The Shadows

TRAINS were always late. Once the first one went off schedule, all the rest followed suit.

Though she was annoyed and a bit apprehensive, for she’d never taken such a long journey on her own before, Poppy Farrell felt it would be a sign of weakness to stop short and go home. After all, they were holding a place for her at Blight’s Academy, one of the oldest and most prestigious girls’ boarding schools in England.

Mum had worked so hard to get them to accept her coming in as a 9th Year student. Though it was far from home, on 700 acres of rolling hills and woods, Mum had decided it was the safest environment for her increasingly wayward fourteen-year-old daughter, a daughter who’d insisted that she was old enough to make this trip on her own, and now wasn’t sure… But she had to see it through.

Traveling into the countryside, woods grew close against the tracks. Poppy could see them through the windows on both sides of the train, trunks close together, branches arching over like a tunnel. Poppy didn’t like woods. She was a city girl, a London girl. She didn’t trust trees.

She had to change trains again at East Grinstead. She’d hoped it was a proper town. Instead, she was left alone on an isolated platform. Behind her was a station house as grey and closed and empty as if it hadn’t been serviced in a hundred years. And encroaching all around, leaves rustling in the wind, were the woods.

Setting out at 4:00 in the afternoon, Poppy had never dreamed that the crowded train stations of the city could give way to this utter desolation. Why did the trees seem to be watching? It was a ridiculous idea, but the feeling persisted. She glanced around. Not a soul met her gaze. She was out here alone with the woods, and the silence, and the twilight.

A gust of wind rushed up her back. She shivered with a sudden chill.

The air was heavy, as if it was going to rain. If she hadn’t missed her connections, she would have gotten to Blight’s in time for supper. She let go the handle of her suitcase, set down her black backpack, with its Blight’s Academy logo of a castle inside a ring of black thorns on the flap, and checked the time on her mobile phone. The light flashed up like a signal. It was almost 7:00!

Where had the time gone?

“Stupid,” she mumbled, annoyed at how long this trip was taking.

She put the phone back into the pocket of her brown corduroy jacket, pulled her long, layered auburn hair off her neck, and pulled the collar up. Her feet in their little tan cowboy boots, skinny jeans tucked in, felt firm, planted, the rest of her at sea.

There was a bench under the eaves of the station house, but Poppy felt too uneasy to sit down. Besides, she was reluctant to step back from the sight of the tracks and their promise of the next train. Across the tracks, and a little further down, was another deserted platform, and more woods.

It was so quiet. Poppy wasn’t used to quiet. As if by magic, a single light came on under the eaves of the station house, lighting up a schedule posted by the shuttered window. Taking out her phone again to check the time, Poppy strolled over to look at it.

“Next train... 7:45... It’s so late!” How did people live out here with such lousy service?

The trees across the tracks went still, and seemed to stare. Poppy scanned the area again for signs of human life, then worried about who might show up. She was all alone out here. What if some gang bangers came along? Or...

If Poppy allowed it, her imagination would get the better of her. She’d read too many mysteries and crime novels. Watched too many horror films. Her mother never understood how such a young girl could be interested in all that morbid stuff. But for Poppy it wasn’t morbid. She just liked to puzzle things out, solve things, such as how to get to her first day at a new boarding school on her own. She didn’t know the train would drop her off in the middle of nowhere and she’d have to wait for ages by herself. It reminded her of that old film, The Blair Witch Project.

Now she wished she’d let Mum drive her.

You’re always so headstrong, Poppy... Mum’s constant litany. What am I going to do with you?

Her younger sister Daisy, chiming in: You always have to have your own way!

But she was fourteen. It was time to be independent. She was an Aries, after all.

She needed to talk to her mother, so dialed her phone number at home. Mum would probably throw a wobbly knowing Poppy was out here alone in the wilderness, but what could she do? The phone rang and rang.

The answer phone came on.

You’ve reached the Farrell residence. Please leave a message.

Poppy fumed. “Hi Mum. Just letting you know I’m almost there. My trains have been late. Don’t worry about me.” She hung up and put the phine back in her pocket.

