Storm in the Shadows 1

In which it is first seen

The girl was perhaps not that distinctive, she had no obvious features of note. Although she was wearing some rather pretty, pale gold cats eye style glasses. She was slightly below average height with mousey hair and dull - almost washed-out - blue eyes. Her smile was timid and a bit lop-sided.

She was dressed like almost all the other girls in the school, only her clothes were a little bit shabbier, a little bit less cool. She obviously didn’t have the best things even if she did have the right things. She was on the periphery, neither part of the cool girls nor part of the losers. She was a bit of a nerd and had some strange habits the others hated her for. But she was funny and smart, would help you if you needed it, and would explain the things the teacher said in a way that was a bit less complicated. Not cool, but she was ok.

Her name was Storm and she hated it. A result of some hippy-ish notion of her parents. Her brothers had fared little better and sported the monikers of Cairo, River and Aries. Although, being boys, they’d never been that bothered about their somewhat ludicrous names. And, given they’d all ended up ridiculously tall and sporty, had had no troubles at their school. Her brothers were all much older than her; she was an afterthought, a mistake or something.

She never felt like she lived up to her parents hopes for her. Mother had purchased a coat in the first year for her to grow into that she was still wearing even though she was now in her penultimate year. Her hair was the wrong colour, she wasn’t sporty enough, she was too introspective and she was half blind and wore the thick glasses to prove it.

Her mother had obviously hoped she’d follow in her older brothers’ footsteps and make it to be a prefect at least at her school. But she didn’t like the idea of putting her neck out, wasn’t ready to have people judging her against others through a voting process. So she hadn’t even run and just told her mother she wasn’t chosen.

She was standing in her usual spot in the corner of the playground talking to herself and trying to work out how she would get round her mother’s likely insistence that she try-out for the netball team again when she saw it.

It was only for a moment, and it might just have been her imagination, but it seemed burned into her mind all the same. She closed her eyes and tried to pin it down. There had been a sort of flash like that of lightening, only not as bright. And she’d seen a… well, what had she seen? It had looked not unlike what she had often thought an imp would look like if they were real. It had been a tiny little creature that had a wicked twinkle in its eye and a sort-of sharp little face. It had been and gone so quickly that she couldn’t be sure of anything else. And anyway, it couldn’t have been real. Just a very vivid daydream most likely.

So why then, was she so sure it had been there…?  And why was she the only one that seemed to have noticed its brief presence? The flash of light alone she felt sure someone else must have noticed so she wandered off to find Lexi and ask her about it.

She knew better than to tell Lexi she thought she’d seen a mythical creature, but she would at least clear up the flash of light.

“Hey, Lex,” Storm said, “was it just me or was there just a flash of lightening?”

“Storm! You made me jump. No, I didn’t see anything. And we haven’t had any thunder either. You must just have seen a reflection off a window or something,” was Lexi’s reply.

“Yeah, you’re probably right. I must just be having one of those dumb moments.” Storm shrugged and walked away again.

But she was certain she wasn’t. She just wished she knew how she was going to prove it or even whether she would see the imp again sometime. If the imp had appeared once near her usual spot, then logically, he’d probably appear there again. Though in the six years that that had been her spot, this was definitely a first. Wasn’t it? She thought about whether she had maybe seen something before. As she was thinking the bell rang to signal the end of break and the whole school resolutely trooped back inside towards their respective lessons. She’d have to think a bit more on it later, for now there was French to be getting on with.

As is always the way with these things, her French class seemed to last three times longer than normal. And worse still Lexi seemed to have melted into thin air and she was stuck with the Jessica’s. They really weren’t so bad, but they just giggled to each other about boys and were almost impossible to role play with. At least with Lexi there they could talk about other things and just do the role plays between themselves.

So when the bell rang to tell them they could go home it really couldn’t have come at a better time for her. She was going to find Lexi, who was probably just hiding in the library, and give her a piece of her mind. They’d agreed ages ago to give each other warning if they were going to miss French for whatever reason. And she’d just finished talking to Lexi moments before the bell had gone and she hadn’t told her. Bitch.

