WAYWARD, a new psychological thriller starring Mae Martin and Toni Collette
The small town of Wayward, nestled deep in the Redwood forests, seemed like the ideal place for Officer Alex Monroe to escape. After a traumatic incident in the city, the quiet, tree-lined streets and the promise of a slower pace were exactly what she needed. She’d even managed to snag a charming, slightly-too-big house with a porch swing that overlooked a babbling creek. It was perfect. Almost.
From the moment she arrived, there was an undercurrent, a subtle tremor beneath the idyllic surface. It began with the whispers at the local diner – hushed tones about the “Wayward School for Teens,” a sprawling, austere complex on the outskirts of town. It wasn’t just a school; it was the school, the economic heart of Wayward, and the source of its most persistent mysteries.
The school was run by Elara Vance, a woman whose presence was as unsettling as it was captivating. Vance, played with a chillingly serene intensity by Toni Collette, possessed an almost hypnotic calm. Her eyes, the color of a stormy sea, seemed to hold ancient secrets, and her smile, though frequent, never quite reached them. She spoke of “rehabilitation” and “nurturing potential,” but the words felt hollow, a thin veneer over something far more sinister.
Alex’s first official interaction with the school was a missing person’s report – a teenage girl, Chloe, had simply vanished from her dorm room. The school staff, led by Vance, were outwardly cooperative, but Alex, with her finely honed detective instincts, sensed a practiced evasiveness, a carefully choreographed performance. There were no signs of a struggle, no forced entry, just an empty bed and a lingering scent of lavender and fear.
As Alex delved deeper, she encountered the students themselves. They were a disparate group, each with their own history of struggles – addiction, delinquency, mental health issues. Yet, beneath their individual stories, Alex detected a shared fragility, a subtle uniformity in their demeanor. They were polite, almost too polite, with a vacantness in their eyes that gnawed at Alex. One student, a quiet, artistic boy named Sam, would doodle intricate, unsettling patterns on his notebooks, his sketches hinting at a world of unseen horrors within the school’s walls.
The investigation into Chloe’s disappearance stalled, hitting one dead end after another. The townspeople, while friendly on the surface, were strangely reticent about the school, their smiles tightening when Alex brought it up. It was clear that the Wayward School, for all its whispered notoriety, was untouchable, protected by a wall of fear and dependence.
Then came the “incidents.” A series of strange, seemingly unrelated events began to plague the school. A sudden, inexplicable power outage that plunged the sprawling complex into darkness, only to flicker back on a moment later, leaving behind a profound sense of unease. Objects moving on their own – a heavy antique clock shifting across a mantelpiece, a row of books tumbling from a shelf with no one near. The school’s security cameras, inexplicably, would malfunction during these occurrences, leaving Alex with no tangible evidence.
One night, Alex was called to the school after a student, a girl named Maya, was found wandering the grounds in a catatonic state, muttering about “whispers in the walls.” Maya, who had a history of anxiety, was quickly sedated by the school’s on-site therapist, a man whose gentle demeanor felt unsettlingly detached. Alex tried to speak with Maya, but Vance intervened, citing privacy and the student’s fragile mental state.
Frustrated by the lack of cooperation and the growing feeling that she was being deliberately stonewalled, Alex started spending her evenings poring over old town records, researching the history of Wayward and the land the school was built upon. She discovered a forgotten tale, a local legend about a secluded grove in the forest where ancient rituals were once performed, rituals meant to “cleanse” and “realign.” The grove, she realized with a jolt, was directly behind the Wayward School.
Her growing obsession with the school began to bleed into her personal life. Sleep became a luxury, replaced by restless nights filled with fragmented dreams of shadowy figures and echoing whispers. Her new house, once a sanctuary, now felt suffocating, its quiet corners filled with an unseen presence. She found herself jumping at shadows, her nerves frayed.
One rainy afternoon, Alex received an anonymous package – a small, worn diary. Inside, in hurried, almost illegible script, were the entries of a former student at the Wayward School. The diary detailed a disturbing regimen: daily “therapy” sessions that felt more like interrogations, forced isolation, and a strange, experimental form of meditation that involved listening to repetitive, low-frequency tones. The student wrote of feeling “empty,” “erased,” and, most chillingly, “connected.” Connected to what, the diary didn’t say, but the fear in her words was palpable.
The final entry described a “graduation ceremony,” a ritual held in the secluded grove behind the school, where students were led into a clearing surrounded by ancient, gnarled trees. The ceremony, the diary hinted, was not a celebration, but a transformation, a shedding of the self. The last words in the diary were a desperate plea: “Help us. Before we become them.”
Armed with this new, terrifying information, Alex knew she had to act. But the diary was old, undated, and anonymous. It wasn’t enough to secure a warrant, not against an institution as powerful and respected as the Wayward School. She needed proof, undeniable evidence of what was truly happening within those walls.
Her thoughts kept returning to Sam, the quiet boy who drew disturbing patterns. She remembered the vacant look in his eyes, the almost mechanical politeness. What if the incidents, the whispers, the missing students, weren’t isolated events, but parts of a larger, more elaborate design? What if Vance wasn’t just rehabilitating troubled teens, but re-programming them?
Alex began staking out the school at night, hiding in the dense foliage of the Redwood forest. The air was thick with the scent of damp earth and pine, and the silence was profound, broken only by the chirping of crickets and the distant hoot of an owl. She watched as figures moved within the school’s lit windows, their movements almost robotic.
One night, she saw it – a procession of students, cloaked in long, dark robes, being led by Vance towards the ancient grove. The sight sent a shiver down her spine, a primal fear seizing her. This was the “graduation ceremony” described in the diary, and she knew, with a terrifying certainty, that it was happening tonight.
Without hesitation, Alex moved, her heart pounding a frantic rhythm against her ribs. She couldn’t call for backup; the town was too entwined with the school, too afraid to challenge it. She was on her own, a single officer against a mysterious, powerful force. As she crept through the darkness towards the grove, the whispers began, not in her dreams, but in the rustling leaves, in the wind sighing through the trees. They were indistinct, unsettling, a chorus of hushed voices that seemed to emanate from the very earth beneath her feet.
She reached the edge of the clearing and peered through the dense undergrowth. In the center, illuminated by flickering torchlight, Vance stood, her arms outstretched, addressing the robed students. Her voice, usually calm and composed, was now resonant, almost chanting, a rhythmic incantation that seemed to seep into the very fabric of the night. The students stood motionless, their faces obscured by the hoods of their robes, their bodies swaying almost imperceptibly, as if caught in an invisible current.
Alex felt a cold dread settle in her stomach. This wasn’t therapy; it was something far older, far darker. She pulled out her service weapon, her hand trembling slightly. She had no idea what she was about to face, what ancient secrets were about to be unveiled in this desolate clearing. But one thing was clear: Wayward was no longer a place of escape, but a place where nightmares became reality, and she, Alex Monroe, was about to step directly into the heart of one.