Something else seemed a little off to me, and it wasn’t the school itself, but how I felt about things. I was…happy. Yeah, that’s the word I would use. I was happy.
At lunch, I sat with Joey and Audrey, who both seemed amicable enough.
The cafeteria stunk, but I saw that stench in a different
light
than I had the day before
. It was just school food,
nothing
more
malicious
than that.
We talked about how we all hated Mr. Hatch, laughing about his obviously made-up fishing stories. “And he can’t even seem to remember how old his son is!” Audrey cried.
“I know, right?” I said, laughing.
I felt good;
somehow all the stress, all the pain, all the despair
were gone.
After lunch, it was back to
Mr. Hatch’
s class, but it wouldn’t be as bad as yesterday, I told myself. Audrey and Joey were friendly toward me, and there was no way I would fall asleep. And
I was there on time. In fact, I was
the first one in the classroom, followed closely by Audrey and several other students.
I found my desk and got my things ready. I looked up when
I heard Mr. Hatch slam the door
. The class
,
who
was all accounted for except for Joey
, jumped
.
Mr. Hatch was looking through the small window beside the door.
“Hey
,
let me in!”
I could hear
Joey
yell.
“Pleas
e?
”
“You know the rules, Mr. Jones
.
No tardies allowed,” Mr. Hatch mocked.
“You’re late.”
“Oh come on, Mr. Hatch.
The bell hasn’t even rung yet. This
isn’t fair.”
“Yeah,” the class agreed in unison.
“Afraid you’re wrong
, Mr. Jones.
Just sit in the hallway.”
And then the bell rang.
I really couldn’t help but laugh.
The rest of the school day went by in a blur.
Mr. Hatch eventually let Joey into the room, and i
t turned out that Joey had complained to the principal about
him
, so
he
was having a little revenge.
As the bell rang, signaling the end of class, I gathered up my stuff and walked out the door. Mr. Hatch
smiled and
offered
some
sort of
sympathy
concerning Lori, which I thought was odd.
Before that day, I didn’t really consider either Audrey or Joey friends, but there was a part of me that reached out to them. I could feel it, and I knew they felt it too. They wanted to be th
ere for me, and it was genuine.
Or so I thought.
When I got home that afternoon, I was no longer happy, and couldn’t for the life of me understand how I had been so cheerful. When I walked in the door after the bus dropped me off, Gramma was waiting at the dining room table, a smile wide on her face. “How was your day today, honey?
” she asked. The smile
combined with the pink and green footie pajamas she was still wearing made her
look more like an insane clown than ever before
.
“Better,” I said and meant it, but I was feeling so down at the m
oment. Thinking about Lori, Mom,
and
D
ad. The pain was growing every second I thought about it.
And that got me thinking that something just didn’t seem right. How could I have been so happy, so carefree at school, but now that I was home, everything that should have been weighing me down all day was making me feel that life was almost completely intolerable?
“Only better?” Gramma
asked
,
her
smile widening.
“Well…I don’t know. I didn’t think about any of this…this stuff all day. I was happy. But now that I’m here
…
.”
“Aw, dear. Come here.”
She extended her arms, inviting me in for a hug. I didn’t really feel like hugging her, but I wasn’t going to fight it. I hugged her briefly, and she managed to sneak in a disgusting kiss.
“
Gramma, I’m going up to my room.” I
started heading toward the stairs.
“Oh no, no. Your bedroom window is still broken…glass is everywhere.”
“And you didn’t clean it up?”
“
W
e don’t need an attitude now.
”
Just something about this whole situation made me angry. My sister and mother were transformed into monsters the night before, their souls trapped into some sort of limbo, and my gramma tells me to go to school in the morning. And now she
wa
s complaining about my ‘
attitude
’
?
“You’re not going up there anymore. I don’t want you near that d—”
“
I hate you
,” I
interrupted
and stormed out of the house, making sure
I
slammed the door
on my way out
.
Chapter 11
I didn’t have any idea where I was going,
but
if there was anything
that was certain,
I had
no place to go. Every day that went by seemed to pile on the other. Why was the school day so good for me? How did everyone know about Lori? How were Audrey, Joey, and
I good friends?
My morning conversation with Gramma replayed in my head as I walked through the long grass.
You
can never leave. You can never go back to your old life. It
doesn’t exist for you anymore.
I replayed it again and again in my head until I was sure that that was exactly what she’d said.
Something else she said bugged me as well.
You don’t know as much as you think you do.
I really was no closer to understanding anything than I was before. All I knew was that if I had any hopes of surviving, I was going
to
have
to
brave that well
, the place where the chiroptera lived
. There had to be something down there, something that I could use to destroy the chiroptera.
I decided the only one I could trust was my father. He had said the well was the key to defeating these creatures, hadn’t he?
Or at least strongly implied it.
