by Kelley York
I haven’t a clue how far from the dorms this boy has led me, but I’m sure that even if I were to run full-speed, I wouldn’t come close to making it to my room in time. Shit.
Not that I’ve ever minded being out after hours, and I don’t particularly mind now, except that it occurs to me I’ve been stumbling through the woods in the dark. Alone. Not something I’ve dared to do before, and certainly never on my own. I always had William.
I give it another ten or fifteen minutes, but the boy does not grace me with his presence again. Cursing quietly, bemoaning that this seems to have been another opportunity lost, I begin to make my way back through the forest. Nothing to be done for it now. All I can do is try to sneak back into Gawain Hall without being noticed, and hopefully I’ll be able to find my way back to this spot at a later point in time.
By some grace of God, the forest thins and eventually deposits me back into the fields with the dorm in sight. I let out a relieved breath, stealing a look around before jogging to the door. Everything is quiet and still as I slip soundlessly inside, thinking that I’ve made it, and all will be well.
No sooner has my foot touched the bottom of the first flight of stairs that my luck runs out.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
It’s not a friendly voice that greets me. I could not be so fortunate. I close my eyes, not having to turn around to envision the way Charles Simmons is sneering in delight to have caught me breaking the rules. Lovely. “I had hoped to run away and join the circus, but alas, their applications were closed.”
“Shame, that. You would have been a wonderful addition to their freak show.”
I want to roll my eyes. Instead, I slowly turn around to unflinchingly meet his gaze. “Quite. If you’ll excuse me, I believe I should be in my room.”
Charles is in his night clothes and a robe, a candlestick in hand and a pleased smile plastered on his obnoxious face. “You should’ve been in your room forty-five minutes ago, and yet here you are. Do you know what that means?”
I wonder. Trouble is really the last thing I need right now—the welts on my back have only just begun to not cause me pain—but my tongue will not stay still. I loathe this man almost as much as I loathe the headmaster. “I cannot say I know, but I’ll wager a guess. Is it a jerk or a suck?”
He laughs at that, damn him. “You keep dreaming, Spencer. You’re nowhere near my mark.”
“Of course. I’m probably too old. Are first years more appealing to your tastes?”
His smile is tight, cold. “Maybe you should ask dear William what my tastes are.”
What he’s insinuating makes my stomach roll, and if he’s determined to make me doubt William, he’s going to be sorely disappointed. But, God, I want to hit him. It would be worth any punishment I would receive. “I would consider your next words very carefully.”
His smile widens a notch. “To your room, Mr. Spencer. You know the punishment for nightwandering. Since it’s a first offense, I’ll let you off easy. Stand out ‘til the prefects do their morning rounds and think about what you’ve done and why you ought not to do it again.”
“What a terrifying punishment,” I mutter. Standing out is the simplest of reprimands, one I’ve seen plenty of my dorm-mates perform. One only needs to stand outside their room in the hall with nothing to occupy themselves. It means I’ll be foregoing sleep for the duration of the night. More important still is the fact that the hallways aren’t the most pleasant of places after dark. If Charles has any knowledge of my asking around about ghosts, then maybe this punishment is on purpose.
Charles tails me all the way up to my room, where he gives my shoulder a push to turn me around and put my back to the door. “I suppose you know the rules,” he drawls. “No moving, no sitting, no singing or talking until you’ve been dismissed in the morning. Disobey, and it will mean an instant trip to the headmaster’s office, and I’m sure you wouldn’t want that again.”
My back aches at the thought. “Have a lovely night, Simmons.”
“Not as wonderful as yours, I’m certain,” he responds before he heads down the hall, back to whatever hole he crawled out of.
When he’s out of sight, I heave a sigh and slump back against the door. I have hours upon hours before Virgil or Augustus will come to relieve me. Not that I know if Charles will actually check on me to make certain I’m still standing here, but knowing my luck…
I’m in for a long night. Not even just one of boredom, exhaustion, and sore legs, but because it takes only an hour before the noises begin.
