Falling into Forever (17 page)

A rusty squeal echoed through the dank, cramped bathroom as she opened the door and checked under the stalls for feet. Turning on the cold water at one of the sink faucets, she stared into the mirror hanging above the sink, her lip quivering at the pale reflection staring back through the glass.

“Yuck,” she moaned, splashing cold water across her face.

Patting a paper towel against her cheek, she wiped the blood away. Fear still pounded loud and heavy inside her heart.

She heard a knock.

“Are you okay in there?” Ben's voice asked through the bathroom door.

“Yep,” she replied wearily.

When Alexandra pushed the door open and emerged,

she saw Benjamin bent over a nearby water fountain.

Gulping the cold water like a kid, Benjamin let it trickle down his chin before he wiped it away with the sleeve of his blazer.

“Where's your class?” he asked, taking her hand.

“Forward to 155,” she acquiesced without complaint.

Benjamin pulled Alexandra to Room 155 and held it open for her. “Until we meet again, Miss Peyton,” he whispered to her, a grin spreading across his face.

Alexandra stepped inside the darkened room while a black-and-white documentary on Dante's
Inferno
played on a television at the front of the class. Mrs. Simmons noted Alexandra's tardiness in a spiral notebook as Alexandra found a seat in the back.

She realized that she was sitting too far back to see the visuals and rested her trembling hands in her lap, thankful for the darkness in which she could muster her composure to face Callahan.

13
Ghosts

When the bell rang for the final class change of the day, Alexandra staggered from her honors literature desk to the doors of Butler Hall. Outside in the quad, the heat was stifling, yet she did not dare remove her blazer, which was hiding the blood and sweat that had stained her white shirt. Gulping air into her lungs, she gripped her stomach as it tied itself in knots.

“I can do this,” she told herself and followed a crowd through the doors of Sumter Hall, her fingers nervously twisting a strand of her long, auburn hair. She was overwhelmed with the desperate need to talk with her father.

Entering the history classroom, she saw the desks arranged in a circle. In the middle, Callahan sat on a stool, waiting for his audience to fill the arranged seats. From across the room, Benjamin waved her over.

“How's your head?” he asked, pointing to her temple.

“It's better now. Thanks for saving me a seat.”

Benjamin removed his book bag from the desk chair sitting beside him.

Alexandra suddenly felt chilled. “I thought he said the air conditioning was broken,” she complained, hugging her arms around herself as goose bumps spread up and down her bare legs.

“Not anymore,” Benjamin said drawing intently in a notebook lying on top of his desk.

Alexandra studied his sketch: the black outline of a dragon. The creature's wings flared at its sides, and fire blew furiously from its mouth. Astride its back sat a girl with long, flowing hair, gripping the beast tightly.

“Can I see that?” she asked him, fascinated.

Hesitating, he ripped the page from the notebook delicately and handed it to her.

“It's not very good. You should just throw it away,” he suggested.

But instead, she pulled a folder from her book bag and placed it inside a pocket.

When the bell stopped ringing in the hallway, Callahan said, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I trust we are all more comfortable today with the air conditioning now working.” He tossed a glance at Alexandra as she shivered under her blazer. “Dr. Sullivan had a brief word with me yesterday afternoon, so we are going to stick to protocol for today's class.”

He winked at Alexandra and continued. “So let's begin now with picking up your textbooks,” he said, pointing toward a towering pile of thick, hardback books stacked neatly on top of his desk.

As the students formed a line, a quiet rapping could be heard at the classroom door.

“Who could this be?” Callahan asked aloud, while he leapt up to answer the knock.

Embarrassed at herself for noticing his tall, strong body, Alexandra grabbed her textbook and slunk back into her chair next to Benjamin.

“Check it out,” Benjamin said, nudging Alexandra's shoulder as she flipped through the pictures of castles and pyramids in the textbook.

Hobbling on a pair of crutches, Taylor looked around the room shyly for an empty seat. Alexandra gasped when

she saw the white plaster cast that encased Taylor's leg below her left knee.

“Over here, Taylor,” she said, waving at her friend.