When Storm got to the library there was no-one in it. Well, except the librarian and she was so much a part of the fabric of the building she just seemed to blend into her surroundings. But Storm had always worked on the basis that librarians were useful people to know and usually chatted with Miss. Leabhar (pronounced Leav-arr) when she got the chance. She was a great person to know and seemed to know where to find even the smallest books in what was quite a large library for a school with so few students.

She went up to her desk and asked if she’d seen Lexi in the last period. Miss. Leabhar hadn’t, but thought that maybe she’d seen her at lunch. Storm thanked and was just about to leave when she found herself turning round.

“Does the library have any books on things like imps and fairies?” She asked, “I’m doing something about them for general studies.”

“Imps and fairies? Well, I suppose they’d be over in that section there,” said Miss. Leabhar pointing to one of the furthest shelves. “But we’re closing in five minutes; don’t you think you’d be better coming and looking in the morning?”

“Oh, I’ll just be really quick,” she said. And dashed off to the stack Miss. Leabhar had pointed to.

When she got to the shelving Miss. Leabhar had directed her to she found all sorts of books about the occult, witchcraft and mythical stories. She grabbed a big leather-bound book that looked promising and high-tailed it back to the librarians’ desk. She checked the book out and said goodnight to Miss. Leabhar then headed towards home.

As she was walking home she was hoping just grabbing the first book from the shelf wasn’t actually a ridiculous idea. It had the look of a good book, and it was certainly heavy enough in her bag. As she walked she also started to wonder where Lexi could have got to. Perhaps she’d just brazened it out and gone to the common room. After all there was no-one to make her go to her lessons and Lexi would probably have fobbed them off if anyone had dared question her.

This is why Storm was friends with her. They formed a pretty good team between them. Lexi was definitely on the closer side of cool than Storm and even hung out with some of the cool kids in her Media class. They’d met on the first day of senior school. During one of those excruciating getting to know you exercises teachers are always so keen on. Lexi had taken the lead and introduced herself first but the moment she’d mentioned how much she loved to read Storm’s eyes had lit up. They’d quickly got completely side-tracked discussing what they were currently reading, their all-time favourite books and the ones they wanted to read as soon as there was time.

They had so many in common and so much to say about them that they didn’t notice the teacher had moved on to the “and now introduce your partner to the group” part of the exercise. They were both reprimanded and made to introduce each other first. This was tricky as they hadn’t got on to who Storm was and where she came from, or how many brothers and sisters she might have. And that was how it stayed. The rest of the class never did get a proper introduction and Storm was quite ok with that.

She and Lexi had been almost inseparable since. Though once they’d started GCSEs and were doing different subjects they had started to drift slowly further apart. Though they would still hang out on a regular basis and insisted on upholding their tradition of getting each other the most excruciating birthday cards they could find for each other. Storm was definitely on the losing side of this new arrangement as Lexi was pretty much her only friend at school still. That was unless you counted Miss. Leabhar, and Storm didn’t.

But Lexi was still there whenever people started to impinge on Storm and her need for quiet solitude and she would still give Storm their silly wink greeting across the playground to let her know she was watching. They would always be friends Storm hoped, but worried what would happen once university separated them by more than just a few timetable differences.

As soon as she reached home Storm ran upstairs to her bedroom and secured the door with a chair shoved under the handle. Her parents never came in her room, but it would be just her luck that they would chose to do so today. She lifted up the large book and laid it on her bed; she turned it so that she could open the back cover first and checked the index. Aha! There was Imp, right after Huldra – whatever that was… (A forest creature from Scandinavian folklore she saw, when she checked). She flicked to the right page only to be heartily disappointed as she was confronted by the words:

“Although often grouped with faeries and faerie folk the Imp is a member of the demon order and does not belong in this work.”

Would you credit it! That was no help to her. Though the picture that was included with the entry was definitely reminiscent of what she’d seen. Oh well, no help for it, she’d have to check Wikipedia and just hope that what was written there was actually vaguely factual. And then she had to laugh to herself, why would something about mythical creatures have to be factual. In fact, how could it be?

