Hunted

Twenty-Three: A Festering Mind

John Elmhirst walked along the darkened corridors of the Old School, his sharp step muffled by the thick carpets. He had his hands clasped behind his back as he went, whistling tunelessly. Everything, for once, was how it should be; everything was how he liked it, organised, structured, controlled.

As he continued his steady pace, the curfew bell rang, warning all students to return to their rooms. It was a wonderful sound, an unspoken command, and command they all knew to obey. Elmhirst couldn't help but grin, order had been restored, power was once again firmly in his grasp, and once he was rid of the senior class everything would be absolutely perfect once more. He turned the corner to his office, whistling triumphantly, when his step faltered.

The corridor wasn't as he knew it. It was too long, the ceiling too low, the carpet here was thread bare, the paintings of Victorian men and women on the wall were all scowling, their eyes following him. He allowed a low hiss to escape his lips, as the corridor flickered like a faulty television channel. He stumbled against the wall, his lungs constricting, his heart pounding.

"No," he growled. "No, no, no - she can't". The walls about him flickered again, until they disappeared, leaving a great black void either side of the narrow corridor. He lurched into the centre of the floor, scrambling across the ground, his face hitting the floor and his cheek burning against the thread-bare carpet.

"She is the only child to have survived this type of alteration," a low voice echoed, a voice he knew well. There was a hollowness to the spoken words, crackled as if played from an old radio.

Elmhirst turned around to find an elderly doctor standing over him, an image of a doctor he remembered well, the edges of his form blurring slightly. Doctor Carson was dead some ten years, but here he stood, white haired and bearded as he had been when he lived.

"But that doesn't mean she should be... preserved. She is volatile," he warned. Elmhirst gaped at him watching as the old memory of the man recalled their final conversation. Elmhirst tried to shake it from his mind, but his own reply, spoken ten years previous, came unbidden.

"She will be the envy of every single patron, Carson. They will pay millions for her". He scrambled around to behold himself, ten years younger, his hair still clinging boldly to the light-brown shade of his youth.

"You're not listening to me, Elmhirst - she is too dangerous. She will destroy this school and you won't even see it until it is too late," Carson warned. "Get rid of her now, before she does something reckless".

"No - I cannot do that. She will be formidable. She will learn control. She will learn to obey me," he hissed and with those foolish words Elmhirst watched his former self and his long-dead colleague flicker and vanish from view.

"I will learn to obey you?" Elmhirst forced himself to his feet, staggering backwards away from the shade of a girl, suddenly standing at the end of the corridor, following the path he had just come. She began walking towards him, her bright blue eyes an unnatural shade, glowing in the darkened corridor. She was only seven, her gaze wide and full of knowing. "Why would I obey you? You aren't strong. You have no power. You can do nothing against me". The image of the seven-year-old Owens flickered forward, covering twenty feet in a blink of an eye, until she was standing right before him, her innocent, childish features twisted into a disdaining grimace. Elmhirst stumbled away from her as she tilted her head at him and grinned wickedly.

"You. Are. Weak. You. Are. Nothing," she breathed, each word falling off her tongue with a heavy thud in Elmhirst's ears, as she followed him, placing one foot in front of the other, relishing in his torment. "You should have ended me when you had the chance".

Elmhirst backed against the door, his hand fumbling for the handle. The blue-eyed child kept approaching him, her eyes boring into his, seeing too much of him, reading what terrified him...