“What happened?” Alexandra asked as she helped Taylor ease down into a chair.

Callahan placed a textbook on the top of Taylor's desk.

“Thank you, sir,” she said, looking up into his eyes gratefully.

Taylor turned to Alexandra and Ben. “If you think this is bad, you should see my car's bumper.”

Callahan walked back toward his desk and picked up a pile of papers.

“What happened?” Alexandra asked, staring at her friend in disbelief.

“Huge deer,” Taylor explained and spread her arms out wide to illustrate.

Callahan tossed a syllabus on Taylor's desk. She looked up into Callahan's blue eyes and said, “Would you like to sign my cast?” and extended a pen to her teacher.

“Maybe later, Miss Woodward,” he told her, as his eyes shied from her face.

“Miss Peyton, I hope you are feeling better today,”

Callahan said, turning to Alexandra. Handing her a copy of the syllabus, his eyes stared at the medallion dangling around her neck.

“I am better today, thank you,” she replied. When she accepted the syllabus from his hand, her eyes locked on his ring. It was encrusted with a dragon, which wrapped around his finger.

“Can I get one of those?” Benjamin asked patiently, pointing at the syllabus. With a hint of annoyance, in a sweep of his hand, Callahan tossed Ben a syllabus and continued on around the room.

Burying her nose in her new textbook, Alexandra tried

to ignore Taylor's eyes.
That girl notices everything
, she thought. Pulling at her skirt, Alexandra tried to hide her scraped knee. But as she tucked her stained shirt collar under the lapel of her blazer, she knew that Taylor had seen a bruise on the side of her cheek.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” Alexandra whispered and untucked her bangs from behind her ear.

The auburn strands fell loosely around her face, covering the black-and-blue mark starting to swell along her jawline.

“Looks like I'm not the only one with a story to tell today,” Taylor answered. “What happened to you?” She shifted her wary gaze toward Benjamin.

“Yeah, I pushed her,” he said, mocking her accusatory glance.

The room fell into darkness as Callahan flipped off the light switch by the door. “Who wants to hear a ghost story?” he asked the class. In the light of the windows, Alexandra noticed a wide grin spread across his face as a collective cheer of approval echoed through the room.

“Excellent,” he said. “I thought you would be agreeable.”

Callahan walked to the center of the circled desks as his students pushed away their textbooks and relaxed into their desk chairs. Taylor giggled as she slouched more comfortably into her seat, while Benjamin sighed and hunched forward over his desk, with his chin in his hands.

“Miss Peyton,” Callahan said, turning to his shy student. Hidden in the shadows, Alexandra hoped that Callahan did not see the grimace on her face when he spoke her name.

Doesn't he know anyone else's name?
she thought to herself. A sharp ache quaked through her head, and beads of sweat broke out across her brow despite the chill in the room.

“Do you remember what we were discussing yesterday before you, well . . .” He paused and continued, “Before your situation developed?”

Her mind raced back twenty-four hours ago to their first meeting, when she had fainted by the cannons. All she could clearly remember was the wave of panic that washed over her before she fell unconscious to the ground.

Taylor squirmed in her seat next to Alexandra. When her friend hesitated too long in answering, Taylor eagerly responded, “You said there was treasure buried under the ground. Then Alexandra dropped like a rock,” she added, patting Alexandra's shoulder.

“Excuse me,” Alexandra hissed in Taylor's ear.

“Buried treasure. That's right. Thank you, Miss Woodward,” Callahan said.

“What kind of treasure?” Benjamin asked.

A voice shouted from across the room, “What are we still sitting around here for then?”

“Yeah, let's go dig it up,” another eager boy's voice yelled enthusiastically in the dark.

“Mr. Franklin? That is your name, young man?”

Callahan asked, turning to the source of the question.

“Yes sir, Jeff Franklin,” he answered emphatically.

In the dim light from the window at her back, Alexandra studied her teacher's reaction. Sitting on the stool at the center of the desks, he tilted his head toward the floor, as if actually contemplating the suggestion. His straight, dark hair fell around the sides of his rugged face.

