Lost & Found: Witherwood Reform School

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  To those who have entered the gate and passed the statue.

  It is now time to open the door.

  DEAR READER

  Here we are. I’m so happy you’re on board. The Eggers children are even happier. Your involvement adds a much needed jolt of hope. Tobias and Charlotte have learned a lot. They were mistakenly taken in at Witherwood and they almost made it out. But now they are back, stuck on top of the high mesa with a number of obstacles standing in their way to freedom.

  It’s important to remember that the lonely mesa that sticks up in that desert wasn’t always there. A hundred years ago, a meteor struck the ground and the mesa grew up around it. Many years later, the school was built on top.

  Now, thanks to the meteor that still rests inside the soil, there are many unusual things happening. Tobias and Charlotte are simply two children who have accidentally gotten caught up in a network of people who are not only up to “no good,” they are up to “yes bad.”

  Life, it seems, is a series of losts and founds. They lost their father and found the strength to do what they needed. They lost all hope and found reasons to hope again. They lost their freedom and found a way out. They lost their freedom again, and … well, you’ll see.

  It will take courage, but we must walk through that large iron gate. We must pass the weathered fountain and enter the wooden doors of Witherwood. It’s strange how they arrived by accident, yet they just might be the kids to bring the school down. May you find more hope than abhorrence in their tale.

  Yours in either case,

  Obert Skye

  CHAPTER 1

  THE WOODEN WINDOW

  On top of a tall mesa, in the middle of a lonely desert, there sits a school. It is not a school of great learning or art. It has no football team or even a tetherball pole. The school is Witherwood—a large three-story building surrounded by a high brick wall with a tall iron gate at its entrance. Behind the gate there are many secrets; some of the secrets are long and complicated, others are simple. Some of the secrets have to do with the students. Some have to do with the odd animals called Protectors that guard the school. Some secrets are too uncomfortable to whisper. Other secrets are noisy and deserve to be shouted. Take, for example, the secret something that is currently knocking against the window of Tobias and Charlotte’s room. It’s a secret that’s making some noise.

  Bump.

  Tobias rose from his gray cot like a baffled vampire. He had been asleep for many hours and his tongue was desperately in need of moisture. He swung his legs off the edge of his sorry bed and sat. He felt like a frog with dry blue eyes, licking his lips and staring at the wall beside his cot. The room was warm and suffocating, causing his dark brown hair to stick to his forehead. He reached with his right hand and grabbed at the hair on the back of his head. It was a habit he had had since birth.

  There was another bump.

  “Did you hear something?” Tobias asked his sister.

  He turned to look at Charlotte. She was lying on her cot, gazing toward the one window in their room.

  “I might have heard something,” she croaked. “It’s really warm in here.”

  “I know,” Tobias whispered hoarsely, “and I can’t remember if that window opens.”

  “I don’t think it does.”

  Charlotte sat up on her cot with her legs sticking out straight in front of her like a wooden doll. Her blond hair was a mess in the back but organized in the front. She was wearing the uniform all the girls wore at Witherwood: white shirt, plaid skirt, red socks to the knees, and black flats that clung to her feet like two stones in need of polishing. Her brain was fully under the spell of Marvin Withers’s mind-controlling voice. Her brown eyes were smoky and blinking slowly.

  “We live here, right?” Charlotte asked in confusion. “In this room?”

  Tobias nodded.

  “Do we like it here?”

  “I think so,” Tobias replied.

  “How can we like a place that’s so hot?”

  Bump.

  Tobias blinked. His foggy mind was poking and pinching all of his senses. He looked around, wondering what he was bothered about. The room was just as it always had been. There were two rows of gray cots lined up across from each other. The cots were all empty, and a couple of them were torn up. At the end of one, there were some empty shoes and folded clothes sitting on the floor. Tobias looked across the room to the door that led to the hallway in Weary Hall. He twisted his neck back and forth and then let his eyes look up at the big window. It faced the back of the mesa, where scrubby trees and prickly bushes filled the view. There were thick bars on the outside of the glass to keep people in, and heavy green curtains hung from the sides like dirty hair.

  Tobias stood up and walked to the window. He tugged on the small lock at the window’s edge, but there was no budge. The sky outside was gray. It was hard to tell if it was early morning or late afternoon.

  “What are you doing?” Charlotte asked.

  “I really think I heard something.”

  Tobias stared out the window into the gray. Through the bars he could see trees swaying and bits of cloud scooting across the sky. He blinked slowly.

  Bump.

  Tobias stepped back from the window as something round and yellow hit the glass and rested on one of the bars outside.

  “What the…?”

  Charlotte got up and stood next to her brother. The little animal sitting on the bar was about the size of an orange, with feathery-looking dreadlocks. It had a small olive-sized nose and two eyes that were gazing through the glass and directly toward Charlotte.

  “What is it?” Charlotte asked.

