Fan Fiction ❯ Terror High ❯ The meeting ( Chapter 7 )

**

 

After the explosion, Chase and Ella were separated from the others. In all the chaos of the fire and the students swarming out, they were left behind.

 

All alone.

 

Or…maybe not.

 

Damian was resting against the banister to the stairs in the C wing, his heart pounding. The lab was gone. Now there was no proof whatsoever.

 

Ella and Chase startled him. They had walked up to him so quietly.

 

“Why are you still here?” Chase questioned, a skeptical tone to her voice.

 

“Yeah…everyone else left…” Ella added

 

“I'm just…thinking…” Damian answered, looking at the ground.

 

“Then…walk with us,” Chase ordered, pulling him up.

 

They walked down to the library, where they wouldn't be heard.

 

Chase pushed Damian into a chair forcefully, sitting right next to him so that he couldn't get away.

 

“What the hell is going on at this school?” Ella asked, her voice a little courser than she meant.

 

“Yeah…I mean, the book, the explosion, the murders…” Chase said, trying to tone down the mood. “What are you in this?”

 

“What - what do you guys mean?” Damian seemed awfully interested in his shoes…

 

“You know perfectly well what we mean…” Ella said, her voice even more persistent. Chase was surprised by the amount of emotion Ella was showing. “I mean…we've seen - things…seen too much than we should have…and I WANT ANSWERS!” Ella was almost screaming. She had had it. She had seen too much to give up now…

 

Chase didn't know what to say. This must be Ella's breaking point. The calmest one, the most cheerful one in the group…had finally lost it.

 

Damian almost retorted, but then went stock-still, frozen with fear.

 

The principal was watching them through the library window.

 

“Okay…but not here…” Damian was constantly watching the principal, his voice a whisper. “Tomorrow…at 3:00…anyone who wants to know…had better come…”

 

The girls froze. They saw the principal now.

 

Chase opened her mouth to scream but Ella came out of her trance and put her hand over Chase's mouth just in time.

 

“I…have to go…” Damian stood up quickly and left the library.

 

Ella let go of Chase's mouth and fell to her knees, covering her face.

 

Chase stopped for a second.

 

Ella was crying.

 

**

 

"What did he say to you again?" Aaron asked, confused. "Wasn't he supposed to be here ten minutes ago?"

 

It was 3:10, and the five of them were sitting at the centre table in the library, waiting for Damian to come. Rory played with a pencil absentmindedly, and Chase pulled another stick of gum out of her bag. They were bored.

 

"He just told me to meet him here at 3:00," Chloe said. "He said...he had stuff to explain after me and Ella confronted him yesterday, and he said that if anyone else...knew anything, if anyone else suspected anything, they should come too."

 

"So that's why you dragged us here?" Chase groaned. "Because of some idiot boy's idea that he has all our answers?"

 

"He knows more than he's saying," Ella said defensively. "We know more than we're saying. But all these incidents, the 'freshman curse...' he knows and we know that all these incidents are part of that."

 

"We know that?" Rory asked sarcastically.

 

Chloe rolled her eyes, grin forming on her face. "Maybe you don't..."

 

Rory was just about to say something when the door to B wing closed loudly. Everyone glanced over to see Damian walking towards them.

 

"Sorry I'm late," he said, putting his bag down. "Had to get some stuff from my science teacher."

 

"It's okay," Chloe said, pulling out a chair for him. "Sit."

 

Chase bit her tongue, having been tempted to berate him into telling them what he knew about the freshman curse. Chloe had kind of ruined her chance to speak.

 

"I know I said I knew some things about the freshman curse," Damian started, "and I do, but I want you promise me right now that whatever happens here, today...you won't tell anyone."

 

"Of course," Chloe said. "Right?"

 

Heads nodded around the table. Chase had her fingers crossed behind her back, unsure of whether to believe anything he said.

 

"Okay. The incidents, as you know, started eight years ago, after this building was built. They've affected only the new students to the school - in the first year, it was everyone, but after that, only the grade eights."

 

"There was a rumour for a while that it had something to do with an old principal's curse, right?" Ella asked.

 

"Yeah...the old principal of the school was a weird one," Damian said. "He was only at McMath for a year, but in that year the school burned down mysteriously. He was said to have died in the fire.

 

"Well he died, but there was more to it. That old principal cursed the school, promising to make life hell for the students that came in. I don't know what his motivation was, but I think it was because of the fire."

 

"It was." Chase was happy to know something he didn't. "The fire was set by a few students who took action against him. Nobody liked him running the school, and so they set a fire in his office and left him there to die. His dying act was to curse the school."

 

"Okay...so that happened, and then after they rebuilt McMath, things started getting weird. People started disappearing, dying...the staff tried to explain it away, the new principal - our principal - tried to explain it away, but no one believed their excuses. They knew that something weird was happening, and they didn't know what. There were the incidents, and then there were noises from the boiler room...nobody knew what it was. Even now, nobody knows. I have no clue what it is, but you can hear it in Tech Ed. At least now, we're actually trying to figure out what's going on at this school."

 

"Well, not really trying...more like stumbling into everything," Ella said. "We didn't intentionally get wrapped up in this."

 

"Sabrina did the same thing to me," Damian said. "She kind of just dragged me into this - most of the stuff I just told you, she explained to me because she had a hunch about the curse."

