BladeGrass Hollows is the first book written in the ShadowLantern series. Continue reading for an excerpt from the book. If you would like to read the rest of this book contact me via the About page.
Chapter Three
The night was dark, but the moon and stars, as well as the school’s exterior lights and street lamps, made it fairly easy to see.
The window to Mrs. Jennings class was too much in the open for Jamis’ comfort. Anyone walking by or driving by along the eastern side of the school could see them trying to get in through it. Before they could make their move they had to be sure that the coast would be clear long enough for all three of them to get inside. Ben had followed, though he wasn’t sure what it was that Jamis and Louie were trying to do. Jamis wished that he would have taken a moment to tell Ben what was going on earlier, for now Ben’s questions were not only annoying him, but they were going to give away their position behind the bush.
“Shhhh!” Jamis scolded, as Ben opened his mouth to speak again. “We have to be quiet.” Their hiding spot behind the trimmed hedge wasn’t much of a hiding spot. Anyone looking out of the school’s second floor, or anyone walking around the outside corners of the school could have easily seen them, but it kept them out of the view of cars, so it was better than nothing.
Jamis crouched lower. “Go make sure the window is still unlocked,” he told Louie. Louie nodded and began to rise. “Wait!” Jamis pulled him back down by the arm. “Just walk by casually. Examine the window out of the corner of your eye and continue along until you get to the far end of the hedge, then duck down and hurry back to us.” Louie nodded and stood, then moved on.
There was an anticipated silence while Louie examined the window. Jamis was impressed by how casual he managed to appear. Louie’s face was void of expression as he walked by so that not even Jamis could tell by it whether the window was unlocked or not.
“It’s open,” Louie whispered, as he returned from the far side of the hedge. “It’s open!” He repeated, more excitedly.
“Great!” Jamis nodded. He peered over the hedge. Cars were coming. If they had to wait too long for cars to pass by they were either going to head back, or find Louie in a heap of trouble. Jamis didn’t want to admit even to himself that he would likely get in trouble, too, if he stayed out too long.
“We don’t need all three of us to go in,” Jamis whispered. “And the longer we stay out here, the better our chances of someone walking around the corner and seeing the three of us crouched by the hedge.” Louie knows where Mr. Graham’s paper was last seen, so I think he should go as soon as there is an opening. Ben and me will watch for cars. Then I’ll go while Ben watches for cars, and as soon as the coast is clear, if Louie and I haven’t been too long gone, Ben will follow.”
“How come I have to be last?”
“Sounds good to me.” Louie peered over the hedge. “I’m just going to get ready to run, and you signal me as soon as the coast is clear.”
Jamis nodded, keeping an eye on the approaching car. It sped past. No more cars could be seen from where he was. “Now, Louie! Go!”
Louie dashed toward the window, threw it open, and rolled inside. The roads were still empty. Jamis decided to take his chances now, too.
He raced toward the window. Inside the class he could see Louie getting ready to close it enough that anyone who saw it wouldn’t wonder what was open, but as he saw Jamis coming, he moved aside. Jamis jumped through.
The classroom was dark. Outside he could hear cars coming. Ben was going to have to wait a little longer. “Lets get going,” Jamis said. Louie nodded and they moved toward the door. It could be unlocked from inside, so there was no problems with getting out.
The hallway was empty and dark except for the glowing lights of exit signs at either end. Jamis crept down it as quickly as he could without making any loud noises on the floor. Louie followed. Somewhere in the building someone was moving things around. Likely a janitor.
Moments later Jamis stood in front of Mr. Graham’s office door. “Shoot!” He cried, as he tugged on the handle. “It’s locked!”
“What!?” Louie moaned. “I hadn’t thought of that!”
A scuffle sounded around the corner. Jamis heart leaped within him. His head darted around looking for a place to hide. He had no chance to get anywhere before the maker of the sound rounded the corner. It was Ben!
Ben scurried over. “Sorry, guys. I tripped on an electrical cord back there. Is it locked?” He asked, looking at the door.
Jamis wanted to scold him for his noise, but he answered the question instead. “Yeah; darn thing’s locked.”
A grin stole across Ben’s face. “Lookie, lookie!” He said, holding up a set of keys.
Louie’s jaw dropped. Jamis hoped he held his composure better. “Where did you find those!?” Louie asked.
“I’m so used to going to the other way for the bathrooms that I went that way before I remembered that I was supposed to be going this way. There was a janitor cart in the middle of the hall. These keys were on it. I grabbed them just in case. Hope one fits!” He looked to be thinking for a moment, but he began whispering again before Jamis or Louie could say anything. “We had better hurry before the janitor comes back and finds them missing.”
“I’ll say,” Jamis agreed. “Give me the keys.” Ben hesitated a moment, not wanting to hand them over, but he did. Jamis immediately got to work testing the keys on the door. As fate would often have it, the key which opened the door was the last on on the chain that he tried. He couldn’t help being relieved, however, that the correct key was there.
“Here, Ben.” Jamis handed him the keys. “Take them back. We don’t need them anymore. We’ll lock up when we leave.” Again Ben hesitated, not wanting to have to run them back, but he took them and hurried quietly down the hall.
Like everything else, Mr. Graham’s office was dark, but this time there was no exit sign glowing above them so they could see.
“It’s too dark,” Louie commented on the obvious. “If I try to feel around I might break something, and we couldn’t read anything without the light anyway.”
“Watch the hall,” Jamis told Ben, as soon as he returned.
“What?” Ben moaned.
“We have to turn on the lights in order to find anything and if anyone comes they are going to notice that the lights are on and we won’t hear them coming. You need to watch the hall and hurry back and warn us if anyone starts to come.”
