Darkness Be My Hero

Rumour has it

“That’s the last one” Clary exclaimed, sliding Tale Of Two Cities onto her neatly packed bookshelf, dusting her hands on her blue jeans, leaving freckles of dust behind.

Clary has always loved to read, and was proud of her little collection, that stretched halfway across her small room. At her old house she and her mum had, had a mini library, but when her dad tragically died in a truck and car collision, Clary and her mother had to move, and the new house didn’t have enough room.

She had moved to Grave Willow a few weeks ago. She remembered the night they had arrived. It had been a dark gloomy night, the street lights flickered, giving a ghostly shadowed appearance to the gravel road in front of her. The small cottage they lived in was cold and had a musty damp smell to it. The backyard was full of twisted neglected trees and a garden bed, full of rotten vegetables. Clary’s mother was a big gardener and in no time the garden would be up and running again, blooming with patches of colour everywhere.

Her school was a dump. It looked like something you would find in an old gothic movie. It had once been a rather beautiful  church, with detailed stained glass windows, and a lush green lawn with a footpath lined with roses that led up to the large double oak doors at the entrance.  But all the beauty has been destroyed when they extended it and turned it into a public school. There was now a wilted grey lawn with a cracked footpath lined with overgrown flowerbeds. A large gate imprisoned the school with peeling paint and weeds sprouting around the bottom. The building itself was a sad grey colour, with black doors and dark tinted windows. Unlike her old home, the sun never seemed to shine and it gave the school an even eerier feel. Clary dreaded walking through the schools gates every morning.

 At school people would whisper about her as she walked down the large hallway, lined with stacked metal lockers. Some of the students Clary noticed would point and stare as if they were picking out every flaw she had. I guess at her old school clary had never seemed to fit in as well as the others, but people had still been nice to her, and when she didn’t feel like being around people she blended in with the crowd and no one seemed to notice her. But things were very different here. The teachers were quite crewel and rude, and gave detentions out freely.

One day in English while sitting through a really boring lecture about the nervous system with Mrs Riddle, Clary found herself gazing out of the tinted windows. She was staring at a rather large building that stood tall upon of the hills, that wasn’t far from Clary’s house. It was framed with a tall gate, quite like the one that framed the school, but this one was in immaculate condition and each bar was crowned with a pointed header.

She was deep in thought, when  she noticed the teacher had stopped talking and was staring at her, like she had brutally murdered the whole class. She was pissed off.

Clary quickly snapped her attention, back to the teacher, who smiled and continued on with her lecture.

“That’s one place you don’t wanna mess with” a voice spoke quietly next to her.

Clary turned to the girl next to her. It was Olivia. Clary had only spoken to her once, in Math, and that was only to ask her for a pen.

“Sorry, what are you talking about?” Clary asked innocently

“The castle you were gawking at, you don’t want to go up there, bad things happen.”

“Like what?”

“Legends and rumours say that there’s a crazy couple, who kidnap trespassers, and keep them prisoner as there servants, then they eat them!”

“Ewww gross,” Clary shook her head, surely she was exaggerating. “Why don’t they just call the police, and I’m sure they can escape.”

“That’s thing no one knows, they have sent police up there but they just disappear or go missing if they come back. Some people say there’s a magical curse. “

“There’s no such thing as magic Olivia, it’s impossible” Clary had never believed in those crazy ‘magicians’ they were just a trick of the eye.

“They also said that flying was impossible, but here we are flying around the world in 10 days. OMG have you seen..”

But she was cut off by the teacher, yelling at them. But clary wasn’t listening to her rant and rave she was too interested into what Olivia had told her.

Clary knew she had to explore whatever was up there, and face her fears and thoughts. Surely it was all just a made up folktale.

Little did she know what actually lied atop the in the vast castle; what she would be faced with.