YV had only opened the curtain about a quarter’s way, just enough to let all 4 of them gaze upon the sight. White chalk markings carved into the ground, bending, twisting and stretching into what looked to be a giant symbol etched into the bricks.

It was hard to make out shapes in the dark– the only light illuminating the inside of the tent being the spitting flames from rapidly dying candles. but her eyes slowly traced towards the centre of the tent, following the white lines of the pentagram until the white chalk stained red. Crimson red. 

She saw a pair of feet, and her eyes wandered upwards until she pieced together the figure of a young man slumped over on a chair in the centre of the clearing, one hand tied to the backrest, another dangling off the edge like a corpse. But it was odd, there were really no words to describe how horrifying it was. 

He didn’t have a face.

 • • •

Willowfield. 

Rubie hadn’t been in this place since Kiana Michaud died 6 years ago. Her own childhood town somehow even managed to smell unfamiliar when she stepped off the bus that’d ferried her all the way to her new school.

New– that sounded a little funny. Willowpeak International Academy, or WIA for short, had been her second home for more than half of her life at this point. But here she was, standing face to face with those iron fences again. It was surreal, there was a point in her life where she'd give up anything just to get as far away from WIA's walls as she possibly could, but considering what had just transpired back at her old school? This place seemed like such a safe haven.

Her soles hit the concrete sidewalk, a rhythmic beat drumming out against the rough ground, and that was the last thing she remembered before her mind switched to autopilot. The pearly silver gates of the school looked duller than she remembered them to be underneath the early morning sky, and Rubie had to squint to identify the figure that was supposed to receive her at the gates. Making out his silhouette almost immediately, standing tall and stark against the rest of the environment, there was a man stood in front of the main gates. Dark circles dragged down his eyelids, the customer service smile he was probably forced into maintaining wavered, Rubie could only assume that his button up shirt was ironed that morning, but it’d since creased and wrinkled so much you’d think he was just some bypasser- not a representative of a fancy, publicly revered private school.

Well, it wasn’t like she blamed him– it was like, what? 2 in the morning? Both Rubie and the WIA management agreed on having her come to sort out everything she’d need to start attending the school this evening. But somehow, someway, that’d all been shifted to the most ungodly hours of the night for no apparent reason at all. There was no debating that they, the attendant and the entirety of the WIA management, were as tired as she was.

“Miss Rubie..? Rubie Yang?”

His voice startled her, it was like something out of a movie trailer- and now that she was face to face with him it became clear to her just how scarily tall this man was, he was easily over 6 foot and had an aura so distinct you’d probably be able to tell him out of a crowd of hundreds of people.

“Y-yes Sir. Rubie Yang.”

The attendant nodded, reaching to grab at whatever bags she was hauling around as he beckoned her over with the flick of his wrist. With only the fluorescent street lights to guide their way, Rubie watched in silence as her attendant pointed out every item and place of interest they passed by. The gardens, the classrooms, the monuments they’d built to commemorate the founders of the school as well as the entire town in general, the list went on and on. For a moment she pondered telling him the truth– it’d save him the hassle of giving her a mini-tour if he knew she’d been here before, but there never seemed to be a good time to interject.

Finally, they stopped in front of a building on campus sectioned off from the school, it wasn’t nearly as big as the main building, but large enough that Rubie could have easily mistaken it as an apartment block.

“The dorms.” Rubie had gotten used to the blunt way he spoke already, paying it no mind. “If our pastoral team has it right, I believe you’ll be staying here from now, I trust that you-”

Crack! 

He paused mid-sentence. Voice cutting off unceremoniously to the sound of something snapping from the woods behind them. Both her and the attendant had turned around to face the noise on instinct, the radio silence that flooded the air was suffocating, taunting the fear that spiked in her gut. But while he turned his head back around to her the second later, Rubie let her gaze linger for little while longer, curiosity bubbling up as she strained her ears– there was something else that came from the woods too. It sounded like wind, the kind that came out sounding like dreadful moans and torturous groaning. It wasn’t just that either. It was… no… she swore she saw something move- it looked like a crowd of people, an entanglement of forest animals, or the shadowy limbs of a–

“Miss Yang.”

Her focus broke hearing him call out to her. The stern look in the attendant’s eyes rubbed her the wrong way, for all the time she’d spent listening to him talk, this was the first time he’d ever said something with so much meaning put behind it. The wordless agreement to keep going fell onto them as the man kept walking, this time seemingly more tense than before.

They walked all the way to her dorm room in silence. A silence so tense you’d be afraid one wrong move would break it. He stayed closer to her too, the distance between them growing smaller and smaller until Rubie had the courage to force some space between them.

Soon enough, they reached her building, taking the slow elevator up to the third floor where she’d be staying. The attendant handed the keys over to her, the cold metal shocking her warm palms, and she stared at the tag attached to the end of it– ‘#312’... it must have been her dorm number.

Rubie looked up at him with polite eyes, reassuring him that it’d be fine if he left her to her own devices now. But as tired as he appeared, her attendant still insisted on walking her straight to her room. She felt her gut churn– it wasn’t hard to notice these things, he was kind of starting to freak her out and despite the innate trust she put into WIA as an institute, it wasn’t a bad idea to keep her guard up.

They came to a halt at door 312. That was when he finally handed over all her bags.

“I’m sure you’re aware, but you have a roommate. We’ve alerted her beforehand of your arrival so don’t try anything funny, just a reminder.”

“Yeah…” she forced a smile. “Right. Thank you.”

And with that she was left on her own, the attendant slowly started to walk back to the elevator, slower than what she’d tag as normal. She tried to shake her mind off of it. Realistically speaking there was no way he was as bad as she thought he was– she must have been exaggerating things in her mind. Rubie let out a rough sigh, casting her gaze out to the world from the balcony, her eyes dragging over the school, over all the places he’d told her about, then slowly, to the woods. She’d come to realise that there was a fire in the distance. Campers, maybe?

DING!

The elevator. Rubie turned around to the sound on instinct, just to be met with a dead cold stare. The attendant was looking right at her as the doors closed.

…

Inside, maybe she needed to go inside now.

Willowfield…was a lot stranger than she remembered it ever being.