Hidden Realms

by Dean Murray

  I considered making a “Do Not Enter” sign to let Agnes and the others know I wanted privacy, but I knew that if Ella Mae or Mrs. Shadowford wanted to come in, they could. Then again, I thought, Mrs. Shadowford was in a wheelchair. I hadn't noticed any kind of elevator or special contraption to move her upstairs, so maybe it was only Ella Mae and the other girls I had to worry about when it came to privacy.

  After I shoved another flip-flop under the bathroom door, I drew a warm bath and lowered myself into the refreshing bubbles. I guess I must have been pretty tired, because I fell asleep nearly the instant my body was immersed in the water.

  I couldn't be sure how much time passed, but at some point, I started to dream. A woman in white floated down the hallway, her feet inches from the ground. She called out to me and I followed her. In my dream, we were here in Shadowford Manor. Somehow, I knew she was taking me to the third floor. As I walked down the dark corridor, I looked for the stairs, but there were none.

  How do we get there? I asked her. There's no staircase.

  She smiled and floated to the end of the hallway, beckoning me with a ghostly fingertip. The woman in white stopped in front of a section of the wall covered from floor to ceiling in wood paneling. She passed through it, and I tried to follow her, but couldn't. I could hear her calling to me from the other side of the wall. I placed my hands on the wooden panel, but when it wouldn't budge, I felt strangely powerless. I pounded against the wall, pushed with all my might, but the woman in white was gone.

  I put my back to the wall and leaned against it. On the opposite wall was a large mirror. In it, I saw a bright red flash. Flames! Then, suddenly, a rush of heat came to me, as real as anything I'd ever felt. When I turned around to find the source of the fire, I was no longer at Shadowford. I had been transported back to my past, to a small two bedroom house I remembered all too well. I sat in the middle of my room, the remains of my angry tears still making a path down my cheeks as flames broke out around me. In the next room, I could hear a man screaming. Jill, with her porcelain doll skin and kind brown eyes, looked over at me.

  “What have you done?” she asked. “You witch! Why did you do it?”

  I tried to explain that I hadn't meant to start the fire. It was an accident. I reached out to her, but suddenly, the door burst open and water flooded in, filling the room in an instant. I floated up on the wave, then slowly sank to the bottom, unable to breathe.

  I gasped and sat up in the bathtub in my room at Shadowford, splashing water and bubbles all over the tile floor. Leaning over the edge of the tub, I struggled for air.

  The dream had been so vivid. The call of the woman's voice. The heat of the fire. I shivered, realizing the bathwater had long gone cold. I must have been asleep for a while. Carefully, I climbed out of the tub and wrapped myself in a towel.

  In my room, it had grown dark since the sun went down. I switched on the bedside lamp and changed into my pajamas. Sleep threatened my eyes again, and I was asleep within minutes of sinking into my large canopied bed.

  A scream woke me from my sleep. I bolted upright, my heart pounding.

  The scream came again, blood-curdling this time. I heard real fear in the sound. I rushed to the door and yanked, but nothing happened. Then, remembering the flip-flop wedged in the bottom, I bent over and pulled it from the door. I tried to turn the knob, but it wouldn't move. Someone had locked me inside.

  Panic seized my body. What if there was a fire? And I was locked inside? Had someone locked me in?

  I banged against the door. “Help! Is anyone out there?”

  I pressed my ear against the wood, expecting to hear more screams and chaos, but there was nothing. It was quiet.

  “Hello?” I spoke through the door, but heard no answer. Surely someone was out there. Someone had locked me in. Someone had screamed bloody murder.

  Now, it seemed, the house was quiet. I began to doubt my own ears. Maybe it had all been just another dream.

  Then, voices at my window. The sound of breaking glass floated up to me and someone made a hushing sound. I tiptoed across the room and looked down. Even outside at midnight, the air was thick with heat. The motion sensor by the cottage out back had been triggered and the backyard was bathed in an eerie orange glow.

