October Academy

Chapter 11

The bottle lands perfectly on Darcy. I bite my lip so hard it might bleed.

"Off you go," Alyssa says, grabbing his hand and forcing him to stand up.

Perry nudges me. "Are you going to go?"

"Looks like I don't have a choice," I whisper.

I stand up and walk in the direction of the 'haunted' cabin. Darcy walks a few steps behind me. I don't look back, scared of what his expression is going to be. Is he in one of his nice but quiet and mysterious moods? Or is he going to be an asshole again?

I slowly walk up the creaking wooden steps to the cabin. It used to be an outpost for supervisors, then it was the housing unit for one of the priests that worked at the chapel. After the priests daughter went missing, they locked up the cabin and said it was haunted.

Apparently the priests daughter's ghost still visits the cabin, looking for her father. They call her 'Missing Mary'.

My hand rests on the doorknob, before I twist it and open the door.

Cobwebs cover almost every inch of the wooden ceiling. There's no lights, so the only light coming in is the brief warmth of the fire place seeping in through the broken glass window.

I stand at the doorframe, not exactly scared, but not exactly keen on taking the first step in. The room is basically empty but for a few stray pieces of furniture and a bed frame.

Darcy appears behind me and walks straight in without hesitation and takes a seat on the bed frame. Not wanting to look like a pussy, I make my way into the creaky cabin. The door closes behind me.

Almost every step makes a sound. I prop myself up on the table on the opposite side of the room to Darcy.

"I don't bite," he says, acting offended that I've sat so far away from him.

"You're so..." I go to say contradictory but cut myself off.

"I'm so what?"

"Unpredictable."

"How so?"

"Every time I've spoken to you, you've acted like a different person."

"And who am I now?" he stands up, taking a few steps towards me.

I swallow down hard. "You're confusing me."

"You confuse me," he says, tilting his head ever so slightly.

Even in the dimly lit room, my eyes can't leave his. Dark brown, sparkling kindly, inquisitively.

"How?" I say, crossing my arms. "I've never acted cold to you, then acted all –" I cut myself off before embarrassing myself.

"You're very hard to read."

"I'm an open book."

He takes another step closer, so that my legs, dangling off the counter, are almost brushing against him. Even on the counter I'm still a lot shorter than him.

I bite my lip, unable to look away from him. His lips are dark red. Fuck stop looking at his lips.

"I'm sorry for being cold," he says quietly.

"You apologise a lot."

"I don't mean to be a dick."

"You don't act like it."

A loud thumping noise scares me half to death. I jump off the counter and stumble onto Darcy, clutching his shirt. "What was that?" I whisper.

"Probably nothing," he says.