Chapter 67 – Step into the Paranormal – Holly Hayfield

In the privacy of my own room, I was sitting comfortably on my bed while staring down at an object of disbelief. I held in my hands an official school badge that identified me as a junior member of the staff. After I questioned Ms. Sampson’s ability to offhandedly make me an intern out of nowhere she took it as a challenge. She had this badge made for me in the very same day as evidence. This badge represented a chance for me to go to college as I hoped. Ms. Sampson assured me a generous tuition would come with the internship.

So I was given a choice. Could I put aside my concerns about Ms. Sampson and her dark past for long enough to see through this internship? Or did I turn on her and help Lilith and the others reveal to the world what she really was? It was rare that my self-interest was placed so highly above the wishes of others, but this type of opportunity was rare. All of my distress, all of my concerns about being able to get back onto the right path after high school could end with the help of this badge.

The badge itself was shining like a holy relic to me. I couldn’t even bring myself to tell my friends about it just yet. My friends… What would they think of me for accepting this deal? Jay’s opinion, I wouldn’t care about. Sam would probably understand. It was Val and Lilith that would likely have objections to it. I put the badge back into my backpack. I’d decide on what to tell them after a hot bath.

While I was in the bathtub I felt like I was boiling with anticipation. I decided that I’d call Lilith right away. The phone didn’t ring for long before she picked up.

“Hey Lilith, are you busy?”

“Not anymore, I was just finishing up some homework. What’s that sound in the background? Are you outside?”

“Actually, I’m in the bath.”

“You were in that much of a rush to talk to me? What is it?”

“It’s nothing too important. I just wanted to talk about the Occult Club.”

There was a lot of shuffling noises on the other end as Lilith moved around.

“Now you’ve got my attention.” Lilith said much louder now, “Malorie talked a lot about the Occult club in her diary.”

“I know. Now the Occult club is talking about her. Funny how that works…”

“What do you mean…?”

“I had a long talk with Ms. Sampson earlier today. She offered me a deal. She wanted me to get information on the Occult club. Apparently they were trying to get information out of Ms. Logan also. I can’t say how successful they were. That’s probably what Ms. Sampson wants me to find out.”

“And in return…?”

“In return… You’re not going to believe this. In return she’s making me a junior member of the staff. She wants me to officially intern as a counselor. She gave me a staff badge and everything.”

I could hardly contain my excitement, even over the phone. This was a massive thing to come by. Maybe that was why I wanted to call Lilith so badly. I wanted to share my excitement with someone. However, Lilith remained silent on her end. She was probably still mulling it over. Suddenly I felt like I was about to hear some sharp judgment.

“I’m jealous.” She said finally.

“Really…? I thought you’d be upset?”

“Upset…? Well, I am a little. It sucks that you have to do that woman’s dirty work. On the other hand, we’ve all been talking about changing the school in the long term. I know Mrs. Douglass is retiring soon. If you could replace her then we have a foothold into the future.”

“You’re right!” I said without even thinking about it, “That aspect totally flew over my head.”

“I’ve also been hoping to work at my great grandmother’s school.” Lilith said. “If we can teach there together then I’ll have someone to fall back on if I need help.”

I smiled broadly, not that she could see it.

“That sounds wonderful. I think I like that sort of future vision of us working together. We can continue the work of improving the school into the future, just like you said.”

“I think you’re the right sort of person to see through my great grandmother’s dream anyways.” Lilith said.

“Wow. I think that’s the highest praise you’ve ever given me.” I said.

“Oh brother, don’t mention it.” She said with a small chuckle, “Anyways, does this mean you’re going to visit the Occult Club soon?”

“I’m slated to have my first chat with them tomorrow. They don’t know this yet so it’ll be a surprise. Hopefully it goes well.”

“I’d like to go with you.”

“I thought you weren’t interested in Ms. Sampson’s dirty work?”

