This is in fact, quite an old story for me that I wanted to breathe new life into. I hope you like it. It's in need of some work, but this prologue, I think works very well.

One thing I didn't really notice until I came to post this is my tendency for character names. For some reason I tend to give my male characters more ordinary names such as Thomas or Andrew, and yet my female characters are walking around with names like Dream and Heidi… I haven't been able to work out the reason for this, yet.

Btw, I should mention, the character "Melaine Blackmoor is NOT a spelling error. Her name is Melaine (pronounced Mel-ayne) not Melanie.

The Weird.

By Scarab Dynasty.

Prologue: Bones, Storms, Makers, Deaths.

"Don't tell anyone what happened here, Grimshaw girl. Keep your mouth shut, or I'll do to you what I did to her and then I'll kill the others, one by one until all you can taste is their blood and tears. You don't want that, do you? But I promise, I'll do it. So keep your mouth shut."

Heidi didn't have to say a word.

The thirty-three faces sat stock still, staring at her as she entered the library. Even if several people in the room hadn't snatched a quick glance into her mind, reading her thoughts before she'd opened the door, everyone would have realised exactly what had just happened out there.

She would have looked laughable, if it hadn't been so frightening. Her tears had left lines in the dirt that covered her face. There were rips and tears in her navy blue uniform, torn hair and blood on her fingertips. Somebody –something– had obviously lashed out at her pretty badly, something that had wanted to hurt her without actually killing her. To frighten her, without –quite– frightening her to death (and there were a thousand things out there which were fully capable of that). Something that had a thousand intricate ways to terrify, wound and even destroy you, if it really wanted to.

Luckily for Heidi, it hadn't.

Nam sat in a chair behind the Issuing desk. She couldn't see Heidi's face, but she guessed what had happened, just like everyone else. Nam rubbed one of the little serrated bones that she held in her shaking fingers. They whispered to her, telling her what her Lookers –a select few of the children in the room, who were also wearing thin serrated bones around their necks and had small, bone shaped marks of ink on their cheeks, five of tem in total, and only one of them a boy– could see. Somebody at the back of the room swore out loud in terror.

'Heidi?' Nam asked, even though the bones and the look on Heidi's face had already told her the answer to the question she hadn't even asked yet. 'What's the matter? Where's Mel?'

Heidi whispered something. Her voice sounded dry and bloodless. 'What? Heidi I… I can't hear you.' Heidi took a step forwards, found she had forgotten how to walk and crumbled against the issuing desk. Nam reached out a hand, her thin fingers encircling the older girls arm. She could feel Heidi trembling and smell the fresh blood. Not just Heidi's own blood, either. 'Hei, what's wrong?'

Heidi looked up. Even though Nam was blind she could feel Heidi's frightened, angry, hurt black eyes burrowing into her.

'L-lightning,' Heidi stammered. 'The s-storm. They… t-they s-sent… the storm, t-they…' her sentence faded. Nam felt several of her Bone Holders glancing at the other children around them with wide eyes and grey-white faces.

'M-Melaine's d-d-dead,' Heidi let out a gasp –or a sob, Nam couldn't tell which. 'I-I watched the s-storm and I-I saw it h-h-hit her. It killed her, N-Nam. It k-killed…'

For a short while nobody breathed. Pupils covered their faces with their hands and sat there trembling with a shocked kind of fury. Fury towards Heidi and the storm and the lightning. Even Heidi's sister, Cara, was staring at her with sorrowful anger boiling in her aqua-coloured eyes.

'W-what do we do, now?' Cara asked.

'How the hell are we supposed to know?' muttered Andrew –a year ten standing just inside the office door. Nobody wanted to speak, and Nam couldn't say she was surprised. They had trusted Heidi with Melaine Blackmoor. They had trusted Heidi to bring her through the storm to the relative safety of the Library where the Dark Things couldn't touch her, and Heidi was so useless that she couldn't even do that right. Even Nam, who was usually so calm and collected, couldn't help but feel a tough of angry pity. 'Where are we supposed to get help? Who's going to help us? Frak, Heidi!'

'No help…'

Nam gasped. A few other children jumped in surprise, but a lot of them didn't even notice that someone had spoken.

Gathering her nerves, Nam looked forwards at the girl sitting on top of a table, a few feet in front of her, seeing her and speaking to her as only a blind, telepathic girl can.

Dream –the girl on whom Nam's eyes were so firmly fixed, and one of the few who were wearing bones around their neck– nodded in understanding. With a blink of her eyes, she spread her telempathy, momentarily penetrating every mind in the library.

Only then did she realise that there weren't thirty-four people in the room after all.

Dream lifted her legs and looked under the table. Then she yelped, as something small, skinny and dressed in a bright blue uniform dove out from underneath it, clattering chairs and knocking people over. Dream stood staring at the six-year-old with white eyes and hair.

'Sam!' a girl called Kathy shrieked as the small child scrambled towards her. Nam frowned, knowing without seeing.

'A junior,' she mumbled. 'Someone… brought a Junior in.'

'No help,' the junior whispered, shakily. 'No help… somebody… who killed her?'

