Ascension (36 page)

I looked at the building,
really
seeing it for the first time.  It was a monstrosity.  It looked as if the architect responsible for it had a prison in mind when he designed it.  It stood three stories tall and was all dark, gray concrete.  Four tiny windows showed on each level.  The door at the bottom was carved into a foreboding enclave that was cloaked in shadows.  Just knowing that I would be going inside sent shivers down my spine.

“Great stuff, huh?” Chris offered at my side.  “It’s probably the ugliest building on campus, and the most ominous.  It’s the only piece of architecture that remains on the island from before this place was converted into a school.”

“I didn’t know there was anything here before,” I said.

“Really?”  Chris looked at me, again in surprise.  “It’s a wonder nobody told you.”

“Well, you’re the first person I’ve really met here,” I said, purposefully omitting Dr.  Frame.  “What was here before?”

“You really don’t know?” 

I shook my head. 

“Wow.  Well, the school’s only been here maybe fifty years or so.  Before then, Traven Island was a prison.”

“A prison?”

“That’s right.  But not just any prison.  For more than two hundred years, the most criminally dangerous and insane inmates were sent here to serve their life sentences.  The only way on the island was via boat, and the only way off?  Well, I don’t think there
was
such a thing.  Everybody who came here was here for life.  It was a way to separate the criminals from the rest of society.  But there are stories you might hear…” he trailed off, looking at me strangely.

“Stories?  What stories?”

“I mean, they’re more like myths and ghost stories than anything else, told to keep freshmen in line.”

“What are you talking about?”

Chris looked both ways, and then again at me, before lowering his voice.  “They say Traven Island wasn’t just a prison.  It was an insane asylum, a place where certain…
liberties
… were taken with the prisoners.  A place where the most horrendous and horrible psychological experiments took place.  They say the wardens and those in charge were just as deranged as the criminals.  Every once in a while, kids might stumble upon certain, uh,
remains
from that time out in the woods, and most often it isn’t pretty.”

“What do you mean?”

“Misshapen skulls, old twisted bones,” he started slowly.  “Strange, completely inexplicable torture devices.  That sort of thing.  That’s why the north part of the island is off limits.”

“What’s up there?”

“When the prison shut down, the island was put up for sale by the government for pennies an acre.  It was tainted land, or so everyone said, and there weren’t any takers.  Eventually, however, a foreign businessman, Jacob Oliver, thought it was a great idea to buy the land and convert it into a school.  That’s where the place gets its name.  After he bought it, he made a point of tearing everything down and rebuilding the whole place from scratch.  The main parts of the prison system were down here, on the southern half of the island.  And there was nothing in the north save for untamed land… or so they thought.  After the school was up and running, people began to… find things… in the north.”

“Like what?”

“Well, apparently there are a bunch of cliffs there along the coast.  I’ve never been, but I know some kids who have.  The cliffs are said to open into a network of caves, and that’s where the worst experiments took place.  Up there, far away from the rest of the island, where nobody could hear the screams.”

I shivered.  It seemed my little paradise had taken on a hidden, malevolent past.  It made me uneasy about the place.  I knew it was a long time ago, and that the school had been around for ages, but still…

“So, why would they keep this building?” I asked.

“When Jacob Oliver bought the land, he created a charter for the school he was about to found.  One of the clauses was for a piece of history to always remain.  He didn’t want anybody to forget the origins of this place, for whatever reason.  So, they elected to keep a single building from that time, and to use it as the main administrative office.  Don’t ask me why.”

“Spooky,” I said, suddenly feeling a lot more uncertain about my assessment of the school. 

“Isn’t it?”  Chris offered, shooting me a smile.  “Don’t get too unnerved, though.  All that stuff was a long time ago.  For most of us – and definitely for the people working inside – keeping this building here is a bit of a joke.  But,” he shrugged, “the alums who fund the endowment of the school protest like crazy every time there’s talk about tearing the old building down.  So it remains here.”

“Why
wouldn’t
they want to get rid of it?” I wondered aloud.

“Beats me.  But you’ve got to get going if you want to get your student card today.”  He nodded toward the entrance.

“You mean you aren’t coming?”  I wasn’t looking forward to going inside this creepy stone edifice by myself.

“Nah,” he said dismissively.  “I want to grab some food from the caf before it closes down.  I’ll meet you there?”  Before I could ask him where it was, much less confirm, he was strolling away from me.

I frowned after him.  Maybe what he said about not having many friends
was
understandable.  He did have somewhat of an eccentric manner.  I turned back to the administrative building, took a deep breath, and went inside.

Chapter Five – Exploration

Finding the cafeteria where Chris was turned out to be relatively easy.  However, by the time I got there, at just after two o’clock, the main part of it had closed, meaning that I couldn’t get anything for myself to eat.

Chris was sitting at a far table by himself, nibbling on half a sandwich.  There were only two other people there – both much older than me – sitting with their heads pressed together at a small table off to the side.  I came up to Chris, and flashed my new student card at him.

“You got it?” he beamed.  “That’s good.  Now, you won’t look so much like a tourist when you’re walking around.”

“That’s what I’m most looking forward to,” I said drily.  In spite of everything Chris had prepared me for, getting the student card turned out to be extremely easy.  All I had to do was get my picture taken, and the thing was printed off instantly.  In short, it was a much more pleasurable experience than I had been expecting.  The inside of the administrative building was completely at odds with the outside.  It was full of warm colors and plush furnishings, almost as if the people working there were trying to fight off the dreariness of the outside.