“I’m not. If they’re interested in Malorie then I want to find out more.”

“According to Ms. Sampson they were printing out copies of the Night of the Killing Cat. Ms. Sampson handed me one of their pamphlets. It was different from the ones we printed. It looked like they scanned our original pamphlets and printed them out in a rush. The ink was spotty in places.”

“That’s even more reason to go and see them.” Lilith said. “What sort of reason do they have for doing that? They don’t even know Malorie’s full story yet, right?”

“We’ll see what they know tomorrow.” I said.

The next day went differently from how I imagined it would. Ms. Sampson personally asked me to wear my badge around my neck so that it was on full display. She wanted people to know that my status of intern counselor was now official. I didn’t think my status could rise any higher after becoming vice president, and after the events of the Fall Festival. Yet here I was setting new heights. People were in awe of the fact of my staff badge.

To make this unusual experience even more alien to me, Ms. Sampson gave me another task. She had me deliver the morning announcements during first period. Normally that was left to members of the staff and the first period office assistant. When I returned to class after giving the announcements people cheered for me as I walked in. I smiled and waved politely. I could see that in the corner Black Brittney watched me with a sour look on her face.

At lunch Naomi made a stopover at the student council room. We were all busy eating our lunches when she came in without warning.

“Let me see it!” Naomi said as she came in. “It can’t be true, can it?”

She was walking over to me before anyone could say anything. I pointed at the badge hanging from the lanyard around my neck. Naomi excitedly put her hands on my shoulders and shook me.

“Holly! You really got an internship with the school? How…? That’s unreal!” Naomi said.

“It comes at a high price.” Val said. “Ms. Sampson took Holly in because she learned about the journal.”

“What journal…?” Naomi asked.

“This journal,” Val said.

Val slid my counseling journal across the table near where Naomi was standing. Naomi picked it up and flipped through the first few pages. Then she lowered it down enough to give me a smirk.

“You’re a little spy. I knew I should’ve kept a closer eye on you.” Naomi said.

I laughed.

“What are you talking about? You don’t remember when you were trying to recruit me?” I asked. “You had your eyes on me the entire time. You had your eyes all over me way too much. If you didn’t undress me with your eyes back then maybe I would’ve joined your group.”

“True…” Naomi said with a soft laugh.

Naomi sat the journal down on the table.

“You came here just to talk to Holly?” Val asked, “Or are you staying for lunch? I don’t imagine the rest of your girlfriends will be happy with that unless they’re all waiting out in the library.”

“Nah, they’re waiting for us outside.” Naomi said.

“Us...?” Val asked.

Naomi looked over at Sam.

“Sam, it’s time to do that thing. We need every person. Let’s go.”

“Right,” Sam said as she got up, taking her lunch tray with her.

“We’ve still got a meeting to finish!” Val said as they headed for the door.

“You’ll have to fill me in on ChatCat! I’ll be on there tonight! Peace!” Sam said as she walked out behind Naomi.

“That’s suspicious.” Jay said.

“It’s to be expected.” I said. “Sam is a member of two groups.”

“Which is a problem,” Val said. “This needs to become her only group.”

“We’ll have to save our meeting for Monday anyways.” I said, “We don’t have enough time left in lunch and Lilith and I have a visit to make after school.”

Val pushed the food in her lunch tray around with her fork.

“Will this spying for the vice principal become a regular thing?” Val asked.

“I hope not.” I said. “Any information I get from helping her could be useful to our purposes as well.”

Lilith sat down her fork as she finished eating.

“We think the Occult Club knows more about Malorie than was in the pamphlet.” Lilith said. “This little meeting will let us gauge exactly how much they know.”

Val’s eyes never left mine, even as Lilith spoke. She was looking at me as if she was afraid to lose me. It wasn’t like this would mean I’d abandon her goals. I was partly doing this for her goal of seeing this school changed. Admittedly, I was being driven mostly by self-interest this time.

