THE VAMPIRE UNDERGROUND

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

Brin curled herself up into a ball and covered her hands with her face. She didn’t scream, and she didn’t shout for help. She didn’t know what to do, so she remained still, waiting for someone or something to inflict pain on her.

But there was no pain. Not even the fall had hurt. The only thing she had to fear now was the darkness.

“Who’s in here?” Brin said. She could barely see her own hands in front of her face.

Brin sat up. She heard footsteps coming closer and closer. But before the three children reached her, they started running, in circles, all around her. They were giggling.

“Stop, please,” Brin said. “I want to talk to you.”

Her heart was beating fast now. She didn’t think whoever was in this room wanted to hurt her. But she also didn’t like the pitch black enveloping every inch of her body.

Nobody knows I’m in here, she thought. Brin started crawling toward the opening.

The giggling increased in volume, and she started feeling hands touching her arms and shoulders in quick, frantic swipes.

And then, as her hands reached the bottom of the opening, the giggling stopped. She heard the little girl say, “Oh no.”

The girl’s pleasant voice was replaced with a low growl, quiet but discernable, coming from the other side of the room. It didn’t sound like a human. It sounded like a vicious, flesh-hungry wolf.

I’d kill for a pair of night vision goggles about now.

Then the unthinkable happened: the ground beneath her started to shake.

“Oh my God,” she said. It started softly at first, but then the dirt started slipping through the cracks beneath her. “What the hell!”

She tried to get up on her feet, but the ground wouldn’t stop shaking. The whole building seemed to be moving. She couldn’t tell. All she could stay focused on was that opening in the corner. It was mere feet away.

The ground kept on shaking. And the low growl, so quiet before, started intensifying.

“Welcome to Hell,” Brin thought she heard a voice say.

But Brin didn’t stay to chat. She leapt with all her might toward the opening and landed on top of the sill. She pushed herself forward and fell to the ground below, her right arm striking the ground with a tough, painful blow.

“Owww!” Brin shouted. She looked up, not knowing what she had seen or heard, but certain it had been real. She waited for another hand to pop out of the darkness. But none did.

She jumped to her feet, rubbed her aching arm, and started running away from the house, as far away as she could get.

Anaya and the gang were in the distance, all standing around like they were waiting for their number to be called for an intimate dinner gathering. Anaya turned to Brin as she ran up to the group.

“Where the hell have you been?” Anaya said, grabbing Brin by the shoulder. “We’ve been waiting for you for the past five minutes!”

“Did you feel it?” Brin said, coming to a stop and looking at the other five with trepidation. “The earthquake?”

“Earthquake?” Dylan said, stepping forward, seemingly the first to embrace Brin’s nuttiness.

“Yeah,” Brin said. “The ground was shaking.”