Whispers I cannot quite catch, scratching at the walls in the darkness, just out of sight, quiet sighs, groans, and crying in the distance. At least I have no worries about falling asleep, because any time I think that I might, something moves just at the corner of my gaze and has me jerking my head to look. My heart spends the entire night galloping a mile a minute.
Come morning, I’m so exhausted that I can barely see straight, and every inch of my body is stiff and aches from tension. Virgil strolls down the hall bright and early, before the sun is even up, and startles at the sight of me.
“Mr. Spencer, were you caught out of your room last night?”
My eyes burn with tiredness and I cannot even muster a cheeky smile or witty retort. “It would seem that way.”
He clicks his tongue, opens his booklet, and scribbles something down in it. My name, the date, and my offense, I’d imagine. It’ll go into the headmaster’s book and then in my record. “You’ve been having a bit of a time of it lately, it would seem.”
“Mm.”
“Is there something bothering you?”
I blink slowly at him, surprised by the concern. “Thank you, but I’m well.”
He presses his lips together, nods briefly, and gestures at my door to dismiss me before he resumes his patrol down the hall. With a relieved sigh, I retreat into my room, peeling out of my clothing as I go and collapsing into bed, fully nude, and burying my face into a pillow. I get no more than forty-five minutes of sleep before the morning bells are chiming and I’m forced back up.
I don’t remember washing or getting dressed; the cold water does nothing to alert me. Breakfast and my morning classes go by in a similarly blurry fashion, with me in a daze and retaining nothing of our lessons. Hopefully classes aren’t covering anything important today.
The only thing that sticks out to me is lunch. Even then it’s only because Preston catches me before I can have a seat. “Can we talk for a moment, just the two of us?”
I nod dumbly, wondering if he’d be offended if I slept through our chat.
We have a seat away from our usual spot, although I catch Benjamin and Edwin’s glances in our direction and wonder if they have any idea what I’m being cornered about. I begin to serve food onto my plate; I didn’t have dinner and I ate little at breakfast. A proper meal might help.
Preston watches me for a few moments, mouth drawn, before asking, “What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Don’t play dumb with me. I heard you and Simmons last night, you know. What were you doing out so late?”
I wonder just how much he heard, but—his door is in the same hallway as my own, and so he must have only caught the tail end of our conversation.
Sighing, I run my hands over my face. “I lost track of time, is all.”
“Until after curfew? What were you doing?”
“Just wandering the grounds. I was restless.”
The pull of his brows suggests he doesn’t believe me in the slightest. I cannot blame him. I wouldn’t believe me, either.
“Look, I’m going to be honest with you. I haven’t the foggiest idea what’s gotten into you lately, or if you’re dealing with something. I know Frances’ departure has been hard. We’re all feeling that loss. Just know you aren’t alone, all right?”
I stare at him, unsure of what to say.
“Don’t give me that look. I mean it. Me and th
e lads—we’re your friends, too. And maybe we aren’t as important as Frances or Esher or whatever, but we’ve got your back. You can come to any of us, and if there’s something we can do to help; that’s what friends are for, right?”
My chest aches. Things haven’t really been the same since Oscar left, have they? And that’s been my fault. Preston and Benjamin and Edwin have still been there, hurting over the loss of a friend, too, and I’ve been…well, anywhere else. With William, and then all on my own. Turning my back on them even if it wasn’t my intention to do so. I’ve been a shit friend.
“I’m sorry,” I say, and I mean it. I cannot tell him everything that’s going on. I wouldn’t even know where to begin. “You’re right. I suppose I’ve rather shut myself off since Oscar left. I’m going to try to do better, because even if I’ve been an arse, you’re my friends and I’m quite fond of you. I’ll try to snap out of…whatever this is. I give you my word.”
