WELCOME|ESTERWELL, NY
Briarwood Academy is billed as one of the top boarding schools in the country, with an arts program that would make picasso weep and a price tage to match. But for those who know what to look for, they might find there is more tot his school than meets the eye.
If you stumble across the right web addresses you can find hundreds of blogs from Briarwood Academy students, most of them complaining about their most recent break-up or wondering if their high school teachers hate them. Some detail the trouble you can get into if you happen to be 17 and away from home, but if you are searching hard enough and use the right keywords you might come across an old blog that never gets updated and whose web address seems to keep moving, the old pages always getting shut down mysteriously. It, if you are lucky enough to find it reads:
September 7 2013
So my family and I just moved to Esterwell. Seems it is yet a new town and a new place for Mom and Dad to fight although they keep promising the moves will stop that. I don't believe it anymore, and the town is so quiet that I think I am going to die of boredom. You would think being closer to New York City would have meant stuff to DO! Mom has decided that this time I should attend some sort of snotty boarding school called Briarwood Academy. I am sure everyone there takes flights to Europe on the weekends...stupid. To top it off there is a dress code, I have to wear dress pants or a skirt and a blouse with a tie. Why do they insist on torture? Hopefully I make friends, and soon or I think I am going to die.
September 17 2013
So Esterwell isn't as bad as I thought it was. There is even a club in town on the top floor of the apartment complex but you can only get in if you are 18. Of course, that didn't stop my new friend Marie from giving me her older sisters ID for the evening, WOOOT Friday! I have actually made friends and Briarwood isn't horrible either. I can even live with the dress code when everyone else has to as well and the classes are really interesting. The school is all about imagination and stuff which means lots of art! Everyone has been really nice so far, even the teachers so maybe this time things won't go wrong like they seem to everywhere else.
September 30 2013
I think maybe I took a little too much E the night we went to the club, I was on this amazing high and I just wanted to touch everyone, but then everyone came up to me and started to touch me too. It was great until I started seeing things. People with ears and tails and even someone with claws. It was totally messed up LOL. Proof you should never take that stuff. I even came home and saw my Mom with wings, they were shimmery and lovely and as many kinds of rainbow that you could imagine. I told her I dreamed about it later and she laughed, telling me I was crazy, but she got this really strange look. Maybe she knew I had been on something, I hope not if she ever figures out I was in that club she would MURDER me.
October 10 2013
Something strange has been happening the past few weeks, I had started to see glimpses of the same things I was seeing in the club. Especially the wings on Mom early in the morning when I am first waking up. I think that maybe the E fried my brain. Even sometimes at school there are flashes of it, I will look over and see my classmates with strange body parts and then I will blink again and its gone. Its hard to concentrate with that happening so I have been zoning out in class. Really I should be paying attention, this school is WAY harder than my last one. I'm totally worried about exams before Thanksgiving. Still, I can't tell anyone, of course, people would think I was crazy...maybe I am.
October 20 2013
Finally told my Mom that I think I need a doctor and she got that look in her eyes again. She told me it would pass and I was likely just day dreaming. I told her it's getting worse. I have been doing some research online and discovered that people who are schizophrenic see this crap. I think I really am going crazy, but at least there are no voices in my head telling me to kill people. Yet, oh God...
November 5 2013
I failed my midterms. All of them not just one. I had to go and see the school councillor and finally I just broke down in tears and told her what I am seeing. She nodded sympathetically and told me that they would find a way to let me make up the exams. I have an appointment at the hospital tomorrow to see a shrink. I'm terrified and I can't tell Mom and Dad because I know they will tell me what they always tell me. It's nothing. Still I have to go tomorrow, I really think I might be crazy and this is the only way. I just want to stop seeing Marie with horns, it's almost all the time now. It makes her look like a Goat or something..poor Marie.
Briarwood School
Outside of Briarwood School is the courtyard where children play. Although the plaque reads established in 1876, the building and grounds are far older than this. No one really knows of the school's past, even when they think to enquire, the documents state it was burned in a fire which raged through the town in the same year the school was founded, however if you listen closely to the rhymes the children sing, one might stick in your mind.
Fire purges evil deeds,
Done on grounds such as these.
Although you know we'll never tell,
Beware the Briarwood spell.
Paint and plaster can't erase,
What's happened here in this place.
When you think you're safe at last,
Dead things rise from the past.
The School
Our New House
The Hospital
December 7 2013
I needed to take my birth certificate to the hospital with me. That would have been great had I been able to find it. Finally I asked mom where it was and she and Dad just exchanged this...look. I had knots in my stomach as they sat me down on the couch and told me..guess what..I'm adopted! It would figure but surely in the last 17 years they could have mentioned it SOMEWHERE?! Either way, I couldn't stay long I still had a doctors appointment to get to so I told them I thought I was pregnant. Serves them right for hiding things from me!
When I got to the doctor they kinda confirmed my fears, they asked me all sorts of questions about my life and what I was seeing, even who I was seeing it on. I told them of course what else was I supposed to do. I just want to get better. Finally they all nodded their heads and smiled and then gave me something they told me would help me sleep. Last night for the first time I can ever remember I slept without dreaming.
December 10 2013
Mom and Dad have started fighting again, I don't know about what I feel tired all the time from this new medicine. School is worse now because Marie avoids me like the plague, I don't know what I did to her but I think she is mad about something. I wish I could talk to her about finding out I was adopted. Last night someone from the hospital came to knock on the door and Mom kicked them out. She was furious when she found out I was taking medicine they gave me and we got into an awful argument over it. She and Dad look so tired and I can't figure out why. Perhaps it is all the fighting they are doing again, but she told me never to go to those doctors again. Luckily she didn't know about the second bottle in my drawer. They told me its really important not to stop taking it, and finally the images have stopped. Thank God.
December 20 2013
School is out for Christmas but I wish it wasn't. Mom and Dad have been acting strange jumping at every little sound outside the door and rushing to the window to look out. I told them they need to see the doctors too and I thought the look Mom gave me might burn through my skin. She started crying saying that I didn't know what I had done but then Dad just told me to go to my room and I could hear them talking in hushed whispers from my bedroom. I have no idea what is going on. I wish I could talk Marie but she wasn't in school yesterday or the day before either and no one picks up when I call her house. I think she is ignoring me too.
December 24 2013
We had a break- in last night but it was odd because nothing was taken. Everything in the house was gone through however and Mom is really shaken up. Dad says we are moving again that this place is no longer safe for us. I told him I thought he was over reacting to New York Crime but he just told me I didn't understand. I am sick of hearing that, I wish I could understand and I don't want to move again. I am so tired.
December 26 2013
We spent all of Christmas day packing. If there were presents this year then I never saw them. All I saw was a rush of boxes and hurried explanations to the neighbours. We are leaving tomorrow and I don't have much time now. Dad is in such a hurry to get going that I can barely sit down for a moment. He says we will come back for the rest of the furniture later. I will update this when we are settled in our new place I guess. They said there is someone coming for us, and I finally understand now but I can't share that here. I think I made a big mistake. I hope they can forgive me and Marie if you are reading this. I'm sorry.
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