Cobweb Head

o n e

Windsor's Boarding School had all the warmth of dust.

Its stark doors were closed, its towers were leaden and gothic, and its surrounding trees were tall and wiry. There was no denying it – this place was haunted.

A building couldn't look like that and not be.

The school was hidden within a wooded crevice in Massachusetts, surrounded by red pine trees and chilled winds. I shivered as a breeze tore through the fabric of my jumper.

I didn't think the first time I'd go to America would be for a charitable boarding school with a penchant for delinquents. I would've liked it to be for a fun, non-educational, road trip. Without maths. 

But alas.

My head was heavy with jet lag, as if my skull had turned to stone. I searched the building with my eyes, hoping to catch a ghostly face in one of the windows. There wasn't one.

Two students stood in the space between me and the school's entrance. Their faces were blurry as they spoke, informing me about how well the school would treat me, I was sure.

"You've arrived a little later in the school year, but you should be able to catch up in classes, our teachers work very hard to include everyone—"

I'm scared. I'm terrified. I'm afraid.

The fears grew across my mind quickly – grew like mould. It brought a certain warmth, the uncomfortable kind one might feel during a fever. It was faint, but enough to give me a headache.

"I'm sure you're jetlagged, so let's get you checked in and then we'll take you to your dorm. If there are any questions, feel free to ask."

I only then properly noticed the students' faces. A girl with long braided hair and large cheeks lifted by a pretty smile, deeply tanned skin dotted with two moles. She wore a plain sweater that she'd poked holes at the wrists for her thumbs.

The other student was a boy, fair skin flushed lightly, like blood under snow. His pale grey eyes resembled the ashen sky, copper hair twirled into greased coils.

The girl, whose name I'd forgotten the moment it'd left her lips, stared at me expectantly. She waited eagerly for a question, a comment, anything. I remained silent.

She smiled again, exposing crooked teeth, and her lip twitched uneasily. "You'll be toured of the school and met by headmaster Grimm when you're ready."

Once I'd been checked in, the boy took me to the dorm wing, where we followed the numbered doors to my dorm. The hall was broad and bright, lit by the yellow-stained sunlight slipping in through the windows. It streaked the dark walls of the corridor. The suitacase grumbled as I pulled it forward.

Once we'd arrived at the door, room 106, the boy dropped a key into my open hand. I had been digging nails into my skin the whole day, and now my palm was red and damp with sweat.

"Your room keys – don't lose them." He glowered, and suddenly it felt very personal. I was incredibly good at losing things.

As I took the silver key and slotted it into the doorknob, he took my hand and stopped me before I could unlock it. His eyes had darkened. "I know what you did at your old school, burnt down your school gym. You're not going to do anything like that here."

I looked up at him slowly, a scowling expression forming across my face like ink bleeding through thin paper. "It was an accident, and how the fuck did you hear about that anyway?"

His eyes were warning, searching for something in mine. A lie, perhaps. He straightened, quick to disregard what I'd said, and a strange sort of smile formed across his lips. "Dinner is at eight in the dining hall, it'll be marked on your map."

And then he left, heading down the slightly dimmed halls before his silhouette turned a corner. I scoffed and twisted the key, heard the click of metal on metal and stepped through the threshold.

The room had two beds pressed on both the left and right walls, and in the centre of the back wall was a large round window, like a huge sunken eye against the wood. On the right bed, the green blankets were ruffled, and old comic books were strewn across its sheets.

I detached myself from my suitcase at the end of the left bed, staring at the environmental posters pinned along the right-side walls. Succulents were placed at the desk in front of the window.

I'm frightened. I'm afraid. I'm scared.

I groaned blatantly and fell across my bed with my arms outstretched, kicking my shoes off. I sunk into the fresh bedspread.

Just as I found myself dozing, there was a flicker of movement.

I sat up, drawing my hand through the tousled hair that'd fallen across my face. Something flickered at the doorway. Thick black smoke curled around the knob before disappearing into the hallway.

I rubbed my eyes, stood up and walked into the corridor. The cold floor was nice against the calloused soles of my feet.

At the end of the sunlit corridor, there was something writhing. A mass of ink and smoke and char – I rubbed my eyes again. Could sleep deprivation make you hallucinate?

Shit. Maybe for once I was right. Maybe this place really was haunted.

It evaporated, like smoke being blown across a smooth surface. Its remains scaled the walls and turned a corner. The pulse in my ears thrummed louder.

I felt a tug at my chest, as if a string had caught on my ribs and was urging me forward. And just as I took a step forward for reasons that were beyond me, someone spoke from the doorway.

"You're Will, right?"

I blinked, as if tearing away from a daze, and turned around. A boy stood at my dorm's open doorway, holding out his hand lazily.

I paused for a moment and watched his face closely. "That's right."

"Neat, I'm Leo." He grinned, gesturing towards the dorm room. "We're sharing. I thought you would be asleep; wouldn't it be night in Australia?"

I nodded. "I thought I saw something."

Leo's face lit up with a broader smile. His eyes scaled the dark walls, roof and floor. "Apparently the school's haunted," I knew it. "Maybe you saw a ghost?"

I didn't reply, because I was starting to think he might've been right.

|||

I was starting to feel like a kid again – and I meant that in the very bad, not good kind of way.

I continued to wake up to the phobias after falling asleep, rattling around in my head. The feverish warmth dampened my skin and plastered my hair to my forehead.

This would happen every night when I was younger. I wasn't able to stop the fears from eating away at my skull. I would hear everyone around me, their phobias, darkest fears. I'd learnt to slowly dampen it, to hide the voices under layers.

But this night and day shifting, moving across the world, had demolished this system. I couldn't  decide if the thing I'd seen in the hallway had been real or not.

I couldn't decide if Leo had slipped out into the night, or if it had been a dream.