Standing outside the headmaster’s office during lunch period has never made Rebecca feel as nervous, sneaky, or dirty as she does right now. Mrs. Waurelt’s secretary, Rina Fein, is likely inside one of the office’s side rooms organizing something or other. Rebecca eyes the buzzer on the front desk, and she frowns. To go in without first getting Rina’s permission is heretical, but. . . Rebecca huffs.

Who does Thanatos Briar think he is, asking her to connive her way into the headmaster’s private documents? If she were to be caught, she could be expelled! There’s been no response to her email, no answers to her phone calls, nothing that shows the headmaster will cooperate easily. Regardless, it must be done if the status quo is to resume in this academy, and Rebecca longs for it to happen. So, she smooths out her skirt, takes a deep breath, and opens the door as quietly as possible, leaving it cracked oh so slightly behind her.

Mrs. Waurelt is nowhere to be seen in her massive office space, the only occupant being specks of dust floating in the light peeking through the massive velveteen curtains of the back wall window. The white of everything pricks goosebumps on her skin in a way that makes her pause.

Rebecca forces herself to focus, and she slips off her mary janes to place them in her messenger bag. Testing her socked foot against the white hardwood flooring, it’s almost silent. Walking on the rugs will be even safer, she thinks. Perfect. She takes her first steps forward.

Rina is definitely in here somewhere, but she knows she has to start, so she presses her ear against the first lower level door to her right. There’s no sound, so that’s a good start. She turns the knob and pushes it open. The sight filing cabinets lining this room wall to wall pushes her heart into her stomach.

“This. . . might take longer than I thought.”

The headmaster could return any moment, so instead of wasting her time worrying, Rebecca gets straight to work. This first room is all finances, and the rooms after that are similar in formal contents. The other rooms on the bottom level match similarly in tone, ranging from archived student and faculty records the student council largely have access to to a massive range of files dedicated solely to the academy’s several century history. The bathroom was standard, but she did find a toolset and some toiletries beneath the bathroom sink.

Rebecca clicks her tongue upon closing the last door downstairs, and she immediately regrets it.

“Who’s there?” calls a soft, adrogynous voice, and Rebecca quickly hides herself underneath the left side staircase, curled in and tucked as far under as possible, behind casual lounge furniture in the crook of the staircase. “If someone’s there, come out now before I set off the alarm.”

With every footstep down the stairs above her, Rebecca presses her hands even tighter to her mouth. She can’t see when Rina reaches the bottom, but she can hear her search the office, checking each door and every room, even pulling back the curtains with the scrape of metal rings against a metal rod.

Rebecca can feel tears pricking at her eyes. She doesn’t know at what point Rina’s calling voice began to sound like her mother’s, but it only stills her heart faster. Rina comes closer once more, heels clicking against the wood. Rebecca scrambles back quietly, but she pauses when she hears something shift. Her head whips around.

A door? A small, carved door lies hidden away much like Rebecca is. It’s simple in its decorations, bearing only trim around it, a silver knob, and a small keyhole. To think something like this was here, it almost doesn’t surprise her considering the age of the building. Almost.

Rina is almost to her, when an idea strikes, and she hurriedly texts Thanatos. A brief pause, and the three typing dots appear, but they cease as quickly as they came, and Rebecca bites her bottom lip. The steps get closer, and still nothing. . . nothing. . . nothing. . .

The phone goes off from outside the office, and Rina stops right in her tracks, just on the edge of Rebecca’s sight. She sighs, tucks her phone away into her back pocket, and walks away.

“Guess I’m hearing things again. I’ve got to stop listening to horror podcasts while I work,” Rina groans. The doorknob creaks as it turns, but Rina pauses. “Did I not shut this? I could’ve sworn. . .”

Rebecca swallows.

“It’s fine, Rina, we just won’t tell Mrs. Waurelt! She doesn’t have to know. That way, she can’t scold you for it again.” With another sigh, content this time, the door creaks open and then shuts. Rebecca peeks out.

Empty. The office is empty for real this time.

She beelines for the bathroom, hurriedly makes her way in, and buries her face in the toilet. It takes her a minute before her stomach settles again, but with that literally out of her system, she can get what she needs and get the hell out of here. A face rinse and teeth brush with her finger later, Rebecca refocuses herself on the hidden door.

The first thing she does is test the knob, but when it doesn’t twist, she eyes the keyhole. “If only this place weren’t warded,” she mumbles. Her phone buzzes, and she jumps, barely avoiding knocking her head against the stairs.

