Chapter 63 – The Masquerade Begins – Erica Henson

Val stood in front of me with the iron fortitude of an imposing statue. I took a risk by reaching my hand out to her and caressing her face like a close friend. Something had taken over me. It was a will, perhaps, to return to the way things once were. It was wrong of my past self to con her into submissive control, I knew that now, and I wanted to make amends. Now her clandestine silence after I made my move was giving me pause.

Her response came all of a sudden. She slapped my hand away at the wrist. I grabbed my hand in pain and looked at her with curiosity.

“Consider that your final warning.” She said as I rubbed my wrist. “I didn’t know back then to tell when someone is trying to ruse me into something. I know well enough now, thanks to your lessons. Erica, don’t do this again.”

She gave a nod to Holly and then bumped my shoulder as she walked by me. Holly, however, stood in place looking at me with such a sad look of pity. Holly was regarding me as if she were watching a scene from a sad movie. Was I that pathetic? She closed her eyes and shook her head.

“That could’ve gone worse.” Holly said.

“You mean it could’ve gone better!” I retorted.

“I warned you, Erica, remember? You didn’t listen to me back then. Listen to me now. Don’t push Valentina any harder. She has enough on her mind without you getting in her way.”

Holly’s words were spoken gently yet there was certain harshness to them. However I refused to give in right then and there.

“I wanted…”

“Closure…?” Holly asked, “That was the best closure you could possibly ask for.”

I bit my lip in frustration. Holly took two steps forward so that she was standing right beside me. She put a hand on my shoulder and gave me a heartfelt look.

“Erica…” She whispered, “If you want to prove to her that you’ve changed it isn’t enough to just say it to her. You’ve got to show it.”

“How…?” I asked.

“That much I’ll leave up to you,” She said with a slight nod, “Don’t let this stop you from enjoying the festival. I’ll see you inside.”

She left me to stand there out in the cold as she followed Val into the gymnasium. I probably should’ve gone inside with them, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow them so closely behind. I stood there, listening to the sounds of joy emanating from the gymnasium now that the festival had officially started. The cheerfulness I heard from inside were so authentic that I couldn’t help but to feel pained. I had never known such authentic happiness, not in a long time.

Eventually I forced myself to go back in if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I wouldn’t lie down and die after being rejected. Up on the stage Valentina was giving the commencement speech before the crowd of costumed attendees. Holly was standing beside her in a robe and mask, a beacon of academic honor. She looked like she naturally belonged up there. They both did. Holly completed Valentina’s external image in a way that I could’ve never imagined.

The more I thought about it, the more pained I was. It was no wonder that Valentina wasn’t willing to let me back into her life with Holly standing at her side. I used to pretend to be the perfect angelic honorary student. Holly was the real deal, incorruptible and indisputable. Holly’s mere existence seemed to defy the nature of this school’s rule of law. Jackie had once told me that there was another side to Holly, but that wasn’t quite right. Holly could be shrewd when she needed to, but she was never a two-faced liar. Not like me.

The festival kicked off with a massive boom. As soon as the commencement was done, everyone rushed the dance floor as music blared throughout the gymnasium. I found myself trying to push my way through a crowd of elated masked dancers. My misfortune set me on the wrong side of the gym, apart from Jackie. Jackie was really the only person I felt like I could talk to during all this. She wasn’t involved with my conflict with Val, and thus would offer me a stress relieving respite.

Although I planned to meet up with Jackie, Zoe found me first. She stopped me in the most inconvenient spot on the dance floor.

“Have you seen Lilith?” She asked me, her words drowned out by the music and cheering.

“Lilith…?” I asked to confirm her question, “I haven’t seen her. Why?”

“My questions…!” Zoe tried to shout over the background noise, “The basement…! She might know…!”

Zoe was a serious person. She wasn’t here to have fun, not even a bit. She wasn’t even wearing a mask, forget a costume. She mentioned earlier that she wanted to confront Lilith about the basement, but I wasn’t sure if she was serious. Given the fact that Lilith regarded Zoe the same way Val regarded me made me doubt Zoe’s assertions.

“Maybe she isn’t here tonight…!” I shouted, “This thing doesn’t seem like her style anyways!”

