“Let’s talk about death, shall we?”
Mr. Deverell walked around his table to the board at the front of the class, a marker in his left hand uncapped. He raised his hand, continuing to speak and write at the same time. Corvina was surprised to observe that he was left-handed. Perhaps, it was because of the way he’d used his right hand the other day in the library on her that had made her unconsciously think he was aligned towards it.
“D-A-N-S-E. M-A-C-A-B-R-E,” his deep voice enunciated the alphabets he wrote in bold, block letters on the board, and turned to face the class. “Danse Macabre. Can anyone tell me what this is?”
One of the girls at the front raised her hand hesitantly, and he nodded at her. “Yes, Miss Thorn?”
“The Dance of Death?” she said in a tone that was more questioning than responding.
“Correct,” he swept his gaze over the sunlit classroom and the students. “The idea emerged in the Late Middle Ages. The idea that there is universality in death, the regardless of who you are in your life or your station or how much you possess, you will have to dance with death in the end. Kind of beautiful, if macabre, isn’t it?”
It was. Both terribly beautiful and horribly macabre, that death came to all in the end.
“The idea later impacted art, music, and literature,” Mr. Deverell continued, playing with the marker caught between his index and middle finger. “In literature, in particular, this became an allegorical device that inspired the use of many motifs to represent and even foreshadow death in stories. Now, close your eyes and think about death. What’s the first image that comes to your mind?”
Corvina looked around to see everyone close their eyes, just as his gaze came to linger on her for a split second, a heated, visceral, and entirely forbidden look in them before they moved on. Thankfully, Jade was on a bathroom break so she didn’t notice that.
“Mr. Morgan?” he asked a boy sitting near the window.
“Skulls,” the boy replied.
Mr. Deverell nodded, turning to write the word on the board with a bullet point. “Give me another.”
“Scythe?” someone piped up.
Mr. Deverell’s shoulders shrugged. “Depending on the context, yes. With the Grim Reaper, yes. Next.”
“Crows,” Jax offered, giving Corvina a wicked grin.
Mr. Deverell’s hand paused before he wrote it as well. “Yes. Crows are considered symbols of deaths in many cultures, considered to bring bad omens with them. They are mostly a gothic motif in literature.”
“Graveyards.”
“Yes. Next.”
“Skeletons?”
“Fits with the skull. Next.”
For the next few minutes, she took notes in her old, browned notebook and let the class do the talking.
Mr. Deverell finally turned back to the class once the board was full. “Death is fascinating. It’s the only inevitability of life, but one that most people spend their lives trying to outrun. Character death can be the most powerful weapon in a writer’s arsenal but one that needs to be used extremely carefully. For your creative paper, I want you all to write about death. Make it impactful. Make it surprising. Make me not predict it.”
He let his eyes rove over everyone. “Give me a natural death, a murder, a suicide, or anything else. Think. I want to see it and be moved. It’s due in four weeks.”
On cue, the bell rang and everyone began to wrap up. Corvina watched a girl from the front, one whose name she didn’t remember, walk to Mr. Deverell while hugging the books to her chest. She observed the rigid way he held himself, slightly away from her, the eager body language of the girl, and she knew simply from watching she was another one of his admirers. God, it felt like he had a buffet to sample and select from despite the rules.
Shaking her head at herself for silently lusting after a man half the school lusted after, she pushed her notebook in her bag and walked down the aisle, keeping her gaze on the door.
She became aware of his eyes on her, but she kept her head down and walked out. He watched her, all the damn time, and then he expected her not to be affected or to think with some rational brain cell when they collided. It wasn’t possible. Something between them – chemical, emotional, psychological, she didn’t know – came together like molten lava and hot ash, caused by an eruption unpredictable to them both.
It was another beautiful day, but her mind was muddled. She didn’t understand why he affected her so, why the idea of him standing so close to another girl made something fiery twist in her stomach. She didn’t know him. He didn’t know her. But there was something there, almost sentient in the way it kept growing and bringing them together.