I ran as hard as I could toward where I thought it was. I could hear Gramma yelling from the doorway for me to come back, that I didn’t understand everything. Well, come and get me, Gramma.
It wasn’t long before I was near the hole in the ground, a place I recognized from my vision. I stopped and got on my hands and knees in order to feel around for the hole. I didn’t want to accidently step in it.
The sun was in the west, and the sky was clear, so there was
plenty of light to see, but
for some reason the entrance to th
e
well seemed to
be el
uding me. There just didn’t seem to be—
And then the
ground below me collapsed, and I found myself plunging down, down, down for probably fifty feet before hitting water.
The impact was painful, but I was alive. The walls surrounding me were dark and slimy. The light from outside offered me very little
to see by
. How was I going to get out of here?
There was no way out.
I held my breath and sunk to the bottom.
Unlike in the vision where my feet touched bottom, the real bottom
was
actually
ten feet below the surface, and there was nothing down there. I was stuck, trapped in ten feet of water fifty feet below the surface with nothing to hold on
to.
Panic. That’s the only word I can think of. Sheer panic. I
was trapped with nowhere to go. Why did I come down here? What was I thinking?
I trusted that I knew what I was doing.
And I was apparently wrong. I was going to drown in here, and no one was ever going to find me.
The water was dirty, s
limy, and gross. As my arms grew tired, I could barely keep my face above the water.
I took in mouthful after mouthful of that disgusting
liquid
. I had to get out of there, and soon, or I was going to die, but who
could help me
? Gramma was
likely still back at the house.
That left…exactly no one. I couldn’t expect my two friends to show up and save me
,
could I?
“Help!” I screamed. “Help! I’m drowning in here!”
T
hen I heard something above. It sounded like kids.
“Hey, Amanda, hang on!” shouted a voice that I recognized. It was Joey! How did he know I was in here?
“Joey! I’m so glad you’re here!”
There was silence for a moment.
And then, I
hear
d
someone talking
softly just above me. Something about the well seemed to amplify the voice. I still had to strain to hear it, but despite my struggles to stay afloat, I could make out the words, “
Father…trying…ill…she…open…door
.” That was Joey’s voice. Who was he talking to? Audrey?
What was he talking about?
Soon a rope dropped down. “Just grab it, Amanda, and hold on tight.” I did as he asked, but I could feel it slipping through my hands as he pulled me up.
“Joey, I can’t hold it. My hands are slipping.”
He continued pulling me up, and by some miracle, I managed to make it all the way to the top.
There were actually three people there. Two
of them
I expected—Joey and Audrey. But there was a third I wouldn’t have guess
ed
in a million years: Mr. Hatch.
“Mr. Hatch?” I asked, completely out of breath and dumbstruck. I
was
on my hands and knees, coughing. All three of them were talking over each other, so I couldn’t hear anything they were saying.
I then managed to get up.
My clothes were soaked and sticking to me
and covered in slime. I was one slippery mess
.
“Mr. Hatch? Joey, Audrey? What are you three doing here?”
Mr. Hatch spoke. “Amanda, we need your help.”
The other two nodded.
“You need my help? For what?” I asked incredulously. “I just nearly drowned myself in an abandoned well for no reason I can explain. What good would I be to you guys?”
None of them answered immediately. The silence was awkward. Finally Audrey spoke, suggesting that I get a change of clothes. I agree
d
, and we headed to the house.
On the way there, Joey talked about how awful things were in Orchard Hills these days, about how the chiroptera were growing ever more dangerous. “Just like how your sister be
came victim to them, you know?”
“Joey, I never told anyone about that but my gramma. How do you and everyone else know about it?”
A nervous look stole over his features. He looked to Audrey and then Mr. Hatch.
Mr. Hatch said, “Your gramma called the school and informed the staff.”
I thought that over for a second. “Why would she do that? And how did all the students know without you telling them? I know the staff never said a word
,
because I would have known.”
“Amanda,” Audrey said, “it doesn’t matter how we all knew about Lori. We just all heard about it, okay? And we are all here for you.”
There was something totally strange going on here, and I didn’t like it one bit. But by then, we were at the house. Gramma was waiting
on the inside
the door with a worried expression on her face. She eyed my visitors with what looked like terror i
n her eyes. I climbed the
st
eps. They
st
ood right behind me on the porch
.
“They can’t come in here,” Gramma said far more seriously than I had ever heard her say anything before.
“Gramma, I fell down an old well out there. They helped me out. I was lucky they were out there to help.”
Gramma opened the door
, reached out and grabbed my shirt to yank me into the house, but before she could get me in and shut the door, Mr. Hatch
grabbed the door, holding it open.
“We’re coming in too,” he said.
Gramma pulled me close
to her and held me tightly. I couldn’t breathe. “What’s going on here?” I asked. “Let me go.”