First Impression (A Shadow Maven Paranormal) (14 page)

I shrug and pull my fingers free. “I couldn’t think of anything else. Hopefully it doesn’t stink.”

He shakes his head. “No. It’s fine. Thanks, for real.”

A curse and a shout from the top of the stairs break the awkward moment. Matt yells, “Come on guys, hurry. It’s a fire. The place is on fire. That son of a—”

Something above crashes and bright light flickers across the horrified look on Matt’s face.

Stacy whimpers.

I struggle to my feet and give Ben a hand to get to his.

The three of us fight our way up the steps to the top of our earthen prison. The landing is a small room with shelves on both sides and the door wide open to a kitchen. Flames dance along the wall of the kitchen, licking the ceiling, and my face burns with the radiant heat. The ghostly glow of the room is familiar.
The Old Schoolhouse.

Fire blocks the only other doorway to the room.

“How are we going to get out of here?” I shout over the crackling flames, looking to the only one of us who could possibly have a clear head on his shoulders.

Yellow-orange light flickers wildly in Matt’s wide eyes. He searches the room, and my eyes follow the same path as his. Light glints in the window over the sink—but didn’t someone say all the windows to the building had been nailed shut long ago? Matt darts back down the steps to the root cellar and drags a large object back up with him.
The chair.

He braces himself and releases the chair against the window. The shattering sound barely overcomes the constant chatter of the flames. Matt shouts. “It’s about a six-foot drop to the other side. I’ll go first to help everyone out. Stacy next. Then Chira, okay? Ben make sure everyone gets out okay, right?”

Ben nods, the blood soaking clear through my sock, and dribbling over his right eye.

“No,” I say. “I’ll go last. Ben is hurt and may need help through the window.”

Matt has climbed onto the sink and has his sweater wrapped over his hand. He’s knocking out the remaining pieces of glass left in the window. He glares at me. “We don’t have time to argue. Let’s just all get out, okay?”

I nod, and he hops out the window, disappearing into the darkness on the other side. A siren wails in the distance, and I only hope that it might be approaching.

I climb up to the sink and reach down a hand to help Stacy. She gives me a terrified, tight lipped smile as she drops out the window, screaming as she falls into Matt’s waiting arms.

Ben tosses my sock aside, and his one open eye meets mine. We clasp hands, and I pull him up into the sink with me. He shakes his head. “You first.”

I frown. “We don’t have time to argue, remember? You go!”

He shakes his head and grasps me by the shoulders and for a fearful moment, I’m afraid he’s going to throw me out the window. Instead, he pulls me to his chest in an embrace. He breathes in my ear, “I thought I’d lost you.”

A gas explosion in the kitchen sends us both out the window at the same time. His arms are still wrapped tightly around me as we fly for a moment before gravity takes hold. We slam to the ground, and my head hits the earth in the same spot for at least the fourth time tonight. The spots behind my eyes narrow until there is nothing left, and darkness takes hold.

Stacy grips my hand, the
oxygen mask over her face. The paramedics have covered her with a blanket and she’s finally beginning to look less shell shocked. I study her face and am glad that she hadn’t been cut there. But would she ever have a normal life again?

“Stacy!” a female voice screams and rushes toward the ambulance.

“Mom?” Stacy tries to sit up, but she’s already been strapped in.

I release her hand and hop down from the ambulance. I nearly run into Mrs. Brine, a heavy set woman in pearls with bags under her eyes. Her desperate eyes meet mine, and I step aside to let her hop in.

A paramedic frowns at me. “You need to go to the hospital, too. You’re showing symptoms of a concussion.”

Mr. Benson steps up, his deep voice commanding. “No worries. I’ll take her along with my nephew and meet you there. He’s the one that’s going to need stitches.”

The paramedic nods and closes the back door of the ambulance.

Mr. Benson escorts me back to the squad car and ushers me to the passenger door. Ben and Matt sit in the back seat behind a sheet of Plexiglas with holes in it. Blood is already seeping through the bandage on Ben’s forehead.

When I settle in the seat, Mr. Benson shuts the door and gets in at the driver’s side.

He starts the engine and turns on the flashing lights of his Dodge Charger. After a long moment of silence, he looks in the rearview mirror. “How did you know?”

Ben clears his throat and leans toward the glass. “Ghosts are known to leave an impression on a place, replaying their final moments over and over again. So when I’d heard about the sighting that night when we went to check out the building, I knew that someone may have been murdered there, but I wasn’t sure if it was recent or a hundred years ago. I suspected it was recent only because there are no rumors about anyone being murdered in the Old Schoolhouse.”

Mr. Benson nods, pulling in and out of traffic right behind the ambulance. I avert my eyes to keep from feeling dizzy. I watch Ben, who leans forward against the restraint of his seatbelt.

“Mr. Scott and the custodian were the only two known people to have a key to the Old Schoolhouse—” Ben says.

“Mr. Scott said something about a night watchman,” I say.

Ben eyes me knowingly. “I looked into that and found out it wasn’t true.”

I frown. Of course it wasn’t. Murderer…liar.

Ben continues, “I wasn’t sure which of the two to suspect, but the custodian seemed to be less worried about our snooping around than just ticking off his stepdaughter, Chira.”

I nod. That seemed true.

“And although there were ten of us in the building that night, it seemed that only the five in the video had been targeted. Not only did Mr. Scott mention that he’d seen the video, but he even disclosed details about Jacob’s car accident that weren’t made public yet. Uncle Matt, you had said that the lines to Jacob’s brakes had been cut, but that information wasn’t released to the press. I assumed it hadn’t been released to the teaching staff either.”

Mr. Benson huffs. “It still hasn’t been.”

