The Kat Dubois Chronicles: The Complete Series (Echo World Book 2)

by Lindsey Fairleigh

  I dangled my helmet from the handle and fixed my bun, then walked out of the parking lot, away from the mall and its satellite buildings. When my feet reached the sidewalk, I broke into a run.

  The streets were jam-packed with cars as people headed home from work and from the school just up the street. The string of cars clogging the road made me self-conscious, and I pulled up my hood as I ran. I probably looked like a gnome, but at least my hair color was hidden.

  I made a circuit around the high school, then veered onto the campus when I reached the entrance to the staff parking lot, almost back at the point where I’d started. Thanks to my recurring dreams, I had a solid grasp of the school’s layout.

  There were still a couple dozen cars parked in the lot, plus the handful I’d seen in the bigger student lots on the other side of the school. I figured those belonged to students here for sports practices and the like. Perfect. In the latest dream-echo, Ms. C. had said that an excited atmosphere amplified the weirdness. There weren’t too many people here, but hopefully there were enough to rile up whatever thing was making everyone think this place was haunted.

  I slowed to a walk as I drew closer to the school’s main entrance, a series of five pairs of sturdy, glass-paned doors with NEWPORT HIGH SCHOOL embedded into the brick above them in big, silver lettering. I unzipped the vest and sweatshirt a good six inches so Dom could see, too. “Let me know if you spot anything weird,” I told him, voice low and lips moving the barest amount.

  “Of course.”

  “Thanks,” I murmured. I was pretty sure I was already breaking some law just by being on the school campus without any kind of an actual reason; I didn’t want to draw extra attention to myself by having a full-on conversation with nobody.

  Though, I figured, if somebody called me out, I could probably blame any weird behavior on the “ghosts.” Besides, I looked young enough to be a student. Nobody should have any reason to think I didn’t belong.

  When I reached the doors, I tugged on the handle of the leftmost door. It barely budged, the clang of the lock’s latch jarring my arm. I reached for the next door, but it was locked, too.

  “Damn it,” I hissed when the final door proved just as immovable. I needed to get into the school; that’s where all of the weird shit was supposedly happening. I hadn’t planned on the place being locked up tight. After-school activities were still a thing, weren’t they?

  Hands on my hips, I backed away from the doors, scanning first the left half of the school, then the right. The school was broken up into two main, autonomous buildings—the one in front of me, containing the main office and all of the communal spaces like the cafeteria, gymnasium, and theater, if the blocky shape and crazy-high roofline was anything to go by, and the other building, a sprawling single-level structure off to the right looking as though it housed all of the classrooms. I’d been able to gather that much about the layout from my lap around the school, piecing my observations together with what I recalled from the dreams.

  I drew my lip in between my teeth. Assuming all of the doors were locked and I would be relying on good old breaking and entering to get inside either building, I thought it would be safest to pick just one part of the school or the other. Figuring the gym-and-theater half would still be filled with students practicing whatever the hell they practiced after school—and thus would lead to a higher probability of me being spotted and recognized—I opted for breaking into the building holding all of the classrooms.

  Thankfully, it was dusk, which would make it easier for me to spot people through the windows of classrooms that were still lit up . . . and would make it harder for those same people to see me, lurking around the school like an über-creeper.

  I headed around the right side of the building, walking at a steady pace and scoping out the classrooms from the corner of my eye. The windows of the first two were dark, but that corner of the building was way too out in the open for any kind of window-breaking to be anything other than stupid. The wing of classrooms ended in a pair of double doors, but a quick check proved that, just like the main doors, these ones were locked.

  After that first wing, the side of the school recessed into a deep, narrow courtyard area, and the floor-to-ceiling windows beyond gave me a view of what looked like the school’s main hallway, the opposite wall lined with lockers and handmade posters advertising the school’s upcoming winter formal: A Night to Remember. I gagged a little.

  Two students, a boy and a girl maybe sixteen or seventeen years old, stood near the edge of the windows, the girl gesticulating with sharp gestures. Looked like they were having a bit of a fight. Perfect. I just hoped their excitement was enough to get some ghostly action going.