“Whatever I gather on them I’ll share with you as well. I don’t know what Ms. Sampson is planning for me in the long term, but whatever it is I won’t let it hurt our original goals.”

Val nodded at me reassuringly.

“I can’t trust Ms. Sampson, but I can trust you. I know you’ve got a strong head on your shoulders. You won’t let her manipulate you like a puppet. If she asks you to do something you don’t want to do then hold your ground, just like I taught you.” She said with a sly smile.

That was the closest thing to her official blessing that I was going to get. During the remainder of the school day I spent some time reading up on occultism on my phone. Thanks to Malorie’s diary I already had a slight understanding of the topic, but my knowledge still lacked depth. What was it that drove these types of people to fawn over such mysticism? Was it the fantasy? Was it an escape? Or was it the belief that our world could be more than meets the eye?

I’d have my answers after school. That was going to be the way I pegged reasons for seeking them out. I’d tell them about my badge and Ms. Sampson’s ire, but for the most part my plan was based on a strategy of speaking softly. I hadn’t met Sofi and Alyssa before this. The rumors about them were eccentric though. They had a history of practicing their ‘alchemy’ out in the open. From what I heard about them I wasn’t sure if they were scam artists or truly believed themselves capable of magic.

Lilith and I met up after school outside the library. There were countless unofficial after school clubs at our school and most of them used unoccupied rooms without permission. These were usually overlooked as being fairly petty offenses, especially when most of them had honest extracurricular activities at heart. However, some of them, like the Occult Club, had to go the extra mile to set themselves apart from the others. That must’ve been the reasoning for the Occult Club’s awkward and isolated location.

They were located on one of the far reaches of a remote wing. It was like they weren’t just trying to separate themselves from the rest of the clubs, but from the rest of the school as a whole. The entire hallway they were located in had decorations that were meant to give the feeling of occultism. The hallway had two full scale skeleton models standing like guards at the entrance of their hallway. The skeletons themselves were probably stolen from one of the science material storage rooms. Both skeletons wore black robes with their hands clasped together in prayer form.

These two skeletons were just the beginning. They were standing across from each other, and just off of the black carpet that lined the center of the hallway. The hallway carpet was lined by decorative vases, busts of great philosophical thinkers, and the occasional plant holder filled with fake roses. On one side of the hallway there were windows heavily filtered by thick grey curtains. The shaded light that fell through gave the hallway a gloomy vibe. On the other side of the hallway there were paintings of historical locations hanging up. The view was actually impressive, albeit a little overdone.

Lilith and I gave each other an astonished look as we started walking down this hallway.

“I recognize some of this junk,” Lilith said. “They’ve been plunging through the storage rooms closer to the main part of the school. I’m surprised no teacher has busted them over this.”

“I doubt many teachers patrol out this far.” I said. “Coming out this far every day seems like it would be a hassle. They’ve got some serious drive if they decided to make their base this far from the center just to do all this.”

“Serious drive…?” Lilith asked, “You’ve got an enlightened way of looking at it. I think this is more about flying their colors. They know they have this hallway to themselves and their flaunting it.”

“You’re probably right. They aren’t the only ones that act like this either.” I said.

“That’s why I hope one of the changes Val makes is to get rid of this type of thing.” Lilith said.

“Aren’t you worried the school will lose some of its character if we went around tearing down these types of student-made enclaves?” I asked.

“We’ll lose some, but it’s for the best. For every group that has unique designs like this, there are five more that disgrace the school’s image with graffiti and gang symbols.” Lilith said.

“You want to return everything to the default blank slate concrete?”

Lilith looked at me with a stony, resolute expression on her face.

“I want the entire school to be repainted and treated with respect.” Lilith said, “We can’t do that until all this other crap has been cleared out. It’s a shame that the walls and floors have been so poorly treated for so long. This Occult Club has gone for a creative look that I can respect, but this sort of shady imagery lends itself to the shady spirit of the school. I want to change both.”

