasn’t as bad as the men who lived here, but I had my own problems. My addiction, my weakness, was just something I was able to hide.
I stopped midway up the grand staircase, my memories getting the better of me.
Red, raging fire. Flames licking the curtains and the bookshelves, devouring every piece of furniture they touched. The heat that filled the air, the smoke that choked you. A mirage of oranges and reds, yellows and whites. A beautiful scene that I would never get out of my head.
Who knew the most beautiful things in this world were also the most dangerous?
I pushed those thoughts from my mind, fighting my memories as I headed up the steps and turned, walking to the eastern wing. The guys’ rooms were down here. I tried not to venture here for that reason alone, knowing better than to trust any of these guys alone in their rooms.
But today? Today I needed to find Payne. I needed to ask him, pointblank, about what Dagen had said.
Subjects.
You didn’t have subjects.
Only kings and scientists had subjects. Normal people didn’t—then again, I knew by now that no one in this place was normal. Normal wasn’t even a word in their vocabulary.
Upon turning into the eastern wing, I spotted Koda. His shirt was neatly buttoned and tucked into his grey pants, his black hair spiked on the top. He was heading in my direction, but the moment he saw me, his feet halted, his face lighting up.
“Felice,” he said. “What are you—”
“I need to see Payne,” I told him, a bit rudely. It wasn’t like I enjoyed interrupting people, but on a day like this, after seeing that makeshift cemetery and hearing Dagen try to explain what they were, I didn’t have time for niceties.<
br />
Koda blinked, his green eyes studying me. He didn’t appear suspicious, but he did look a little curious. He pointed behind him, towards the left. “I think I saw him in his room,” he said.
I thanked him, sweeping past him to move to the room he’d been pointing to. Koda nodded once, and then he was gone, off doing whatever it was he did when he wasn’t with me.
The door before me was cracked open an inch or two, and I leaned closer, talking loudly, “Payne? It’s me, Felice. Are you in there? I need to talk to you—” I was about to explain exactly what I needed to speak with him about, but the door creaked open all by itself.
Things had a habit of doing that around here.
Perhaps in spite of my better judgment, I entered the room without getting verbal permission first. I inched inside, glancing all around, half expecting to find Payne doing something, catch him in the act of…whatever it was he did.
The room was set up like mine, the furniture and the dressers and closet all the same, but beyond that, nothing else was similar. The walls were covered in papers. Hand-written and haphazardly taped to the stone. The walls were his working board. As I stepped closer to a particularly jam-packed wall, I noticed the words written on them were in red.
My gut clenched, but not in a good way. More like an Oh, crap way.
Payne was nowhere in sight. The bathroom attached to his room was open, and with a quick glance inside, I found no one. Koda had said he’d seen him in his room, but he wasn’t here anymore.
I was alone in what was clearly a madman’s bedroom.
A makeshift counter sat before the window, the sunlight shining through to illuminate the glass jars sitting on top. All shapes and sizes, the glass was almost completely translucent, allowing me to see the contents inside. My feet took me to the small counter, and I carefully picked up the smallest jar. An oval-shaped jar that looked like, at one time, it was used for perfume or something.
What was in it now was not perfume.
Grimmstead Academy: A Villainous Introduction Page 9