Mission Preparatory is a school for the elite. The complex is posh and sprawling. Its lofty steeple roofs and huge latticed windows have the look of Old World castles. Except for the blacktop pushing its way to the gated entrance, towering trees completely ring the complex, providing equal amounts of beauty and darkness to the immense campus. A dark wild forest moves in all directions away from the preparatory school, providing a natural barrier of protection from the eyes of the curious. The forest is stopped by distant housing developments and the town of Wayword.
Mission indeed screams affluence, an enticing wonderland for the overindulged offspring of the rich and famous. But that is an illusion. Mission Prep is in fact a dumping ground for the neglected and unwanted youth of the well-heeled.
I am one of the unwanted. My crime was being born. I wasn’t planned, and clearly, I wasn’t wanted. Because my progenitors have always considered me irrelevant, my first fifteen years were spent in the local public school system, but after continuous scrapes with the law, the fed up WPD and the town judge summoned my douchebag parents back to Wayword. I was promptly plucked out of the Juvenile Detention Center and summarily dumped at Mission and left here to rot. That was over a year ago.
So here I am, seventeen, still boarding at the exclusive school. Here, residence halls are called manors, not dorms, which is misleading because even though the rambling structures have the look of a manor, they still house students. The single occupant rooms are quite spacious and have their own private bathrooms. So I’m comfortable and have no complaints. There aren’t any rules here. At least none posted or spoken, and yet we have a crime free campus, which is very weird because the student body is truly a collection of rebellious rejects. Every kind of mischief occurred at Wayword High, but here? Nothing. We’re like drugged-up zombies lurching our way through our high school years. The only thing, though, is I don’t believe we’re being drugged. It’s something else. I can’t explain it, let alone prove it, but lately a growing feeling in my gut is warning me of the presence of an unseen, sinister entity. What it is, I don’t know. I’m only sensing a presence.
Unexplainable things happen here. Like how is it that every student attending Mission maintains a high GPA? How? Listen, I walk the halls and grounds with more than a few kids who have the IQ of a banana peel. So I know that cannot possibly be true. Strange though, I’ve seen several of these walking banana peels on exam days and they are different. They are sharp and alert. I haven’t witnessed cheating, yet it has got to be happening. No one has ever been caught even attempting to steal a test prior to taking an exam, and there is no evidence of passing cheat notes in class. Nor is there evidence of instructors engaging in academic improprieties–i.e. fixing grades. CCTV cameras are mounted everywhere. Privacy is not a right at this exclusive institution. It’s all so very strange. But stranger still is how our Division I football team remains undefeated when half of our players are on the wimpy side. Seriously, how can a tricycle demolish a tank on the football field. It doesn’t happen. Except for here.
Another weird thing occurred a few days ago. I don’t have many friends here but I count Margret Remming as one. Margret was born with a hip deformity which left her with a noticeable limp. She’s also a bit on the slow side of the intelligence meter and for those two reasons, she was cast aside and dumped here. Well, Margret took ill the day before an important chemistry test. I was with Margret when the nurse came in to check on her. Because her temperature was so high, Margret was immediately moved to the campus clinic, which is more like a mini hospital than a clinic. I check on her later that day but was told she was not allowed visitors and that she most likely would be spending a night or two at the clinic. So, imagine my shock when I walked into chemistry the next morning only to find Margret looking healthy and acting all chipper. We spoke after class, but only briefly. Margret appeared nervous and anxious to get away from me, but before she shoved past me, I noticed that her light blue eyes were strangely speckled, like fine sand particles had somehow gotten lodged in them. I also noticed that her limp was gone. A feeling of apprehension came over as I watched Margret hurry down the hallway.
“She’s inhabited, you know that, right?” A male voice startled me.
I whipped around to face a dark-haired boy standing just behind me. “What does that mean?”
“It means that’s not really Margret. Something has taken over her body. It’s not your friend.”
I felt the apprehension ballooning. “You’re insane. What are you talking about?”
“You don’t know yet, do you?” The boy began to stroll away. “Look out your window tonight. Look toward the forest.”
“What will I see?”
He threw a look back at me. “The inhabitors. Keep the lights off. You don’t want to be seen.”
Half past midnight they came into view, four figures ambling across the immense lawn. They soon disappeared into the trees. The figures appeared gangly and grayish in the moonlight, and they moved in a hunched over sort of way. I had no clue as to what they could be but I knew with a certainty that evil lived in the surrounding forest and that there was no escaping this place. Is survival possible? I don’t know. What I do know is that from here on my life at Mission will be lived in utter terror.