Zoe didn’t look satisfied with that answer. She broke off from me and stormed away in the opposite direction. Was she really going to try hunting Lilith down? Maybe this was about more than the basement for her. Maybe she hoped to make amends with Lilith like I tried to with Val? Here I thought I was the only miserable person in this sea of joy.

After pushing through another gauntlet of dancing fools I finally made it to the other side of the gym. Jackie was there wearing the tiger mask that I made for her earlier that week. She was sipping her drink, pointing and shouting at some girls that were being particularly rowdy. From what I gathered it looked like a fight was about to go down. These two girls had bumped into each other and now they were calling up their group to back them up.

“I told you all to shut the hell up!” Jackie shouted at them, “I don’t care who started it! I’m ending it! So put your masks back on, go somewhere else, and enjoy yourselves for the night! This is the best time of your lives, girls! After this it’s all downhill!”

The girls reluctantly backed off, listening to their ferocious vice principal. As I expected, the tiger mask fit her perfectly.

“Erica!” Jackie said as I approached, “Why aren’t you out there having fun?”

“I’m not feeling all that well…” I said.

“Did something happen?” She asked.

“Nothing that I feel like talking about,” I said, “What about you? Are things going better over here?”

“The staff has already broken up two fights.” Jackie said with a sense of irritability in her voice. “This is the reason we usually don’t do dances and festivals. The school’s population is too out of control.”

“It looks like a huge amount of people showed up. I never would’ve imagined…”

“You can thank Holly and her little event planning group.” Jackie said. “They worked above and beyond my expectations. The only problem is that it’s hard to keep eyes on everyone with the gym filled to the brim.”

“I wonder if I could’ve pulled this off if I won that student council vote.” I said.

“It’s not important.” She said. “There’s no sense in beating yourself up with those types of questions. Relax, enjoy yourself.”

It was hard to enjoy myself in a place like this. My main reason for coming to this festival was to have my conversation with Val. Now that it had ended in flames there was nothing left for me here. All of the ‘friends’ I had in this school were hardly real friends. They were mostly people I associated with in passing. I never managed to make any deep connections with anyone since coming here. Maybe that was why I was so desperate to reconnect with Val.

“There you are!” Someone shouted angrily, pushing through the crowd of girls.

Jackie and I turned to look at who was causing a commotion as they barged their way through a group of students near us. It was Ms. Logan, or at least a demented woman that looked like Ms. Logan. To call her a mess was putting it lightly. Her makeup was rolling down her face on paths forged by heavy tears. Her hair which was usually messy was especially crazy with strands of hair shooting in every direction. Some of her hair was obscuring her glaring expression. In one hand she held a bottle.

“Abby…” Jackie said, pulling her tiger mask off to the side, “What the hell is this?”

Ms. Logan smiled an obviously fake smile and tried to walk forward. She stumbled forward as she tried to come closer. She almost fell but Jackie caught her before that could happen. People around us had stopped dancing all together to get a good look at this drunken teacher. Abby pulled herself away from Jackie’s hold with an aggressive flail of her hands. She stumbled back and nearly fell as she did so.

“You…” Ms. Logan said heatedly, “You took everything away from me! You took my friends! You took my job! You took my future…!”

Jackie raised her hands as if to calm Ms. Logan.

“Abby… You’re not thinking straight right now. You know you’re not supposed to be drinking. Where’d you even get that bottle?”

Ms. Logan pulled away before Jackie could take the bottle of alcohol away from her. She downed a shot straight from the bottle as she backed away.

“Some stupid kids were drinking behind the gym! Does it even matter? It’s mine now! Haha!”

Ms. Logan wasn’t in control of the volume of her voice. In fact, her voice was filled with much more confidence than usual. She had a totally different air about her tonight. This felt wrong, and it wasn’t merely the alcohol. Normally she’d never willingly confront Jackie. I, like many others around us, could only watch this new Ms. Logan with a dumbfounded expression.

Jackie tried to snatch the bottle from her hands. Ms. Logan resisted. They fought for the bottle.

“Let it go!” Jackie said angrily as she tugged on the bottle. “You’re causing a scene in front of a lot of people. Remember the talk we had a few days ago…”

“You’re not the boss of me! Not anymore!” Ms. Logan shouted back with equal fierceness. “You don’t give me commands anymore! Not on this, not on anything!”

