Allison had kept her word; at the commencement of the first day of school, she was standing at the foot of the front staircase, waiting for Shannon. All of the second years had their classes together. There weren't enough teachers to go around for anything else. It just made things easier; Shannon stuck to Allison like glue all day long, and she got around just fine. Just like Allison said she would.
Briargate was sprawling, much larger than Shannon had believed it to be. All of her classes were either on the first floor or in the basement, but hallways twisted off from the entry hall in each direction, looking to confuse her. Her spatial awareness was constantly in confusion; some hallways and rooms didn't even seem possible. Briargate seemed much bigger from the inside.
She adjusted well enough, though. There was a kind of surreal feeling to not being in school with Toni Guaraldi and Robbie Edwards. She'd been with them since kindergarten. But there was Allison, who'd stuck around after that first day (a little bit to Shannon's surprise), and Caleb, who showed up sporadically between chumming around with the red-haired girl and her friends. (The boy Shannon had recognized at the banquet was Dexter Bradburyâhe lived in Clearwater and she'd seen him around a few times, but he had not ever been in her class at school, despite being the same age as her.) She spent the first weeks with the two of them, getting to know them better than she had at the banquet. The gaps were filled, but in different ways.
The old school scared her, though.
She hadn't said the words out loud to anyoneâhadn't yet, at leastâbut the building gnawed at her. She told herself it was its vastness, how easy it was for her to get turned around and confused. So much bigger on the inside. Empty, too. Not enough students to fill it. It was still new enough; she was intimidated. Deeper down, she knew that that was not all. There was something else, something abstract. A strong trepidation hung over her, a constant expectation that something was coming, something she could not name.
It was likely present since Sarah Benadine's death, but it had grown within the walls of Briargate into something much bigger. Something...real.
It was no help that on two different occasions, Allison had asked her what she could do. Bewildered, Shannon had never had an answer for her.
That, Shannon decided to talk to Caleb about.
Shannon liked Caleb; she liked Caleb a lot. He was easier to talk to than Allison was, less temperamental. There was something else about him too, something wise; talking to him felt like she was talking to someone considerably older, with all kinds of memories and experiences to draw off of, not just the life of a recently-turned-twelve year old boy. Perhaps it was his eyesâhe had his grandfather's eyes, knowledge Shannon was, of course, not privy to, but they were the same. He had the same understanding in his eyes that his grandfather did, an interesting quality for a twelve year old boy.
She'd gotten to know Caleb pretty well in her time at the school. She trusted him, perhaps even more than Allison. She didn't know, when she first went looking for him, what was going to unfold in the conversation, but perhaps it was this that really got things started; this discussion paved the way for everything that was going to come.
She caught him in the library at lunch a few days later. He was with Dexter Bradbury and the red-haired girl, and the short, gawky boy and the sweet-faced, dark-haired girl that they were always with. She hadn't caught any of their names except for Dexter's, but she felt she knew them; it would stand to reason that they all came from Clearwater, but she didn't know why none of them had ever been in her class at school. There was only one of each grade level at the grade school and the high school. There weren't nearly enough people to have multiple. But she'd never spent a day with any of them.
The library was well-populated, but it was big, and most of the students there were blocked from each other by bookshelves. There were tables at the front of the room, by the librarian's desk, and in between each set of two shelves, for students to read and study at. Caleb and the others were way back, deep in the stacks. There was only one other student nearby, another second year. A boy with gigantic horn-rimmed glasses and freckles scattered all across his face.
The girls seemed to be the only ones truly studying when Shannon got there. The gawky boy, who was famous for his rather amusing commentary in class, had swept Caleb and Dexter into discussion of little consequence; Shannon caught something about a Chilly Willy cartoon, but they were too far along in their conversation for her to come in now.
"Hi," the red-haired girl said as Shannon came up, attention snapping immediately from the book she and her friend were poring over. She sounded uncertain, and her eyes dug holes in Shannon's head.
"Oh, hi Shannon," Caleb said after a moment, realizing she was there. The gawky boy cut off his discussion.
"Boy, you're Shannon Malone," he said, grinning and sticking out his hand. His eyes lit like he was meeting a celebrity of some kind. Shannon took his hand and shook it tentatively, unsure what to make of him. "I'm Jared Wilkins. I live here in Clearwater on Minerva Boulevard. You live over on Quarry Street, don't you?"
Shannon blinked, bemused. Slowly, she nodded.
"You live next to the girl that got murdered," Jared continued. "Or, used to live next to, I guess."
The sweet-faced girl across the table from him sucked in a breath. "Jared, did your mother teach you no manners?"
Jared waved her off. "Anyway, that's Ginger Beaumont,"âhe jabbed his thumb at the girl who'd spoken and she waved a dark handâ"Ollie O'Brien, and Dexter Bradbury. And you've met good ole Caleb, I take it."
The red-haired girlâOllieâsmiled sweetly but shyly. Her cheeks were pink. Caleb rolled his eyes.
"Don't mind him," he said. "He always shares people's addresses on his first meeting of them."
"So what brings you to our neck of the woods?" Jared asked, paying Caleb no mind. Dexter looked at him strangely and shook his head.
"Oh, uh...I, uh, actually wanted to talk to Caleb," Shannon said.
Caleb looked up in slight surprise. "Oh, sure."
He was on his feet in a second, leading her away from the group. He steered her even further into the stacks, where the place was deserted.