 

"Sabrina...Sabrina Lionheart? Saxophone player extraordinaire? Missing person?" Aaron looked surprised. "She knew about this?"

 

Damian nodded. "I think she'd figured out almost everything. Who was causing it, why the people who disappeared did...she knew almost everything except the how."

 

"How do you know that she knew this? What'd she drag you into?" Chloe asked.

 

"Investigating an office," Damian said. "Or, actually, the room below the office. I'm not exactly sure whose office it was...but I think it was the principal's."

 

The group was silent for a minute.

 

"The blood!" Ella said suddenly. "The blood - on his shoe - remember that?"

 

"When we got dragged to his office," Chase said, remembering.

 

"Which hurt like hell," Aaron added, glaring at Chase. She grinned sheepishly.

 

"So that's why," Ella said. "It was him, all along..."

 

Damian opened his mouth to explain some more, but then he saw Evan Campbell outside the library door. Their eyes met, brown eyes locked on grey, and the principal made a slitting motion across his throat, plainly telling Damian that he knew everything that Damian had figured out...and that he was dead if he left that library alone.

 

All of a sudden, only one thought was in Damian's head: Move.

 

"You guys," Damian said slowly, his eyes always on the principal, "we should get out of here. I need to get home."

 

Chloe and Rory could see him too, but they couldn't say anything either. They'd seen the principal too.

 

"Why?" Chase asked.

 

Chloe knew that she'd get up and walk out if she wasn't given a reason, but she couldn't think of anything to say.

 

"Chase, come with me, I just need to grab my coat," Chloe said.

 

"Wait, I'll come too." Damian jumped out of his seat to join them, and Rory stood too.

 

"You two going to wait for us?" Chloe asked, giving Ella her you-are-so-coming-with-me look.

 

"No, that's okay, we'll come." Ella grabbed Aaron's arm, and together the six of them made their way out of the library.

 

"Once we get out of here, we have to run," Chloe said.

 

"Wait...what?" Chase was confused.

 

"The principal. He was watching us from the B wing doors," Damian said. (The school's library had doors that led to both wings.) "And he can read lips, remember? In homeroom. When you were talking to your friend, Ella. Nobody could hear you two - nobody knew you were talking, but he read your lips."

 

Ella nodded. "That was creepy."

 

"He was watching us. He knew what we were saying," Damian said.

 

Chloe pushed the library doors open and they emerged into C wing. They were about to turn towards the rotunda to leave, but instead saw Mr. Campbell blocking their way.

 

"Hi, Mr. Campbell," Chase said, her voice bursting with fake cheerfulness. "How are you?"

 

And with that, they ran.

 

All six of them turned and sprinted up the C wing stairs. Aaron led the pack, Chase hot on his heels, with Chloe and Damian bringing up the rear. Their principal was right behind them.

 

They ran down the C wing hall, headed towards the walkway to B wing. Damian was doing his best to keep up, but he tripped and fell just as they rounded the corner to the balcony. Chloe helped him up and they took off.

 

Aaron knew that he was leading them into a corner, but as he took off down the stairs, he remembered what Damian had said about noises in the boiler room, and he knew exactly where to go.

 

The Tech Ed wing was always open until 4pm after school. Anyone could get in before then as long as the teacher didn't notice him. None of the six knew the Tech teacher, but he never let in anyone who wasn't a student of his.

 

Or, in this case, anyone being chased by the principal.

 

Aaron flung open the door to the Tech wing and was forced to slow down, navigating through the maze of shop equipment to get to the maintenance door at the back. The boiler room was further in the bowels of the school, but going through the storage room was the only way he knew of to get to it. (Aaron had done enough exploring in his first year at McMath to know how to get to the boiler room.)

 

The six of them made it into the storage room way ahead of the principal, but they knew they couldn't run much longer.

 

“We need to hide!” Chase said, her voice weaker than she would have thought.

 

Aaron scanned the room frantically. He'd remembered something…

 

“In here!” Aaron flung open the door to a small closet, pushing everybody in.

 

Of course, what he failed to realize was that it was where the janitors stored the turpentine.

 

Aaron closed the door almost all the way, his foot keeping it open enough so that Damian could see outside. The thin band of light coming in was just enough to barely show their tangled positions in the cramped closet. Aaron was facing the back of the closet, balanced with one hand against the wall and leaning dangerously close to Ella…not that she didn't like it. Chase was sliding down the wall slowly, with only Ella's hand to steady her. Chloe had stumbled when Aaron pushed her in, and had grabbed whatever she could to keep her balance as she tried not to fall on Rory.

 

Of course, she only realized now that she'd grabbed his leg.

 

Damian was actually able to stand without hitting anyone - although in the back of his mind, he was wondering how there was always a closet to hide in during moments like this. He kept his eye out for the principal, wondering if Evan Campbell had actually given up on them.

 

Of course, those hopes were soon dashed.

 

Mr. Campbell came in slowly, cautiously, looking around the room for any sign of somebody hiding there. Damian saw his eyes come to rest on the closet they were hiding, but fortunately he didn't investigate any further. He turned to leave, and Damian waited to make sure he wasn't coming back before he pushed open the door.

 

Then they heard the outside door lock, and it didn't take a genius to realize they were trapped.