  Tobias’s brain was jumping up and down, trying to help him recognize the small creature they had met in the gardens and that Charlotte had named Lars.

  “I don’t know what it is,” Tobias said. “Does it look familiar?”

  “No. Well, maybe a little,” Charlotte said sadly.

  The little creature looked up at the sky, fluttered, squawked, and then flew off. Both of the Eggers children pushed their faces up against the glass trying to see where it had gone.

  Whack!

  Something much larger than Lars slammed against the bars and scratched at the window. Both kids jumped back. Tobias tumbled over one of the empty cots and fell to the floor. Charlotte didn’t need a cot to help her fall. She went to her knees and then scrambled back onto her feet as fast as she could.

  “What happened?”

  “I don’t know,” Tobias said.

  This time, a large red animal had slammed against the window. Tobias stood up and backed away.

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know that either,” Tobias answered. “Maybe we should leave our room.”

  Whatever it was hit the window again. This time they could see feathers, and talons reaching through
the bars and tearing at the glass.

  Tobias spun on his heels and walked quickly toward the door. Charlotte duplicated the motion and kept in step with her brother. The feathery beast slammed up against the window again. The sound of glass beginning to split and crack ripped through the stuffy air.

  Reaching the door, Tobias tried the knob, but it was immovable—locked tight.

  The beast hit the window again and glass blew inward, shooting about the room like twinkling daggers. Tobias got three shards stuck in his right arm, and Charlotte’s left leg got two. Both children looked at their limbs, trying to mentally digest what was happening. Their brains were foggy messes due to the hypnotic influence of Marvin Withers’s voice. They could barely remember their own names, let alone how to react in such a frightful situation.

  Charlotte picked the pieces of glass from her leg as Tobias did the same to his arm. With the window shattered, the animal was now frantically trying to squeeze through the bars and into the room. The children were brainwashed, but an overpowering instinct for survival kicked in.

  “Grab a cot,” Charlotte said almost mechanically.

  Tobias reached down and picked up one of the ripped cots. Charlotte grabbed the front end of it. Charging like two rhinos with muggy heads, they ran toward the window and smacked the bars and beast with the end of their battering-ram cot. Metal clashed against metal and the sound was terrific. The air resonated with a tremendous clang as the animal screeched and flew backward.

  The two children dropped the cot and stared at each other.

  “Was that a bird?”

  “That was more than a bird,” Tobias answered.

  “I think I liked the first, little one better.”

  Within no time the big creature was back again. It swooped down and clawed madly at the bars. The Eggers children picked up the cot and moved back a few feet. They ran with the cot and slammed the end of it against the bars again, directly into the animal’s screeching beak. The creature screamed and flew backward into the gray sky. A soft wind drifted into the warm room, mixing with their labored breathing.

  Tobias and Charlotte dropped the cot.

  “I think we hurt it,” Tobias said.

  As the two children stood there looking out, the bars on the window began to creak. The damage the beast had done plus the two hits from the charging cot had torn the bars from the top of the window. The metal bars moaned as they tipped backward, away from the wall and down to the ground. A noise similar to dumbbells being dropped down a flight of stairs echoed and then stopped. The bars were gone and the window looked naked. The glass was completely shattered.

  “It’s not as stuffy now,” Charlotte said.

  Warm wind drifted in, tinged with the smell of cedar trees and dirt. The sky was growing dimmer, which meant that night was coming.

  “What should we do?” Charlotte asked her brother.

  It was odd—despite the fact that Tobias and Charlotte were two adventurous and mischievous children, and regardless of the fact that there was an open window they could have easily escaped through—neither one made a move. They could have jumped from the window, worked their way to the stream at the back of the mesa, and traveled through the tunnel to the abandoned rest stop they had made it to the day before. But neither one had the desire to go anywhere. Witherwood was their home, and their brains were not letting them remember anything else. Had they been clearheaded, they might have tried to escape, but they weren’t even clearheaded enough to wonder why nobody had come to check and see what all the noise they were making was about.

  “Are we safe now?” Charlotte asked. “Is it gone?”

  Reeeeech!

  The creature swept in through the window and knocked Tobias off his feet. He rolled to the wall and covered his head with his hands as the animal tore at his shirt and pants with his talons. Whatever it was, it was wounded and angry. It squawked like a vengeful duck with something to prove.

  “Do something!” Tobias shouted.

  Charlotte was already moving. She grabbed two shoes that had been left sitting on the floor by some other poor student. Without thinking, she slipped the shoes onto her hands and began punching the creature as if she were a prizefighter. The hard shoes made her blows count. She hit the animal in the throat and then in the stomach. The beast looked as if it were made up of bits of birds and monkeys and dogs. It was not a familiar-looking animal. Charlotte turned and connected another punch to the beak.

  “Baaaraaaaaaaafffffft!”

