Nora and the Nightmare King

The cab was jostled as it drove down the bumpy gravel road, knocking Nora from side to side. She did her best to keep her elbow from hitting the armrest of the car’s chunky, wood-paneled door but was unsuccessful. If she had her cell phone with her, she would have listened to music or watched videos, but her parents had confiscated it as an added punishment. So, she had to settle for watching the rain streak the cab’s windows. It was coming down so hard that she could barely see anything outside, the trees on either side of the road becoming nothing more than a tangled blur of bare branches.

Nora’s parents, who had made it very clear to her that this was “for her own good,” and claimed to love her “very much,” had sent her off to a co-ed boarding school an hour north of her hometown—despite Nora’s protests. The school, Margaret Meadowsweet’s Moderate School for Troubled Youth, was known for helping misbehaved children and teens better adjust to the expectations placed on them by society. Nora rolled her eyes even though no one would see it.

She was being sent away because she’d gotten into a couple—in fact, several—teeny tiny fights at school, causing her parents to be “concerned for her future.”

They hoped that by sending Nora to the Moderate School, she would finally make some friends, or at the very least, learn to behave as she should. Nora did not plan on it—the making friends part or the behaving part. The kids at this school were probably just as dull, unimaginative, and unadventurous as those at her last.

She only had to fake it long enough to prove to her parents that she could listen in class without causing a disturbance. Surely, she would be on her way back home before long.

After some time, the obnoxious taxi that Nora had been stuffed inside for nearly an hour began to slow and the rain finally relented. When Nora stepped out of the car, slamming the door behind her in one last act of protest, she found herself standing in front of an enormous two-story Victorian house with black wood siding, decorative iron bars on the windows, and several crooked spires. Underneath the overcast sky, it looked more like a witch’s house than a school.

“Right this way,” the taxi driver, who had been vetted and provided by the school, mumbled, ambling up to the house with a slight limp. He smelled of rosemary and patchouli oil, and it left an unmistakable trail in his wake.

Nora hesitantly followed, careful to remain tucked behind his back as they approached the house, using him as a shield. The driver rang the doorbell, which groaned like an old church organ, causing a pair of ravens to take flight from a tree branch nearby.

When the door finally creaked open, Nora peeked her head around the driver’s back to find a large woman in a hideous, full-length, grey dress, with a white collar that buttoned around her neck. The woman stood, blocking the entire doorway, wearing what could only be described as the most ungenuine smile Nora had ever seen. It looked as if someone had stuck it on in a game of pin the smile on the old maid.

“You must be Nora Night,” the woman said through stiff, still-smiling teeth.

“That she is,” the driver answered for her, eager to be on his way. He steered Nora from behind his back and guided her towards the tower of a woman.

“Thank you, Herbert. I’ll take great care of her,” the woman promised. Nora doubted it but she figured it was best to keep this thought to herself.

Once her bags had been unloaded from the trunk and Herbert had driven back down the winding road that brought Nora here, the woman’s smile vanished. She shut the front door, locking it by sliding each of the five deadbolts into place.

Why would the front door to a school need five locks on it? she wondered, narrowing her eyes. Suddenly, Nora was feeling sentimental for that clunky cab.

“Old buildings,” the woman said, as if that explained it. Nora had been inside other old buildings before. Her own house was built in 1932, and it didn’t even have two locks on the front door, let alone five.

“My name is Margaret Meadowsweet and I am the headmistress here at the Moderate School. You shall address me only as Headmistress Meadowsweet during your time as a student here. I feel I should warn you, we will be sending regular updates to your parents regarding your progress, as well as behavioral reports.” Meadowsweet gave Nora a knowing look as she said the word behavioral, as if to let Nora know that she knew exactly why Nora was here. Nora would hope so. She was the headmistress.

Meadowsweet paused, but when Nora didn’t add anything to the conversation, she continued. “If all goes well, then you will be allowed to stay. However, if you cause trouble here then you will, with your parents’ permission, be sent to Rift’s Reformatory, our sister school. Rift’s is known for its disciplinary model…”

The entryway to the Moderate School was dark and dreary, not at all helped by the day’s lack of sunshine. The rain may have eased up for now, but the sky was still a canvas of smudged charcoal. Shouldn’t a school be bright and lively? Shouldn’t there be children talking and laughing? Nora couldn’t imagine a less pleasant place than this, but if Headmistress Meadowsweet was warning her about Rift’s Reformatory, she could only imagine how dreadful it was.

“Understood?” Meadowsweet asked, this time waiting for Nora to respond.

“Yes.” Nora sighed.

“Yes, ma’am,” Meadowsweet corrected, pointing a single finger down at Nora.

“Yes, ma’am,” Nora repeated begrudgingly.

