*Inside Evil and its sequels are available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks*
It was mid morning when Susan and Martha arrived at the school. Though she wouldn't normally do it, Susan decided it was best for the pair to sneak in the back entrance to the dorms rather than make themselves obvious. Marching through a high school without being invited was sure to raise a few eyebrows, and Susan wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible. The students seemed to still be in lessons, so the pair stowed themselves in the girls toilets after some resistance from Martha, who made it quite clear that never, even in her younger years, had she felt the urge to skulk around in toilet cubicles. For Susan however it actually brought back a nostalgic feeling, she'd been one of the very few people that she knew who had actually loved her high school days. By lesson, she'd focus on the task in hand whilst trying to get a smile from her stunningly gorgeous art teacher. By lunch, her group of friends would sneak under the hedge and talk to the strong jaw lines and erupting stubble of the pupils from the bordering boys school.
A commotion in the corridor signalled the end of class, and Susan shoved Martha into a cubicle as girls flooded into the toilets, leaving the door open a crack so that she could scan the opposite mirror for a familiar face.
"That's her," Susan whispered as a rake thin brunette leaned over the sink and touched up her makeup. The girl puckered her lips to apply a deep outline, before turning towards Susan and marching into the cubicle next to her. Wide eyed, Susan looked at Martha for advice on what to do. "How should I know?" Martha hissed back, with absolute contempt on her face for being put into this situation.
"I can't just knock," Susan whispered.
"Well I'm not staying like this," Martha replied disapprovingly before rapping loudly on the divider and gesticulating for Susan to say something. There was a pause where Susan was unsure of what to do, but knowing that Martha's patience was drawing perilously close to it's end, she whispered,
"Emily?"
A few seconds passed before the girl in the next cubicle responded.
"Hello?"
"Emily?"
"Er, no, who is this?"
Susan grimaced. She couldn't even bear to look at Martha.
"Never mind," she whispered, withdrawing her face from where it was almost pressed against the divide.
"We're going," Martha said crossly, putting her hand on Susan's arm and preparing to open the door.
"Mrs Lingly?" The voice came from above, and Susan saw that a very puzzled looking girl, who actually looked very little like Emily Stone, was peering over at them.
"Hi," Susan managed to say through a thin and embarrassed smile. Martha shrank into a corner in an attempt to hide. "Not Emily then, we'll just go."
"Wait, wait," Susan heard the girl call as she and Martha moved swiftly towards the toilet door. She heard the girl jump down from the toilet and unlatch the door.
"I can get her, wait here a few minutes."
Martha stood at the mirror, pinching her cheeks slightly and pushing a strand of hair back behind her left ear. Susan didn't dare say anything, and it seemed like an eternity that the pair were waiting. Young lithe girls wanting to preen came through the door, saw the women and turned away again, leaving Martha and Susan to their own devices.
"Mrs Lingly, what are you doing here?" The voice was familiar, and Susan looked up from where she'd been watching Martha in the mirror to see her daughter's best friend come into view. Emily had a thin face and her hair was pulled back loosely into a ponytail. There was mud on her cheek and her knees, the latter of which poked out from under a pair of blue shorts and were pink with cold. "I'm sorry, it's hockey practice. I was out on the field. Is everything ok?"
"Oh, thank God," Susan breathed in relief.
"Why on earth are you in here? And whispering through toilet cubicles? I wasn't quite ready to believe Fran when she told me." Emily looked just as bemused as the previous girl had. "Listen, I really can't talk right now, Pike, I mean Mrs Hughes, will kill me if I miss practice, I've already messed up three crucial passes this term. I'll be done in thirty minutes, wait for me in our room, my room," she corrected herself. "The door's unlocked. You could have done that in the first place you know". She gave them a fleeting glance before running back to practice, her trainers leaving clods of frozen mud in her wake.