From somewhere came a screech. Heart hammering, Poppy hoped it was a train coming. She looked up and down the tracks both ways, but saw no light. Another screech came, this time she could tell it was coming from behind her, in the woods at the back of the station house.

It must have been an animal.

A high, shrill cry echoed up through the trees. Ah! Ah! Ah!

Perhaps it was an owl. They had owls in London. In the back garden…

A splat of rain hit her face. Thunder rolled, long and loud, then fading off. The sky brightened, then went dark.

Poppy buttoned the top button of her jacket, tugged her collar close again, and headed for the awning of the station house. The bench was coated with a thin layer of moss.

Looking for a bare patch of whitewashed board, so as not to ruin her jeans, she sat down.

Eeeeeeeeee!!!!!!

Where was that train?

Sounds of breaking branches and strange noises coming from the woods sent her rocketing to her feet. Shaking with raw panic, she inched her way out to the platform, into the rain, and stared at the darkness between the trunks of the trees.

The single light from the station house shone on some- thing white coming through the woods. Two hands appeared, pushing the branches apart. The scratched face of a girl came through, and then her whole body followed.

Her long blonde hair hung in hanks; her dress was torn. She was shaking as badly as Poppy was who just stood there, gobsmacked.

“Who are you?” Poppy shouted over the thunder that crashed. A sheen of lighting blanched all color from the frightened girl’s face.

The girl’s eyes slid from Poppy to the backpack still sitting on the platform. The girl opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out.

“What? What’s the matter?” Poppy grabbed her suitcase and backpack and took them under the awning. “Are you all right?”

The girl jumped, then looked back at the woods, the leaves now pattering in the rain. She stretched her hand out toward Poppy, pointing her finger at the backpack.

“Don’t go there,” she said. “Don’t go to Blight’s Academy.”

“What?” Poppy couldn’t believe her ears. Blight’s was a highly regarded boarding school. It was safe. Mum said so.

“Don’t go there. Please, don’t go to Blight’s Academy! Go back! Go home!”

“But, why?”

The wind blew the girl’s long, straight hair over her face and seemed to blow her words away, for though her mouth was moving, Poppy heard nothing.

A loud whistle and a beam of light on the tracks heralded the train. It was coming in Poppy’s direction.

“The train’s coming,” Poppy cried over the din, running to get her suitcase and backpack.

“Don’t go!” the girl shouted. “Please, listen to me!”

The train pulled up with a loud screech. Poppy opened a door in the last car and shoved her bags inside. She had one foot on the steps when thunder banged like a china cabinet falling over. The girl’s face went livid white, her eyes so black, and her lips so red, she looked ghastly.

“What are you going to do?” Poppy shouted. “I’m leaving.” She shut the door.

The train jerked and squealed and began to go. Poppy grabbed a seat and watched the girl through the window. She was running around on the platform, waving her arms around, when a dazzling streak of lightning came down. The train was too far down the track to see what happened next, but Poppy thought she heard a horrible, gut-wrenching scream.

“Oh my God,” Poppy murmured. She put her hands over her heart to stop it hammering. How awful for that girl. It was like she was mad or something.

Poppy got up to stash her suitcase in the luggage rack, and realized her legs felt like overcooked pasta. She just got it stowed, and was slipping into a seat with her backpack, when the door at the end of the car slid open.

A tall, burly fare collector came in, hand out for her ticket. He had a little ticket- selling box hanging on the front of his blue uniform making Poppy think of a toy wind-up monkey with a drum.

“Got your ticket, miss?” he asked.

“Yes.” Poppy pulled the ticket she’d bought at Victoria Station out of her jacket pocket, and handed it to him.

“Where you getting off?” he asked.

“Blight’s Academy,” she said. A moment ago, she’d have been proud to say those words, but that girl coming out of the woods and acting crazy had shaken her confidence.

The fare collector frowned and nodded. “Of course. It won’t be long now.”

