CHAPTER 103: SHADOWS OF COMPLIANCE.

The morning after the note arrived, Elara and Corrine moved through the school like ghosts, their faces carefully composed into expressions of docile normalcy. In the dining hall, they smiled faintly at classmates, nodded at teachers, and ate their breakfast with mechanical precision.

Elara’s fork scraped against her plate, the sound blending with the hum of chatter, but her eyes darted to the corners of the room, where maintenance workers lingered. Corrine sipped her tea, her knuckles white around the cup, as she scanned the faces of other students, searching for signs of fear or suspicion that matched their own.

In their first class, history, Elara sat at her desk, pretending to take notes as the teacher explained different terms. Her pen scratched meaningless loops on the page while her thoughts raced. Who had slipped the note under their door? Was it the hostel mistress, or someone else watching them?

Across the room, Corrine caught her eye, her expression unreadable but tense. They were in this together, but the strain of their double lives was already pulling at the edges of their friendship.

"Elara," Mr. Hargrove’s voice cut through her thoughts. "Can you tell us the primary export of the Virginia colony in 1650?"

She froze, her heart thudding. "Tobacco," she said, her voice steady despite the panic rising in her throat. She hadn’t been listening, but she’d read the Chapter last week. Mr. Hargrove nodded and moved on, but his gaze lingered a moment too long, or so it seemed to Elara.

After class, as they shuffled into the hallway, Corrine whispered, "We need to be more careful. He was watching you."

"He’s always watching everyone," Elara muttered, but her stomach twisted. The teachers seemed more alert lately, their smiles too tight, their questions too pointed. It was as if the entire faculty knew something was amiss but was determined to keep the students in the dark.

Their plan was simple: act like model students during the day, but search for clues at night, when the school was quiet and the staff less vigilant. They’d overheard whispers about the locked basement beneath the main building, a place students were forbidden to enter. Rumors swirled round it. If there was a clue to Bella’s disappearance, or to the strange occurrences plaguing the school, it might be there.

That night, after lights-out, Elara and Corrine lay in their beds, fully dressed under the covers, waiting for the hostel mistress’s final rounds. The footsteps came at 10:30, pausing outside their door. Elara held her breath, her fingers gripping the edge of her blanket. The doorknob rattled faintly, then silence. The footsteps moved on.

They waited another ten minutes before slipping out of bed. Corrine pulled a small flashlight from under her pillow, a relic from a camping trip two summers ago. Elara grabbed a hairpin from her desk, hoping it would be enough to pick the lock on the basement door. Neither of them spoke as they crept into the hallway, their socks muffling their steps on the cold wooden floor.

The school at night was a different beast. Every creak of the building felt like a warning. They moved quickly, sticking to the edges of the corridors, avoiding the main stairwell where the night watchman patrolled.

The basement door was at the end of a narrow hallway near the cafeteria, its heavy oak frame marked with fresh paint. Elara knelt, her hands trembling as she worked the hairpin into the lock. Corrine stood watch, her flashlight beam darting nervously down the hall.

"Hurry," Corrine whispered, her voice tight. "I thought I heard something."

"I’m trying," Elara hissed. The lock was stubborn, the hairpin bending under her clumsy fingers. She’d read about lock-picking in a novel once, but the reality was maddeningly different. Sweat beaded on her forehead despite the chilly air.

A soft thud echoed from the far end of the hall. Both girls froze. Corrine switched off the flashlight, plunging them into near-darkness. The silence stretched, broken only by the faint hum of the building’s old pipes. Then, nothing. No footsteps, no voices. Just their own ragged breathing.

Elara forced herself to focus, twisting the hairpin until she felt a click. The lock gave way, and the door creaked open, revealing a steep staircase descending into blackness. The air that wafted up smelled of damp stone.

Corrine hesitated. "Are we sure about this?"

"No," Elara admitted, her voice barely audible. "But we can’t stop now."

They descended, the flashlight’s beam cutting through the darkness. The basement was a maze of concrete walls and rusted pipes, the air thick with the scent of mildew. Old crates and broken furniture were stacked haphazardly, covered in dust. Corrine’s light swept over the walls, revealing faint scratches, similar to the ones they’d seen on their dorm door before they were painted over.