'No prizes for guessing who!' Dream grimaced. 'Kathy, what the hell is she—'

'It's a he, you freak!' Kathy snapped. The small boy who-looked-like-a-girl clung to Kathy's skinny frame tightly, watching Dream and scowling as if he could actually feel the older girl probing around in his thoughts. (Dream had always found it interesting, how younger children could often tell when she was trying to read their minds.) 'For God's sakes, can't you tell the difference?'

'To hell with what it is,' Andrew said, brusquely. 'It shouldn't be here! How did it get in this building?'

Kathy hesitated, an angry blush rushing into her cheeks.

'No help,' the boy said, louder this time, wanting to be heard. 'Nobody helps now. Melaine's dead. That's true, Kathy? If Melaine's dead how do we stop the dark things?'

'He… he wanted to know what happened,' she said bitterly, 'and now he knows!' She turned angrily in Heidi's direction, her eyes crimson bright. 'We all know! We all knew! We knew they'd send lightning or ice or-or wind or all of them after her! We all knew how much they wanted to kill her. How could you let this happen, Heidi?'

'No help…' the boy whispered.

Heidi couldn't answer. A bolt of lightning filled the sky outside, slicing between the window-blinds like ice cold fingers. Dream shivered as the shining residue bled over her cheeks. A girl at the back of the room broke down in sobs. Dream felt the sudden outburst like a glowing glyph, flashing on a radar.

'Melaine's dead,' she thought to herself. 'It's got us right where it wants us now. There's nothing to be done about it.' She forced herself to stand, even though her bones felt they might crack if she put any weight on them. She turned around…

He had been sitting so quiet in the corner that nobody had noticed him until now except Dream, and now she and Kathy happened to turn their heads in his direction and saw what he was doing.

His name was Thomas, the school's only year eleven, and while everyone around him sat and cried, he was drawing frantically on a pale grey sheet of paper. Dream walked towards him and leaned in on the paper, Nam watching through her Bone Keeper's eyes. Kathy saw it too, and her crimson eyes went bright with horror. She let go of Sam and slapped her hand over Thomas's picture, ripping the paper and the inky flesh of its character as she tore it away from him. Thomas winced.

'What the hell do you think you're doing?' she whispered. Thomas looked up at her. he's not crying, Dream's voice whispered to her, and Nam wondered for a moment why, before she remembered that Thomas was a Maker. An Artist. All the emotion he had leaked out of his pen instead of his face.

'I don't have any red,' he said.

For as moment Kathy stood perfectly still, and Dream with her. 'Damn you,' Kathy said, her voice almost a whisper. 'That… that's not what I meant. What is this? This isn't another one of your wretched picture-stories, stop it!'

Thomas hesitated and Dream waited, tensely to see what he would do. He clearly wanted to reach out and pull his torn drawing away from Kathy's hands but wasn't able to. Kathy was staring at him so hard Dream thought her eyes might pierce his skull.

She couldn't feel any emotion for him, but she felt it coming from the paper on which he'd been drawing. Thomas had drawn two bright eyes staring upwards into a storm that raged in black and grey ink about the paper. He had sketched two hands with long nails and thin wrists, reaching into the dark. Right at the very centre of the picture, a white bolt of lightning was slicing into a human girl's chest like a metre-long kitchen knife. There was a trail of inky blood on her fingertips –drawn in silver instead of red, but it was still obvious what it was meant to be. Dream's blood ran as cold as the silver on the paper.

'You… you knew all about this, didn't you?' Kathy said. 'You knew about the storm.' When Thomas wouldn't answer. 'We know Melaine's dead, we know why she's dead, you don't have to scribble it onto paper so we all have to look at it! It was your idea to send Heidi and you know she's useless! You knew she'd never be able to protect Mel! You're such a fool, Thomas! Why did she have to pay because you're the fool?'

Unable to contain it, Kathy's eyes started burning like embers from a fire. Thomas blinked, his writing hand twitching into a fist, clutching his biro. Then he stood up, his eyes locked on Kathy's face, incapable of pulling away. 'Kathy, stop!' Nam yelled. And then the babbling started. Mostly Dream and Nam, but others too, everyone bickering and panicking and squeaking in fear.

'Katherine, no, no!'

'Stop it, stop it, stop it…'

'Don't do that, Kathy. Please, you can't!'

'Kathy,' Heidi looked up, tearstained and breathless. 'Please, leave him alone!'

Kathy continued to stare as Thomas rose to his feet, her ember-eyes wide and tearful. A bitter, vengeful smile on her lips. The dull emotionless glaze of Thomas's face suddenly lifted and his expression burned with anger just like Kathy's. The children temporarily forgot who was dead and started to scramble away in terror. Only Dream, Nam and Heidi stayed where they were. Them and Andrew, who hadn't moved from the doorway for what felt like hours.

Dream pulled herself together and made a move to grab Kathy by the throat. Kathy knocked her away without even looking, but as she did, Dream caught hold of her wrist and pulled. She could feel Kathy's anger beating in her skull like a second pulse, but it was nothing compared to the pressure that had started to radiate from Thomas. The ridiculous strain of the Maker's sudden rage and pain made her feel dizzy.

