"Hell is empty, and all the devils are here" – William Shakespeare
Rowan
I woke up drenched in my own sweat, minutes before my first alarm rang. I had a nightmare again, when my father was torturing my mother, and he strapped me to a chair and watched, but the nightmare isn't the only reason I'm uneasy this morning. I got up from bed, dressed, got dressed up for school today, and I felt the air shift. Something was wrong. I have that weird feeling that someone was in my room, the feeling of 'Someone standing in my room minutes before I woke up'. My room was too quiet. I thought nothing of it as I left my room and closed the door with a soft thud.
The hallway outside was too empty and quiet. Way too quiet, even for Blackstone. I get the instinct that someone is watching me. I turn around—nothing. Huh. Weird. Maybe it's a lack of sleep or something.
I walk into the grand hall. Students are already there in their dark uniforms. Shoes echo in the stone halls. Teachers watch from the balconies. The woods loom behind the campus. But something is terribly wrong. The halls of Blackstone aren't loud. They are worse—filled with hushed chaos. A ripple of whispers follows me down the corridor.
I hear it from two girls whispering as I pass, trying to get to class. "Kael Rylan is dead." Not just dead, but brutally killed in Blackstone woods. The whole school knows. As I walk by various students, the rumors spread: "found near the tree line," "blood everywhere," "no witnesses," "no weapons," "no screams."
The authorities were already trying to silence the matter. Security became tighter: four armed soldiers at the gates, another five at the doors to Blackstone. It seemed even the authorities were afraid of this mysterious killer, though they tried to mask their unease.
This morning, as I opened my locker to grab my books, a sharp pain suddenly hit the back of my head. I quickly sat on the nearest bench—and realized something. Last night, I woke from a nightmare. I thought I saw someone moving near the woods outside the dorm windows. A figure. Small. Fast. Disappearing between the trees. I told myself it was just a trick of the night, but now… Karl was killed in those woods. That means I might be the only person who unknowingly saw the killer. I was the second witness.
I stood up because I wasn't feeling woozy anymore. I turned around and locked eyes with Vesper across the campus. She looks calm. Too calm. Her hair is perfect. Her eyes are too cold. But I saw something strange when our eyes met. I have this strange, unexplainable feeling, as if she knows I already saw something. I averted my eyes from her as fast as I could and hurried to class.
I didn't know what I had seen in the woods that night. But when Vesper looked at me like that. I knew she did.