"Yes, we sure could have," Martha said, grabbing Susan's arm and guiding her sternly out of the girls toilets. Susan could have sworn that she caught the slightest of smiles under the frosty exterior.
Waiting for the end of Emily's practice was excruciating for Susan. Martha sat carefully on the end of one of the twin beds in the small shared room, picking at her nails which had been filed, applied and painted since the attack in the high street. Susan cast her eye around.
The room was at the back of the dormitory block, overlooking the school playing fields where she could see a short thin woman ordering muddy pupils and hockey sticks around a field with her whistle. However, it was the room's interior that caused Susan a certain degree of discomfort. Her daughter's bed was still made, her small and very worn bear, Purdy, tacked on the bedpost. The jewellery box that she'd desperately wanted for her ninth birthday lay open on the make-up stand, a jumble of bangles and chains overflowing from the small sparkly container. Susan fingered the jewellery carefully, discovering new beads and recognising old charms which had been bought over the years. Vanessa had photographs of friends stuck with Blu-Tack on the corners of her mirror, and Susan felt a pang of sadness that nowhere did she or Bernard appear.
Susan had completely forgotten about clearing Vanessa's things out, as had her husband it seemed. Meanwhile, Emily seemed incapable of clearing anything away. If Vanessa had walked in that very moment, swung open her wardrobe door and started dressing for the night, it wouldn't have been such a strange scene. Other than the fact that she was dead.
"I'm sorry, she doesn't give us any slack."
Susan looked around to where Emily was now coming through the door, her muddy appearance absent, her hair still wet from the showers. She was still ruffling her hair with a towel as she threw her satchel next to the bed where Martha was perched. She paused, seemingly at a loss of what to say. "Mrs Lingly, I'm so....," but Susan cut her off.
"I forgot about her things, I should have come sooner."
"It doesn't matter, I like them here. She was going to wear that on the Friday night that she.." Emily trailed off, looking to where Susan was running a small thin silver chain through her fingers. Susan put the chain back into the jewellery box and closed the lid. In her pocket she gently fingered the stone disc with Vanessa's ever changing face inscribed upon it. Her reasons for visiting Emily didn't seem so clear now, and surrounded by her daughter's things, she had a building feeling of simply wanting to flee. There were too many memories trying to flood her mind, and she was quite sure that coming here had been a bad idea.
"Do you know where her diary is?" Susan blurted out, unsure of how to broach the subject and feeling the need to remove herself from the room as quickly as possible.
Emily blinked quickly and paused, before looking Susan in the eye and shaking her head. She was unable to hide the momentary look of trouble.
"No, I'm sorry, I don't know where it is. Even though she was writing so much in it these past weeks, she was always secretive about where she kept it."
She removed her gaze from her best friend's mother and turned her back, opening a drawer in her desk and starting to rummage through her belongings. For a moment Susan hoped that Emily was going to pull out the diary, but she realised that the girl was simply avoiding having to look at her.
"You must know where she kept it?" Susan persisted "I mean, if she was writing all the time, you must have seen where she put it?"
Emily shook her head without turning around. "I'm sorry Mrs Lingly, I didn't pay that much attention. Diaries aren't my thing." She picked up a tube of moisturiser from the desk in front of her, squirted a small amount into her palm, and began to fidget with the cream as she smoothed it onto her face.
"But you were her best friend? You must know something?"
"I don't know anything," Emily responded almost too quickly, clenching her jaw so as to rub cream into her youthful skin. "She kept a diary, but I don't know where it is, I haven't even touched her things."
"She must have said something to you?" Susan questioned, her voice rising. "She moved up here, out of her home, away from me. She must have said something."
"I don't know anything," Emily stressed, turning around and glaring at Susan. "I can't help you Mrs Lingly. I wasn't even friends with her really, not at the end."
"How can you say that? You've known each other for years, you've been inseparable."
"Stop pushing it, there's nothing to say."
"Emily, I've known you a long time, I just can't believe that you...."
