The Elementals of Edgewood

Chapter Five

George couldn't fall back asleep after the nightmare. It was only midnight, but the image of the girl haunted him until the morning. His dreams were empty when he did doze off, which he was glad about, but the girl's eyes kept floating into his mind. The terror in them chilled him to the core.

By the time the sun rose, George's mind was heavy with exhaustion, and he was starving. His mother had unforgivably let him sleep through dinner. The only upside to his nocturnal night was that there was no chance of him being late for school.

Yet he somehow, he still managed to walk through the doors on the second bell.

Cursing under his breath, he turned the corner to his English class, fumbling to tuck his shirt into his pants. He burst through the door just as the rest of his class were finding their seats.

"Just in time, George." Miss Evernathy, his English teacher, looked at him sternly, her drooping skin collecting in folds on her forehead. He gave her a nervous smile in return, before slumping into his seat in front of Nate, completely avoiding his friend. 

He dreaded the questions Nate was going to ask him about last night- he didn't want to have to lie about or even remember the situation again. Sure enough, as Miss Evernathy began droning on about the importance of commas, he heard Nate's chair scoot across the floor as he leaned towards him.

"Oi," Nate whispered, "What happened to you yesterday?"

"Not sure," George kept his eyes on the teacher, but turned his head slightly so Nate could hear his whisper. "Guess I ate some bad food or something."

"No," Nate leaned forward even further. "Before that, when you were swimming." George's mind drew a blank. He turned his head further, looking slightly over his shoulder.

"What're you on about?"

A violent cracking sound reverberated around the room, making George and his classmates jump. Miss Evernathy had smacked her ruler onto the surface of her desk.

"George and Nate, pay attention!" She yelled, beady eyes popping out of her skull. George heard Nate slither back into his seat.

"Thank you," she smiled menacingly, voice calm. George rolled his eyes at her insane behaviour. "Now, everyone take out your essays, and we'll do some peer marking. I'll take them home tonight and mark them properly afterwards." She turned to face the whiteboard. 

Her comment hit George like a tonne of bricks. He had no idea what she was talking about. He'd thought the essay was due on Monday.

Thankfully, the same look of stressed confusion was displayed on the faces of his classmates. Jessica Barker raised her hand.

"Miss, you said the essay was due on Monday."

"No, Jessica, it was always due today." Their teacher replied through her teeth.

"But I wrote it down in my homework diary, and it says-" she was cut off by Miss Evernathy throwing her whiteboard pen onto the floor. Her face was a rich purple, veins pulsing on her temple. George frowned at how inappropriate she was acting.

"Fine then Miss Barker," she snarled, "why don't you teach the class then? Huh?" She stalked towards Jess's seat, her wrinkled face quivering in fury. "Why don't you try and teach these bunch of idiots-" she threw her jiggling arm out at the class- "about literature?" George was in shock. He'd never seen his teacher - any teacher- act like this. 

"You think you're so perfect, so special," she spat, "but you don't have a bloody clue about anything." The class was silent, frozen in shock. George felt as though he should say something, stick up for Jess. But he didn't know what.

And he was too terrified.  

"Nobody cares about you Jessica. You're a stuck-up know-it-all, and once you leave this school, I can promise you," she threw her hands onto Jess's desk, who's fists were clenched in a sort of terrified anger. Miss Evernathy leaned in until she was inches away from the girl's determined and hurt expression. "This life that you've worked so hard on building will crumble to pieces around you within seconds."

A number of things happened in the next couple of seconds that were strange, but the quickness of their occurrence blurred the order in George's mind.

Jessica Barker, teacher's pet, stood up, shocking the class by glaring at her fuming English teacher. Then, from where he was sitting, George swore he saw her eyes change colour, from their normal brown to an electrified gray, almost silver.

It was in that moment that a window on the other side of the classroom shattered into pieces.

Screams and shouts filled the air as shards fell onto the row of people sitting under the window. But it was a different commotion that captured George's attention.

An eagle, about half the size of a person, soared through the classroom, cawing and screeching. People cowered as the bird flew low, skimming it's claws just above people's heads.

"Get down!" yelled Miss Evernathy, her previous anger seemingly broken.

George and the class dove under their desks in a flurry of chair scraping and yelling. Panic thumped in George's chest as he realised the urgency of the situation. This thing could hurt somebody.

Crouching on his knees, he looked across to Nate, who had the same look of bewildered terror George imagined was on his own.

A  sudden whooshing sound from above made his muscles freeze. Slowly, he looked up. Sitting on Nate's desk, was the eagle, and it had it's eyes locked on George.

He felt his airways close.  The eyes of his classmates were trained on him and the bird, but George didn't dare look away from the bird's beady eyes. It tilted it's round, white head to the side, almost curiously, razor sharp claws clicking on the desk's surface. George gulped.

It felt like an eternity had passed before the bird finally let out a squawk, and flew off the desk. George released the breath he'd been holding, letting the tension in his shoulders relax. Still, he looked around, trying to pinpoint the bird's new whereabouts.

A sharp shriek from the front of the classroom pierced the air, followed by a clutter of banging, squawking and yelling. The sound erupted from under Miss Evernathy's desk, and their teacher was nowhere in sight. The bird was attacking her.

"What do we do?" yelled Nate. George looked at him, then back to the jumping desk. A plan formed in his head.

"We need to pull the desk off her," he shouted back to Nate, "That way she can get out."

"Okay," he replied, then paused, locking eyes with George. "Are we really gonna be the ones to do this?"

George looked around the classroom. Everyone else seemed frozen in fear. Jessica Barker looked in a state of petrified horror.

"Looks like it," George yelled back to him. Forcing determination into his mind, he crawled out from under his desk and stood, eyes on the teacher's desk the whole time. The bird was swooping up into the air, before soaring back down under the desk.

Feeling Nate's presence behind him, the two boys stumbled towards the desk and each grabbed a side. George looked into Nate's scared eyes, which were focused on the soaring figure of the bird.

"On the count of three," he yelled, "One, two, three!" Together, they lifted the large, oak desk off the floor, and moved it off the top of their teacher, letting it clunk onto the floor a metre away.

Miss Evernathy lay curled in a ball, blood drizzling out of scratches and wounds covering her body. George swore and stumbled backwards at this sight, while Jess screamed. She had stood, to help them maybe, and now covered her mouth with her hands in shock.

The bird squawked, before flying away from their teacher, and circling the air above their heads.

One of his classmates yelled out, "Someone call an ambulance or something."