Dead Beautiful (22 page)

“Benjamin died of a heart attack, Cassandra transferred, and Minnie Roberts is crazy.”

“What fifteen-year-old dies of a heart attack in the woods? And what about what Eleanor saw in the séance?”

Nathaniel shook his head. “I thought we already went over this.”

I sighed. I guess he had a point. “But that still doesn’t explain why the headmistress is so interested in me and Dante.”

“Well, you did get into some trouble, didn’t you?”

“Just once,” I said, thinking of getting caught with Dante after the séance. And then I remembered the dress-code incident on the first day of class. “Okay, twice. Maybe you’re right,” I conceded, and turned to the check out the store.

Unlike normal bookstores, each section was categorized not only by genre, but by subject matter. One shelf read
Puberty.
The one across from it read
Pet Saves Owner and Dies,
and beside that were sections titled:
Superhero Origin Stories, Babies, Death in the Family,
and
Girlfriend in the Refrigerator.

I scanned the walls and walked toward Nathaniel. He was a few rows away, looking at a book in the section on
Vampires and Zombies.
But before I got to him, a section title caught my eye.
Boarding School.
I crouched down to read the titles. There were a lot of novels and a few nonfiction books on prestigious prep schools, but there wasn’t anything on Gottfried Academy.

I approached Nathaniel, who was flipping through a teenage romance about vampires. I wasn’t really interested in zombies or vampires, but with nothing else to do, I knelt beside him and looked at the titles, pulling one out every so often. Most of them were horror stories with fangs and gravestones and bandaged, faceless monsters on the cover. I was growing bored, my eyes going in and out of focus, when I spotted a book that stood out from the rest. It had a plain ivory binding, with letters so faded they were barely legible.

I pulled it out and cradled it in my lap. It was thick and dusty. The cover read:
Attica Falls.
I opened it, my excitement mounting as I flipped through the pages. It had a full chapter on Gottfried Academy, which was more information than I had ever seen on the school, and it had pictures. It must have been shelved in the wrong section accidentally. Satisfied, I tucked it under my arm and brought it to the register.

Mr. Porley coughed into his arm. “Interesting choice,” he said in a gruff smoker’s voice.

“I’m new to the East Coast.”

“Up at the Academy, I’m guessing?” he asked, taking me in. He had large hairy hands and wore suspenders, as if he had been either a fisherman or lumberjack in some former life.

I nodded.

He opened the book cover and charged me ten dollars, half of the price asked. “Seems you have some luck about you. This one’s out of print,” he said, before putting it in a paper bag.

I thanked him and left with Nathaniel at my heels.

With nothing better to do, we walked to the end of the street until we reached an abandoned house. It was white and crooked, with a wraparound porch and pillars that looked half eaten by termites. I tested the steps with my foot to make sure they wouldn’t collapse before Nathaniel and I sat down. A few groups of students ambled past us, chatting and sipping cups of something hot and steaming. Down the street, Professor Bliss was smoking a cigarette outside the general store. I opened the book and flipped through it, skipping over the chapters on the history of Maine, the founding of Attica Falls, and the natural wonders of the White Mountains, until I found what I was looking for. Chapter 7: Gottfried Academy.

I began to read while Nathaniel looked over my shoulder. Some of it I already knew—the Academy’s role in the Revolutionary War, its transformation from a religious to a secular school...but just when I was beginning to accept that there was nothing more to Gottfried than a superficial history, one page caught my eye. On the bottom right was a photograph, a normal black-and-white image of Gottfried Academy, and one that I normally wouldn’t have glanced at twice if it hadn’t been for the familiar face staring back at me.

“That’s...that’s my grandfather,” I said in awe.

Nathaniel pushed his glasses closer to his face and squinted. “Which one?”

