The Shadow Anthology

Graham & Lucy

Moor's Orphanage was plagued by death. It had been six months since the first girl fell ill with suspicious symptoms. Miss Wallace had deemed it necessary for the girl to be quarantined immediately. However, two months onwards the disease had crawled back from the hospital and infected another girl. In the ensuing months the contagion took its time clawing through clotted veins. It slithered into a girl's bed, ensnared her body like a writhing python and took her hostage.

Miss Wallace seemed unscathed by the pathogen poisoning her girls. She became an ivory tower and stood by while her girls suffered. Her class depleted as she was forced to drag her girls to the hospital. As the months elongated, her rooms thinned like her hair. The alcohol in her drawer could only stare at a wall and gather dust. The bags of shadows under her eyes cast a bleak figure onto whomever she looked at.

Fortunately for some, not all girls were suffering under the rule of disease, and it seemed some were in perfect physical health. Jennifer was a part of the latter which relieved her teacher, though she hadn’t had enough rest in months and so her life darkened daily. For an age she had tossed and turned in her crumbling bed, unable to sleep. Ever since Sophie was ripped from her side six months ago, she was barely able to steal more than an hour of sleep in the night. The worst of it was that only days prior they were permitted to have adjoining beds. The bed was removed with Sophie and now festered a swelling shadow in a secluded room.

Miss Wallace was in awe of how Jennifer had managed to not catch the disease. She had shown no sign of infection, even after being in such proximity to patient zero. The woman considered formally shutting the site down so she could repurpose it as a hospice. Jennifer, through her midnight meandering, knew the floor-plan of the manor even in utter blackness. This allowed her to search freely for her missing friend, when she had the time to do so. Though the building did consist of only one floor, that floor had a lengthy expanse, which gave Jennifer an enormous breadth of hallway to investigate. Miss Wallace didn’t tell the girls where she kept the sick as she wanted to discourage visitation and spread of disease. This meant that Jennifer was utterly in the dark.

Eventually all rooms were eliminated. This led Jennifer to believe that Miss Wallace had somehow managed to transport Sophie and the other girls to the nearest town. This theory made sense to her as she rationalised that often, when a girl became ill previously, they had been taken to the local village where a functional hospital was located. The girls surely needed professional attention; she knew this, but she concluded a friend was just as important.

Jennifer then suggested to herself that she could use her cunning to steal into Miss Wallace's office, where she would find the physical evidence of where the girls were being treated. She waited until dusk and then for the girls to sleep. Eventually, night arrived, permitting Jennifer to evaporate. To glide into places only tangible to ghosts the girl had to float on the air. She stealthily rose out of her bed and drifted out into the hallway, through the corridors and into the office.

Once there, Jennifer knew where to look for paperwork. After Miss Wallace had finished tutoring the girls for the day, Jennifer had been studying her during the night, until she discovered what she needed. Sliding open the drawer, Jennifer peered inside and sorted through papers until she found what she sought. With eyes darting to the door, she quickly scanned to find that all the missing girls were indeed in the village, which was quite a walk away. She took note of the name and, returning everything, left to plan for her travel to Glanshire.

The weekend was just two days away, giving the sleuth ample time to plan. Given the girls were left unsupervised throughout the weekend, Jennifer knew she had been given the perfect opportunity to slip out without fear of being noticed or caught. Using the time to plan, the young girl made sure to cover up any possible flaw she could conceive. When the time came for her departure on Saturday morning, she was ready in both tactics and headspace. She had set herself a strict yet manageable schedule. She was sure to pack her bag the night before.