The Dr. Randolph Mancer Academy, the boarding school my parents sent me for my troubles. The hallucinations, as the doctors called them, started ruing the middle of the eighth grade. I heard voices, whisperings which spokes words of gibberish to me. In the corner of my eyes I often saw dark figures, when I turned to look at them they vanished. Often when lying in bed at night I felt something in my room, watching me sleep and to worsen my paranoia I often heard the gibberish of the whisperings. I remember sleeping with my covers over my head so I wouldn’t have to see what was in my room. The psychiatrist my parents forced me to go to subscribe every possible treatment he could, but they had no effect, the hallucinations worsened.
Near the end of the eighth grade a man in a black suit arrived at my house offering a solution to my problem. He asked to talk to me in private first before revealing it. The man sat me down and asked me about my hallucinations. I refused to tell him just as I refused to talk about them with the psychiatrist (to stop his question I said they were too frightening.) The man, after asking a few times told me the hallucinations I had, which left me shocked. After giving a pamphlet and his phone number to my parents, he left.
The pamphlet said that by the academy’s community and teachers will help me to overcome my problems and enrollment was free. A fluff stuffed package to awe parents. It took awhile for them both to decide, my mother was the one to push it forward and after a week of deciding my father gave in. The academy sent a black suit to accompany me on the flight and as I was leaving, my mother was having second thoughts on having her little boy leaving, however my father reassured her. At the time I wasn’t happy because it cut my summer short since the academy started at the beginning of August.
The flight from Bangor, Maine to Denver, Colorado took hours and sitting next to my stolid supervisor with a window seat kept me from my book in my carryon bag leaving my only entertainment options to be reading the shopping magazine inside the pocket of the seat in front of me or to watch the landscape which after awhile hurt my neck. Eventually I reverted to taking a nap.
After exiting the plane, I followed the man who carried my bags through the busy terminal full of tourists to the bus loading dock where 4 intercity busses were lined up and other students were being led by men to the busses. I was asked to get on the second bus in line and assigned a seat number by the bus driver. I took my seat next to a small short uncombed blonde haired boy who was staring out the window. I sat down and looked out his window at the other students getting on the bus, each being led and having their bags by a black suit.
The bus ride itself lasted for a couple of hours, nothing that another short nap could quicken. When I awoke we were driving in the mountains and the boy next to me was still looking out the window daydreaming. As the busses rounded a corner the academy came into view. The building architecture was more modern than I expected for a boarding school and it was also built into the mountainside and had most of its structural elements made of cement.
The busses then entered a tunnel, filling them with orange light. We then stopped at an underground bus station where additional black suits took roll call of each bus group and then herded us into a lobby which had snacks along to wall. Young men and women who were dressed casually overlooked the snack operation with smiles on their face. After about half an hour of new students talking to each other, trying to find a few people to familiarize themselves with, an announcement came on telling all the students to enter into the theater.
I sat down in one of the middle rows next to, no one else, but the blonde haired boy which I sat next to on the bus. He was looking down at the floor and my curiosity finally broke through to introduce myself to him:
“Hi, I’m Richard.” I said, but the boy continued looking at the ground. I then tapped him on the shoulder and said hi to him again.
“Oh,” the boy jolted in his seat and looked at me. “I’m sorry; I thought you were talking to someone else.” He paused for a second then remembered what to do next. “I’m Isaac.”
“Nice to meet you Isaac. So why did your parents send you here?” I asked to further the conversation.
Isaac showed a look of sadness with his response, “My parents are missing… They have been since I was eight, I’m an orphan. They orphanage only sent me here because they couldn’t pay for a psychiatrist since I have started hearing voices recently.”
“Oh, I’m sorry about your parents… “I said as a man dressed in a black suit with a royal purple tie. He stood at a podium center stage.
“Welcome, new students, I am Dr. Randolph. Now most of you think you are here because you have a problem, that you here to be cured of the hallucinations you all have been. Your parents think you are here because of this, however you all are gifted in a way none of you can yet understand and the purpose of this academy is to develop this gift so that you can help bring about a new era in human history.” He looked about the crowd of students and grinned. “But first we must get you situated. We have about hundred-hundred of you here who will all be separated into 3 different houses which are led by house seniors. I will call out the house and the students who are in that house. After I am finished with a calling out all the names for that house that house will follow their seniors to their dorms.”
I was unfortunately in the last house to be called which was the House of Order and strangely enough, Isaac was in it too. We followed the group of ten seniors spread throughout the group who I now recognized to be part of people who were in charge of the snacks. They sent us up stairs and hallways until windows started appearing on walls and we could see the mountains. We then exited onto an outdoor path which led to an octagonal building the size of a gas station. We entered inside, passed an empty reception desk and found nine elevators, one big one in the center and four smaller on each side.
One of the seniors stood in front of the large elevator and shouted out, “Alright freshmen, I am Andrew and lead senior of the House of Order. These elevators lead to eight separate floors, two for each class. The bottom two and the hardest to deal with are the freshmen dorms.” He looked at a sheet of paper in his hand. “If your last name starts with any letters from A to E, go to Megan at Elevator 1, with any letters from F to L go to Stevin at Elevator 3, letters M to Q are with me at this elevator behind me, letters R to V go to Vitoria at Elevator 7, and letters W to Z to Zack at Elevator 9. Chop Chop peeps, it’s almost twenty-one hundred and we still need an hour to get you accommodated.”
All the students went to the senior they had to report to, Victoria held a clip board and was trying to get attendance down with all the students shouting their names at her. She then forced the group to be quest and to one by one give her their name. Once she was done, she placed the clipboard on the receptionist desk and opened the elevator doors and said, “Alright, everyone in.” She then squeezed into the small enclosure and produced a card attached to her waste by a retracting holder. She swiped the card and pushed the floor 8 button. She then turned to the group, “You all will be getting a card like this, but you can only access the bottom two floors which are for freshmen. Floor 8 is the dorms and Floor 7 is the lobby where you guys can hang out. Also, any upperclassman can come to the freshman floors. Don’t worry about your baggage; it has already been searched for contraband and sent to your rooms. You won’t be punished for it since you don’t know the rules, so don’t worry. ”The elevator door opened and she hopped out. “Everyone out and follow me” The hallway was lit by fluorescent light and had a carpet floor with cinderblock walls painted white. Artwork covered the walls as well as some sculptures filled spaces.
The senior stopped at a door in the hallway and pulled up her card again and swiped in front of the door and explained, “This will work for only your cards, no one else besides the ones sleeping in this room will. Also notice that we don’t separate genders, we only do that in sophomores and up. If you do not like it, tough I had to go through it and I know what it was like. I will also be sleeping in this room with another senior, so nothing will happen… And besides everything is being recorded by cameras.” She pushed open the door and walked in.
The room was filled with made bunks which each had a dresser and around it a curtain. Also there were two desks next to each other in between the bunks. The walls mimicked the hallway and in the center of the room was a pile of their bags. The senior then said, “You’re free to choose your bunks, but be sure to choose wisely because no one is going to want to switch with you.” The students moved to their bunks and I followed Isaac who took the lower bunk. I took the upper, since upper was cooler. “Find you bags and don’t bother to empty them, we’ll do that tomorrow. Get on your PJs if you have them and go to sleep. I don’t want anyone up past twenty-two hundred.” I ignored getting my PJs on and went straight to bed, although I had been napping, the day had worn me out.
If you finished, here is a revelation: Randolf is Aeneas' father and the school teaches alchemy.
IIIIIInteresting.
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