It’s Thanatos. She presses answer, hesitantly, and holds her phone to her ear with her shoulder.

“Aren’t you supposed to be on the phone with Ms. Fein?” she asks frustratedly.

“I made Jonny do it.”

Rebecca thinks about it briefly. “That. . . makes more sense. He’s a rambler, much like those other hooligans he hangs out with.”

He sighs from the other side. “Anyway, any progress?”

“I found a tiny door. It’s locked, and I know Mrs. Waurelt always keeps her keys on her.”

“How?”

“She’s old fashioned that way, keeps everything on a keyring, including a master key.” Rebecca does move to check the desk but all the drawers are locked as well. “If she doesn’t want someone somewhere, she’ll lock it and keep the only key with her; example given is her mug cabinet in the teacher’s lounge.”

Thanatos hums. “You wear bobby pins. Take two out.”

“What?” She kneels by the door again. “No, wait, I know what this is. I’m not going to lockpick my headmaster like some common thief!”

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“Then pretend you’re a fancy thief and hurry it up. We don’t have all day.”

Grumbling under her breath, she does as told and removes the bobby pins keeping her side pieces tucked into her ponytail. They fall to frame her face.

“Okay, now what?”

“What kind of lock is it? Is it a digital lock like we use now or older?”

Rebecca pokes at the keyhole. “Definitely older. It. . . It looks like something out of a storybook, like that old ‘Alice in Wonderland’ one with the small door.”

“So it doesn’t look serrated, it just has a hole?”

“Yes,” she confirms, staring at the pins. Thanatos types something on his end, and he shifts in his seat.

“Ugh, warded locks. Go grab pliers if you can and turn on the camera.”

Pulling her phone away from her ear, she sets it on the floor. She rushes to grab pliers from the bathroom’s toolset. Lastly, with a quick dig into her bag, she connects her wireless earbuds, and she turns on the face camera. Thanatos is there, sitting at his desk, also holding a bobby pin.

“Warded locks are extremely old, dating back even to ancient China, but commonly known for their use in the middle ages. Brits still use them here for various purposes, God knows why,” he starts, and Rebecca nods. “They work by the key being in a specific shape to bypass wards-- specific obstructions in the lock --and turn to hit a button on the topside of the lock.”

“So we just need to hit that button.”

“Basically. We’re going to make a skeleton key using the bobby pins you have. Scrape the ends off the bobby pins with the pliers.” A job done quickly, and Thanatos nods. “Now bend one like this. The other is a backup.”

He shows her carefully. The pin is bent to a ninety-degree angle, and the very end of the straight edge is bent again, another right angle, so that it’s parallel to the bumpy edge.

“No, no, the other way. That little end needs to point in the same direction as the other side of the pin.”

Rebecca stops herself and fixes it, and she looks at her tool of crime resting in her palm. “Is. . . this really it?”

“Tumbler locks require two pins. Our modern locks require two to three sometimes depending on how advanced they are plus a credit card you don’t care about. I assume you have plenty of those.”

Rebecca sneers at him, but he rolls his eyes. “Push it into the lock. Hurry, I’m not sure how much longer Jonny can stall for.”

She carefully prods it in, and per Thanatos’ instruction, she pushes it as far back as it can go. She starts to twist it, but it won’t move, so she tries to force it at his behest. The bobby pin snaps a few times, and she pulls it out to find it mangled. Thanatos groans.

“The backup, now.”

She remakes her lockpick and tries once more, begrudgingly listening to Thanatos’ every word. Eventually, it hits something, and he tells her to turn it.

“Oh!” She exclaims quietly, proudly. The bobby pin turns and something clicks. She pulls it out, and she tries the doorknob again. “It opened! Briar, I did it!” Rebecca stares in awe at her handiwork. She catches a glimpse of the screen again just as he smiles oh-so slightly.

“Good work. Now get in there. Don’t worry about locking it back.”

“But--”

“I’ll take the blame for it, so stop dilly-dallying.” He turns off his camera. “Jonny is almost done. I’m going to come there and distract her in person until you sneak out.”

Before she can say anything further, he hangs up. She puts her phone and headphones away, and she keeps the pliers for time’s sake. Opening the door fully, she peers inside, but it goes deeper than she thought. Dangling in front of her though is a chain, and with a sharp pull, a dim yellow light turns on. Leading downward is a steep, brown wooden staircase.

Rebecca braces herself and crawls inside.