“I wasn’t sure of the connection between the missing girls in Fairfax and the Old Schoolhouse until we found that compact and the other items in the woods. Just to be safe, I grabbed one of Mr. Scott’s Mountain Dew cans from the trash this morning and asked you to run the prints.”

We pull into the parking lot of the Emergency Room, but Mr. Benson hadn’t put the car into park yet. “We ran those prints, and they were found on three of the items and the bottle of pills Donnie had taken when he supposedly committed suicide.”

Ben nods gravely. “When you called me, I was sitting in the library alone, and stepped into the hallway to look for Matt and Chira. Instead I found Matt bent over Chira’s bag.”

Mr. Benson throws the car into park and growls through clenched teeth. “Right, and I told you and Matt to wait at the school until I got there.”

Ben’s gaze drops. “I’m sorry about that, sir. But while we were on the steps of the building waiting, something told me to go check out the Old Schoolhouse.”

“Something?” Matt huffs. “You mean your owl. That freaking bird swooped at us crying like a hawk and took off toward Old Schoolhouse Road. Ben ran off, and I followed him.”

Ben’s gaze lifts to mine, a grin tugging the corner of his mouth.

Mr. Benson scrubs his hands through his hair. “Seriously? The bird. You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“No, sir,” Ben says.

Mr. Benson waves his hand in front of his face in a dismissive gesture and opens his car door. I follow his lead and hop out of mine. After opening the back door to let the boys out, Mr. Benson says, “Well, I’ve got good news for you. When the squad cars pulled up into the lot of the school, Mr. Scott nearly ran into me and Deputy Dawson with his Buick. The deputy and I apprehended him, and he’s being charged now. No doubt he will not make bail.”

Tension I didn’t even know was in my shoulders releases, and I feel faint again. My knees buckle. I gripped the roof of the Charger to keep from falling over.

“Hey!” Ben cries and dashes to me, catching me in his arms before I collapse.

With his help, we make it into the emergency room.

My mom leaps to her
feet when Ben and Matt visit my hospital room the next afternoon. She still wears her diner uniform, but her hair is up in a loose bun instead of her usual pony tail. Even though they only planned on keeping me overnight for observation due to my concussion, my mother refused to leave my side for a moment. We are waiting for the doctor to make his rounds toward me so that he can release me. I’m already dressed back into what was left of my school uniform.

The pale red line across Ben’s hairline is held together by invisible stitches. I wish that they had had that stuff when I’d fallen on my chin as a kid. My fingers flutter to my chin at the memory of the spiky stitches and the scar left behind.

Matt smiles and introduces himself to my mother, shaking her hand. The two boys stand together at the foot of my bed and seem to be getting along better than they had the whole time I’d known them, even joking and accepting each other’s jabs in stride.

“How is Stacy?” I ask when things have turned quiet.

Matt swallows and looks at his cousin, a wordless conversation passes between them. Finally he smiles at me. “Always to the point, aren’t you?”

I shrug. “There’s no sense beating around a bush, right?”

The dimple on Ben’s chin deepens with his grin. “She’s fine…physically. She was dehydrated and suffered from the blood loss, but otherwise, she’ll heal. Her parents are already considering laser surgery for her scars. But mentally? She’s taking this really hard. Beyond all the stress and loss she’s endured this week, she was taken prisoner by that monster, and it’s going to take time to recover from it.”

Matt nods. “And her parents are talking about pulling her out of school for the rest of the year to give her a break.”

“That’s understandable,” Mom says, her worried eyes making me feel like she might be considering the same route for me.

I shake my head at her in a silent protest.

She shrugs.

I turn back to the boys. “I hope she’ll make it back. Oh! I talked to Tasha this morning. I don’t know if you guys knew that she woke up yesterday. I got the text message right before…” I trail off, not wanting to relive those memories.

Ben gets the hint. He clears his throat and pulls my messenger bag from behind him. “Well, I got all your assignments from classes today, if you want them.”

I nod. “So you didn’t get kept overnight?”

He sets the bag in an empty chair against the wall. His finger flutters to his stitches. “I’m fine, just this one thing. No concussion.”

My mom shakes her head. “But
you
do have a concussion. I think the school work can wait. I don’t want you to strain your brain.”

I frown, wondering how long I’ll have to endure my mom treating me like a toddler again. Part of me is enjoying the attention, but only a small part.

The door opens again, and Dr. Park walks in. The small Asian woman studies everyone. “Boy, it’s crowded in here, huh?”

I smile in greeting, and the two boys slink over toward the far corner to stay out of the doctor’s way. She checks my eyes again and glances at my chart. After signing the top two forms, she hands some paperwork to my mother. “I still suggest rest. Stay at home in bed through the weekend. Only go to school on Monday if she feels up to it. No sports for at least two weeks. The last thing she needs is another head injury.”

My mother nods at the doctors instructions, but her eyes remain on me as if she’s trying to make sure that I’m paying attention.

I nod to reassure her.

As the doctor finishes her spiel, a nurse enters with a wheelchair.

I groan and stand. “Is that really necessary?”

The doctor nods. “Hospital policy. It’s just to the parking lot.”

I shrug and sit in the green canvas. The cold metal arms send a chill through the white fabric of my blouse. Satisfied, the nurse and doctor make their exit.

Ben offers to push me while my mother pulls the car around. Matt shoulders my messenger bag and stays with me as well.

We stand in the lobby together for a long moment in silence. Both boys keep their gaze to the parking lot. So different, yet so alike these two cousins are. I clear my throat, and they both turn to me in unison. “So am I stuck with you two?”

They both grin at me.

“Yep,” Matt says.

“If you’ll have us,” Ben adds.

And suddenly, my world feels a little bigger, safer than it did before.