“Perfect. I’ll show you to your room.” Meadowsweet turned and began to ascend the large wooden staircase to their right, not even bothering to turn and check if Nora was following her, as if she had eyes in the back of her head. Nora gripped the retractable handle of her suitcase. As she stepped onto the first stair, the wheels caught on the lip of the wood.

“We have Saturdays and Sundays off, so right now most of the other children will be outside in the garden, in the library, or in their rooms,” Meadowsweet said, nearly reaching the top of the stairs. Nora sighed, pushed in the retractable handle, and grabbed the strap on the side of her suitcase. She leaned to one side as she hauled her bag up the rest of the stairs.

“Students are encouraged to use this time on weekends to study or explore new hobbies. Breakfast is at seven o’clock each morning in the dining room, lunch is at noon, and dinner is at five.” Meadowsweet didn’t even seem to notice Nora’s struggle. Or, she didn’t care.

“You will drop off your dirty laundry here,” Meadowsweet instructed, opening the door to the laundry chute on the second floor. Nora had never lived in a house so large it needed a laundry chute.

The hallway upstairs was suspiciously quiet as they passed several closed doors, each labeled with a numbered gold plaque, like a hotel. Nora could hear faint whispers and scuffs behind those doors—feet shuffling here and there, music playing softly in the distance. Since she had yet to see another student, these small rustles and creaks felt more like the sounds of ghosts than of other children.

“Ah, here we are,” Meadowsweet announced, knocking three times at a dark wooden door bearing the number sixteen. How many rooms are there? Nora wondered. Meadowsweet had taken a left at the top of the stairs, but the hallway extended in the other direction as well. This side of the hallway was only even numbers, which meant the other side was probably odd.

A girl around Nora’s age and height answered the door. She had strawberry red hair and so many freckles that her face reminded Nora of the night sky.

“Autumn, this is Nora, your new roommate,” Meadowsweet informed the girl.

Autumn turned her narrowed eyes on Nora, inspecting her as if she were a slide pressed under a microscope. Autumn was dressed in the ugliest grey wool skirt and white button-up shirt that Nora had ever seen, similar to the one Headmistress Meadowsweet wore.

Nora knew for a fact that she looked a lot cooler than Autumn, in her loose-fit jeans, her favorite pair of black leather boots, and her mom’s old, oversized band tee. The crooked, yellow smiley face logo was her favorite.

She really hoped the bad taste in this place wasn’t contagious.

“I’ll have your uniform delivered to you before dinner,” Meadowsweet stated, instantly shattering Nora’s dreams. “You will be expected to wear your uniform Monday through Friday. On weekends, you may dress however you wish—within reason.”

With a single tight nod and a prim turn, Meadowsweet departed, leaving Nora alone in the hallway with Autumn. Apparently, that was the end of Nora’s orientation to the Moderate School.

Autumn opened the door a little bit wider so that Nora could slip inside. She had claimed the right half of the room, decorating the walls with photos and magazine clippings. String lights twined her bed frame, illuminating the small stuffed bunny that sat atop her red blanket, and the smell of the vanilla candle in the window sweetened the air.

The left side of the room was exceptionally bare, with its naked walls and scuffed up bedside table.

“It’s been a while since I had a roommate,” Autumn explained, breaking the awkward silence between them.

“How long have you been here?” Nora asked.

“Two years.”

“Two years?” Nora’s eyes widened. She had assumed she would be here for a couple months at the most, just until she proved she could be good and listen quietly in class. She figured she’d be back home and at her old school in no time, but if Autumn had been here for two whole years…Nora didn’t want to think about it. She couldn’t. Maybe Autumn had been here for years, but that didn’t mean she would be, too. Her parents had used the words “trial” and suggested she “see how it goes.” Most subscription trials didn’t last more than a month, even she knew that.

“You’re allowed to decorate your side of the room, you just can’t put holes in the wall. Tape works for putting up pictures and posters. Some of the others used those sticky hooks to hang lights,” Autumn suggested, gesturing to the space above Nora’s bed.

Nora noticed that there were plastic glow-in-the-dark stars stuck to the ceiling. She wondered if they were Autumn’s doing or some previous student’s.

“Aria’s room is pretty cool. It’s just down the hall. She taped up a bunch of sheets of blank paper and has been working on a mural.” Autumn mimed painting on the wall.

Nora wasn’t sure what to say so she nodded and gave Autumn a small, tight-lipped smile, before setting her bags down on the floor. She took another look around the room and then plopped down on her new bed, releasing a puff of dust from the dull grey quilt that had been provided to her, causing her to cough.

“Like I said,” Autumn shrugged, “it’s been a while.”

That night, Nora had trouble sleeping. Nothing about this place so far was what she’d expected. She tossed and turned for what felt like hours, until, eventually, she decided to take a look around the house. She wasn’t sure if she was allowed to leave her room at night. Meadowsweet didn’t mention a curfew, but this seemed like the kind of place to have one.