Gritting her teeth, she exited out to see Jax waiting for her, leaning against a wall. He was good-looking and playful, something she’d learned over the course of weeks that she’d hung out with Troy and his boys. Jax had a tendency to say stuff with that wicked gleam in his eyes but in a well-meaning way.
“Yo, Purple,” he greeted her, pushing off the wall and joining her as she made her way to the gardens. She gave him a small smile, not really shy but not really wanting to talk. She was mostly an introvert, perhaps because of the way she had grown up with silence as her companion. Silences were comfortable but most people didn’t feel that way. She was realizing that most people had an unnecessary need to fill silences, a need she didn’t share. It made people uncomfortable around her, adding even more to her oddities.
“So, gloomy lesson, huh?” Jax filled in the silence.
Corvina shrugged. It had been gloomy, but beautiful. Death as an idea was fascinating, and her mind was already churning with how she would write her paper. Out of all her classes, she was learning she loved literature the most. While her Psychology elective was helping her understand the mind a bit more, it was purely for understanding and nothing else. With Literature, she could feel herself both analyze and imagine, both the rational and creative sides of her mind engaged fully with the subject.
“So, we’re going to the woods,” Jax slid a grin her way. “Wanna hang?”
“Where are we hanging?” Jade’s voice came from the side as she and Troy joined them.
Jax wiggled his eyebrows at her. “The woods.”
Corvina saw Jade’s eyes widen slightly. “Are you crazy?” she hissed, slapping Jax’s arm with her hand. “We aren’t supposed to go there. It’s dangerous.”
“Well, your roommate goes there often enough, so I guess she is the crazy one,” Jax retorted.
Corvina felt her teeth gnash at the word, her skin tightening as something hot, stinging entered her body. Anger. She almost didn’t recognize the emotion because of how foreign it was to her. Corvina had never been an angry person, but that word. That word, so carelessly tossed around, was her trigger.
Before she could say anything, Troy slapped Jax upside the head with a “Watch it, dick.”
Jade pointed a finger at the boys. “Don’t talk about her like that. If there’s anyone crazy here, it’s you boys for thinking about going in those woods.”
“We are going,” Jax asserted. “Question is, are you coming or not?”
Corvina didn’t want to go, not after the crazy comment or how close it hit home. But she also didn’t want them to go towards the ruins. She felt protective of them, for some bizarre reason. She didn’t want anyone finding them, anyone stumbling upon them – not the ruins, the graves, or that old piano covered in a new tarp. She hadn’t realized but she’d already claimed the place in her mind, willing to share it with only one person, one who’d claimed the woods as his solace long before she got there.
That was the only reason she said, “Sure.”
Jax gave her a winning grin while Jade sighed, pinching her nose. “Fine. But we don’t go too deep. And we get back before the sun goes down.”
“Deal,” he assured her. “Meet us in front of your tower. I’ll get some stuff.”
Troy gave Corvina a side hug. “Thanks, Purple.”
Corvina rolled her eyes, her heart warming at his gesture.
The boys jogged off and Jade gave Corvina a curious look. “You go in the woods a lot?”
Corvina shrugged and made her way towards the tower. She had been going into the woods more over the week, early every morning. More specifically, she’d been going to the ruins with some food and her journal. She liked sitting on one of the large stones by the crumbling wall, surrounded by nature taking back what man had once made. She liked that every morning there were more and more crows that came to be fed by her. She liked watching them feast while writing in her journal – observations about people, inferences about herself, and thoughts about one man. She liked putting the words on paper. It made her make sense of everything that went on inside. Journaling wasn’t something she had always done. In fact, she hadn’t even thought of doing it until Dr. Detta had suggested it.
The cold wind brushed her face, whipping strands of her hair that had escaped her fishtail braid. The sun was bright but close to the horizon. They had probably an hour or so of daylight left.