“Grab a seat, if you want,” Chris said, motioning across from him.  “Or keep standing, I don’t know.  Whatever suits you, I guess.”

“Well, are you almost done?”  Most of the sandwich was already gone, and there only looked to be a bite or two remaining.

“Yeah,” he said, mouthing the remaining piece.  Then he stood up.  “You want to head out, then?”

“Where to?” I asked.  “And there wouldn’t happen to be any other place to get food on campus, would there?  I haven’t eaten all day.”  Actually, that was an understatement.  Back in the clinic, I could barely stomach the disgusting porridge-like food they tried feeding me three times a day.  I doubted I gotten more than two spoons of it in my system at each meal.  I was ravenous.

“There’s a small pizza shop on the way back to the dorms,” Chris said thoughtfully, “although, I’m not sure if they’re open yet.  And any of the other places are
definitely
closed until after the first week, at least.”

“Well, let’s go over there and see, at least,” I suggested. 

“Why not,” he shrugged.

I turned toward the door, checking once to make sure he followed.  Outside, the sun was shining and the day felt toasty.  The beautiful, cloudless skies from this morning remained.  On a day like this, it was hard to believe that this island had such a twisted past.

“So what’s storm season?” I asked once we were outside.  I remembered Chris mentioning it briefly.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, appearing strangely energized.  “
That
.”

“Yes,
that
,” I mimicked.  “What is it?  And why were you talking about it so ominously before?”

The corner of his lip twitched up in a half smile.  “Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. 
Storm season
.  Every fall, the weather here goes crazy.  It lasts at least a month.  Any day, you could find yourself stuck outside in a flash rainstorm.  Waves crash into shore, and even the river starts to flood.”

“There’s a river?”

“Yeah.  Where do you think we get our fresh water?  It’s up north, in the forest.  Anyway, two weeks into storm season, every walkway is flooded halfway to your knees.  Whenever you’re outside you have to watch for falling branches – or even whole trees.  Every year, at least one unlucky kid finds himself under one of those.  Surprisingly, there’s never been a casualty.  But, it’s been close.”

“So you mean classes keep going during all this?”

“Oh, classes
never
stop here.  No matter what.  One year, the week before winter break, we had a snowstorm that piled up the powder to your waist, and classes
still
kept going.  A walk that might take ten minutes in normal weather became a forty-minute nightmare.”

“Yikes.”

“You’ll see why when it all starts.  The teachers here are all
very
strict.”

“Really?”

“It’s a boarding school.  What do you expect?  They’re stuck right here on the island like the rest of us, except for them, it’s
years
they’ve been seeing the same thing every day.  If the island starts to feel monotonous to the students after only a few months, imagine what
they
feel like.”

“I guess,” I said slowly.  It was hard for me to see how anybody could grow tired of this place – once they got over its unusual past.

“So a lot of the time, they take it out on the students,” Chris laughed.  “But if you keep your head up, it’s not that bad.  You get a little leeway since you get to choose your own classes.  I can tell you what teachers to
absolutely
avoid.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem.  It’s what friends do.  Right?”  Before I could answer, he stopped dead in his tracks.  “Damn,” he said harshly, “it looks like the pizza place is closed.”

I looked up, and saw that we were standing in front of a dark storefront.  The sign above said
Pinocchio’s
in large red letters, and there was a small symbol of a pizza slice beside it.  I looked down to a note on the door.  It said, “Open the Second Week of Class.”

“Great,” I said humorlessly.  “Is there anything else?”

“Nothing before the cafeteria opens up again,” Chris replied thoughtfully.  “That’s actually one of the first things that gets on your nerves about this place.  There are so few food options, for anybody.”

My stomach growled loudly.  I felt like I hadn’t eaten in days—which wasn’t far from the truth.

Chris apparently heard it, because he laughed out loud.  “That hungry, huh?  Well, there are some vending machines in the basement of our dorm, if you want something before the cafeteria opens up again.”

“Definitely,” I said.  “That sounds a lot better than waiting.”

We turned and walked briskly toward the dorm.  All I could think about was getting some sort of snack to tide me over until the cafeteria opened up for supper.

I walked ahead of Chris most of the way, spurred on by my hunger.  When I got to the front of the dorm, I heard a mechanical
click
, and a whirring noise.  The next thing I knew the door was opening for me.

“Looks like your student card works,” Chris said happily.  “A good thing, too.  I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to chaperoning you all over campus.”

“Don’t kid yourself,” I retorted.  “You’d have loved that.”  He laughed.  “Which way to the basement?”

“There’s a door at the end of the hall.  I’ll show you.”

I followed him to an area that definitely hadn’t seen any recent renovations.  On the walls, old layers of paint were peeling, and cracks crawled across the cement floor.  A row of washing machines stood to one side, and dryers on the other.  It was quite a contrast to the condition of the rest of the dorm.

“It’s just around the corner,” Chris said, looking back to make sure I was following.  I was right on his heels.  My stomach had started to knot itself in hunger.

We turned the corner, and right there, just in front of me, stood a freshly-stocked vending machine.  I doubted I had ever seen a more beautiful sight.  I ran up to it, not caring that Chris saw my eagerness.  I was
hungry
.