  Tobias rolled out from the corner and kicked upward, pushing the animal toward Charlotte. She swung and smacked the creature in the back. The dazed animal wobbled and then stumbled over a cot. It fell to the floor with its feathers ruffling and its voice fading like a dying battery.

  The animal shuddered and became completely still.

  CHAPTER 2

  CLUED IN

  Charlotte reached down for Tobias. He took her right, shoe-covered hand and stood up. He was scratched in more than a dozen places and his hair was torn up, but he was okay.

  “Is it dead?”

  “I think so,” Charlotte said.

  “You’re a pretty good fighter with those shoe-gloves.”

  The animal began to stir. Without thinking, the two children flipped over the cot nearest the animal and threw it down across the beast’s body. The animal’s head was sticking out, but the cot held its body against the floor like a net. Tobias sat on one side, holding it down while Charlotte sat on the other. The animal tried to struggle for a moment and then gave up. They studied its head as it was pinned to the ground. It had a long, wide beak that looked like it was covered in dark brown leather. Its eyes were bulgy and framed by bushy red eyebrows and patches of short twisted hair below. Its neck was dotted with red feathers that bristled as it breathed.

  “Is this how animals are supposed to look?” Tobias asked, confused.

  “I can’t remember.”

  The animal struggled beneath the cot. It worked one of its talons out and pushed it through the material.

  “Um, that’s not good,” Charlotte said, shaking. “Not good at all.”

  The talon began to rip the material more. With the cot flipped upside down and lying across the beast, Tobias grabbed one of the metal legs and unscrewed it as quickly as he could. The animal was thrashing now, trying desperately to get out from under the cot.

  “Here!” Tobias said, handing Charlotte the cot leg. “Hit him in the head with this. I’ll hold the cot down.”

  Charlotte moved to get into a better position to hit the creature while her brother struggled to keep the animal pinned to the floor. Charlotte knelt on the animal’s cot-covered body and lifted the metal leg to take a swing. As she held the leg above her, she stared at the creature’s head. It stopped moving for a second to look back at Charlotte. Its fat eyes and sad beak were a pitiful and confusing sight.

  “I can’t do it,” Charlotte said.

  “Here, give it to me.”

  As the Eggers children attempted to switch positions, the animal got a second and then a third talon through the cot material and began to rip it to shreds. It bucked its body and lifted the cot several inches from the ground. With a quick maneuver, it pulled itself out from under the cot and stood up on its two large feet to scream.

  Tobias and Charlotte were on their knees, which is a fine place to be if you’re praying but a tricky place to be if you need to run. They both scrambled to stand up as the animal bellowed.

  “Run to the door!”

  “It’s locked,” Charlotte reminded him.

  “I can’t think of anything else!”

  The children turned and moved toward the door. The animal lunged in their direction. It reached out with its right arm and swiped at Tobias’s back, ripping off a large piece of his shirt.

  Before they could reach the door, it burst open and Ms. Gulp charged in. She was holding a long stick with a glowing bit of wire on the tip of it. The wire was crackling and shooting spar
ks. Behind Ms. Gulp were some orderlies in yellow lab coats, all holding sticks of their own.

  “Get down!” Ms. Gulp yelled at the children. “Down!”

  Tobias and Charlotte dropped to the floor as Ms. Gulp swung her stick and connected the glowing tip with the belly of the beast. The animal screamed and lurched backward. The orderlies stepped over the Eggers children with their sticks out, pushing the animal toward the window.

  Ms. Gulp took another hard swing and knocked the animal to its bony knees. The creature screamed. It was outnumbered and knew it. It stood up and, in one smooth move, leapt through the window and vanished almost magically into the approaching night.

  Ms. Gulp stood there holding her stick like a sword. Her red hair, which was usually pulled back and tight, was a mess, her boxy body was sweating through her brown blouse, and her blue skirt was dirty and way too short for a woman of her size. She turned her square head and glanced at Tobias and Charlotte. She looked almost as disturbing as the thing she had just chased away. Ms. Gulp lowered her stick and took a deep-sounding breath.

  “What just happened here?”

  With the immediate threat of danger gone, the Eggers children’s brains slowed and became dull again.

  “What happened?” she demanded.

  “It broke in through the bars,” Tobias said.

  Ms. Gulp looked toward the window. “I don’t know what’s up with the animals. They’re supposed to protect this school. For some reason, the tables have burned.”

  Ms. Gulp had hurt her head in a terrible pool accident a while back. Because of the injury, she often said things wrong or got words mixed up. Nobody ever corrected her, for fear that she would berate or beat them.

  “I have a feeling you two have something to do with how mad the animals are acting,” Ms. Gulp said cruelly. “Things are precarious. Let’s hope we figure it all out before it’s too late. Now, good night.”

  “Is it okay to sleep with the open window?” Charlotte asked innocently.