“Why should I do any of this?” Ben complained. “I don’t even know what is going on here!”
“We’ll let you know later,” Jamis promised. “But right now we need to hurry up then get out of here.”
“Alright,” Ben nodded unhappily, but he went to watch the hall as he had been told.
Light flooded the room as Louie flipped the switch on the wall. The office had been cleaned up since Jamis was in there on Wednesday.
“Perfect,” Louie moaned sarcastically. “He’s cleaned his office, now I have no idea where to look, or even if the paper is in here at all.”
“We’ll never find it if it is here and we don’t look for it. Come on. But if you move anything put it back exactly the way it was.”
“Jolly.” Louie nodded. He checked the desk drawer where he had seen it last, but it wasn’t there. Jamis checked the small set of drawers just beside the desk. They were cluttered and keeping things as they were before he started looking through them was difficult. Because of that he was only able to partially search through them.
“I found something,” he heard Louie say. “Here is some records of previous trips to Bladegrass Hollows.”
“I don’t see anything wrong with any of these,” Jamis said after scanning through them. There was a paper from five years ago titled “Bladegrass Hollows” and subtitled “The haunting truth of an insanely quick completion of an obstacle course.” The paper talked about how one boy managed to beat Mr. Graham’s obstacle course in an extremely short period of time, then it compared the stamina of the youth to older adults who couldn’t have come anywhere near such an incredible time. According to the paper the obstacle course had been run the following week by several adults on a camping trip and none of them had been able to come close to the young boy’s time.
Louie looked disappointed. “That must have been the article I saw him looking at. Though I don’t remember the subtitle being such a drag.”
“You didn’t remember what the subtitle said at all,” Jamis reminded him. “You were trying to remember and you probably pulled a random guess out of your hat when you told me earlier what you thought it said.”
“I guess you are right. We’d better get out of here before we get in trouble.” Louie moved toward the door.
Jamis followed, but stumbled over a small cardboard box on the floor near the desk. It spilled revealing an old yellowed and wrinkled newspaper entitled “Bloodgrass Hollows” and subtitled “Haunting night. Young boy claimed to be possessed kills other boys.” Jamis eyes widened.
“That’s it!” Louie exclaimed. “That is the paper I saw Mr. Graham hide!”
“This paper dates back to ten years ago,” Jamis mused, picking it up. “Mr. Graham has only been taking class members there for eight years.” The paper started off by saying that Bloodgrass Hollows, (named for the fields of Cogon Grass, also known as Japanese Blood Grass, there) had been renamed to Bladegrass Hollows after an extremely disturbing event on a class trip for students from Rocksford High School. The events there caused Bladegrass Hollows to be closed to all public for two years.
“Then there is something evil that happened at Bladegrass Hollows,” Louie said.
“But that doesn’t mean anything, really,” Jamis responded. “People have been going there for eight years with Mr. Graham and nothing has happened. Besides, if we look at the history of the world, something bad has likely happened in any place you’ve ever been to, or ever will go to.”
Silence returned as they both turned their eyes back to the page and began reading again. The paper told of six youths that had crept off in the middle of the night, wandering away from the general camp of their class members and teacher. Of the six that had crept away only three had returned. All three of them came back with blood on their clothes. One of them was confused and frightened but didn’t know what was going on. The other two were running back, one chasing the other with a large bowie knife. The young boy doing the chasing claimed that the other boy had killed his two friends and was possessed with an evil demon and must die. The fleeing youth denied his claims. The noise awoke the other students and the camp leader and they kept the two boys apart, trying to get some straight answers from them. The two boys glared at each other during the questioning. The one with the bowie knife lunged at the other but was held back. The teacher himself held the boy with the bowie knife as he seemed to be the aggressor, and the other boy hadn’t fought back at all. But just then the other boy pulled away from the grasp of the class mates who were holding him and, in a fury, he lunged forward, stealing the bowie knife and stabbing its owner. The stabbed boy was critically wounded, but he survived.
Both boys were assumed to be insane and were taken away to be handled as such. The paper didn’t say what had happened to them in the end.
The teacher was taken to court for the possibility of killing his students. Though he was not convicted of any crimes, he was still denied his job as a teacher. The report didn’t say much more, but what Jamis read was enough to shock him, and, from the look on Louie’s face, his friend was horrified, too.
By now Jamis was worried that someone was going to walk in and slice him in half for having snuck into the school. The dark night outside suddenly seemed more haunting than it had before, and every passing car reminded him of a mafia member preparing for a drive-by-shooting. Cold chills tingled up and down his spine.
“Bloodgrass Hollows,” he heard Louie whisper. “A more fitting name for it. I wasn’t the only one who was cut by what must have been what the paper refers to as blood grass.” His voice was shaking. “The grass is all red-tipped, too, as if it has cut people thousands of times before.”
“Still,” Jamis paused as he put the paper back into the box and closed it as it had been before he tripped over it. “This incident happened only once. Mr. Graham has never had any problems ever since they allowed people to camp there again. Everyone loves Mr. Graham. And none of us going this year are bad people. I know Lester and some others can be hard at times, but they aren’t evil.”
“We can think more about this later,” Louie said, his voice still shaking. “Let’s just get out of here.”
Jamis nodded. Suddenly a noise thumped at the door. Ben was supposed to be keeping an eye on things down the hall, but someone could have come from one of the other rooms, or the nearby janitor closet, even. Jamis quickly flipped the switch on the wall off. The room went dark. The rattle of the door handle sounded. Whoever had made the noise at the door was coming in.