I pointed to a tall broad-faced man in a suit and vest. His hair was darker then, his glasses thinner. He was standing in front of the Gottfried gates with a school scarf draped around his neck, smiling and looking almost nothing like the dry curmudgeon I’d encountered last summer. The caption read:
Headmaster Brownell Winters, 1974.
Below it was a newspaper article, reprinted in the book from
The Portland Herald.

The Gottfried Curse

July 7, 1989
By Jacqueline Brookmeyer

After nearly one hundred calamity-free years, a fire ravaged the forest surrounding Gottfried Academy, the preparatory school located near Attica Falls. The school is known not only for its stringent classical academics, but for its proclivity for disaster. Since its founding in 1735, Gottfried Academy has been plagued by a horrific and unexplainable chain of tragedies, including disease, natural catastrophe, and a string of accidents of the most perverse and bizarre nature. These recurring events have brought attention to Gottfried Academy, attracting a series of enigmatologists who have attempted to understand the causes and patterns behind the disasters. All of them died under suspicious circumstances, until 1789, when the disasters stopped. But has this phenomenon, coined locally as “the Gottfried Curse,” truly been buried?

It began in 1736 with an outbreak of the measles and mumps. The school was originally founded as a children’s hospital by Doctor Bertrand Gottfried, who attempted to ward off the epidemic. Despite his efforts, more than one hundred children perished. Rumor has it that the doctor built catacombs beneath the hospital grounds to bury the children and contain the infection. Three years later, Bertrand Gottfried mysteriously died. His body was found in the lake by a groundskeeper, his death apparently caused by heart failure.

I paused and stared at the words.
Heart failure.
“It can’t be,” I murmured. “What?” Nathaniel asked over my shoulder.

“Bertrand Gottfried died of a heart attack. Just like my parents.”

“He was old,” Nathaniel said. “It’s not the most bizarre way to die.”

“It is if they find you in a lake.”

“Maybe he was swimming when he had the heart attack,” Nathaniel offered.

“Or maybe it wasn’t a heart attack.”

“Turn the page.”

Though none of the catacombs were ever discovered, they are purported to have been the beginnings of the subterranean tunnels that still run beneath the premises. All previous headmasters, including the newly incumbent Headmistress Calysta Von Laark, have refused to comment on this matter.

After the death of Bertrand Gottfried, the hospital stopped accepting new patients and closed its doors to the outside world. For a decade, no one came in or out, save for a weekly groundskeeper, who delivered groceries and supplies from the local general store. Yet, just as suddenly as the hospital closed, it reopened. This time, as a school. The head nurse at the time, Ophelia Hart, ascended as the first headmistress. She named it “Gottfried Academy,” after its founder.

Over time, the infirmary’s tragic history was forgotten, and students began to filter in. The disasters continued like clockwork. The unexpected collapse of the building that is now the theater, in 1751; the nor’easter of 1754; the tuberculosis epidemic of 1759; and the food-poisoning incident in 1767. Ten years later, the school was partially destroyed during the Revolutionary War, which was followed by a series of disasters culminating in the chemistry lab accident of 1789.

But what was origin of the curse, and is it really over? Some believe that it’s the area itself. Others believe it was Bertrand Gottfried. “Everything started to happen after he died,” local Esther Bancroft said. “He wasn’t a doctor, he was a sinner. Lord knows what he did to those children. And then they killed him, and his soul is trying to tell people to stay away. Stay away.” But others blame the curse on Gottfried’s first headmistress.

“It was that woman,” local Hazel Bamberger, 84, claims. “That nurse that started the whole god-damn school. Ophelia. She was with that Doctor Bertrand, not like normal doctors and nurses are, but closer. After he died, she became the first headmistress, and that’s when everything started. That’s why it’s always couples that die. She’s seeking her revenge on people in love.”

Although some might not believe Bamberger’s theory, there is one more disturbing coincidence that even the townspeople aren’t aware of, and that is the manner in which many of the people died. According to confidential police files, which were leaked by an ex-Gottfried professor who wishes to remain anonymous, more than half of the deaths at Gottfried were deemed heart attacks.