It takes a few steps down before she feels safe standing, but it’s worth it at the sight before her as the candles light themselves as she steps onto the floor. A small, confined study area complete with a desk, antique chair, and bookshelves strategically set into the walls of the entire room. It reminds her of Thanatos’ desk the day before, but this is by all means more haunted than a dorm room. Even the styling is darker wood, contrasting the white she’s so used to seeing, but none of it is dusty.

“If her office is warded, this place must be twice so,” she decides out loud to herself. “But if those girls really did die so recently, then the files must be recent too. . .” Rebecca eyes the busy desk.

Moving the chair behind her, she swipes aside papers on the desk as she scans them until, at the bottom of the stack, a black folder catches her eye. Hesitantly, she peels back the cover, but almost as quickly, she slams it shut. Rebecca sinks into the chair, and she pulls her hand away and to her chest as if splashed with acid.

“Holy shit .” Rebecca feels bile rise at the back of her throat once more, but this time she forces it down. Her whispers are panicked. “There’s really a murderer here. There’s an actual, honest-to-God, murderer here.”

She stares down the file mocking at her, black as night and holding blood in its pages by paperclips. Her shaking hand reaches out again, and she opens the folder properly. She scoots the chair forward to get a better look, but it’s only a little easier the second time. Barely.

A full page photo, high in its quality, acts as the front page of the folder’s contents. Dottie James, only sixteen years old, sprawled out on her stomach as if crawling, and her bloodied hands dig into the wall of one of the many lecture rooms. Her fingernails are bloodied from desperate scratching, and the back of her pajamas are ripped open to reveal horrific, tree-like markings. The “trunk” stems from the base of her spine, crawling up and branching out, black to red with white specks across the branches. They go far enough to hide under the remaining fabric, to wrap around her throat.

Dottie bleeds from every orifice on her shocked face, head sideways on the white floor. Her tears are stained red like the rest of her. Rebecca can only fathom the kind of pain she was in as this thing stole her life from her. As she thinks it, “stole” feels like an accurate word. From the pictures in her student file, Dottie was on the thinner side, sure, but here she looks boney and decrepit.

Rebecca moves the picture over, but she’s only granted more photos, all closer and more detailed. They’re clearly professionally taken, so whoever Mrs. Waurelt hired for this wasn’t shaken by it. But fortunately for her, Rebecca finds the remaining papers to be reports rather than poor Dottie’s body.

There’s another black file under it, but Rebecca decides against opening it, feeling confident in their contents. She stashes both folders in her bag and hightails it out of that accursed space. Her knees are unsteady as she climbs the stairs. Her hands are trembling as she shuts the hidden door. Her stomach is burning as she approaches the office’s main door.

Rina is clearly talking to someone enthusiastically outside, loud enough to make Rebecca wince, so she opens the door much like she did before. There’s Thanatos, chatting away with a charming smile, a clever caress of his own hair, a focused gaze. He never stops looking at Rina even as he pulls his ponytail over his shoulder to cleverly disguise the brief, fluid point down the hall for Rebecca. Rina is excitedly showing him something on his phone without a care in the world.

Rebecca has no time to curse him for being so womanizing. Instead, she thanks him internally, sneaks out, and shuts the door softly. It’s not until she finally turns the next corner that she lets her back hit the wall.

As she relearns to breath, Thanatos eventually makes it to her side. He frowns. “Well?”

She pulls out the folders and slams them into his chest as she simultaneously begins putting her shoes back on. “Never ever again.”

Without opening them, Thanatos puts them in his own bag. “If it makes you feel any better,” he begins. She stands after snapping her shoe strap back into place. He turns away when she tries to make eye contact. “If it makes you feel any better, it won’t have been for nothing.”

Rebecca can’t even bring herself to smile, but she lets out a bitter laugh. “Just take the stupid files, solve this thing, and leave.” Her fists clench until her knuckles are white, and her eyes stare holes into the floor. Thanatos looks at her again, cautious.

There’s silence thick like miasma, and they both stand there, wading in it. Thanatos crosses his arms. “Did you. . . look in them? The files.” Rebecca nods, and she thinks she’s hallucinating as his face softens slightly. “I’m sorry. I should have warned you.”

Her head snaps up, but he’s already walking down the hallway. “Wait--” she tries weakly, but he doesn’t stop.

“There’s nothing else for you to do besides keep an eye on Angelica Waterson.” He doesn’t spare her a backwards glance, but he does briefly tap his gloved index finger against her shoulder as he passes. “Until Friday, Miss Hawthorne.”

Rebecca presses her palms to her eyes so as not to cry.