"I kinda got the feeling you wanted to talk in private," Caleb said, almost apologetically. "People rarely make it back this far into the stacks."
Shannon nodded, wondering vaguely how he'd read her so well. There were more tables back here in between the shelves, and they each took a seat. All the books back here seemed gargantuan: extensive, weighty tomes on any subject under the sun. Shannon focused on them as she talked to Caleb.
"Do you know why Allison would ask what I can do?" she asked slowly.
Caleb looked at her sharply. "What?"
Shannon pushed forward in slow, aborted sentences. "She's asked me a couple times what I can do. She always says we're not supposed to talk about it, but that I can trust her. And a girl from Clearwater said something similar at the beginning of the year. About not being able to talk about something."
All at once she realized how silly this must sound if Caleb didn't know what she was talking about. She sighed. Shaking her head, she continued on, describing her discussion with Cassie in more detail.
"Do you know why Allison would ask what I can do?" she repeated. "There are a lot of things I can do. I don't know what she means."
Caleb peered at her curiously. "She asked you what you can do?"
"Yes," Shannon said. She felt she should say more, offer something of an explanation, but she didn't have an explanation to give.
"And you really don't know what she means?"
"No."
Caleb frowned for a moment, looking, as Shannon had been, at all the books on the shelves. Then, as if the whole atmosphere of the room had changed, he looked at her with a slight smile and said easily, "Don't worry about it."
"Don't worry about it," Shannon repeated lamely.
"Naw. Allison, uh, says strange things sometimes. She probably heard a rumor or something and thought you'd heard it too." Caleb, Shannon noticed, could not meet her eyes. "But I bet it's no big deal."
"You're probably right," Shannon agreed, though she doubted it. Caleb was fidgeting. Quietly, almost afraid, she said, "Are you sure?"
"Yeah," Caleb said. He looked closely at her. "Is there anything else you wanted to ask?"
Shannon shook her head. And then, almost as if the words were forced out of her by another person, she asked, "Caleb, have you ever seen a monster?"
She didn't know why she asked, what possessed her to do it. As soon as she'd said it, she expected him to laugh, or tell her to be serious, or make a sarcastic remark. He did none of that, instead opting to look at her thoughtfully. Her stomach twisted in an odd way. She hadn't wanted to be laughed at or ridiculed, but this was somehow worse. He was taking her seriously.
"No," he said lowly, leaning in closer, conspiratorially. "Have you?"
She'd knownâoh, how she'd knownâthat he would ask. And maybe she'd wanted him to all along. She liked CalebâCaleb with his grandfather's eyesâand so maybe she'd been hoping he would ask. Hoping she could tell because she hadn't told a soul, she'd just gone on like nothing had happened. Maybe she wanted to tell Caleb because something told her that Caleb would understand. Maybe it was his eyes.
Maybe it was something else entirely.
Many years later, Shannon Malone would be very well convinced that something else told her to tell Caleb about the night in Dyer's Park.
She waited long enough that Caleb looked like he was going to speak again, and then she said, barely a whisper, "Yeah, I think so."
And perhaps the worstâor the bestâthing was that Caleb didn't really look surprised.
"You have?"
He was not disbelieving. He was barely even questioning. It was more like being certain he hadn't misheard. Shannon nodded gravely. Caleb looked down to the tips of his shoes, chewing on the inside of his lip.
"What...what did you see?"
With her eyes still on the mountains of volumes of novels and books, she began to speak. It was strange talking about the thing she'd seen in Dyer's Park. It felt more fictitious the further she went on. She didn't look but she was sure Caleb was watching her with mounting disbelief in his eyes, gradually coming to the conclusion that she was putting him on. She was torn, part of her wondering why she had ever said anything, the other part wanting to tell every detail as fast as she could. She could see the creature as clearly as she had that night, but it seemed less real somehow. The words had never been said aloud, and every trace of that night was gone. The cut on her ankle had healed.
When she looked up at the end of her recollection, there was no disbelief on Caleb's face. What she saw instead shook her to her core: there was fear, and something else. Something a bit like...intrigue.
"Wow," he said with that little boy fascination, reminding Shannon that this was still a child she was talking to.
"It sounds crazy," Shannon said, "but I saw it. At least, I think I did. It nearly got me."
Caleb was silent for a while. Shannon's skin itched waiting for him to say something. She played with her hands, unconsciously running her fingers over her right palm.
"It sounds crazy," Caleb said carefully, "but I don't think it is." He looked her straight in the eyes. "I think it's real."
Shannon felt cold. The words hung in the air; she swore they were repeating themselves over and over again. She'd wanted Caleb to believe her...and yet she hadn't. An isolated piece of her still didn't believe it herself.
Do you think there's something bad here?
"So you believe me?" Shannon said, her voice suddenly raspy and strained.
Caleb frowned. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."
Shannon never got the chance to say another word. The bell rang, marking the end of lunch. Shannon and Caleb's heads flew up at the noise like a shot had rung out. Looking back down, Caleb laughed nervously.
"Um...we'll talk later?" he said.
"Yeah," Shannon agreed. "Yeah, okay."
As it would happen, they would not talk about this for quite some time. But that was of little consequence; the pieces were already starting to fall into place.
***Ugh, I hate this chapter so much. But I...don't know how to make it better. I already cut it practically in half and it still feels like a mess. Ah well. Thanks to everyone who voted and commented; I really appreciate it :)***