Chapter 4 HERBERT WILBUR 2
Taking a deep breath, Elaine pushed the enormous double doors open and stepped inside.
She didn’t know what she was expecting, but she was sure that this was far from it.
From where she stood, all she could see as far as her eyes could reach was a seemingly never-ending hallway. The long corridor was dimly lit, the golden lamps casting trembling shadows that danced along the walls on both her left and right. The faint hum of silence filled the air, so thick it almost had a voice of its own.
The walls were adorned with paintings of ancient times, eras long gone, places that maybe once existed in some forgotten world. The portraits stared down at her people who clearly didn’t belong to this time. There was something so hauntingly beautiful about them, as if the artists had trapped their souls within the frames.
Everything about the hallway felt detached from the world she knew. The deeper she went, the more she felt as though the hands of the clock had been turned backward dragging her centuries into the past.
Her steps echoed softly against the polished floor as she walked, her eyes trailing over the paintings in silent admiration. Time felt strange here. It was only when the light ahead began to grow brighter that she realized she had finally reached the end of the hallway.
There stood a massive arched window that allowed sunlight to spill in, washing the room in a warm, golden glow. To her left and right were turns like a T-junction.
“Which turn is the principal’s office?” she whispered under her breath, glancing from one path to the other.
Her instincts nudged her toward the right. Nothing good ever comes out of going left, she thought, forcing a nervous smile.
Taking the right turn, Elaine walked on. But something was off it was even darker here than the hallway she had just left. Her footsteps seemed to fade faster, swallowed by the still air.
She hesitated, contemplating whether to turn back and try the left corridor, when she began to hear faint voices distant chatter.
“I guess I’m on the right path,” she told herself softly, though the sound of her own voice gave her little comfort.
She kept walking forward, the voices growing louder and louder, but the strange thing was she couldn’t make out a single word. It was like listening to a conversation through water. Muffled. Unreal.
Then, out of nowhere, a cold, ominous breeze swept through the hallway. It brushed her skin like ghostly fingers, chilling her to the bone. It was brief, but enough to make her stop in her tracks. Her body tensed, her breath shallow.
She turned back immediately.
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“Uhhhh,” Elaine groaned quietly as she stepped out of the principal’s office, finally done with all the remaining paperwork and requirements. Her head was spinning from all the forms and instructions, and her hand ached from signing her name repeatedly.
Apparently, she had been assigned a room all to herself no roommate.
That should’ve been good news, right? She loved her privacy, never liked people touching her stuff or asking too many questions. But for some reason, the thought of sleeping alone in this massive, old building sent a strange chill crawling down her spine.
Elaine stood at the front of the principal’s office, unsure of where to go next, when she noticed some students looking her way.
Some were clearly older, others younger, but all had the same curious, almost wary look in their eyes as if they could already tell she was new.
And there she was, standing stupidly in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by her luggage like some lost traveler who took the wrong turn to the past.
“I shouldn’t announce to the whole school that I’m new,” she muttered, rolling her eyes at herself before walking away quickly.
Outside, the air felt different lighter, more alive. She had asked a few students for directions and was now heading toward the dormitory. Her legs ached horribly; it had been a walking marathon ever since she stepped out of the car with her mom that morning.
As she got closer to the dorm area, she finally began to see signs of life.
This part of the school was a hundred times livelier than anywhere else she had seen so far. The silence of the main building was gone, replaced by the hum of voices and laughter.
For the first time since she arrived, something about this place actually felt… normal.
She began to wonder if this school was the reason the surrounding towns looked deserted if all the life of the area had been swallowed up and kept within these pale white walls.
The excitement that had been absent before began to sneak in slowly.
Some students sat chatting along the pavements, others perched on window sills, and a few rested lazily under the wide trees scattered around the lawns. The air was alive with chatter, laughter, and the faint melody of a piano drifting from somewhere.
The building itself was vast grand even with the same pale white color she had noticed on the other structures earlier.
Elaine stepped inside, expecting a normal dorm corridor, but what greeted her made her jaw drop.
It wasn’t a corridor at all it was a manor.
A massive, open hall stretched before her. A pair of giant chandeliers hung above, their lights burning warmly, coating the entire room in a golden hue. The marble floor shimmered faintly, decorated with intricate patterns that looked too old and too elegant for a school dormitory.
At the far end of the room stood a piano, silent and polished.
“This looks like a ballroom,” Elaine whispered, spinning slowly to take it all in. “A literal 1700s ballroom. The only thing missing is a wine bar.”
Two grand staircases curved upward on opposite sides of the hall, meeting the upper floors like a royal palace.
“Which school builds rooms upstairs?” she muttered, completely stunned.
The dormitory was four floors high four! Surely, there had to be an elevator somewhere, she thought as she began walking around the vast room.
Sure enough, she found one, though its metal door looked ancient, like it had been installed decades ago. Beside it was a large brass plaque mounted on the wall.
She stepped closer to read the names engraved on it:
Yvonne Adams
Jacob Oak
Owen Aetos
Vlad Doukas
Theodore Argyros
Andrew Diamandis
Damon Vaemond
At the bottom of the plaque, a date was inscribed in bold, fading letters,
Year 1904
“Wow…” she breathed, her fingers brushing the edge of the metal. “This place is older than I thought.”
She finally made it to her room on the third floor. The first thing her eyes caught and immediately hated was the giant tree outside her window.
“Oh God,” she groaned, dragging a palm down her face. “Why do the trees have to face here? Why?”
She let out a loud, shaky sigh as she quickly drew the curtains closed, blocking the sight entirely.
Even as beautiful as the room was with its antique furniture, lavender curtains, and spotless floornit still couldn’t ease the strange unease creeping inside her chest.
Elaine lay down on the soft bed, sinking into the warmth of the sheets. Her eyelids fluttered shut as the exhaustion of the long day finally caught up with her.
Her last thought before drifting into slee
p was that no matter how calm everything seemed…
something about Herbert Wilbur still didn’t feel right.