I thought about that as we continued walking. She had a point. Perception of the school’s appearance would have an important effect on the school’s culture. What we had now was sectarian independence between groups. The school itself lacked a universal image. Lilith was leaving out that changing that image would require more than what the student council could change. It’d require serious money and the full support of the staff.

We came upon the door of the Occult Club down at the end of the hall. It was clear that it was their main room by the decorations that were surrounding it. Every other door that we had walked by in this hallway was left naked and unadorned. This door, however, was pompously overdressed with tacky decorations. On either side of the door stood two oversized fake plants, multiple frames with paintings, decorative beads pinned to the walls that drooped all the way down to the floor, and floor to ceiling tapestry.

“They must think they’re royalty or something.” Lilith said.

“Let’s go in and see that for ourselves.” I said.

Stepping into the Occult Club clubroom was like stepping into an amusement park attraction. The room had its side windows covered by massive curtains, just like in the hallway. The dark room was littered in even more rambunctious baubles and trinkets than the hallway. There were so many miscellaneous objects filling this room that it was hard to find a spot to rest my eyes. It was like a maze with no center, a painting with no focus.

The two members of the Occult Club stopped what they were doing to look up at us as we came in. There was a game board on the table that they both had their hands on. The table was overflowing with candles of multiple types and sizes that were filling the room with a strange, overbearing perfume-like smell. Beside the game board, there was what looked to be a dead bird. I was hoping that it was just a prop and not a real dead animal that they brought in. I wouldn’t be able to tell from the smell because of all the candles.

The girl sitting closer to the middle of the table shot out of her chair, slammed her hands against the table, and smiled broadly.

“New members…?” She shouted as she got up.

She went around the table so fast that I could almost swear that she was coming to tackle us.

“Wait..! I know you…!” She said as she approached Lilith, “You’re Lilith Meredith! Does this mean you finally read my letters?”

“Letters…?” Lilith asked, then a flicker of recall lit up on her face, “You…! You were the one that stuffed those letters into my locker?”

“Yeah, that was me! I’m Sofi! Didn’t you read them?” Sofi asked.

“No! I didn’t! I thought that all those letters being dumped into my locker was some form of harassment, so I tossed them.”

“What?!”

“What was I supposed to think? Who stuffs a stranger’s locker full of nearly a hundred letters? I assumed it was from one of the girls I told to get lost when they tried to talk to me in the library.”

“You can’t have just… I…” Sofi said in disbelief as she backed away from Lilith with one hand on her head.

She nearly fell over as she vacantly bumped against the table behind her. Her friend caught her and supported her to keep her from falling. As Sofi regained her footing she walked right back up to Lilith with an angry expression.

“Do you know how long it took us to make those letters?! Alyssa and I made them all by hand?! If you had read any of them then you would know that we know.”

“That you know what?” I asked.

Sofi raised an eyebrow at me.

“That we know about the truth behind the Killing Cat’s murder of Judith Meredith!” Sofi said

Lilith laughed mockingly.

“Oh please,” Lilith said.

“It’s true.” Alyssa said quietly. “We talked to the grandson of one of the women that used to work for Judith Meredith. He told us all about it.”

“You can’t be serious.” Lilith said.

“Of course I am!” Sofi said. “I thought that was why you came here today. Aren’t you interested in finding out the truth?”

“That’s not why we’re here.” Lilith said.

I stepped ahead of Lilith and Sofi turned her attention to me.

“We’re here because Ms. Sampson knows that you were printing out copies of the Night of the Killing Cat.” I said. “It wasn’t wise of you to publicly hand those out to people, especially now. Ms. Sampson is looking for scapegoats and you two have made yourselves ample targets.”

“Tch, like I care what she thinks,” Sofi said, “She’s part of the problem.”

“That’s not the only reason we’re here.” I said. “I want to know what you were meeting with Ms. Logan about.”