  The next wing of classrooms ended in another set of double doors, and I’d just planted my foot on the bottom cement step leading up to the doors to check if they were unlocked when I heard the sound of heels clacking on hard flooring from within the school. Someone was approaching the doors.

  I skipped backward a few steps and ducked down in the courtyard between the school’s brick exterior wall and a rhododendron bush growing near the stairs. That door was about to open. This was my chance to get in to the school without committing a major crime.

  Frantically, I searched the ground for something—anything—to stick into the hinge-side crack of the door to keep it from shutting all the way, when whoever it was left the building. I found an empty plastic soda bottle and tossed it aside, then did the same with a slightly slimy banana peel. The next thing I picked up was a twig about a half inch at its thickest, and I was about to throw it away, too, when the door creaked open.

  Out of time, I stood and shoved the stick into the crack, then crouched back down. I crossed my fingers and held my breath, waiting for the impending snap of wood.

  It didn’t come. I dared to hope that the twig was fresh and springy enough to withstand the pressure.

  I watched from my hideout as a young, female teacher emerged from the school carrying what appeared to be a bucket of rolled-up maps. She craned her neck, peering around the bucket at the stairs as she descended, and I recognized her immediately: Ms. C., from my dream. She was so focused on her footing that she didn’t notice when the door didn’t shut all the way behind her.

  She headed for a car parallel parked beside the sidewalk, maybe a dozen paces up from the base of the stairs. I waited until the entire upper half of her body had disappeared into the backseat of her car to make my move.

  I snuck out from behind the overgrown bush and hurried up the stairs, easing the door first open, then shut. The hallway ahead was long, lined with lockers broken up by recesses for the classroom doors. At the end of the wing, there was a wide opening to that main hallway I’d seen through the windows in the courtyard.

  I wasn’t sure if Ms. C., who’d so kindly and unknowingly let me in, would be coming back to grab more stuff to load into her car, so I hurried up the hallway.

  Now that I was inside the school, I could hear the two teens I’d seen through the window. Definitely an argument.

  “. . . not the point!” the girl said. “You should’ve told me she was there. You know how I feel about her, and she totally has a thing for you!”

  When I heard the creak of the door at the end of the wing opening once more, I sidestepped into the final recess on the left. I hunkered back into the corner and forced my breaths in and out, quiet and even, cursing myself for the guilty reaction. If I’d just kept on walking up the hallway, cool as a cucumber, the teacher probably wouldn’t have called me out. But if she found me like this, skulking in a corner, she’d sure as hell know something was off.

  Clack clack. Clack clack.

  I crossed the first two fingers of both hands and glanced up at the ceiling, wishing and hoping and praying that Ms. C.’s classroom was closer to that exterior door than I was. I held some clout with the universe now. I just hoped the universe would pull through.

  “Which is why I didn’t say anything about i
t, babe,” the boy said. “I didn’t want you to freak out.”

  I rolled my eyes. It was such a guy-ish thing to say, trying to excuse his lies to his girlfriend by claiming he was trying to protect her. That, right there, was why I didn’t do love. You could never fully trust another person. Not ever. Trust only leads to pain and heartbreak. In the end, we’re all on our own.

  Clack clack. Clack clack. Ms. C. was drawing nearer. Damn it. I needed her to be gone so I could sneak around less sneakily.

  “Oh my God,” the girl laugh-shouted. “I can’t even—ugh!”

  “Come on, babe,” the guy said.

  I shivered, glancing down as I pushed my sleeve back a few inches to reveal that the hairs on my arm were standing on end. On my next exhale, I was stunned to see that my breath was faintly visible.

  Clack clack. The sound of Ms. C.’s heels stopped maybe twenty paces back down the hallway.

  “Don’t touch me!” the girl snapped.

  I caught movement out of the corner of my eye—something dark—but whatever it was passed my nook before I actually saw it.

  “Everything alright down there?” the teacher called, and I could hear her taking a few more steps toward my hiding spot.

  I held my breath.