"Look," Corrine whispered, pointing to a corner where the scratches were denser, forming a pattern that looked strange and scary. They weren’t random claw marks; they curved and intersected, like symbols or writing in a language neither of them recognized.

Elara traced one with her finger, her skin prickling. "This isn’t normal. Animals don’t scratch like this."

Before Corrine could respond, a low, guttural sound echoed from deeper in the basement—a scraping, like something heavy being dragged across the floor. The girls froze, their pulses hammering. Corrine’s flashlight trembled, the beam wavering.

"We should go," she whispered.

But Elara’s eyes caught something in the corner of the beam’s light: a small, metal box half-buried under a pile of rotting cardboard. It was out of place, too clean and polished for the decay around it. Against her better judgment, she moved toward it, her hands shaking as she brushed away the debris.

"Elara, no!" Corrine hissed, grabbing her arm. The scraping sound came again, closer this time.

Elara ignored her, prying open the box’s lid. Inside was a single photograph, faded but intact. It showed a group of students standing at the edge of the forest, smiling for the camera. Bella was among them, her face bright and carefree, a stark contrast to the hollow-eyed girl Elara remembered from before her disappearance. But what made Elara’s breath catch was the figure in the background, half-hidden by the trees—a tall, thin shape with eyes that gleamed unnaturally in the photo’s grainy light.

Corrine gasped, her hand tightening on Elara’s arm. "What is that?"

"I don’t know," Elara whispered, slipping the photo into her pocket. The scraping sound was louder now, accompanied by a faint, rhythmic tapping, like footsteps on concrete.

"We need to go, now!" Corrine said, her voice breaking.

They scrambled back toward the staircase, the flashlight’s beam bouncing wildly. The tapping grew faster, closer, as if whatever was down there knew they’d found something they weren’t supposed to. Elara’s foot caught on a crate, and she stumbled, the hairpin falling from her hand with a faint clink. Corrine yanked her up, and they ran, their socks slipping on the dusty floor.

They reached the staircase and bolted up, slamming the basement door behind them. Elara’s hands fumbled with the lock, her heart pounding as she prayed it would hold. The hallway was silent, but the air felt charged, as if the building itself were watching them.

Back in their room, they locked the door and shoved a chair under the handle for good measure. Elara pulled the photograph from her pocket, and they studied it under the dim light of Corrine’s flashlight. The figure in the background was blurry, but its eyes were unmistakable—too large, too bright, like the owl that had crashed into their window.

"This is proof," Elara said, her voice trembling with a mix of fear and determination. "Proof that something’s wrong here."

"But what do we do with it?" Corrine asked, her face pale. "If we show anyone, they’ll know we were in the basement. They’ll know we didn’t stop looking."

Elara didn’t have an answer. The weight of their discovery pressed down on them, heavier than ever. They were in deeper now, and the consequences of being caught felt more real with every passing second.

The next day, the girls struggled to maintain their facade. In the dining hall, they laughed at a classmate’s joke, but Elara’s eyes kept drifting to the forest beyond the windows. In class, Corrine scribbled notes diligently, but her pen shook, and she kept glancing at Elara, as if checking to make sure she was still there. The photograph was hidden in Elara’s sock drawer, but its presence loomed over them like a storm cloud.

That night, the girls sat on Elara’s bed, the photograph between them. Corrine’s voice was barely above a whisper. "We can’t keep doing this alone. We need help."

"But who can we trust?" Elara asked, her voice cracking. "Everyone’s too scared to talk, and the ones who do... disappear."

Corrine’s jaw tightened. "There’s Sarah. The one who mentioned her friend. Maybe she knows something."

Elara hesitated. Reaching out to Sarah was a risk, but they were running out of options. "Okay," she said finally. "But we have to be careful. If she’s working with them..."

"She’s not," Corrine said, though her voice wavered. "She sounded scared, like us."

Their bond, strained by fear and sleepless nights, held firm in that moment. They were terrified, but they were in this together, and that was enough to keep them going. They agreed to approach Sarah the next day, to test the waters and see if she could be an ally.

In the early hours of the morning, Elara woke to a faint tapping at the window. Her heart stopped, but when she looked, there was nothing... just the empty night. She glanced at Corrine, who was awake, her eyes wide with fear.

They didn’t speak. They didn’t need to. The truth was clear: whatever had taken Bella, wasn’t done with them yet.