Behind The Locks || ONC 2024

Chapter 17: Need To Close The Door

The fact that the entity had the ability to heal did not stop pain from gushing through every corner of her body, prickling like sharp thorns.

The scream that escaped her lips was nothing she had the ability to stop. She could almost swear she had blown some fog away and made everyone deaf.

She yanked her feet, aimlessly, in anticipation to get him off. She must have banged on something due to the counteracting force that she felt.

Almost instantly, the grip on the knife loosened.

She crawled as fast as she could to the door. She knew it wasn't over between them.

The door was reluctant but once she propped her back against it and pushed it, it budged. A little more effort was all that was needed to put it to a close.

She got to her feet, one limping, her back still against the door, and pushed it to a close.

She then stretched her hand for the keys hanging loosely against the lock.

Just by her hands getting closer to the lock, the bruises around her fingers re-appeared. It went without saying that the lock was made out of silver or iron to isolate entities like the one she harbored.

She didn't bother with the pain it came with, there would be darker times ahead if she was unable to lock the door.

Clasping the keys, Zack appeared from the middle of darkness, the chain still wrapped around his knuckles. She had to be fast or else her brother would be the one to take the life out of her.

Her cadaverous fingers shook abruptly as if they had just been in the north pole for a week but somehow managed to embed the key inside properly.

Twisting it was the hard part, with no single string of strength in her fingers she had to force her other hand from pressing the door.

Zack charged towards her, huffing and puffing like a wounded buffalo, raising his fist.

Whatever happened next took a fraction of a second, leaving Arielline bewildered, recollecting memories of what had just happened.

Zack had fallen against the door, behind her and Mirabelle was on the floor somewhere in front of her. Nick was not in her view but she could guess that he too was laying unconscious or dead.

She leaped towards her brother and placed two fingers against his wrist. Fortunately, there was still life in him as insinuated by a low throbbing beat of his pulse.

The knife was of real pain and she knew that the wound would heal, but not with it embedded.

She gave herself a seat on the floor next to her brother, stretching her aching legs.

She had to do it. She sighed before illuminating it with Nick's phone.

It was so ugly that at its mere sight she nearly shot out all her breakfast.

The cut gushed with blood some red features she did not even want to think about displaying. Was that a bone? Via a sliver beside the blade, through the semi transparent blood, was a whitish hue.

She clasped her mouth at the disturbing image, suppressing a wild scream.

Its pain was not as bad as it looked, but she could not imagine that that was her leg.

The fact that she had never seen such a wound before —more so in her body— forced a tear out of her eyes.

Horror movies turned out to be sugar coating stuff, not even them had she seen such ugliness in a wound.

Nick wasn't to blame, it was whatever had gotten into him that was to blame.

She clasped the end of the dagger wiping a stray tear from her face with her sleeve.

Her fingers had been consumed by the bluish effect and were as good as new, but then again the blisters re-appeared as her hand neared the dagger.

It was either made of silver or iron, it wasn't anything she needed to be told.

So, he knew that at some point he was going to come up against a ghost.

Nick was hiding something, and she had to find it out, if he wasn't dead.