  Not a second later, a dark, ominous figure swept past my hiding spot, heading in the direction of the kids.

  What the hell? I shrank back, plastering myself against the classroom door behind me, eyelids opened about as wide as they could go.

  Another figure glided into view, this one pausing just a few feet away from me. I had the sense that it was looking at me, though it didn’t have anything more than a rough, humanoid outline to delineate body parts. Certainly nothing resembling a face or eyes.

  “Mon dieu,” Dom said. “What a frightful creature. Little sister, I would highly suggest not moving a muscle.”

  I didn’t. I didn’t even breathe. I was pretty sure my heart didn’t even beat while that thing was staring at me. But I did get a damn good look at it.

  It wasn’t larger than an average human, but the malice coming off of it in waves made it seem enormous. The darkness of it was unrelenting, seeming to suck in the light from the florescent bulbs overhead, but it was somehow transparent at the same time, more a shadow than a person. Oddly, that darkness reminded me of the barrier surrounding Aaru.

  I couldn’t believe Ms. C. wasn’t freaking out. She couldn’t have been more than a dozen steps away from the—the thing. Unless, I realized a moment later, she couldn’t actually see it. As I stared at the shadowy figure, unable to look away from its malevolent, sightless stare, I shivered again, wishing I couldn’t see it either.

  But I could, and holy shit—maybe ghosts were real.

  “Yeah, Ms. Cramer, we’re fine,” the teenage boy said. I’d almost forgotten about him and the girl.

  Another shadow being passed by my hiding spot.

  “I’m not fine, Jake,” the girl hissed, and it was like her voice snapped the shadow frozen mere feet away out of its fixation with me, and it followed the others.

  “Babe . . .”

  “Alright,” Ms. Cramer said, “what’s going on?” The clacking of her heels resumed, and she moved farther up the hallway. Toward the kids. Toward the shadows. Toward me.

  “Don’t babe me!” the girl said.

  Ms. Cramer was maybe four steps away from my hiding spot. Three.

  Metal clattered and clanged in the main hallway, the sound increasing and moving closer like rushing wave.

  Ms. Cramer was two steps away.

  The lockers across from my hideout started to rattle. I balled my hands into fists. This was it—one of the incidents they’d talked about on the news.

  It seemed to be centered around the fighting couple, and I was just seeing the very edge of the action. I needed to get closer if I was going to have any chance of understanding what was going on here.

  Ms. Cramer stopped just around the corner, barely out of sight. “Jake, Melanie . . . you both need to calm down.” Her voice was impressively steady. “No sudden movements. Deep breaths. Very slowly make your way toward me.”

  The teens seemed to take her advice, falling silent.

  A moment later, the rattling stopped, but the temperature dipped ever lower. I had the eerie sense that we were in the eye of the storm. It was going to get worse before it got better.

  All of a sudden, the door to every single locker in my view burst open, spilling out books, papers, drink bottles, and items of clothing.

  “Ah!” the girl—Melanie—screamed. “Something grabbed my hair!” She screamed again.

  “Mel!” Jake yelled.

  Ms. Cramer ran past the opening to my hideout, eyes only for the scene ahead of her.

  Shit was getting real, fast, and we’d just flown past the time for subtlety. I followed Ms. Cramer, rounding the corner to the main hallway a couple seconds after her.

  Melanie was on her butt on the floor, swatting at the grabbing hands of the shadow people surrounding her. One had hold of her ankle and was dragging her slowly down the hallway, while her boyfriend swung at the thing with what appeared to be a metal music stand. It was clear that he couldn’t see the shadow being like I could; he missed more often than not, and when he did luck into landing a hit, the music stand just passed right through it. At least a half dozen other shadows swarmed around the couple, more closing in from farther up and down the hall.

  I pushed Ms. Cramer out of the way and launched myself at the shadow dragging Melanie away, hoping without reason that because I could see the thing, maybe, just maybe, I could touch it, too.

  Bingo.

