from atop the carriage. Edgar! Barnabas tore out of the carriage. Two darkly clad, masked characters idled atop brooms in front of him.
“What’s this all about?”
“Just a bit of a delay in your trip, Principal Croft.”
“Your voice sounds oddly familiar.”
“Well, it should, Principal,” the lead one reached up and pulled off his mask to reveal a swarthy male face with a tousled mess of dark brown hair that crowned his head and cascaded into an impressive beard that covered all of his chest.
“Benjamin Marsh!”
“Yes, your old student, Principal. I am sorry that things had to end like this for us,” the one named Benjamin Marsh said. “I learned a bit from you, but sadly, it won’t be applied to the path I’m following.”
“What’s the meaning of this, Marsh? Why have you been framing a good civic group for this heinous crime? And what have you done with the Everlasting Wick?”
“Well, it does figure that if anyone should discern our methods it would be you, old teacher. Unfortunate that you won’t be around to see how it all plays out.”
Before Croft could move, Marsh thrust out his hand and black and brown sparks emerged from long, thick fingers to fell the other man, striking him in the chest. Croft crumpled to the ground alongside the unfortunate Edgar.
Marsh knelt by him and thrust his hand over Croft’s face. “Remember this, Principal? You once called it, I believe, an abomination,” Marsh seethed. A red glow formed in his hand. “Funny that it’ll be the very thing that ends your existence.”
Marsh clamped his reddened hand over Croft’s face. Croft writhed and screamed as his features began to fade and then disappeared forever under the malevolent intent of Marsh’s hand. Marsh stood, towering over his two victims with his great height.
“Shall we destroy it?” asked one of the warlocks with him.
“No, leave this one,” Marsh replied. “I want them to know what they’re dealing with.”
Memory Corridor
The slight warlock had to hurry. For centuries he had been preparing the rooms, corridors and staircases of Ghoul School for the onslaught of new witches, warlocks, trolls and gnomes eager for learning and education. The last night before the start of the school year was always the most rushed for him. Normally he found it peaceful to be alone with his cleaning agents, just he and the staircases, banisters, walls and floors of the school—it was his solace.
But this late afternoon, something uneasy had settled into the walls of one of the corridors. Memory Corridor was what many called it, for all of the memories of times past that it held. Usually it was a quiet, almost hallowed place but today it felt uneasy and tense. The warlock could feel in the walls. They buckled, first gradually, but then they became violent. The seams of the walls seemed almost to the point of tearing as whatever was within screamed to get out, to be free.
The warlock did not scare easily but this was indeed daunting. He struggled to leave the corridor...but all went dark for him as the corridor claimed him as their own. A new memory would be born in his wake and take its place behind the now-calm walls of Memory Corridor.
Back to School
DAY ONE
It was storming over Ghoulsville on the eve of the first day back to school. Gabbie Del Toro usually did not mind the rain as it spattered against the windows of her fourth floor cozy room of the Del Toro family home, a large corner house at the southern end of Ghoulsville. Jinkies, her pet cat, seemed to care less about the rain. He was just as comfortable reclining in his usual spot at the foot of her bed.
But things were so different this year. Her family had gone through so many changes, it was no wonder that she wasn’t sleeping as soundly as usual. She got up from her bed and went over to secure the bay windows, peering into the night at the tall spired homes and buildings that formed the topography of Ghoulsville. A flash of lightning showed the woman she had seen before. The woman was all dressed in black from head to toe, in stark contrast to the long whitish-yellow hair trickling from under the black hood and mask, which were connected to a shimmering black cape. After the flash of lightning the woman was gone again, disappearing into the night. Frowning, Gabbie returned to her bed to snuggle up next to Jinkies. She certainly hoped this stormy night did not foreshadow how the upcoming school year would go for her.
Her alarm clock seemed to go off in no time. Gabbie did not feel as tired as she should have, given her late and uneasy night. Fresh out of a quick shower, Gabbie (short for Gabriella Anamaria Del Toro) feverishly brushed her hair, something she found herself doing these days more often. She was twelve and a witch, or a witch-in-training as her mother liked to say, so any day now, she should be getting her stripe. Every witch upon reaching maturity would get a colored stripe in his or her hair, signifying that they had reached a certain status in witchdom. Her mother had gotten her stripe at eleven; her father as a warlock received his iris color even earlier at ten. By all accounts, Gabbie was already late. For witches, most stripes were white, pink, green or brown. There was one witch who had a blue one—Zeldabub, her aunt and Queen of the House of Ghouls. One witch had a magenta stripe, the criminal Beverly McClafferty. Rarely a witch might also get a purple stripe, the rarest of all the stripes and some said the most mysterious, though Gabbie had no idea why. For her, just getting her stripe was the main thing she worried about these days. She didn’t care what color it was. Her inspection this morning came up empty for any sign of a stripe and she turned away from the mirror, frustrated.
She glanced out the window to the still-moist streets below. Her eyes wandered to the tall home across the street where her best friend, Neville LeGrand, lived with his father Niall. His mother had died years ago, leaving Neville and his dad to go it alone. Niall was Gabbie’s godfather, which she vaguely thought made Neville her cousin; but a recent falling out between Niall and her father, over the Pumpkin Hill plunder, she assumed, made relations a bit more stark than usual.
Neville was already dressed and wearing a dark cloak. A mask sat atop his head, turned up. She managed to give him a slight wave which he returned with a head nod. Neville was a warlock or a warlock-in-training, though Gabbie would daresay he was further along in his training than she was in her witchly training. It was one of the unfairnesses of life that as a male warlock, he didn’t have to worry about getting a stripe in his hair or anything like that—just pupil color—and even then, they could be discreet about that. But there was no missing a stripe. Who came up with these rules that governed boys and girls, anyway?
She headed downstairs to the kitchen where her mother was finishing up breakfast. “Good morning, Mother.”
“G'morning, Gabriella,” Abigail said. It had been a few weeks now since the Pumpkin Hill Plunder, but it felt longer for Abigail Del Toro, who for all intents and purposes had to shoulder the mantle of a single parent, if only situationally. “You and Grawl need to get a move on. Things are different this year for the both of you.”
“Yes, Mother.” Her mother looked increasingly drawn and thin these days. She definitely didn’t smile much since her father had been taken into custody for his alleged role in the destruction of Jack of the Lantern’s home and the purloining of the Everlasting Wick.
