AllFreeNovel
Share Us
16
Bianaca
Ididn’t know whether I was surprised or not to find Kelly towering over my bed, black hair cascading around her in soft waves. I blinked rapidly, attempting to remove the remnants of sleep from my brain.
Body heavy with fatigue, I awkwardly gaped at the small girl standing over me. After everything that had happened, I was positive I had locked the door.
So how the fuck had she gotten in?
“Kelly?” I asked in disbelief. She blinked her crystal blue eyes at me.
“Between,” she whispered softly. The familiar word made me freeze and tense. I sat up in bed, somewhat reluctantly, and I turned toward her fully. Tiny hands gripped my wrist, nails digging into the sensitive skin. “Between.”
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked, my voice just as quiet as hers had been. “Do you know something about the school?”
I didn’t know how to phrase my questions in a way she would understand. Fear was an iron claw around my throat, cutting off my breath. My heart beat rapidly beneath my rib cage.
Did Kelly have answers? If she did, I needed to figure out how to get them from her. She was willing to answer my questions in her own obscure way. It was my job to piece together the puzzle.
Her hand still tight on my wrist, she pulled me off the bed. I came willingly, feet muffled by my fuzzy socks I had slept in.
“Between. Between. Between.” Her free hand curled into a fist that she rammed repeatedly into her head. Immediately, I attempted to restrain the offending limb.
“Stop,” I said desperately. Wide, tear-filled eyes met mine once more, and I was struck by the despondency in them. They weren’t the eyes of a child. They were the eyes of someone who had seen too much, lived through too much, yet was forced to repeatedly act as if she was okay.
She yanked at my hand, pulling me down so we were eye-level. Her voice was raspy with suppressed emotion when she spoke next. “Once you escape your monsters, you find new ones.”
“What does that mean, sweetie?” I asked gently. I implored her with my eyes to explain, to help me solve this damning puzzle, to trust me with her secrets. The unshed tears in her eyes heightened the blue color, stagnant tears hanging suspended on her lashes.
“Between. Between. Between. Between.” She released my wrist as if it was toxic, pulling open my bedroom door and slamming it shut. Terror for her slithered down my back, and I desperately reopened the door. Memories of the clicking sound replayed in my head on a loop.
The monster had been hunting these halls.
But one glance in both directions confirmed that they were empty. No monsters. No Kelly.
It was the latter observation that had me stepping outside, into the darkness that cloaked the halls like a cauldron of spilled ink. Only the light from my opened window allowed me to see my hand in front of my face.
Had it always been this dark?
I didn’t think so.
“Kelly?” I whispered tersely. She couldn’t have disappeared so quickly. Even if she was running, the halls were long enough for me to have spotted her before she turned the corner.
Did she sneak inside one of the other rooms?
I hadn’t heard any doors beside mine slam shut, and I knew for a fact that her room wasn’t on this hall.
Where had she gone?
That minuscule seedling of fear sprouted into a full-grown tree. The darkness only provided substance to the damn fear plant, helping it grow.
“Kelly?” I whispered harshly. I took an automatic step back into my room. Despite my fear for Kelly, I wasn’t stupid enough to wander these halls. The last thing I wanted was to end up like Ali, sacrificed to an unknown monster.
Goosebumps erupted on my skin at the thought.
Monster.
The word itself sounded crazy, ethereal. Something you would hear in movies or read in books. Monsters weren’t supposed to exist in real life. At least, not the stereotypical scaly beings that hid under beds.
