“What the…” The black thing she jumped over caught her eye. She choked on air. That was the gift? She picked the gun up cautiously, afraid it would go off in her hands. She looked around as if help would come. What was she supposed to do with a gun? A wooden stake would have made her feel better, maybe even a bottle of holy water.

She ran with the gun into her room and whirled around looking for someplace to hide it. Her closet. The closet was perfect. She yanked the door open and placed it on the top shelf beneath the extra blankets. Was he crazy giving her a gun?

******

“Detention blows.”

“No shit, ass**le,” came another voice.

Madison looked up from her computer. “Hey, none of that now. You’re here to learn from your mistakes…whatever they are. You only have another hour to go so I suggest that you do some homework.” She looked over her small group of detentionees.

The group consisted of some of her favorite students. They were termed stoners, losers and ass**les by the students and even by the faculty. She didn’t care. She liked them even the kid in front giving her the most exaggerated pout she'd ever seen.

Chris, her constant detention companion, was laid back and didn’t give her any problems. He was pretty funny and didn’t bother trying to suck up. She was honest with him and didn’t play any games. They respected each other.

“Come on, Chris, don’t give me that look?” She chuckled at his pout.

He was a funny kid. He was what some of the kids called trailer trash, but he was nice. Well, as long as you were on his good side. There was no doubt he could be a mean son of a bitch and no one in their right mind would provoke him, but from what she knew about him he never threw the first punch and he never got in someone’s face without a very good reason. Otherwise he was one of the most laid back kids she’d ever met.

“Miss. Soloman, come on now. You know this is bullshit. That little preppy bastard beats the shit out of his girlfriend over the weekend and we're paying for it.” He gestured to his friends and the two unfortunate bystanders who got pulled into the fight. They were decent kids too, very quiet so she was very surprised when she found out that they voluntarily got into the fight.

Madison leaned back in her chair. “Tell me what happened.”

Chris nodded. “See, it’s like this. That little shit Mike gets away with too much. He steals, he cheats on every test, his parents hire tutors who do his homework, all the teachers know, but they look the other way because of his old man and he’s on the football team.” She’d heard rumors before but no one was ever willing to confirm them.

“He also likes to slap girls around. I warned him in the past to watch it, but clearly he thought I was f**king kidding. I found out this morning the little shit beat the hell out of Carol. When I asked him about it he told me to f**k off and no one would believe me. Carol tries to hold him back and right in front of me while the teachers’ backs were turned he pushed her to the ground.”

“He’s not lying, Miss. Solomon,” Ed, a very shy boy, said. He hardly ever looked up from his book. That in itself let her know Chris wasn’t lying. Plus he never bothered lying to her in the past. He took his punishment like a man when he got caught. Not once since she’d taken this position had he complained over the circumstances of his punishment.

“I don’t understand why Mike isn’t here along with you,” she said.

They all scoffed in disbelief. “Look at us,” Chris gestured to their worn out clothes. “They’re not going to listen to us over that preppy prick. He and his friends come from money. They don’t care what we say and they lied about Carol. They said Mike was protecting her from me if you can believe that shit.” She didn’t. Chris would never hit a woman. Everyone knew that.

She nibbled on her lower lip and looked at her classroom door to make sure that it was closed. “Okay, guys, everyone move to the back. Talk quietly and you can play those video games I know you have hidden in your bags. If that door opens pretend you’re doing something constructive.”

Chris winked at her. “Heart of gold, Miss. Soloman.” They quickly went to the back of the room leaving her to her search.

She scrolled down the webpage she found on the Adlard family. Surprisingly there was a lot of information on the family. The family was old and noble. It could be traced to the Roman invasion, but thankfully she didn’t need to go that far.

After two months of avoiding each other she got tired of waiting for answers. So this morning she dug the note she kept out of her purse and decided to see what she could find.

It was his fault. Every time she waited to talk to him or left notes he ignored her. He walked right past her with only a polite hello. If that was the way he wanted to act so be it. She could find her own answers. She didn’t need him.

She limited her search to the nineteenth century. Ephraim probably used a fake name on that note. He probably forgot what surname he was currently using. She would find out.

“Aha!” She found his name.

“Is someone coming?” Ed jumped.

“No, it’s fine,” she said without looking up. He probably stole the name. That was it. She read about his supposed father first, a Duke. Yeah right. According to this webpage his first wife was attacked by a mad man when she was pregnant with one Ephraim William Howard Adlard.

She read on. The Duke remarried a woman who was rumored to beat Ephraim and call him “the thing”. Odd. His second wife gave him five more children, three girls and two boys. According to family history she pushed the Duke to disown Ephraim to line her own son in third place for the title. The Duke initially refused.

Hmmm, interesting. Ephraim suffered from a weird medical condition that left him looking like a little boy until the age of sixteen. At sixteen he went into a coma. The website at this point touched on some rumors.

One story stated that he woke up from his coma changed into a man. He didn’t resemble his brothers or father. He attacked a maid and was dragged off by Magistrate Nichols. She wrote down that name. His second brother inherited the title and brought his brother home twenty years later. He still looked young, but died a few years later.

The second story was simple. They had him dying in the coma. Nothing helpful there. The third story continued from the first, but had him die at the hands of Nichols. The author believed the first story because of compelling evidence below.

“Oh, a picture.” She clicked the thumbnail. A large portrait popped on the screen. It was of a man and woman and eight children. That wasn’t helpful. She was about to close the page when she saw the "next" button. She clicked it and gasped loudly.

She didn’t need to read the description to know who the young man was standing next to a much older man, woman and five kids. It was Ephraim. His hair style and clothes were different, but that was him. According to the caption he was posing with his brother, sister-in-law and their children. Ephraim was reported to have died two months after the portrait was finished.

Shaking her head in disbelief she typed in Magistrate Nichols. What she read there turned her stomach. The man was sick. He was compared to Jack the Ripper several times. He lived to torture and kill and loved the fact that the government encouraged him. He went missing in 1835. Years later a secret entrance was discovered leading to his famous dudgeons where skeletons were found in small cells. In a room that could only be described as a torture chamber they found a dozen skeletons. One of those bodies they believed was Nichols’ body based on a pendant found among the bones.