'Let go of me, Dream!' Kathy shrieked.

'No, Kathy. I won't let you take it out on him,' Dream said, calmly. 'You've got no reason to hurt him.'

'I'm not hurting him,' Kathy snarled (it was frightening, how cool and calm she could sound while making that kind of noise). Which, Dream knew, was true. Technically, she wasn't hurting Thomas at all. She was doing something worse.

'Kath—' Heidi started, choking on her own voice.

'Somebody has to be blamed,' Kathy interrupted as Thomas rounded the table and came towards her, walking at a speed she alone dictated, a purely murderous anger blazing in his eyes. Murderous, Dream thought, feeling sick. Kathy was doing it again. Making somebody hate her. Hate her so badly they couldn't help but try to destroy her, and in their attempt they would destroy themselves as well. Dream knew. She'd seen it before. She'd seen it before too many times. 'If he knew what would happen when we sent Heidi out there, then why didn't he say anything? Somebody's got to take the rap. It's him. It's all his fault.'

'I… I know,' Dream said, trying to sound calm. 'But… but not Thomas, Kathy.'

'Not him,' Heidi whispered. 'Kathy, it was me. I was the one who was out there, I—'

'You didn't see it coming,' Kathy snapped. 'Thomas did. He must have done. He knew Mel was going to die, the minute he started drawing this bloody picture and he didn't do a thing! He as good as killed her, why should killing me be a prob—'

Thomas lunged forwards. It was unnaturally fast, but Dream sensed it coming and pulled Kathy backwards, more for his safety than for hers. Sam sat cowering behind a plastic chair, but Kathy kept her red-hot eyes on Thomas, urging him to strike again. Willing him to hate her.

'Kathy!' Dream screamed.

For a moment, Kathy wavered, and so did Thomas. Both of them freezing in mid air, Thomas with his clenched hand raised. But now his hand was empty. For just a moment Dream could see the desperation in his deep blue eyes and feel the burn of panic. Kathy wiped her cheeks, and realised that he hadn't completely missed her after all. There was a thin smear of red on her fingertips. She obviously didn't feel it.

'More blood,' she muttered, tears filling frenetic eyes. 'My blood and Heidi's, my blood and Mel's.' She burst into tears, still not breaking eyes with Thomas. 'I'm sick of blood. Why did this happen?'

'Mel… Melaine was your best friend,' Dream said, softly. 'Would she want you to do this? You're just angry and scared, Kathy, we're all angry we're all scared. I know you don't really want to hurt or have him hurt you. What would Mel think?'

There was a long cold moment while Kathy made up her mind. 'Melaine Blackmoor… can't think anything,' she said at last through sobs, another slant of icy lightning breaking through the blinds. 'She's too DEAD to think!'

Thomas jumped forwards with a new pen in hand, the sharp point aimed at Kathy's throat. A strange, ugly laughter raged like fire around the building making the walls shake like something out of a horror film. Children hid their faces.

'Stop it, stop it!' Sam screeched, leaping to her feet.

Her screeching was a godsend. Kathy heard her. She froze, started and pulled her eyes away from Thomas's, just in time to prevent both of them from doing something they'd always regret. Thomas stopped charging towards her and staggered backwards into a chair, blinking in shock and trying to remember who he was.

Dream felt a sigh of relief running through the whole group. The air felt as if it was filled with pins and needles and chalky anger and lemony rage and moans of sorrow that sent shivers down her spine. Dream could hear, feel, taste and smell a million different raw emotions. Telempathy was not always a pleasant thing to have, but it was better than making people want to kill you if you looked at them directly, like Kathy could.

Dream knew that Kathy had been a mere second away from making Thomas try to stab her in the heart and as soon as he touched her, his body would have broken into a million pieces, his flesh melting away from his bones. Both of them would have been killed, Dream thought grimly, which would have made the death-toll three. The highest they'd ever had in a single night.

Well, okay, that was a lie. But nobody counts the night of the coach trip, anymore.

Sam ran forwards and buried her face in Kathy's jumper. She whispered something, her words muffled by a mouthful of cotton. The last of the thunder growled and faded.

'Oh God,' Kathy whispered into the silence, Her anger fled. 'Oh, God!'

Behind them, Heidi stood up, and Dream reached out her arms and folded them around her. The room was silent and tearless and prickling with rage. No depth of Telepathy could breach the barriers of shock and sorrow blanketing the children's minds like an unbreakable diamond coating. Dream let go of the shivering Heidi and sat down, her whole body slumping in despair.

Then the bell rang. A sound felt by only thirty-five people, that seemed to make the whole building tremble and sent shivers across the library floor. Dream felt the wrath of the pupils around her dissolving, like recycled paper left out in the rain. It felt like some kind of strange, twisted conclusion, Dream felt. Like she was standing on the last page of a novel. Their story was over.

And it didn't even get a proper ending.

'Class dismissed,' Nam said bitterly, clutching the shards of bone tightly in her fists.

End Prologue.