  Down in the garden, movement caught my eye. I squinted to see who it was, but all I saw were shadows. Had someone outside been screaming? I didn't think so. I was certain the sound had come from inside the house, but whoever these people were outside, they didn't seem to have heard it.

  “Be quiet.” A guy's voice. He was somewhere in the darkness near the back of the garden, but I could almost make out his figure.

  “Oh come on, Jackson.” A giggle. A girl I didn't recognize. “Don't be such a stick in the mud.”

  “I'm serious, you can't be here,” he said. “It's late. You should go home.”

  “Not until you give me what I want,” the girl said. In the shadows, I saw her grab him and pull him close. His girlfriend?

  But Jackson pushed the girl away. “Stop, Tori. You know that crap doesn't work on me.”

  “I don't understand you,” she said. “What is it about you that's so different?”

  Jackson emerged from the darkness and a blonde girl stumbled after him. “Wait! Aww, Jackson, come on.” She grabbed his arm and he turned sharply toward her.

  In the glow of the light from the barn, I could see the anger and frustration on his face. Inside, my heart pounded watching them. For a moment, I thought he might hit her, but instead, he yanked his arm away from her. “Just go.”

  The girl, Tori, had her back to me. She put her hands on her hips and backed away from him. “Fine. I didn't want anything from you anyway.”

  Jackson kicked at the grass as the girl walked around the side of the house. As if sensing me watching him, he looked up toward my room, just as he had done earlier that day. Quickly, I backed away from the window and closed the curtains.

  In the distance, I heard a car start up and drive away.

  The Big Stone Demon Statue

  “Nervous?”

  Agnes poked her head into my room Monday morning. I stifled a yawn and waved her in.

  “More tired than anything,” I said. “What was all that screaming about the past couple nights?”

  Agnes cocked her head and made a face at me. “Screaming? What screaming?”

  “You didn't hear it? I swear to God, it was like someone was getting slaughtered out there.” I checked my outfit in the mirror. I was afraid I looked like I was trying too hard with my black lace skirt and black v-neck t-shirt. Maybe I looked too morbid. As an afterthought, I grabbed a plain pink ribbon and wrapped it around my wrist. “Tie this, would you?”

  “Sure,” Agnes said. “I slept like a baby last night. Sometimes Mary Anne has nightmares, but I've never heard her scream or anything. Maybe you dreamed it.”

  I thought about the locked door. “What freaked me out even more was the fact that I couldn't get out of my room to go see what was going on.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, why are there locks on the outside of our doors? Why do they lock us in our rooms?”

  Agnes shook her head, as if she didn't believe me. “I don't think they ever really lock them,” she said.

  But she was wrong. I knew!

  “Stop worrying,” Agnes said. “Besides, you look hot. That skirt is so cute. It's very punk.”

  I laughed. “Thanks.”

  “Grab your bag. You don't want to be late for your first day.”

  Together, we made our way down to the Shadowford van. I had half hoped we'd be taking the bus to school, but no such luck. They might as well have mounted a megaphone on top and shouted to everyone that we were freaks. I sighed. After the way Drake had treated me, I fully expected everyone at school to label me an outcast right away.

  In the van, Mary Anne and Courtney barely said a word. I wondered what things must have been like before I came along. Did Agnes t
alk their ears off nonstop? Or was she only this talkative because she hadn't had anyone else to talk to in so long?

  “I'll show you where to go to get your class schedule,” Agnes said as we pulled up to the high school ten minutes later. “We're both sophomores, so hopefully we'll have a few classes together.”

  I stepped out onto the concrete sidewalk and stared at the school. My stomach lurched. God, I hated starting new schools. With this latest string of foster homes, I'd started four different schools in the past two years. Peachville High School made five.

  The school itself was even smaller than I expected. A single brick building held most of the classes with only the gymnasium and one other small building off near the football field. Most of the schools I'd been to in Atlanta had more students in the tenth grade than this school probably had all combined. I tried to tell myself it would be an adventure. A kind of social experiment. Inside, though, I just felt nervous.