Surely, everyone else was asleep by now. As long as she was quiet, she would be fine. If she did get caught, she could play the “new kid” card. Meadowsweet might not buy it, but Nora was bored out of her mind staring at the glow in the dark stars above her head and itching to explore.

Without her cell phone, she didn’t have a flashlight, so she would have to search Autumn’s half of the room for something to help her see in the dark.

Nora squinted at Autumn, who was quietly snoring. Nora blinked several times and then rubbed her eyes. She could have sworn Autumn’s blanket had been red earlier but now it appeared to be dark blue. She shook her head. Unless Autumn owned a magic, color-changing blanket, Nora must have been seeing things earlier.

She looked at the half-burned lavender candle on the window sill on Autumn’s side of the room. Autumn had to have matches or a lighter around here somewhere.

Nora tip-toed over and slid open the top drawer of Autumn’s bedside table. The last thing she needed was to get caught going through her roommate’s belongings on her first day here.

Luckily, Nora didn’t have to look much further. There was a small matchbook in the first drawer, from a local business named Wash N’ Go, with cartoon bubbles around the words. The matchbook rested on top of a photo of Autumn and, Nora assumed, Autumn’s family, based on the matching red hair and the impressive collection of freckles.

Nora snagged the matchbook and crept across the room, her fuzzy socks slipping slightly on the dusty floor. She shut the bedroom door gently, causing the latch to issue the smallest click as it found its home. Only once she was out in the hallway, with the door closed, did Nora allow herself to breathe again.

The hallway was even darker than she imagined, and the air had a staleness to it, reminding Nora of her basement back home. Nora wasn’t afraid of the dark, but even she wouldn’t go into the basement alone at night.

“It’s fine,” she whispered, willing herself to believe it. “Totally fine…”

After a few seconds, her eyes began to adjust. Sconces holding unlit tapered candles lined the striped, wallpapered walls, but they were too far out of Nora’s reach. She struck one of the five matches, and with the light from the small flame, she was able to see a candelabra sitting on the table down the hallway, to her left.

Who owns candelabras anymore? Nora only knew what they were because of her favorite vampire slayer novel, High Stakes, in which an evil vampire lived in a decrepit old mansion on the edge of town. Not too dissimilar from this one, she thought warily.

Nora used the almost burned out match to light one of the candles in the candelabra. She twisted the single candle free, leaving small shavings of wax behind. Even with the candle, the house was still ominously dark, and eerily devoid of the human sounds that Nora was so used to hearing—talking, laughing, walking, breathing. Instead, each and every small noise that would otherwise go unnoticed in an old house like this was amplified by the night—the wind berating the windows, the bugs chirping, the pipes settling, and the deep groan of the foundation’s worn joints. The house is alive, her mother would have joked if she’d been here. Nora pulled her mother’s T-shirt tighter around her for comfort.

As she walked down the hallway, towards the stairs, she realized the Moderate School was in much worse condition than she remembered from her tour. Spiderwebs covered the baseboards and the ceilings were so tall they made Nora feel as if she were a little kid again and not eleven years old.

She inched down the hallway, inspecting the dark quickly as she passed. She didn’t know what she had hoped to find tonight, she’d merely assumed anything would be better than tossing and turning in bed for several more hours. Now, Nora was beginning to wonder if that was true.

The hallway seemed to stretch on forever. At home, Nora could walk from one end of her small one-story house to the other in under a minute. This house was so massive it felt like a palace…or a prison.

The doors to the other students’ rooms were all closed and no light drifted out from underneath. Nora found it hard to believe that not one student in this school slept with a nightlight. Back at home, the familiar street lights cast enough of a glow through the windows of her house that she could always see where she was going when she ventured into the kitchen for a midnight snack. In this place, the moon was nothing but a myth. Forget street lights.

As Nora approached the stairs, a draft hit her, almost blowing out her candle. Goosebumps rose on her skin and she cupped her hand around the flame.

The light didn’t reach very far, and from where she stood, the stairs seemed to stretch for miles. She thought her eyes might adjust here, too, but the longer she stared at the pool of darkness below, the more it seemed to swirl and squirm.

Nora shook her head. It was just her imagination. She’d had a long day and she was only exhausted, and maybe a little nervous for her first day of classes tomorrow.

She turned around, planning to head back to bed for the night, when the flame of her candle flickered once more. At the same time, something just beyond the light caught Nora’s attention. There was someone standing in the dark, hidden amongst the shadows.

Just my luck, Nora thought. Meadowsweet must have heard her sneaking around. Will this go on my behavioral report? she thought, rolling her eyes.

When no one stepped forward to chastise her, Nora asked, her voice a little uneven, “Um, hello?”

At that moment, she could have sworn she saw the darkness… move. An uneasiness spread through her, climbing outwards from the pit of her stomach.

Whoever was standing in the dark, watching her, it wasn’t Meadowsweet.