“I can’t. I have to go back to my room before my study session with Ayaz,” I rolled my eyes.
“That project still going on?”
“Yeah. Our final presentation is the first week of the second quarter, so we’re want to make it perfect now so we don’t have to work over the holidays.” The end of the quarter was only a week away.
“Okay, catch you at dinner tonight. Andre and I are going to shoot some arrows. I was going to see if you wanted to come, but you’re just too popular for us.” Greg, Andre and I had been heading out for archery every chance we got. Something about theTHWACKof arrows smacking into a target that I imagined was Courtney’s face made heading out in the freezing cold worthwhile.
“I’d hardly call my forced proximity to Ayaz ‘popularity’, but whatever. You guys have fun. If you go out this weekend, I’ll happily join you,” I grinned as I headed back toward the dorms. I made my way down the narrow staircase, flicking the light on once I reached the bottom.
A dark shape wearing a black robe – a little like an academic dress – fled across the hallway.
“Loretta?”
It had to be her. The shape and the clip-clop of heels told me it was a woman, and who else would come down here apart from Loretta?Maybe she came to talk, and I wasn’t here.I leaped down the last three steps. “Hey, Loretta! Stop, please, I just want to talk to you.”
Black robes billowed out as the figure disappeared into shadow. The storeroom door slammed on its hinges. I raced down the hall, my shoes echoing on the cold stone floor. I yanked the door open and flicked the light switch.
The dark square of the secret passage gaped back at me. The hidden door was open. Footsteps scrambled up the stairs toward freedom.
“Loretta? Are you up there?” Without a light, I didn’t dare move from the door.
Only stony silence answered me.
My heart pounded in my ears. I had no idea Loretta knew about the passage. Quinn knew about it, but none of the other Queen’s seemed to. It was weird she was using it now, in the middle of the afternoon, when she was supposed to be in class.
I turned around to head back to my room. My body froze as I noticed a box on top of a stack beside the door. It had been slashed open and the contents pulled out and strewn across the floor. I was so preoccupied with Loretta that I hadn’t even noticed it.
I bent down and picked up the papers. They were pages and articles cut from newspapers, old and yellowed at the edges. I held up a front page of theArkham Gazetteunder the light. The date in the corner was November 1st, twenty years ago.
TRAGIC FIRE CLAIMS LIVES OF STUDENTS
A large picture showed a fire blazing from Derleth Academy. Flames billowed from the tower windows, and the stone bridge between the dormitory and the academic wing had collapsed. Smoke obscured the sky, so it was impossible to tell if the image was taken at night or during the day. My fingers flew to the scar on my wrist as I scanned the words of the article.
Firefighters battled all night to halt the blaze at Miskatonic Preparatory School but were unable to save the lives of the 245 students who were trapped inside.
That was weird. The caption called the school a different name, but the building in the picture was Derleth Academy. I recognized the distinctive crenelations on the top of the dormitory tower. In the background, I could just make out the rolling green sports fields. It wasdefinitelyDerleth.
All those dead students… I thought back to what Quinn had said about that tiny graveyard near the pleasure garden. Were they buried there? How could they just start up the school again like this never happened? The whole thing was all kinds of creepy.
Because it’s a school for rich people, of course. If people like Vincent Bloomberg II and Damon Delacorte wanted the school to remain open, then oceans would part to make it happen.
The more pressing question was, why had I never heard about this? You’d think a fire killing 245 teenagers at my school was something that might have come up.
After the scholarship administrator visited me, I did some extensive internet sleuthing about Derleth Academy, trying to find out everything I could. There wasn’t much information – a flashy website and some social media profiles of celebrated alumni – prominent sports stars, philanthropists, writers, politicians, and businessmen I’d never heard of. Nothing about a fire that killed 245 kids. If one kid died at school, it was all over the national news. How did they hide this?
Maybe that’s why they changed the name – so they could hide the school’s past from the media.But how you could conceal that kind of loss of life from prospective students, especially when so many were legacy students, with family attendance at the school going back decades? I bet half the kids at Derleth today had a relative who’d been immolated in the blaze.
Jesus.
I flipped to the next article, expecting to read something about the rebuilding and re-opening of the school, or the change of name policy to distance themselves from the tragedy. Instead, it was an even earlier article from a tabloid about whether or not the school was haunted. Apparently, students had reported odd smells, strange visitations in their beds, and teachers seen walking off in the middle of the night. The article was from a tabloid. It linked all the strange happenings to the school’s original architect, Thomas Parris.
The bell rang overhead.Shit.I had to book it all the way across campus to get to the library to meet Ayaz. I grabbed a handful of the articles and shoved them under my blazer. I thought about slamming the secret passage shut – it was creeping me out, gaping open like that and sending a crisp chill through the room. But I didn’t want to risk locking Loretta out. Especially since she hadn’t been carrying a light.
I quickly unlocked my room, grabbed my history books, shoved the clippings inside the cover at the top of the stack, and sprinted back up the staircase and into the dormitory. Courtney and her brood gathered in the middle of the hall, admiring a new necklace her mother sent her. Every time I tried to step around them, one of them would shuffle into my way.
By the time I made it onto the landing in the atrium, the second bell was ringing. Only a couple of students were still out in the halls, and they scampered. I quickIy glanced up at the class lists, admiring my beautiful new score, courtesy of Trey. If a teacher caught me in the halls, I’d lose three points, and I didn’t want to do that to him after he’d given up his place to me.
Footsteps echoed on the marble. Someone was coming, someone with the power to take away my points. It took a split second to make the decision. I sprinted across the hall and down the darkened wing, swinging my body around the wide metal staircase toward the gymnasium.
