New Haven

It was a dreary Friday night. Unlike most of her fellow co-workers, who were safely at home with their families cuddling in front of their fires the headmistress of the New Haven preparatory school, Dihedra Haven was in her office with a fresh glass of rum safely in her hand. The poor women looked positively exhausted with her long raven hair coming undone at the pins and her shirt soaked in nervous sweat. Her office was a grand thing to behold. It had an oval shape to its base that gave the illusion of being circular when in fact you could point out its four distinct corners. Its wall to wall bookshelves covered every inch of the office and consisted of every book imaginable, all in all, her office seemed straight out of a fairy tale. Its high ceiling descended straight to heaven with no end in sight. It was even equipped with a grand chandelier that hung high in the ceiling but low in the office. It illuminated the whole place with such a bright light that if you were to be there at this very moment you would never know it wasn’t mid-day. Dihedra Haven carefully stirred her glass as she looked over the two files that lay on her desk. “I can’t believe we’re accepting these girls!” The headmistress screamed shoving the two files off her desk and quickly downing the rest of the rum that remained in her glass. “Don’t get yourself in such a mood over such an insignificant matter,” said Harold Hollows, the headmaster of the New Haven sister school, Rupert Ivan Prep. Harold Hollows was a tall Scottish man of around six three who had a rather thin build to him. He had plain brown eyes and rather plain brown hair that turned lighter in the sun. Not a handsome man by today’s standards of beauty yet he had a natural charisma to him. You would never think it, to look at his present lazy state and the current dreary atmosphere of the room. He stood sluggishly from the chaise that hid in a small corner of the office where just a minute ago he had been fast asleep. Bending over, Harold Hollows picked up the fallen files and stopped to look at the pictures that lay on the front of the files. The headmistress was in an outright rage over Harold Hollows’ indifference towards the situation. “Small! Something small! Do you have any idea the risk we are taking by accepting these girls into this school,” she paused to steady her self; the liquor was beginning to take an effect on her balance, she stared down again at the pictures that were clipped to the files, “If you can even call them girls. Abominations! Yes, that’s what they are! Yes! How am I accepting these abominations into this school?” Harold stopped now and looked up at the headmistress. His expression filled with a mixture of pity and fear. He crossed the room quickly and look the worn woman down. Speaking slowly and sternly to her he said, “You should hold your loose and liquored tongue before she hears…,” but the headmaster of Rupert Ivan Preperatory was not able to finish his sentence before the chandelier’s lights went out and a great shadow descended upon them. His breath caught with a cold that came with the darkness that threatened to swallow them whole. “Before she hears what?” said a voice so sweet and pleasant. It was completely out of place in the new atmosphere that had taken over the office. It seemed to make the atmosphere even more daunting. The strange voice engulfed the whole room, “Are we voicing opinions where we shouldn’t be, Dihedra?” it said. Harold Hollows quickly separated himself from the drunken headmistress. Backing up until he hit his back to one of the office’s massive bookshelves. “No… it’s just… well, you see… I’ve been under some stress…” Dihedra, a woman of no small stature suddenly seemed aged and minuscule in comparison to the voice that came from the neverending darkness. The headmistress tossed her raven black hair while she stammered and seemed unable to get her words out in any comprehensive order. Out of desperation or just lack of confidence the headmistress filled her glass again. The shadow seemed pleasantly happy with this small fact. “Now, now, there Dihedra, come out with it. What was it that I shouldn’t hear?” Dihedra seemed to be trying to think through her rum spinning thoughts. Trying to find some words that would help her out of the predicament she had gotten her self into. Some mystifying and magical words that would calm the ever encroaching darkness that was threatening to swallow her whole. “Its just that these girls are very unique, extraordinary even,” the darkness seemed to smile at this obvious compliment, “It would be most unfortunate if something were to happen to the other students,” Dihedra was choosing her words wisely and too much success, “and the other unique children because of the girls over abundant freakishness.” Harold Hollows suddenly noticed the headmistress faux paws. The words were out of Dihedra’s mouth before she could take them back. She waited as she held her breath for the darkness to finally take her. She waited for any sign; any hint that her words had been heard. “Maybe she didn’t hear me?” Dihedra thought to herself. It was true that the shadow did not seem to notice the mistake that the headmistress had made. Pleased by this conclusion, Dihedra picked up her glass and breathed in its dizzying scent. Without warning or monologue her drinking glass hit the floor along with one headmistress, Ms. Dihedra Haven. The headmistress’ eyes glazed over in a complete pearl white color. She made a panicked motion to try to stand up but some kind of force pushed her back down. She began to convulse violently, mumbling toward the invisible force hovering above her. Dihedra retreated on all fours to the wall behind her desk. She seemed to be attempting to push herself more into the wall. Desperately trying to get away from whatever it was that threatened to take her. The more she fought the more light began to come out of the raven hair women. The headmistress shook as a pale imprint of her self began to detach itself from her struggling body. The white imprint shimmered slightly as it completely left her body. The shimmer began to collect itself together until it hung as a small mass hovering and bouncing above her till she laid completely still and lifeless. Harold Hollows had not watched the women suffer. Harold Hollows had not screeched or hollered. He made no attempt to protect and defend the body of one Dihedra Haven. Her body now laid cold and grey on the ground. Harold Hollows simply walked carefully back to sitting in the corner on the hidden chaise as he had been previously. “You don’t have time to look for another headmistress and I already have my own school to worry about,” He said to no one in particular as he opened a secret compartment in the bookcase next to him. He pulled out a half empty bottle of scotch and paused before opening the bottle. He looked up into the darkness that seemed to be looking back at him. After a moment the hovering mass plunged itself into the cold motionless body of a Ms. Haven. Half a second later the cold and silent body came alive with a start. Ms. Haven convulsed as she struggled to breathe in gulps of frozen air. In an instant the chandelier came back to life. The room was warm and bright again. All evidence of the change that had come so suddenly and left so abruptly, were gone. The room itself was utterly spotless. There was no broken glass that had once been filled with rum on the floor. The room was ridden of anything eerie. There was not even a hint of dread in the atmosphere at all. Dihedra Haven stood up on her shaken legs and walked slowly back to her desk. She looked up at Harold Hollows, who would not meet her gaze, and collapsed, onto her chair. She was beaten. She was giving in. “Fine,” she said, “Well, welcome to New Haven prep ladies.” Turning her chair Dihedra gazed out into the night. “And may God have mercy on us all.”