“Sir, did something bad happen there? I mean----I met a girl on the platform----”

“I don’t know,” the fare collector said, lifting his nose as if to avoid a bad smell. “I haven’t heard a thing.”

Poppy studied the man as he slid back out through the door from whence he’d come. He’d say that to anyone. Even if he had heard something bad, he wouldn’t say what it was.

Poppy slouched down in her seat. Occasionally she looked out the dark, rain-spattered window, back toward the platform where that poor girl had been raving and hopping around, wondering why it seemed that some kind of unseen force had been trying to warn her off going to Blight’s, to delay her and, now, to stop her. Hopefully, someone at the school would tell her what was going on. Perhaps the girl had been expelled, or something. It was only the twilight and the woods that charged the atmosphere with foreboding.

The lights flicked on overhead. Poppy sat up and looked around. She was the only passenger in the car. The dark zipped past the windows, and once in a while, a patch of clear, moonlit sky whizzed past.

She opened her backpack and took out a book she’d bought on the Internet with her allowance money: The Biggest Secret by David Icke. This was her biggest secret: Poppy adored conspiracy theories. These were the best mysteries of all. They made her think.

As she closed the backpack, the logo of Blight’s Academy stared up at her: a ring of black thorns around a red-brown school building that looked like a castle. For the first time she noticed, just above the door, a tiny five-pointed star.

The logo was a bit disturbing, she supposed, with the thorns and the star. But weren’t most hedgerows full of thorns? Hadn’t she heard they were meant to keep intruders out?

That girl back there was off her rocker. That was all.

There was a theory at the back of Poppy’s mind, about the Web of Wyrd. She’d heard about it in a film and then looked it up on the Internet. It suggested that all events in the world were connected, that seemingly unrelated people were thrown together along the strands of the Web to be caught up in the same Fate, and, if one dug deep enough, one would find that seemingly random events were linked.

Many of the most famous crimes in history, the ones she’d read about, turned out to have all sorts of weird interconnections. Were conspiracies involved, or the unseen workings of the Web of Wyrd? If it were the latter, Poppy hoped she hadn’t been caught on the same strand as that girl back there.

David Icke had a theory that the royals practiced black magic and had done so for thousands of years, that maybe, they’d created the Web of Wyrd to run the world their way. Was that a conspiracy theory, or what?

She sighed. How her friends would laugh if they knew what went on in her head! There were no conspiracies or Webs of Wyrd, really, but coincidences were amazing.

The woods were pressing against the train on her side of the car, branches sliding against the windows. Poppy flinched away. Why did the woods frighten her so much, but not horror films, or these conspiracy things? It was only nature. It wasn’t like the woods were full of witches....

When were they going to get to Blight’s? Would she find her way in the dark? Would the shuttle be waiting at the next station to pick her up? She checked her mobile phone for the time.

8:20.

God, she was late! Would they even let her in?

She thought back to the first delay in London: that drunk jumping in front of a train at Camden Town tube station. He was the one who’d held everything up. Why would anyone do that? Being run over by a train had to be painful as hell, and besides, if someone wanted to end their life, it seemed damned rude to inconvenience everyone else in the process. Mum would say she was being selfish to think that, but it happened so frequently, people falling in front of trains at Camden tube, that reports about them had become part of the ongoing babble and squawk of the city. But, then there was that girl on the platform back there....

What had happened to her?

Was it a coincidence that, on a single journey, two people had fallen off a train platform?

Or could it be something to do with the Web of Wyrd?

Whistle blaring, the train lurched around a bend, knocking Poppy over on her seat.

Oh my God!

Poppy covered her ears at the memory of the girl’s scream. She wondered if the girl had been struck by lightning, and was lying dead on the tracks. Hopefully, she’d made it across to get the train going the other way.

Poppy groaned. She was sick of worrying about it.

The train blasted its whistle again, and slowed.

A bell was ringing.

“Blighton-Moss Station! Alight here for Blight’s Academy shuttle service.”

Poppy stuffed her book back into her backpack, then hurried to retrieve her suitcase. She was waiting at the door when the train screeched to a halt.