Edgar Allan Poe High School, Home of the Ravens, was a normal academic institution, populated by normal teenagers--or was it? Once the new principal took over, things quickly went from normal to bizarre, and Crystal Fall’s and her friends’ lives were in danger. But the teens had a secret ally: God was on their side! For readers who've graduated from R. L. Stine but aren't quite ready for Stephen King, this novel and its sequel, Mystic Mansion, are perfect reads!
Amy Black nodded. Her head dropped, and she woke with a start. Mr. O’Brien was droning on, something about a bare body or a bear named Bodkin or some other such Shakespearean nonsense. Why couldn’t Shakespeare have written his plays in English? she thought drowsily.
She closed her eyes.
Her head fell forward again, and she saw the gun--
It was there, in her locker, under her gym bag.
She reached in, took the cold hard steel in her hand.
Him! That jerk!
She watched him enter the boys’ rest room. Her legs carried her down the hallway, and she pushed the door open.
He was at one of the sinks, washing his hands. He turned, saw her, his mouth and eyes wide with surprise.
“What are you doing in here?” he demanded.
He was always demanding something.
“Can’t you let me have even a moment’s privacy? Do you have to--”
There was a sound of thunder, a flash of lightning, and the gun kicked hard in her hand.
Somewhere, someone was screaming.
She sat bolt upright in her chair, barely able to distinguish her dream from the commotion around her and the ringing bell.
The other kids were gathering their books. They left their seats and hastened toward the door, toward a few minutes of freedom, toward a five-minute rendezvous with their friends. Mr. O’Brien called after them, reminding them of their homework. Amy grabbed her book, too, stuffed it into her book bag, and strode from the classroom, the deafening sound of the gunshot still in her ears.
In the hallway, outside Mr. O’Brien’s English Lit class, Amy paused to lean against the wall. She was breathing fast. She was shaking, and she felt faint. The dream, the vision, the hallucination, whatever it was--it had been so vivid, so real! And this was the third time in two weeks that she had had the nightmarish vision.
Why did she keep seeing herself shooting Ed Warner?
She may not love him, exactly, not anymore. But she still had some feelings for him. Certainly, she didn’t hate him. And, most definitely, she did not want to hurt him, least of all to see him dead. After all, he was her boyfriend, for the time being, anyway.
Sure, sometimes Ed could be a little too pushy--all right, a lot too pushy, demanding even, but, hey, that wasn’t any reason to have such violent fantasies.
Maybe I need help, Amy thought. Maybe I’m going crazy.
The thought frightened her. What would Ms. Martin, the counselor, do if Amy dared to confide in her about her “dreams”? Call the cops? Have her arrested? Or put her into a mental institution? Amy shuddered, feeling even weaker. She couldn’t bear being torn from her home, from school, from her parents and friends, and she didn’t think that the understanding Ms. Martin would, in fact, be all that understanding. Maybe no one would, not doctors or her mom and dad or even her friends. She didn’t understand it herself. How could anyone else?
No, Amy decided, she couldn’t risk telling anybody about these strange hallucinations. She would just endure them and maybe, eventually, they would no longer plague her.
She bent over the water fountain and drank deeply of the ice-cold water. Her head hurt. There was a dull ache behind her eyes that threatened to explode at any moment.
“Hi, Amy!”
She straightened, forcing a tight smile.
Her friend, Dee Dee Dawkins, looked at her, an expression of concern on her face. “Are you all right?” Dee Dee inquired.
“Not bad for a Monday,” Amy lied. “Just a little headache.”
“Yeah,” Dee Dee replied, with a giggle. “A headache by the name of Ed Warner.”
Amy gasped.
Dee Dee’s eyebrows lifted. “You sure you’re okay?”
Amy smiled. This time, the smile looked more genuine. “Well, maybe not today, not with this headache,” she said, “but soon.”
“I’m glad,” Dee Dee said.
Amy arched an eyebrow, looking pointedly at her friend.
“Well, I am,” Dee Dee insisted. “He’s become such a jerk!”
The girls came to a junction in the hallway. “See you at lunch,” Dee Dee said.
“See you at lunch,” Amy repeated mechanically, her thoughts elsewhere.
Dee Dee, looking at her friend as Amy walked slowly down the other hall, shook her head. “Boys!” she said, exasperated.
Amy thought about lunch, about Dee Dee, about the test coming up in Biology, about what a mess her room was and how she’d promised her mom she’d clean it up after school, about the new teen club that she and her friends were considering visiting tonight--about anything and everything she could think about to keep her mind off Ed Warner and the awful visions she had had of the smoking gun in her hand and his lifeless body on the bloody rest room floor.
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