Preston studies me a moment before he relaxes, seeming to decide that’s a good enough answer for him. “That’d be good. It’s not the same without you, you know? Rugby’s boring with just them little ones.” He inclines his head towards Benjamin and Edwin who both are, in fact, built quite small and not much of the rugby-playing variety.
“Well, I think I would fall asleep on the field if I tried to play today, but what about tomorrow?”
That’s enough to make his smile widen. “That would be great. After classes?”
“After classes,” I agree.
As promised, and after a proper night’s sleep, I devote the next day doing my best to engage more with my friends. I arrive at breakfast bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, intent on being my usual chatty and carefree self. And Rugby, yes, because I did promise.
My heart, however, is not in it.
I’ve far too much experience going through the motions of pretending I’m fine when I’m not. There is simply too much on my mind, from Oscar to William to ghosts to—
Yes. That, too.
I try desperately not to think of that, of him. I do my best to keep busy even if it means repeating the same routine every day, like the aimless wandering in search of the tunnels, or the trips to the library to look through the same books again and again—but memories of home still seep through the cracks. For a time, before things went so horribly wrong here, I had almost convinced myself that everything of him had been sufficiently buried, chased away by the soothing feel of William’s kisses and touch.
Now that I’m alone, now that the memories have been forced to the surface, I cannot help but reflect on them.
Sometimes I still scrub at my skin extra hard when I wash, as though it will rid me of the lingering remnants of an unwanted touch. Sometimes I meet someone’s gaze in the hall and I’m positive that they know. Sometimes, nightmares wrest me from a deep sleep.
Like tonight.
I’m upright in bed before I’m even fully awake, heart lodged in my throat. Swimming in the first few moments of disorientation, I’m certain I’m not alone. That a familiar, deep, unwanted voice is murmuring familiar refrains against my ear.
No.
Just a dream.
I’m alone in my room. At school. Far from a home that no longer exists.
My breathing slowly returns to normal, and it’s in that newfound silence that I realise while I may be alone in my room, I am not alone in entirety. Someone is moving about.
I remain immobile, straining to make sense of what I’m hearing. Footsteps? Quiet, not like the heavy thumping that I tend to hear when the halls are active with the undead, and I’m not sure if they’re coming closer to my room or I’m imagining things.
A moment later, though, I become aware that the steps are indeed approaching. Pausing, just outside my door, then a slow creak, and I realise…
The door is opening.
William, is my first thought. Though it was far more common for me to sneak into his room, it wasn’t unheard of for him to visit me from time to time. Who else would it be? What would prompt a visit from him now, when we’ve not spoken a word since that night?
“William? Is that you?”
No response. Silence and tension build in the air and in my body as I begin to think it isn’t William after all.
Then I hear it. Or…I think I hear it. So brief that it’s the softest whisper, but I’m so unbelievably certain the voice belongs to Oscar.
“You have to…”
The words are lost to the ether before the sentence can be finished, but it’s enough to have me pitching forwards out of bed and hurrying to the door to stick my head into the hall.
Nothing. Nothing to see, and nothing to hear except the heavy thrumming of my own heart.
Unwilling to give up so easily, I step fully out into the corridor. “Oscar?” I whisper. “Oscar, is that you? Are you here?”
It doesn’t matter how many times I call to him. I’m left not knowing what’s just happened and feeling undeniably distraught. For however brief a second, I thought I had found him and was filled with such excitement—and I could cry with the frustration of having it ripped from me again.
Back in my room, the door clicks quietly closed behind me. I crawl into bed and pull the blanket up to my chin. I foresee a lot of tossing and turning for the rest of the night. Regardless, I force my eyes closed, concentrating on steady breathing that sometimes helps me to drift off.
A ruined effort as an icy hand clamps over my mouth.
Eyes flying open, what I see should not in any way be possible for a multitude of reasons, but there is a dead boy sitting upon my chest.
His dark hair hangs in stringy, limp wet strands, freezing water dripping from his person; I can feel it sinking through my clothing. His milky eyes bore into mine, wide and emotionless, and his mouth scarcely moves as he whispers, “We have to be quiet.”