Lifting his head, he ran his hand through his hair, pushing it back from his blue eyes, which were staring right at Jeff Franklin.

“I do not think Headmaster Sullivan would take kindly to us digging up the center of campus, do you?” Callahan smiled.

“I thought you were going to tell us a ghost story.

Can we get on with it, already?” Benjamin asked aloud brusquely, shifting restlessly in his chair.

Callahan whipped his head around at Benjamin. “Mr.

Lawson, please join me up here.” Benjamin hesitated, but Callahan waved him to the center of the class. Cringing lower into her chair, Alexandra watched as Benjamin slowly meandered toward Callahan.

Removing his jacket, Callahan unbuttoned his left shirt sleeve. He pushed the sleeve up, over his elbow.

Benjamin studied Callahan's forearm, then looked back up into his teacher's eyes.

“So see,” he said to Benjamin, “this is what impatience can get you. A wolf I once tracked through the Hungarian forests taught me that lesson well.”

Callahan patted Benjamin on the back and rolled his shirt sleeve back down over his forearm. “Please, sit down young man, and let us continue with the ghost story.”

Retreating to his desk, Benjamin ignored Alexandra's curious eyes until she leaned into his ear.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“He's got a wicked scar on his arm.” Benjamin paused to see her reaction. “From a wolf,” he continued.

Alexandra's stomach flipped and thrashed like an Olympic gymnast going for the gold. Trying to concentrate on the sound of Callahan's voice, she gritted her teeth and stared at the top of her desk.

“I did some research on Collinsworth Academy before accepting this temporary position. I was most intrigued when I discovered a mysterious footnote in its long history,” explained Callahan as he propped himself comfortably on his stool.

Despite the nausea swelling in her gut, Alexandra did not dare lay her head down on the desk and risk provoking any more of Callahan's attention. Hunching forward in her chair, she propped her chin in her palms and glanced at the wall clock hanging above the door. “Hurry,” she murmured to the clock.

“It seems that a curse was placed upon this ground by a so-called witch,” Callahan said. “Mary Scott was her name.

She worked for the Collinsworth family, who has owned this land for many generations. Mary lived with her only son in a small cottage behind the main family house. She performed whatever task the family needed in exchange for the cottage. Charles Collinsworth also promised an education for her son. Mary served as a nurse, housemaid, nanny, a cook—whatever the Collinsworth family needed her to do for them.”

Callahan paused, taking note of his students's rapt attention.

“But others who lived on the grounds spoke of Mary behind her back to the head of the family, Charles. They questioned why Mary left her son alone at night in the cottage while she walked all over the woods until dawn.

They wondered, too, why Mary never joined the rest of the servants or the family for worship services inside Drake Hall.”

“Did you all know that your assembly hall was originally built as a church by the Collinsworth family?”

Callahan glanced around the room while his students nodded their heads up and down. “The family took great pride in the building of that church, seeing it as a service to the community. So it did not escape their imagination, as the whispers in their ears became louder, that Mary Scott

may be a witch. That was the only possible conclusion.

But the family loved Mary, so they hesitated to punish her. They did not want to believe that the rumors could be true.”

He shifted his position and then continued the story.

“When the Civil War broke out, Mary's world turned upside down. Her son joined the Confederate army. People noticed that her nighttime visits to the forest became more frequent. Her appearance deteriorated into a scraggly heap of skin and bones. She spoke to no one, unless out of absolute necessity. News of her son's whereabouts in the war-ravaged world beyond the Collinsworth estate arrived slowly and sparingly to Mary's ears.

Then war loomed closer to home. So close, in fact, that Charles Collinsworth bought the cannons you now see by the administration building. Having been told that those cannons defended a pirate vessel in the Caribbean, Charles was convinced that they could defeat any Yankees who dared cross his property line.”

“So that's why the cannon is called Bloody Mary?”

asked Jeff, interrupting Callahan abruptly.

Callahan did not answer him. “We're getting there, Mr. Franklin.” He coughed to clear his throat and then continued. “Mary Scott received word that her son had been gravely injured in a battle in the North, but that he had escaped capture and was on his way home.