--XIII--

It had been three days since I came to Lindsay's house. We never really talked after that. I kept arriving late in class purposively, left two seconds after the bell had rung and spent my lunch breaks in the field bleachers just so she wouldn't have a chance to ambush me.

There were rumors about her and her mother. Macy Cartridge from the Science Club was my informant. Yeah. I hung with her, which was a little desperate, even for me.

"Lindsay's mom used to be famous for her fortune-telling," said she, her face inching closer and closer towards my face until it reached an uncomfortable distance. "There even came a time that she was considered one of the tourist attractions in Ashland."

I swallowed the last bite of my apple pie. It felt like wood was scraping the inside of my throat. "Does any of her... predictions come true?"

"Why?" There was a glint of wicked curiosity in her dark eyes that left an unsettling feeling in my stomach. "She predicted something for you, didn't she?"

"Not really," I lied, staring at my empty plate to hide my reaction. "Just curious. That's all."

She had brought out a laptop from her bag and started to type something in Google. After clicking on the first search result, she showed it to me. It was some news about a freak accident in Centralia some time ago.

"Five years back, a group of researchers went to Centralia to make some sort of documentary. Sadly, it didn't go well."

"And... how is this related to Mrs. Moseley?"

Rolling her eyes, she closed the tab and turned the laptop to herself. "A few days later, the police searched all over the place but they never found anyone. All they got was what remained of the filming equipment. There were talks around town that the police were able to rescue some of the footages. And it contained some pretty disturbing stuff, I heard. The kind that involved ghosts and demons and hell."

"You don't really believe that, do you? I mean ghosts? Pshh..." I managed to put on a smile of disbelief. But at this point, I could well believe anything if that meant I wouldn't have to admit that I was going mad. Having transferred to more than ten schools, I thought I had seen it all. Turned out, I could not be more wrong.

Macy stared hard at me. "None of the crew came back, by the way. Lindsay's dad was one of them. Her mom didn't take it so well and had gone from plain weird to full-blown bonkers. She started making mumbo jumbo prophesies about Doomsday, evil spirits; that kind of stuff. In short, she had become the town's crazy mascot."

"That's... a harsh way to put it," I commented, peering over her laptop.

Macy immediately snapped it close. I caught a glimpse of the mini social networking site I had visited before to find out about North Schuylkill. It looked like she was a contributor there. The articles in there were mostly gossip and exaggerated stories.

"Reality is harsh, Aramis," Macy muttered, rolling her eyes.

I had a bad feeling that I might see my name in that site's pages one of these days. As of now, that was not yet a priority in my Worry List.

I would love to think that Mrs. Moseley was just a crazy woman with an obsession for fake jewelry. But something inside me was afraid that she was telling the truth.

As anyone might expect, I ditched Macy after lunch. I decided that things weren't working between the two of us when she started to talk about the cursed chair and Hazel Hemlock's death. I knew where she was going and I did not want to go there.

All the while, Lindsay kept tailing me around school, looking all scared and wide-eyed despite my efforts to avoid her. There was an urgent look on her face whenever she tried to start a conversation with me. And believe it or not, I knew what she was about to say even before she even opened her mouth.

"I'm sorry..." Lindsay murmured when I finally decided to face her after Social Studies. "But... Mom always tells the truth. She... She told me about—"

"About my imminent death? Newsflash, Lindsay. Just in case you haven't noticed yet, everyone knows that already. From the day I sat on that cursed chair," I scoffed at her, quoting my fingers.

I didn't really want to be mean since Lindsay had been nothing but nice to me and all. But admitting that I was going to die soon was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Added to that was the diary Mom left inside the creaking cupboard, which pretty much validated that my ancestry was indeed cursed.

Way to go me!

"But maybe there's something we could do," she croaked.

"Oh, I see. Maybe I could just lock myself inside a secret closet for the rest of my life just so I could get a rest from all of the people who wanted me to die," I snapped at her.

I was about to storm my way to the busy corridor when I caught a glance of Vincent Sinclair standing in front of the lockers not too far from us. He was looking directly at me. There was a severe look about his face when he met my gaze.

As if that wasn't strange enough, he was wearing an old-fashioned black suit. Coat and tie and all. Maybe he was a member of the drama club, if there was ever any in this school. And he got the part of Abraham Lincoln minus the beard.

"Get out," Vincent whispered.

It was so weird. I knew I shouldn't have heard his voice when I was standing around ten yards away from him in a very noisy corridor. But I did. His words practically echoed inside my head.

Behind me, Lindsay stifled a sob. It made me feel so bad I started to grow a conscience just by looking at her.

"Aramis, I don't want you to die, but—"

"Lindsay, please. Just... leave me alone," I mumbled weakly before stepping away from her as quickly as I could.

When I looked back to the spot where Vincent stood just a while ago, he was already gone. I craned my neck, hoping to spot his flashy excuse of a get-up among the crowd of rowdy students in the hallway, but he was nowhere to be found. It was like he just disappeared.

Next thing I knew, students were already rushing along the corridor leading to the exit. People were shouting, screaming.

I was getting pushed aside. Lindsay got caught in the middle of the stampede.

"What's happening?" she shouted as the crowd dragged her farther away from me.

My back hit the wall after being shoved out of the way. I squirmed to get to the corner in the hopes that I wouldn't get trampled on.

"I... don't know. We have to—" When I lifted my gaze, Lindsay was nowhere in sight.

There was a loud explosion from the upper floor. This made the students go all the more wild. The shouts were replaced by hysterical cries. Not even a minute passed and the fire alarms went off. The sprinklers turned on, worsening the madness everywhere.

Mr. Simpson came running down the stairs, shouting, "Don't panic! Stay calm. Head to the exit in a single file," with his neck veins bulging with the effort.

As expected, no one listened to him.

Another blast shook the floor.

I held onto the locker near me and shielded my head with my hands. Debris fell from the ceiling. It quieted for a while, giving the students just enough time to evacuate the area.

I was about to follow the others to the school grounds when I caught glance of Vincent at the top of the stairs. Unthinkingly, I headed up the steps. "Vincent!"

Before I could reach halfway through, a hand clasped around my arm. It was Carter. "Aramis! Where are you going? We have to go out!"

"But he's in there!"

"Who? No one's in there, Aramis! Everyone's already outside." He pulled me to the exit and to the grounds where the other students waited for the next instructions from the teachers.

When I looked over my shoulder, I saw someone standing in front of a second floor window. His back was turned on us and despite the distance, the black coat he was wearing had pretty much told me that it was Vincent.

Suddenly, the window behind him shattered. Then, he was gone.

What happened next was a blur to me.

Mr. Simpson stood in front of the crowd while speaking through a megaphone. He was explaining something about chemical mix-up in the Chem Lab. 

If I believe any of that, I couldn't say.