Being quiet is the opposite of what I want to do. It’s the opposite of what I plan to do, for that matter. I have every intention of opening my mouth and screaming past the boy’s clammy fingers in hopes that I’ll draw the attention of the whole damned dorm.
No sound comes from my mouth.
I cannot even get it to open.
I want my lips to part, and so they should. A boy of this size should not be able to silence me.
He seems to realise what I’m trying to do because his fingers dig into my cheeks bruisingly hard and he leans closer. “We have to be quiet.”
I don’t understand how a boy significantly smaller than myself has the capability of immobilizing me. “We have to be very, very quiet,” he rasps, followed by a wet cough as though trying to breathe around waterlogged lungs. “We cannot let him hear us. We have to be quiet, be quiet. Don’t make a sound, don’t move…”
I cannot breathe, with the weight bearing down on my chest, with the hand over my face. I cannot move, cannot turn my head to try to suck in air, and I don’t know what more he wants from me because I’m being utterly silent because I cannot even breathe to make a sound.
“We have to be silent. Quiet, quiet, quiet… We have to—”
The door opens again. Not the same slow creak as before but flung wide as though by a burst of wind, and I am distinctly aware that the room has suddenly plummeted to ridiculously low temperatures and a musty, damp odour fills my nostrils, unpleasant and unfamiliar.
I don’t know if it’s the sudden noise that frightens him, but the boy vanishes. I gasp in large gulps of air. With my regained capability to move, I bolt upright and paw at my face to wipe away the feeling of that hand on my skin.
My heart will never settle again. I swiftly dismiss the idea of rushing out of here and up to William’s room, desperate to be held and comforted. I could also go wake one of my friends, but would they believe a word of it? They would surely try to reassure me, if nothing else.
But can I be reassured? I don’t think it possible right now. I have no faith these encounters will stop. They’ve only grown in frequency the more I learn about the schoo
l, while everyone else remains so blissfully, wilfully ignorant.
I dwell on that for a time, contemplating what it could mean. If I continue and these interactions have escalated to the point where I’m now being attacked, could I end up another name in the Whisperwood cemetery? Or would the headmaster mark me as a runaway, never to be found?
Such ideas should scare me, I know. The feeling of icy fingers against my skin should frighten me into choosing a safer path, but I cannot. Whatever risks may come attached, I made a promise to Oscar to find him and to bring light to whatever has happened, and I cannot turn my back on that.
I cannot turn my back on him.
It takes me a few days to regain my bearings after the incident in my room, to stop feeling so jumpy at every sound, every presence. When I emerge from the other side of my fear, I’m more determined than ever in my quest for answers. If the dead hope to scare me into silence, then they’ve failed miserably. I’ve reached a place I cannot turn back from.
It’s this newfound determination that leads me to my next course of action. It’s one that I’ve toyed with since my meeting with the headmaster, but one I put off for a variety of reasons. Dread, perhaps. Nerves.
I’m going to see Mr. Hart again.
This time, I do not plan on being so polite.
After classes have concluded for the day, I knock lightly on his half-open door and step in without waiting for invitation. “Mr. Hart,” I greet as I approach his desk, where he appears to be grading papers. “Do you have a moment?”
He doesn’t look up from his writing. “Of course. Did you need help with today’s work?”
The idea is absurd and not worth an answer; English is my strongest subject, after all. Instead, I place a book atop the stack of papers he’s reading. Pendennis. The book Oscar never would have left behind. I have a hunch as to who gifted it to him, and when Mr. Hart’s gaze snaps quickly to me, wide and surprised, I know my gut feeling was spot-on.
“Where did you get this...?”
I have no reason to lie. “It was hidden beneath Oscar’s mattress. This is why I know he didn’t leave Whisperwood of his own accord. He told me that book was given to him by someone special, and it was one of his most prized possessions. He never would have left without it.”