Page 19 of Gothikana

‘Corvina did,’ Erica supplied. ‘Came out right after Mr Deverell. It was all over the girl towers.’

‘Mr Deverell goes into the woods all the time. I don’t know if he’s brave or stupid.’ Jax whistled, turning to Corvina. ‘Did you see anything weird? I’ve heard there are all sorts of bizarre things in there.’

Corvina finally looked back down at the group to find all of them staring at her. ‘Nothing interesting, at least not something I stumbled across. Just woods. And a lake. But that was it.’

‘Lake?’ Jade asked, surprised. ‘There’s a lake in there?’

‘And quite a beautiful one, too,’ Corvina added. ‘It’s dark and murky. But peaceful.’

The memory of the strange feminine voice surfaced, but she pushed it away.

‘What’s on top of our tower?’ She voiced the question she’d been thinking about for a long time. She knew the room had a piano in it, but she had no idea what purpose it served.

‘Top of the tower?’ Jade looked at her, puzzled.

‘She means the storerooms, I think.’ Ethan narrowed his eyes behind his glasses. ‘Why do you ask?’

Yeah, she wasn’t going to tell them about Mr Deverell playing the piano there. She wasn’t an idiot.

‘Just curious,’ Corvina replied with sincerity. ‘It’s all so new to me.’

Troy gave her a soft smile, his blond hair and blue eyes glinting in the sunlight. ‘It’s a storeroom. Every tower has one on top. The admin people keep old stuff there that had originally belonged to the castle. No one really goes up there.’

Just like the woods. And just like in the woods, Mr Deverell ventured into places other people didn’t go. But why come to one of the girls’ towers? Was it because of the piano? Was her tower the only one that had it? And if so, why come to play at night? And why did none of the other girls hear him? Was the room soundproofed in some way or was everyone else just too used to the odd castle sounds at night? That seemed most likely, since she was the only new girl in her tower, all of the others having been around for at least a year or more. Maybe she wouldn’t have heard the music either had she been asleep that night.

Questions still circled her mind. The more she observed him, the more she felt herself falling into her curiosity. There was something about him, something she couldn’t put her finger on, that made her realise he wasn’t a usual man. There was something… dark around him, but what was it hiding? It made her want to take a harder look and try to understand what it was and why it sparked something in her.

‘The driver who dropped me here told me the castle is rumoured to be haunted,’ Corvina said, changing the topic. ‘Is that true?’

‘The town,’ Ethan scoffed, ‘likes to demonise shit up here. They think we all have orgies and worship the devil or something. I’m not surprised they’d think it’s haunted, too.’

‘They have good reason to,’ Troy pointed out.

‘It’s a load of bullshit,’ Ethan argued back. ‘You know better than to believe some old wives’ tale.’

What tale? Corvina looked at them both in confusion, seeing Troy pull out the grass at his feet, and Ethan looking at his roommate with agitation as though it was an argument they’d had before. Why?

Before she could speculate, Jade abruptly brushed her shock of white hair back, glaring at Ethan. ‘Whatever you believe or don’t, you have to admit it’s weird.’

‘Wait,’ Corvina interrupted, bringing up a hand to silence whatever Ethan had been about to say. ‘Can someone tell me what’s going on?’

‘I’m equally confused, girl,’ Erica chimed in, looking around at them.

‘And me,’ Jax agreed.

There was a pin-drop silence for a long moment before Jade sighed. ‘I forget you don’t know half the mad shit circulating around here sometimes.’

Her roommate looked down at her pink nails, worrying her lips as she began. ‘It’s one of those crazy stories kids tell around the campfire, you know? One that makes most people here very uncomfortable.’

‘Those who believe them, you mean,’ Ethan corrected.

Corvina nodded for Jade to go on, intrigued enough to discard Ethan’s commentary.

Her roommate took a visible breath. ‘They say there was a group of students at the university about a hundred years ago, a good few years after it was founded.’

‘Okay,’ Corvina encouraged when Jade hesitated.

‘It’s all hearsay but this group of students… they’d go down the mountain to the village — that’s the town now — and take someone into the woods with them for “fun”.’ Jade emphasised the word with finger quotes in the air.

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