The Road Ahead

Prologue

              A person's integrity is never worth much when their dreams are involved. People go crazy for an opportunity to live, and usually, they forget themselves in the process. Dreams are lasting things, sometimes carried out long after the person who dreamed them are gone. The Ambrose School of the Arts was a dream, it was built into a reality by Juliet Ambrose, she was 67 when the school was completed in 1934, she grew up poor but always harbored the dream of creating a school for people like her. She was living another dream as one of the best artists in the world at the time, she composed 312 songs throughout her life and could play at lease 4 instruments well.  Her dreams were the only innocent thing about her. When she died in 1938, she left behind one of the most prestigious schools in North America, a husband who hadn't loved her in years, and a son, who loved her too much for his own good, who took over her precious school. Her son allowed her school to prosper, he loved it with the same passion that she had and the school managed to stay in their family, his son took over after him and so on. The school grew into a type of mysterious monarchy of sorts in the middle of Carlton county, Louisiana as there had always been secrets wrapped in with the ivy growing up the side of the building. People died on campus entirely too often for people to write it off as a coincidence, but no one had the balls to dig deeper either. 

 Some people would kill to carry out a dream especially if it would give them a chance to do what they love. On the night of July 16th, someone did. It had been raining heavily that night, and it was very late at night, or very early in the morning depending on how you looked at it. The body was right where the murderer had left it. The Head of Admissions was one of the most intimidating people on the campus but he didn't look as intimidating as he leaned limply against the front doors. A stain began to spread on the heavy, treated mahogany door from the gashes in his back. His neck was tilted down toward his lap at an unnatural angle as if he was looking at his blood covered hands in shame. 

He didn't stay there very long. A young teacher was leaving the building after falling asleep making plans for her class in the fall. She opened the door to leave only to be greeted with a man falling forward at her feet into the doorway on his back, lifeless eyes staring up at the high ceilings of the foyer. 

She fell to the floor, a blood curling scream falling from her lips as she struggled to push herself away from him, her stilettos scraping against the marble floor leaving rubbery black streaks at curved angles. The head master of the school, the latest of the bloodline, Dorian Ambrose II. The Ambrose family still had a thing for names that diplomats in the 1800s might have. He debated on calling the police as he tried to console his employee in some way, in his 20 years of running the school he had dealt with at least 4 similar scenarios, they were getting good at playing them of as rumors, always having the deaths wrapped up in a nice, confidentially sealed, bow by the time the sun rose the morning after. They always happened at night. He made a decision to call the funeral home instead, where he had connections. As the van for the body arrived, he ushered the woman to one of the couches inside the building as he had arrangements made to replace the bloodstained door. The body was taken away within 15 minutes, the door was replaced within 2 hours and the head of admissions had been replaced before the predecessors blood was cold.  

As for the teacher who had found the body, she shivered on the leather bound couch even though it was still summer and the air outside was warm and stagnant. In her head, she processed the things she had seen in slow motion. Her head buzzed and she grabbed held it between her clammy hands, tugging at he hair. She was young, mid twenties, far too young to lose her mind this way. Dorian Ambrose knew she would though, that was the tradition, a body is found, the body is disposed of, the person who found it is never the same, haunted with hallucinations, gripped by fear so tightly that they are sent to an institution, sometimes, they had to be disposed of, too.