Horton Girls

Chapter 3: A Discovery

Violyn's P.O.V
Grandma says: Life can be a classroom too. If you pay attention you might learn something new everyday.

The bell rings and school is over for the day. It has been a good day. We have gone through the usual morning routines, showers at 6.30 a.m, breakfast assembly at 7.30a.m, and lessons begin an hour later. There has been the usual feuds. Bullies pushing and shoving when teachers aren't looking, girls grumbling under their breaths when given detention slips for the slightest wrongdoings and the jungle tribe of monkeys stealing food in the staff room. Otherwise it's alright. I mean no one was mysteriously lifted into the air today or screaming in the bathrooms. Grandma says autumn is a season to be cautious of though. Spirits run free during the season of nature losing its life.

At Horton, every school day ends at exactly 3.40p.m. The students are then given two hours of free time before gathering for afternoon prayers at 5.40p.m. Thirty minutes later we have the dinner assembly where announcements and reminders are noted before we have our meals. At 7.30p.m, all students are required to be inside their homerooms for an hour of study or school work. Afterwards, it's free time till lights-out at 9.30p.m. This is the schedule. Tardiness and invalid reasons to abscond any school planned activities have their consequences.

The hours trickle through my fingers like water. At 8.36p.m, Laura and I are in our dorm room, eating chips and watching a movie about alien invasion. Outside, a storm bear down mercilessly on our hillside town. Dark clouds race across the sky like black wolves. Heavy raindrops start to fall, slowly at first but with gathering momentum until an angry pitter-patter sound can be heard. Horton girls and teachers hurry for shelter as thunder echoes over the school and fingers of lightning dance above the jungle treetops.

"Do you hear that?" Laura hits the pause button on the computer.

I resist the urge to roll my eyes. "Yeah...I hear rain and thunder."

"No, someone's coming!"

As if on cue, the door swings open, revealing the silhouette of a girl. I grab Laura's arm in fright as the figure slowly pads towards us. In the dim lighting, I can see that she's completely drenched and is still in full uniform. My heart threatens to jump out of my chest as she gets closer to the bed. This is it. The tale of the dead girl lurking dark corners of Horton is true. Grandma says there has been a few deaths in Horton but this tale is different. It's about a Filipino originated girl of fifteen who fell into a hole and was swallowed up by the ground spirit. They found her body, two weeks later with both of her eyeballs missing. Grandma says when you make a deal with a spirit and cannot repay them, they will take your eyes as punishment. Without your eyes you will be lost on the other side. Forever in darkness and misery. Unless a living person retrieves your eyes and returns them to you. But the quest is a deadly one. Sometimes when Horton girls walk alone in the yards, they can hear the girl's faint cries for help. Other times, they may see an apparition of a girl covered in dirt.

"Please don't kill us." It takes a second to realize that they're my words.

"What the hell?" a familiar voice replies with slight annoyance. "Will you relax! It's me."

Oh thank goodness. I honestly don't want to face an actual ghost. I can deal with hearing voices and seeing harmless figures...from a distance. But up close encounter is pretty scary. Imagine staring into the eyes of a ghost with a big knife penetrating their skull. Ugh.

"Sherri?!" I throw a pillow at the 'creepy figure' that turns out to be my sister. "You scared us! What were you thinking...showing up in the middle of the night looking like...like some Conjuring shizmo."

Okay, I'm not a speech genius.

Laura bursts out laughing. "Really? Conjuring shizmo?"

"It isn't funny Laura," I scold. "One of us could've died of a heart attack---"