She tugged the strap of her sling bag higher over her shoulder as she spied Troy, Jax, Ethan, and two other boys she didn’t know standing by the tower. Five in total.
“Should we get some girls?” Jade asked quietly from the side. “Not that I don’t trust them. But you don’t know them, and I don’t want you to get uncomfortable.”
Corvina felt her lips tip up in a smile at her friend’s consideration. “I’m fine, don’t worry. Thank you,” she put a hand on her petite shoulder and squeezed.
A few minutes later, the boys having armed themselves with food and water, looked at Corvina.
“So, where to, Purple?” Troy asked indicating the opening in the forest. “You know it best.”
Corvina was no expert in the neck of these woods, but she did know them better than these guys. The ruins to the left and the lake straight forward, both were places she wanted to avoid – the ruins because they were hers, and the lake because of the voice.
She indicated the right. “I haven’t explored that side, so let’s go there.” Hopefully, there would be nothing but woods.
The group, all seven of them, entered the forest and headed right. Under the thicket, the light was considerably less bright, the shadows longer, the wind cooler.
“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Jade piped up from her side, her hands fisting the straps of her backpack.
“We’re just going to go further a bit and return, okay?” Troy put his hand around Jade’s smaller shoulders, tucking her in his frame. “We wouldn’t have had the balls had it not been for Purple here,” he nodded at Corvina. “She’s been going into the woods so coolly over the last few weeks, we had to see for ourselves, you know? I actually have a fear of woods and heights for a long time.”
“Why?” someone asked, and Corvina listened, curious about Troy’s past.
“Just one of those things,” Troy shrugged it off. “But I’ve always wanted to explore these woods. Most kids on campus are scared of it.”
“Oh yeah,” one of the new boys chimed in. “The Slayers are just a freaky legend told to students to scare ‘em off anyways.”
“Slayers?” Corvina asked, remembering the word the boy had told her in the library, her hand drifting over the hard, rough bark of a tree.
“Yeah,” Troy explained. “It’s a stupid name. But that’s what everyone calls the students all those years ago who kidnapped and murdered the villagers.”
Goosebumps erupted over her arms. What the hell? What had the boy in the library meant with his message? Who the hell had he been? Clearly, he had just been messing with her.
“You wanna know something even freakier?” Troy continued, not realizing anything was amiss in her mind.
Corvina nodded, the unsettling twist in her gut wounding up tighter.
“The students who finished the Slayers?” Troy grinned. “Legend says after ending them, they disappeared off the face of the earth after leaving Verenmore. Every single one of them.”
A chill wracked her frame as Jade punched Troy in the side. “Stop scaring us!”
“The woods are a place for scary stories, Jadie-girl,” he ruffled her hair.
The incline steepened as they walked, and Jax gave her his hand to help her as she grabbed her skirt. It was the first time in her life Corvina realized that hands held different sensations. Mr. Deverell holding her hand had been an entirely different experience than Jax holding her hand. Both their grips were firm and large, but where Mr. Deverell’s warm grip had penetrated her skin and sunk in to ignite something deep, deep inside her, Jax’s just was. It didn’t make her have even an iota of the same physiological or psychological response.
“How do you know so much?” Corvina asked Troy to distract herself from the thought of the mercury-eyed man.
Troy slid her a serious look. “I work for the university part-time, taking packages to town twice a month, sending them out. The people in town, while drowning in rumors, also have some very interesting info about this place. Especially the old woman at the post office.”
Corvina felt her brows furrow, surprised at this fact about Troy. “What about her?”
“Oh, this’ll be good,” one of the boys laughed from the back.
Troy remained quiet as he helped Jade over a fallen log. “Her father’s younger sister was one of the girls who’d been taken. She was born a few years after everything allegedly happened but she learned all about it from her parents.”
“Why are you even investigating all this?” Jade demanded, shaking her head.
“You’re not interested in knowing what happened here?” Troy demanded back. “This is our home and you don’t want to know why they keep all this shit hidden from us?”