The bottle went flying out of their hands and hit the ground just beneath them, alcohol spilling onto both of them. The loud shattering of the glass caused even more girls to look over at the two of them. I wasn’t surprised to see Jackie look up at Ms. Logan with a dark expression. The thing that I found surprising was the fact that Ms. Logan was mirroring this exact same look. The surrounding audience watched them with quiet awe.

“You betrayed me.” Ms. Logan said in a lowered voice. “I trusted you. I LIED for you! And yet you still betrayed me!”

Something about what Ms. Logan was saying caused a flicker of panic to appear on Jackie’s face. Jackie glanced quickly over at me, then at the other girls that were watching this showdown.

“If you want to talk about things, let’s go outside and talk in private…” Jackie said in a hushed voice.

“Why?” Ms. Logan asked with a brazen grin, “Is there something you don’t want all these troubled girls to hear? Hmm? You don’t want them to know about the things that happened when you were just a little troubled girl yourself? They don’t know that you still are, same as me. Let’s tell everyone about what really happened 10 years ago.”

Jackie had gone from a look of trying to maintain control, to a look of outright aggression.

“You shut your mouth.” Jackie said.

“Or what…?” Ms. Logan asked, “Am I going to get the same treatment as Malorie did? Are you going to stitch my mouth up too?”

Suddenly Jackie snapped and slapped Ms. Logan so hard that I thought it might knock her unconscious. Ms. Logan drunkenly stumbled backwards to the ground. Everyone watching exclaimed their shock in whispers to each other. This had me on edge. Jackie had crossed a serious line and worse yet, she had done it in front of a crowd of spectators. As Ms. Logan stood back up with a hand on her cheek it was clear in her eyes that she wasn’t planning on walking away from this. In fact, she looked even more resolute than before.

“It always comes to violence with you, Jackie. You’ve never changed.”

“Shut. Up.” Jackie said in a firm warning.

“Malorie’s voice has kept me up at night for the past ten years. I don’t think I’ve really had a good night’s rest.” Ms. Logan said. “You don’t have that problem, do you? A monster like you probably sleeps like a baby.”

This time when Jackie hit Ms. Logan it was with a clenched fist. She hit her nose so hard that Ms. Logan’s nose began bleeding profusely. Jackie stepped closer towards her and raised another clenched fist. Everyone watching tensed up with anticipation. That’s when I threw my arms around Jackie’s waist and tried to pull her back from Ms. Logan with all my strength! Jackie resisted my pull so that she could keep fighting.

“Help!” I shouted to some of the staff members in the distance. “Help me out over here!”

The music was still so loud that my voice didn’t travel very far. The girls around us waved their arms towards some of the other staff members. When they realized something was happening they began to hustle over. Luckily the first person over wasn’t one of the regular staff members. It was Officer Angelica Morelli that came rushing through. The moment she laid eyes on the situation she knew what was going on.

“Jackie…” She said woefully, “What have you done?”

The moment Ms. Logan saw Officer Morelli, she took off and ran. Jackie turned that direction, as if to follow her.

“Get back here!” She shouted. “I’m not done with you!”

Officer Morelli took my place in holding Ms. Sampson still. Officer Morelli then looked at me.

“Erica! I need to talk to her! This is serious! She might be going to her car! If she drives off now it could be trouble! I need you to chase after her and tell her to come back! Can you do that for me?”

“I’ll try.” I said.

Ms. Logan already had a headstart on me but I was able to see where she was going from a distance. She burst through the gym doors and ran out into the night. It took me some time to push my way through the girls oblivious to the confrontation, but I soon made it outside. Surprisingly enough she wasn’t headed for her car. Maybe that was because of the alcohol? Instead, she started for the woods like she just wanted to put distance between her and the school. That was understandable, but I couldn’t let her go so easily.

Keeping up with her was hard to do once she made it into the woods. The farther and farther we got away from the school, the darker and darker it became. It reached the point where the light coming from the school was just a glowing blur of indistinct sources. The music was faint, barely hearable at all. Just how far had we ran? I was completely out of breath. Worst yet, I was failing at my goal. She had disappeared somewhere within the trees.

“Ms. Logan…!” I shouted into the darkness, “Ms. Logan where are you?”