  It felt like a sack of ice-cold sand when I slammed into it, but my momentum dislodged the shadow’s hold on Melanie even as it knocked the wind out of me. I rolled over the thing, tucking my shoulder and pressing off the floor with my hands to land on my feet just out of reach.

  My attack seemed to have stunned the shadows surrounding the teens, rendering them momentarily immobile.

  Not one to waste an opportunity, I met Melanie’s terrified eyes and shouted, “Run!”

  Chapter Eight

  Melanie scrambled to her feet, snagged the sleeve of her boyfriend’s letterman jacket, and was dragging Jake out of there almost as soon as the word “run” left my mouth.

  Ms. Cramer, on the other hand, stood just as paralyzed as the shadows seemed to be, her eyelids opened wide, her eyes locked on me.

  Because, damn it, I was glowing again. Faintly, but enough to let her know exactly who I was.

  “You—you’re her.”

  I huffed out a breath. She could gawk later . . . when we weren’t under attack by these creepy-ass ghosts, or whatever the hell they were.

  I sprinted straight at Ms. Cramer, grabbing her arm and pulling her back into the wing of classrooms we’d both come from. By the time we passed the first classroom door, she was running full on beside me. That she could keep up with me at all was impressive; that she could do it in those heels was outright astonishing. But then, adrenaline can make athletes of us all.

  We shoved through the doors leading to the outside world and rushed down the cement stairs.

  “Get in!” Ms. Cramer yelled, gesturing sharply to her sedan.

  With the prospect of those shadow things being hot on our trail, I wasn’t about to argue. I yanked open the passenger side door of the car and threw myself in, peering through the back windshield at the school as I yanked the door closed. Shadowy figures poured through the school’s thick metal doors like those barriers were no more solid than water.

  “They’re coming!” I said.

  Ms. Cramer fumbled with her keys, hands shaking. “Come on . . . come on . . .”

  The shadows were closing in on us.

  Ms. Cramer finally singled out the right key and fit it into the ignition. The engine rumbled to life, and she slammed her foot on the gas pedal. The tires squealed, we hung in place for an infinite moment as the wheels spun�
�the shadows yards, feet, inches away—and then we were barreling out of there, leaving burnt rubber and angry ghosts in our wake.

  By the time we stopped at a red light a block from the school, my skin had stopped glowing. Ms. Cramer gripped the steering wheel so tightly that her knuckles were bone white and I could hear the creak of the leather against her palms. She was breathing hard—we both were—and her dirty-blonde bob was in disarray, her cheeks flushed with color.

  “I need a drink,” she said, staring ahead at the light. “Do you need a drink? ’Cause I really need a drink.”

  I laughed breathily. I kind of liked this chick. “Sure,” I said, that increasingly familiar dull throbbing settling in at the base of my skull. Looked like my headache was returning. A drink was exactly what I needed.

  Ms. Cramer turned left at the next light and continued on for another few blocks. We drove past the shopping mall where I’d parked the bike, then pulled into the lot of a smaller strip mall on the opposite side of the street. She parked in the first of many rows of parking spots, then turned off the car and stared straight ahead through the windshield, fingers still gripping the steering wheel.

  “I quit,” she said, less to me than to the world in general. “It’s too much—this crazy haunting shit.” Ever so slowly, she shook her head. A faint, hysteria-tinged laugh bubbled up from her chest. “I can’t do it anymore. I quit.”

  I wasn’t sure how to respond, so I didn’t say anything at all. Sometimes, no words was best.

  Ms. Cramer looked at me. “Do you have any idea how many teachers called in sick today?”

  “Um . . .” I frowned, brow scrunching. “No?”

  “Twenty-three,” she said breathily. “That’s almost a quarter of the faculty. The district doesn’t have enough subs as it is—the rest of us have been covering classes during our open periods—and the number of call-ins is growing every day.” She returned to looking straight ahead. “And you know the worst part?”

  I shook my head.

  “I love my job.” Her chin trembled. “The district has plenty of funding, and my students are . . .” She cleared her throat. “They’re so wonderful, and their parents care. They actually take an interest in their kids’ education. Do you know how hard that is to find as a teacher these days?”