“Actually, no, I don’t,” Jade responded. “I’m happy with my life here, and I don’t want to unsettle that. Simple.”
“Not even after what happened with Alissa?”
“Especially after what happened with Alissa.”
Alissa who had been hiding something from Jade.
‘Please help me.’
The voice came out of nowhere, echoing in her head, bringing with it that ugly coating on her tongue. Corvina bit her lip to keep from reacting, gripping the trunk of a tree at her side, keeping her eyes to the ground, to the rich, dark soil and thick grass around the folds of her skirt.
“The fuck!” Ethan exclaimed and everyone turned to see him standing at the back, towards the left, his eyes on something. Corvina followed his gaze to see what he was looking at and blinked.
A shack. Brick and wood. Not quite dilapidated. Unbroken windows.
And a long silhouette moving inside.
Her heart stopped.
“Fuck, let’s go,” Jade tugged on Troy’s arm, her eyes frantically connecting with Corvina.
One of the guys stumbled back. “Man, let’s get outta here.”
Pulse racing, Corvina squinted, but the shadow didn’t move again. It stayed still. Could it be someone who needed help?
‘Go back, Vivi,’ Mo’s voice sounded in her head, and that was a good enough answer for her. Whatever it was, a voice or her subconscious, Mo looked out for her.
Without a word, she started back uphill, knowing the others would follow her out. Their climb back was mostly in silence, their paces hurried, most of them lost in their own thoughts.
“What the fuck was that?” Jax asked after a few minutes, giving Corvina a hand over the same log again.
“Maybe an animal?” a guy suggested.
“An animal that tall?” Troy said quietly from the side. “I doubt it. Did you guys even see the door?”
Corvina looked at Troy, frowning. What about the door?
“What about the door?” Ethan echoed the question in her head.
“It was locked from the outside,” Troy stated, giving them a look before continuing up. “If there was anything inside, it was locked there.”
Jax hesitated, holding Corvina’s hand for support as she navigated the terrain. “Should we go back and see if it’s someone who needs help?”
The words left Corvina’s mouth before she could stop them. “We need to stay away from that place.”
She felt Troy’s eyes sharpen on her. “Why do you say that, Purple?”
“Just a feeling,” she told him simply. She didn’t think mentioning that a voice that may or may not be real, one she’d been hearing her whole life, had told her so would sit well with them.
“Yeah, well, I’ll trust her feeling,” Jade agreed. “Let’s just get back.”
They made their way uphill in silence as the daylight slowly disappeared, finally entering the castle grounds just as the sun sank below the horizon. They stood for a second in front of the towers, processing whatever had happened back in the woods.
A dark figure moved towards the Main Hall, his eyes taking in their group, lingering on the hand Corvina hadn’t realized was still being held by Jax. She saw his eyes pause on the hand for a long second before he moved on, and she didn’t understand why she felt the need to follow him.
“You don’t-” one of the boys began before pursing his lips.
“What?” Troy demanded.
“You don’t think Mr. Deverell has something to do with that, right?” the boy asked. Corvina felt her attention sharpen at his name, her eyes taking in his retreating figure, the idea whirring around in her mind. Could he? Could he truly have something to do with whatever it was back there?
Troy ran a hand through his hair, looking up at the sky. “I don’t know, man. He’s secretive and he goes in those woods all the damn time, and no one knows why. But I never got a bad vibe off him.”
Jade visibly shuddered. “It could be one of those wrong place, wrong time things.”
“He’s been here longer than any of us,” another boy pointed out. “For years, longer than most of his peers. First as a student, then as a teacher. Who knows what all he’s seen and done? Or even why he always goes into those woods.”
“Those woods,” Ethan said, looking at the sea of dark green hiding countless secrets. “I don’t know about Mr. Deverell, but something is very wrong in those woods.”
Something was very wrong in this whole place, and Corvina didn’t have a clue as to what it was.
