Sarah Benadine is Dead

Chapter XX, Part I

Diane Merriweather, like Ollie O'Brien, was non-gifted. She attended Briargate because her father was telekinetic and had attended the magic school, Brackenfield, in Milwaukee when he was a youth. Diane was eleven years old. This was her first year at Briargate. It was also her last. Diane Merriweather would be the second person to die in Briargate School that year.

She came because she heard the voices. She could not tell what they were saying or where they came from, but they were dragging her on. It was like they were coming from somewhere nearby and far away at the same time. Every time she thought she was getting closer it would seem she was getting farther away.

Like she was sleepwalking, her feet pulled her to the dining hall. The whispers swirled around her ears, words she could not name no matter how she tried. There was an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach and her palms and the soles of her feet; she felt she should turn back, but it was almost like she—couldn't. The pull was too strong.

The pull.

The dining hall was empty. She'd been expecting that, she thought. She knew the room would only hold her.

(was that really true?)

The voices, they were louder now. Or maybe it was just one voice, one voice amplified like thousands. Louder, louder, loudest—

An explosion of thunder made it impossible for her to hear anything else. It gave her her bearings, ironically enough. The dining hall was dark. Dinner was not for another few hours. There was a light shining from underneath the door to the kitchen. That would be Signora Moretti, preparing the food. Diane Merriweather was alone.

—true?—

That voice, those voices, whatever it was, it was near. She was sure of it now, it had to be. It was so loud now, but she couldn't tell what it was saying, couldn't tell where its source was. For all she knew, it wasn't saying anything at all. Somewhere in some vague half-aware part of her mind she could hear Signora Moretti moving pots and pans.

Diane turned her head abruptly to the side. She thought she'd seen something moving out of the corner of her eye. There was nothing there, of course, but the wall. Suddenly that uncomfortable sensation seeping through her body was too much to bear. She had to get out of there, there was something wrong—

The wall. The wall was changing. It was...moving.

That perhaps wasn't an exact description, but there was a hole carving its way up the wall from the ground. There was pitch darkness inside it. Intense foreboding flooded over her as she looked. She shouldn't be here.

Something was looking at her from the hole in the wall.

She took slow steps backwards, unable to get her legs to move quickly. Before long, she hit a table and went stumbling to the ground. She landed hard on her tailbone and she winced. Her mind felt foggy. The voices were still so loud in her head. She could barely comprehend what she was seeing. As she stared in a mixture of horror and fascination at the large hole in the wall, a small, grotesque bat flew out of it. Its tiny pinpricks of eyes were red. And then, right before her eyes, it melted, blood, flesh, and bone stretching and bubbling and changing until a woman stood before her.

Diane only had the chance to let out the shortest of screams before one sharp fingernail cut through her jugular vein.

Diane Merriweather was number two.