House of the Damned

After I got back to my room, I was still shivering and trying to stop the shock. I paced the length of the floor, back and forth. The floorboards creaked beneath me—as they sometimes did in the other room—but I forced myself to ignore it.

Was I delusional?

No, I can’t be. I shook my head to myself. It was too real, too vivid. I didn’t trust my imagination to come up with something like that. So what was I going to do?

I could try just following the advice. Run away and never come back.

As if anyone would believe me! If I told Miss White anything, I’d be shipped off to a mental asylum within the hour. But if I didn’t do anything…

Then again, this ghost—Frank, if that was really his name—might have been crazy himself after being locked up in there for all those years. He could have made it up, couldn’t he?

I mentally slapped myself.

I couldn’t believe I was thinking about a ghost. This was ridiculous. I didn’t know how I did it, but he did not exist. The fire really had driven my mind off the track.

Another sigh echoed softly from the other room, as if to try and sway my thoughts otherwise. I refused to believe it, and that was final.

In the events of the previous night, I had foolishly forgotten that today we were back to our normal school schedule. I had gotten perhaps two hours of sleep, which had come from oversleeping. So I didn’t have breakfast—I was operating on pure adrenaline.

Lessons were directed like a large homeschooling program—about seven adjacent rooms were stuffed with anything they had found to use. It looked as though someone had held a coffee table and chair convention and had arranged them all in shaky rows. We were separated by age group, and only had Homeroom.

The first two hours were especially hard. My mind kept spinning off in another direction, and my eyes couldn’t see much more than a haze of color. Luckily today was only a lecture.

Elbows bent at unnatural angles, fiddling aimlessly with my pencil, I would have loved nothing more than to sleep right there, too-short desk or not. I stared at the carved wood, trying to decipher the intriguing patterns deep within the grains.

I didn’t snap out of my haze the whole morning. Except for—

“Miss Forrest?”

My head snapped up. There was a snatch of giggling behind me from a few younger students, but I didn’t particularly feel like checking to see who it was.

“What?” I grumbled.

“I said, could you come up here and do the problem?”

I stumbled my way to the front of the room, which had a tiny makeshift dry-erase easel in the center. The teacher stuffed a marker in my hand. Mumbling thanks, I turned to face the equation.

We’re in math? I grimaced. I could have sworn it was still English.

Lunch fared no better for me. Everyone, even my friends, shot sideways glances at me like I was a ticking bomb. Apparently news had gotten around that I’d gone insane two nights ago and woken up half the staff.

Today I sat by myself. No one spoke to me. The swirls and laughter of energized conversations sounded like they came from the bottom of a canyon, throbbing up to my ears.

Science and Health passed me by. In my final class of the day, History, I started doodling.

It was while we were grading some test—I didn’t even know what the test was on—and Elizabeth had asked about one of the answers. Eyes still tilted toward the faded white ceiling, my red pen scratched across the back of my paper subconsciously.

My teacher finished answering the question, and I looked back down at the paper to check the next question.

I had drawn a pair of fiery eyes staring straight at me.

For a minute I just stared at what I had been avoiding thinking about all day.

I scrubbed over it with more red ink.