My First Coven

Run Through the Jungle

Thursday; and everything had kicked off again at school. Mr Banks was on some kind of rampage as someone or something, had apparently managed to gain access to his office and leave a bunch of dead things over his fancy expensive rug and furniture. The dead things in question being a collection of fish of all different kinds, a few chickens with missing heads but the jewel in the dead animal crown was a dirty looking pig; laid on its back on Mr Banks' desk with its entrails spilling out. Oh he was yet again, not a happy man and had gone that weird beetroot colour from sheer rage. He had called everyone at the school at the time in to the main assembly hall to give us all a massive bollocking yet again. He was putting it down to someone playing really tasteless pranks due to it being Samhain soon, well he said Halloween. We were all to sit down and shut up, Mr Banks was not playing nice at all and even the teachers and staff were all lined up against the side wall of the assembly hall.

'We will be questioning everyone who was on school grounds from the hours of seven o'clock last night to six thirty this morning. We we be reviewing all CCTV footage and correlating this with our interviews in which the Police will be in attendance.'

Everyone in the hall seemed like they held their breath at that moment. It felt like that part in a movie wedding, when the vicar would ask if there was anyone present who knew of any reason why the bride and groom should not be married and everyone in the congregation would sit there all bog eyed and silent. Mr Banks followed up with threatening to cancel the Halloween Dance on Sunday which everybody really did gasp at. Mainly because they probably had bespoke costumes to wear and had managed to get alcohol from somewhere. Our dances weren't actually too bad and they always put a decent spread on.

I glanced over to where my Auntie M was stood, next to Mr Evans who was whispering something in her ear. She looked like she was giggling and even used her hand to cover her mouth. I had noticed that Auntie M and Mr Evans had been spending quite a lot of time together recently. I wondered if she had got her claws in him or if it was because of our covens alliance. It was probably both to be fair. They did actually look pretty good together which I thought was quite funny as this had not gone unnoticed by some of the other girls who were not impressed.

But nobody was impressed at the fact that we all had to be interviewed. The Police had turned up shortly after our gathering in the assembly hall, there were quite a few of them actually; around ten uniformed officers and a few higher ups from the look of it. They decided to interview everybody who was boarded at the school first and brought in everyone who shared rooms to be interviewed together along with those running our dorms. June and Julie, the dorm mothers who minded the girls dorm were present for us.

The boarding girls went first and myself, Victoria and Katie didn't have to wait long to be interviewed. We basically told the police what we were doing from the time school finished yesterday to coming out of our dorm this morning when school started. That was easy for us as we had changed clothes after school, done a bit of studying, went for dinner and our usual walk after. Then we went back to our dorm room and watched a film before we called it a night. And we were there until we woke the next morning around half past seven. June and Julie had vouched for us.

It took a while to get through everyone and nobody was allowed to leave the assembly hall until everybody had been spoken to; students and teachers alike. The Police had been taken though to what was the schools control room that was run by two tech guys who maintained all the computers in the school and their other workmates; two security guards. One of which had been woken up as he was usually the nightwatchman who kept an eye on the grounds and the CCTV and he did not look happy at all.

'So come on then.' Katie nudged both me and Victoria. 'Who do you reckon is doing this then?' She asked us just after we had been let out of the assembly hall. We had about fifteen minutes to kill before our next class so we spent it gossiping. I knew what was going on though but Katie and Victoria didn't need to know that, so I just joined in with their speculating.

'I wouldn't be surprised if it's one of the senior boys to be honest.' Victoria said. 'They all do stupid stuff in their final year and they really don't give a shit because they're so filthy rich that daddy will take care of everything.'

Victoria did have a point. The amount of times news went round the school that one of the senior boys had been given some massive expensive BMW or Audi to learn how to drive in then had been showing off drunk, or sober and subsequently wrapped their car around a tree. With apparently no consequences. I thought this may be the reason that was given for all this weird stuff going on; one of the older buys playing really awful and disgusting pranks, just because they could.

'That's actually plausible.' I added. 'Remember a few years ago when Christopher Bouchard let two hundred live ducks out in the library on his last day of school?'

Katie and Victoria started laughing. It was pretty funny and God knows how he managed to pull it off, but the day went down in St. Augustine's prank history. It took a professional cleaning team a whole week to clean all the shit up.

That wasn't it though. But Katie and Victoria didn't need to know that. Auntie M had been doing her best to try and find out what exactly the hell it was we were up against, but until she could get first hand experience with the thing or get some decent clues pointing to what it may be; she was stumped. Apparently there wasn't any magic that could just tell you. Bummer. And I had to keep practising the little magic I knew especially as my coven initiation was in a few days. I probably wasn't able to go to the dance on Sunday as I had my initiation so I had told Katie and Victoria that I was going to a party with my Auntie M, with family and old friends. The dance was themed too which was interesting, Eighties and Nineties. Funny considering none of the students were even born in those decades.

Eventually we made our way to our next class which was P.E. and they were making us do cross country running which made no sense to me at this time of year. It was cold enough to warrant wearing sweatpants but we'd be warm enough soon to not need a sweatshirt or a hoodie. I tied my hoodie around my waist. We'd also be running with the boys today which never ended well as halfway round our route a bunch of kids would sneak off in to the woods to smoke cigarettes or do something else they shouldn't. The route took us all the way round the school grounds, in to the weird forested bit right at the front of the school, then up the main drive and back round to the athletics field; it'd take somebody running full pelt about half an hour but for the rest of us it took around forty minutes. Whatever, I ran with Katie and Victoria at a steady pace so we could continue chatting. I hated running.