"She was a bitch," Emily snapped, cutting Susan off mid-sentence. "I said it. I thought her moving in would be great, and now I wish she'd never come here. From the moment she arrived she was a psychotic bitch who didn't give a shit about anything or anyone."
The words spilled out of her mouth and into the air before she could retract them. Susan was astonished, and Emily's face crumpled slightly as she realised what she'd said and turned away.
"Is everything alright Emily?"
Roberta appeared in the doorway, her eyes narrowing as she saw Susan and Martha. "What's going on? Why are you two here?" She strode into the room and placed herself between the older women and Emily. Susan seemed not to notice.
"Emily, you were her best friend, you can't mean that."
Roberta cut across Susan's path as she made to go across the room to confront the girl. She felt a hand grip her arm as Roberta looked forcefully into her eyes and pushed her backwards.
"You can't just come onto school premises you know and wander around as you please," Roberta bristled, "I have a duty to keep my students safe."
"I'm sorry," Susan said quickly, "but I had to collect my daughter's things."
"Well then you should have made an appointment with Mr Swithburn, and been accompanied. You can't just walk into dorms and upset students." She surveyed the room as she looked for boxes and suitcases. "And how were you supposing to carry everything?"
"I...," Susan looked to Martha for backup, but she suddenly realised that her friend wasn't looking at all well. The colour seemed to have drained from Martha's face, and her hands were clenched over the side of the bed in an attempt to keep herself upright.
"Martha? Something's wrong," Susan said as she attempted to get Martha's attention.
"How sweet!" Roberta said sarcastically. "All heart for your best friend. Nice to see you treated your daughter the same way," she continued with a hardening tone. "Couldn't even be bothered to come to her funeral could you!"
Though it happened in mere seconds, Susan replayed the actions through her head over and over again in the hours afterwards. As Martha started to slump towards the floor, Susan darted forward. Her friend's arms went slack, her eyes rolling into her head so that Susan caught a brief flash of white as Martha fainted.
Roberta cried out, lunging towards Susan, her hands curled into fists. Only, it wasn't Susan that bore the brunt of Roberta's force but Emily, who had also stepped forward in an attempt to catch Martha's fall. Roberta's bare knuckles struck a glancing blow to the side of Emily's face, and Susan heard the crack upon impact. Having caught Martha, who had only momentarily fainted and within seconds was blearily opening her eyes, Susan looked up at Roberta dumbfounded. Emily was holding her hands to her cheekbone, tears beginning to flood her eyes as the stinging across the face deepened to a pounding pain.
"Emily...I'm, Oh God, I'm so sorry." Roberta seemed to be as speechless as the rest of the room, and put her hand forward to the face where her knuckles had been only moments earlier.
Emily shrunk away, her face visibly shocked. "Get away from me!!" she screamed, and without saying another word, she turned and ran off down the corridor. Roberta turned to Susan.
"Get out," she seethed. "I'll deal with you later," and then she too, turned and ran in the same direction that Emily had fled.
"Something is terribly wrong," Martha said weakly as Susan helped her to her feet.
"You don't say," Susan spluttered, still trying to believe what she'd actually just witnessed.
"No, Susan, I've only ever felt that kind of dread once before."
"What do you mean?" Susan asked, looking her friend in the eyes.
"The final weeks before Barry disappeared, there was a moment, with his best friend. I will never forget that feeling, and I've never felt that way again until just now."
"Come on, we need to get out of here," Susan said, suddenly feeling that the entire circumstance had been driven by her desire for the truth and that she was to blame. "I don't feel safe here."
"Nor I," Martha said as they crept out of the room andinto the corridor. "But Susan, Emily knows something about the diary, I couldsee her hands shaking when you asked her about it."-
*I will be posting one or two scenes a week as the story builds. However, if you can't wait that long, Inside Evil is available on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, Smashwords and iBooks.
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