She didn’t call back to me. The eeriness of the dark woods was beginning to haunt me. I started to backpedal, afraid to continue on any further. As long as she didn’t leave school grounds it was fine, right? She wouldn’t leave without her car, would she? I turned my back on the denser forested woods ahead of me and started to walk back towards the school. That was when I heard it.

There was a blood curdling scream coming from the darkness behind me.

The sound was so chilling, so horrible, that I turned back in disbelief. Was that Ms. Logan…? Did trip and she hurt herself? Then she screamed, again, this scream being suddenly cut short by the sound of echoed gargling and coughing. My skin went pale. My body felt stiff. I felt weak.

“Ms. Logan…?” I asked worriedly.

One step after another I propelled myself forward into the darkness. My instincts were all telling me to turn back and run, but I couldn’t. After a cry like that I had to check if she was alright. Despite my brave resolve to continue into the darkness, my entire body was shaking. Half of me was afraid to see what I would find after a scream like that. The other half was morbidly curious.

There was a small clearing between the trees. That was where I found Ms. Logan, along with someone else. This other person didn’t even really seem like a real person, just a shadow. It was a dark silhouette of a humanoid outline in the distance. This shadow was holding Ms. Logan propped up in her lap as Ms. Logan lie motionless. As I stepped through the grass to get a better look, the masked shadow noticed and looked up at me.

Shining blue eyes beamed through the darkness. It was clear, now, that this was indeed another person and not a figment of my imagination. This person was wearing a cat-like mask that had been rigged with lights to glow around the eyes. From the distance I was standing at, it was like I was looking into the cold eyes of a ghost. The eyes were such a cold blue that I felt an unnatural chill just looking at them.

This person laid Ms. Logan into the grass and turned away from me. As soon as the glowing eyes were no longer facing my direction the person was only a shadow once again. The figure walked into the woods and my eyes quickly lost them to the darkness. Now that it was gone I felt unfrozen. I rushed over to Ms. Logan’s side and dropped myself into the grass beside her. She was bleeding profusely. There was a single stab wound in her chest, and the light was slowly leaving her eyes. She slightly turned her head towards me when she noticed me.

“Ms. Logan…!” I cried, “Ms. Logan…!”

I didn’t know what else to say! I had never been in a situation like this! This woman was dying right before me and there was nothing I could do! When I came to find her this wasn’t what I expected to find! I grabbed her hand and kept shouting.

“Ms. Logan…!” I screamed, “Ms. Logan…!”

With the last of her strength, Ms. Logan put one hand up on the tears rolling down my cheek. She coughed up some blood as she tried to speak. What was so important that she was willing to bear the pain of trying to speak?

“She… She’s back…” Ms. Logan barely said between coughs. “Did you see her? She was… beautiful.”

After that last word the coughing finally subdued once and for all. Her eyes were still blankly facing me, but not looking at me, or anything. I didn’t know what to do other than cry. I grabbed her by the shoulders and shook, still calling her name as if she were going to pop back up. The blood that was on her clothes was getting all over my hands as I shook her. I begged her to respond, pleading with her to give me a sign. It was in vain. She was dead.

“She’s dead.” I whispered to myself, trying to swallow the idea.

I pulled my shaking hands away from her and looked at her blood on my hands.

“She’s dead!” I shouted at myself as the weight of the situation fell on me.

I picked myself up and put myself into action! I had to tell someone! I had to tell everyone! My vision was locked on the lights coming from the school as I made my way back. My breathing felt weak and my legs felt even weaker. Yet I couldn’t stop. I wouldn’t stop. I had to let them know.

I burst into the gymnasium in a panic, the girls closest to the door noticing my dire state as I came in. This time when I pushed my way through the crowd I was overtly aggressive. Everyone was still so cheerful that I wanted to scream at them, all of them, for being so oblivious! My emotions were high and my nerves were shot. I had to tell them!

The moment I saw Jackie still talking to Officer Morelli I interrupted their conversation by throwing myself into her. I was crying like a baby, shivering, and clutching her tighter than I had ever clutched anyone. She reflexively held me carefully, but casually scanning around to see how many people were watching this. It was Officer Morelli that pulled me back. She pulled me back by one of my arms, gawking at all of the blood all over my hands and clothing. Jackie looked at me with the same stunned expression.

“She’s dead!” I cried at the top of my lungs, “Ms. Logan is dead!”