The entry on Wiki proved to be quite interesting and linked to several other types of demons and also fairy folk. It made mention of the Lincolnshire Imp which she could remember having been to see when she was much younger. It also said that imps were often lonely creatures and looking for human friends but that they pulled tricks and jokes which, though not often malicious, would make people avoid them. She also saw that during the middle ages witches were thought to have imps as helpers (or familiars) which were often thought to be disguised as any number of pets the witch may have. But most commonly black cats, toads and lizards.

As she started clicking on various sites which were more and more vaguely related to what she was interested in she found herself being side-tracked onto YouTube. She typed in imp sightings feeling sure that this would prove fruitless. But yet, miraculously, there was one that came up. Along with all sorts of stuff that YouTube had decided was relevant.

With trepidation and a distinct feeling of potential disappointment she clicked on it. And there it was a 15 second clip that someone had obviously taken on their mobile phone. Grainy, blurry and with dodgy sound but there was the flash of light she’d seen and there was the little sharp face and then it was gone. She watched it a few more times and was able to pick out a few more of the creatures features.

She realised the reason she’d instantly thought imp was because it looked remarkably similar to the imp enshrined in stone that she’d seen at Lincoln all those years ago. She tried to remember the story that she’d been told at the time and couldn’t. She went back to the Wiki entry and clicked on the Lincoln Imp link. There was the story of two imps causing havoc and an angel turning one to stone whilst the other managed to escape. She hadn’t remembered there’d been two of them in the story at all. But that was probably something to do with how long it’d been since she must have heard it.

She recalled that there was a row of stone angels above the imp in the cathedral, supposedly keeping watch over him so that he didn’t cause any more trouble.

But the second imp was meant to have ended up in Grimsby. Surely she couldn’t have seen him. That would just be one stretch too far. And although they were, allegedly, immortal it would still be an extremely elderly imp by now.

And anyway, if she was going to make the leap and believe that she really had seen an imp, then there was no reason to believe it had any connections to the two in the story. She didn’t live anywhere near Lincoln (or Grimsby, for that matter).

As she thought more about it, and after having watched the YouTube clip a few more times, she came to the conclusion that if that creature in the clip was an imp then whatever she’d seen earlier was exactly the same. It seemed so strange to admit that to herself, it had been an imp.

Her first thought was that Lexi would definitely think she was crazy if she told her, but perhaps a couple of the people she talked to regularly online might just believe her. Though she wasn’t sure she wanted to tell one of them for fear she’d be too overbearing. They’d discussed mythical creatures before after Storm had finished reading the Narnia chronicles for the umpteenth time. Even then she’d been a bit taken aback by just how convinced her friend had been about the existence of some or all of the creatures that featured in the books.

None-the-less, if anyone was going to be able to help her it would be her friends. She logged into her twitter account and sent them both direct messages to get in touch with her as she had a great story to tell them.

She sat back on her bed and looked at her clock. Half past ten, which would be why she was so hungry. She went downstairs to locate snackage and after having wolfed down a quick cheese and chutney sandwich and grabbing a couple of Satsuma’s to take upstairs with her returned to see neither of her friends had been in touch.

She was suddenly overwhelmingly tired and quickly changed into her pyjamas and crawled into her bed. She spent a good few minutes on twitter on her phone waiting for her friends and then she woke up to the sound of her alarm from somewhere under her bed. She gathered her thoughts, retrieved her phone and turned of its insistent bleeping.  She got dressed and went downstairs to get breakfast. Whilst trying to stuff in as much nutella on toast as possible she checked twitter again. Both the friends she’d asked to contact her had been in touch. She sent them both messages linking them to the YouTube clip and told them she needed some advice.

Realising she only had 15 minutes to make the 20 minute journey to school she grabbed her jacket and school bag and headed for the door. She burst into her form room just as the teacher was putting the register away. The teacher merely looked at her, got the register back out and marked her in it. Storm grinned, said thank you and went to take her seat by Lexi.

Only, where was Lexi?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There is more in my head! What do you think so far?