  In big schools, you could always find your own crowd. You were bound to run into a few people who thought like you, looked like you, or at least were interested in getting to know you. Here, though, I had a feeling the variety was limited. Looking around at the students as they made their way to the front entrance, I noticed that almost everyone dressed the same. Jeans. T-shirts. Blue and black backpacks. Very apple-pie American teenager. Suddenly I felt silly with my black skirt and boots. I gripped my new bag tighter and silently thanked Drake Ashworth for giving me at least one solid tip on how to fit in.

  If I was going to make it work here in Peachville, I was going to have to find a way to blend.

  “If you stand there long enough, you're going to turn into a statue like this guy.” Agnes smacked the leg of the big stone demon statue that towered over the school's entrance.

  I stared up at the demon, and for a moment, I felt all the breath leave my chest. I could swear I had seen that statue somewhere before. In a dream maybe? The ground seemed to jerk underneath my feet and I stumbled, reaching out to the cold stone to steady myself. My vision blurred, then the world around me turned black.

  I Must be Electro-Charged

  In the distance, I heard Agnes calling my name.

  Slowly, my eyes opened to find a crowd standing around me.

  “Give her some room, students.” A beautiful woman with dark black hair stood over me, her face full of concern. “What's your name?”

  I opened my mouth and sucked in a huge breath. “Harper,” I said. The sun was bright and I squinted against it. “What happened?”

  “I'm Mrs. King,” the woman said. “You fainted, but I think you're going to be okay. Do you think you can sit up?”

  I nodded, mortified. And, oh, God, I was wearing a skirt. I pulled down on the lace, hoping I hadn't flashed anyone on my way down.

  “How are you feeling?” Mrs. King asked.

  “Embarrassed,” I said, trying to laugh it off. The crowd around me began to disperse, and I was grateful. In a town this small, though, I knew it wouldn't take long for word to get around that the latest Shadowford freak fainted on her first day of school.

  Agnes took my hand and helped me to my feet. “I can't believe that just happened. I mean, I was standing there talking to you one second, and the next you were down. Bam! Just like that.” She slapped her hands together. “Thank goodness Mrs. King was walking up.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I think I'm going to be fine.”

  Mrs. King smiled and took my hand. I felt a shock of static electricity and pulled away. I laughed it off, but Mrs. King eyed me suspiciously. The serious look on her face startled me, and I wondered if I had done something wrong.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, thinking about how the doorknob in Mrs. Shadowford's office had shocked me the other day too. “That's been happening to me a lot lately. I must be electro-charged or something.”

  “It's fine,” Mrs. King said. She took my hand again and helped me up. “Let me walk you to the office and make sure you get checked in okay.”

  I tried to take my hand back, but something had caught her eye. She stared at my chin with a seriousness that sent a cold shiver down my spine. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes,” she said absently. “That's a beautiful necklace.” She let go of my hand and reached out to touch the sapphire pendant around my neck. “Where did you get it?”

  “It was my mother's.” On instinct, I grasped the pendant between my thumb and forefinger and ran it back and forth across the silver chain. The necklace was the only thing I had ever known of my real mother.

  Mrs. King stared at me for a moment, then she shook her head and smiled again. “Well, then, let's get you to the office, shall we?”

  “Wow, she was super nice to you,” Agnes said once Mrs. King had left us by the entrance to the office. We watched as a sea of students parted to let her pass.

  “Is she not usually nice?”

  “No, it's not that, it's just that she's kind of hard to get close to. She heads up the cheerleaders and they're just so exclusive. I've been trying to get on the squad for the past two years.”

  “You make it sound like the cheerleaders are some kind of goddesses around here,” I said, pushing my way into the office.

  Agnes mumbled something under her breath that I didn't quite catch.

  “What?” I asked her.

  “Nothing.” Her attitude changed, like I had offended her or something. “I gotta get to class. Hope you're feeling better.”

  I shook my head and sighed. Was no one in this town normal?