I put the book down and turned to Nathaniel. “This is it,” I said, gripping the page because I didn’t know what else to do with it. “This is the proof that connects my parents to Gottfried. To Benjamin. To everything.”

Nathaniel said nothing, allowing me my moment.

“But why?” I said almost to myself. I had to tell Eleanor. And Dante.

“I don’t know,” Nathaniel said.

“What time is it?”

“Four thirty.” Half an hour till I met Dante. It seemed like ages from now. I turned the page.

So how was it that so many students died of heart attacks at such a young age? And was the school covering up the deaths with claims of disease, war, and natural disaster? To this, many people have answers—conspiracy theories, stories bordering on the supernatural—yet even the most fervent believers are unable to explain why the curse unexpectedly stopped.

The Second Autumn Fire, which occurred this May, was the first unexplained tragedy since 1789. Even Headmaster Brownell Winters, who has held the post for nearly seventeen years, was left speechless, as he refused to comment on the fire’s origins or circumstances. It consumed the entirety of the north forest, now known as the “Dead Forest,” turning the treetops completely orange—hence the name, the Second Autumn Fire. It then spread across the wall, ravaging the Gottfried Library. “A real tragedy,” local bookstore owner, Conrad Porley, said. “All those books gone forever.” The books destroyed included the few written about Gottfried and its history.

To the surprise of the members of the Gottfried community, Headmaster Brownell Winters has not participated in the investigation, nor has he attempted to rebuild the library. In early June, just weeks after the fire, he stepped down from his position as headmaster and left the school. When asked about the Gottfried Curse, his only response was, “There are no such things as curses; only people and their decisions.” As for what he meant, that, along with the cause of the fire, remains a mystery.

I turned the page to read more, but there were only illustrations and photographs. The first was a drawing of men plunging children into the lake, the same lake that was still in the center of campus. The caption read:
Doctors cleanse infected students, 1736 outbreak of measles and mumps.

Below it was a photograph of my grandfather. He was standing in front of Archebald Hall, a forced smile on his face. Two women were standing on either side of him, their hands clasped behind their backs in stiff poses. They were younger than my grandfather. The first woman I didn’t recognize, but the second I did. She was tall, with a narrow face, sharp eyebrows, and graying hair. She was wearing a housedress. The caption read,
From left to right: Professor Cordelia Milk, Headmaster Brownell Winters, Professor Calysta Von Laark, 1988.

The picture had been taken one year before the fire. I stared at my grandfather’s face, trying to comprehend the idea that he had once been the headmaster of Gottfried.

I stared at the pages, the words blurring into gray. What had been the cause of the heart attacks at Gottfried Academy, and what did it all have to do with my parents, who had been three thousand miles away when they died? I flipped through the rest of the chapter, looking for more information, but there was nothing else of any interest. I stared at the book, frustrated that it didn’t have more answers. The rest of the chapters were about Attica Falls —the weather, the town’s setting, the demographics of the inhabitants. No wonder the book was out of print.

“Do you think there really is a Gottfried Curse that’s causing the heart attacks?” I asked Nathaniel. If there was, why would my grandfather send me here?

Nathaniel shook his head. “It’s probably just a story made up to sell newspapers. And even if it’s true, nothing’s happened in twenty years. Everyone knows Gottfried is the safest school ever. I mean, we’re surrounded by a fourteen-foot wall, and we have more rules than the military. It’s like your grandfather said: Curses aren’t real. Science is real. People are real. Statistics are real.”

“What about the heart attacks? You can’t tell me you still believe it’s a coincidence. My parents, Benjamin, and now this...”

Nathaniel gave me an apologetic shrug. “I don’t know.”

Students were gathering at the end of the street, getting ready for the walk back. “Better go,” Nathaniel said as he stood up and brushed off his pants. I didn’t move. Instead, I stared into the book, at my grandfather’s photograph.