  Someone Might Get Hurt

  Except for the whole passing out in front of everyone thing, my morning went by without further incident. Classes here were small, but I was relieved to find that most of them were far behind where we were in my Atlanta school. At least I wouldn't have to worry about being behind on homework, especially since Ella Mae had been so serious about me keeping my grades up.

  At lunch, I found Agnes and walked over to her, hoping she had gotten over whatever I'd done to make her mad this morning. She was sitting with three other girls who looked up as I walked over.

  “Hey,” I said. “Mind if I sit with y'all?”

  “Sure,” she said, her bubbly attitude thankfully returned. “This is Harper, everyone. Harper, this is Shamekia, Randi, and Flora.”

  “Hey,” Randi said. “How's your day going so far?”

  “Hi,” I said, sitting down. “Typical school day, I guess. How about y'all?”

  “Always the same,” Agnes said. “Too bad we don't have any classes together. I have math after lunch. What's next for you?” She squirted some ketchup onto her plate and dipped a french fry into it.

  I glanced at my schedule, then slipped it back into my bag. “Sixth period Calculus,” I said.

  Agnes coughed, nearly spitting out her fry. “I thought you said you were a sophomore?”

  “I am.”

  “Then how are you in calculus? That's usually a senior class.”

  I shrugged. “I don't know. I'm not even sure they have my transcripts here yet. Maybe they put me in the wrong thing.”

  Agnes brightened. “Yeah, that's probably it. I mean, sophomores are hardly ever in the same class with seniors. I bet once they get your transcripts, they'll move you into my class.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said, stuffing a french fry into my mouth. I didn't want to tell her that I had been taking calculus at my last school, too. She seemed sensitive when it came to certain things, and I didn't want to make her angry again or hurt her feelings. I figured it was best to feign ignorance. And change the subject. “So what's there to do around here for fun? Like on the weekends?”

  Agnes didn't answer me. In fact, I don't even think she heard me. Her hand was stuck mid-way to her mouth and her eyes were glued to something on the opposite side of the cafeteria. I turned and followed her gaze.

  That's when I saw them. A group of four girls more beautiful than anyone had a right to be. They seemed to glide across the room as a single unit
. Nearly everyone in the cafeteria was staring at them. As they passed, a younger boy with glasses practically tripped over himself to get out of their way.

  “Who are they?” I asked.

  “Those are the cheerleaders,” Agnes said.

  Her tone carried a certain reverence, and I had to hold back a laugh. Man, these people really seemed to take their sports seriously. There was definitely something special about those girls, but other than their beauty, I wasn't sure why everyone was so awed by them.

  “There are only four cheerleaders?”

  Agnes looked at me and rolled her eyes. “No, silly. Those are just the four most popular cheerleaders. The girl on the right, the brunette? She's Brooke Harris, senior and captain of the squad.”

  I turned to look at the girl she was talking about. She had shoulder-length brown hair and was wearing tight black pants and a beaded pink tank top. Her smile lit up her entire face.

  “Lark Chen is the Asian girl next to Brooke,” Shamekia said, nodding toward the cheerleaders. “Her mom is the mayor.”

  Lark was shorter than the others. Her bone-straight hair fell halfway down her back and was the color of obsidian. She was talking excitedly to the girl next to her.

  “Then there's Allison Moore. She's got the most beautiful blue eyes. And don't you guys love her hair now that she's leaving it curly?” Flora said.

  “Allison used to date Drake Ashworth,” Agnes said, poking me in the ribs. I turned to study the girl with the dark blonde ringlets. She was cute and petite. Exactly the kind of girl who would look great with a guy like Drake.

  “And the girl on the end. The unreal blond with the big smile? Thats—”

  “Tori,” I said, interrupting Shamekia.

  “Yeah,” she said. “Do you know her?”

  “Not exactly,” I said. But I had seen her before. My first night at Shadowford, she was the girl arguing with Jackson by the garden. She seemed so different this morning. Not at all like the kind of girl who needed to throw herself at a guy to get what she wanted. I wondered what, exactly, it was she wanted from Jackson, anyway.