Redemption

Chapter 4 In the Shadows

Aimee’s car had left almost as soon as the fireworks had started which left me no single ounce of hope whatsoever.

I made a beeline for the exit to the grounds and immediately started walking, clutching at my bag to my hip securely. It had my phone inside – my phone!

I rifled around, brought out the little Nokia and dialled away eagerly. Holding it to my ear, I waited for Mum’s voice to appear after the rings but every single sound in my ear was still drowned out from the fireworks bursting into the air.

I swore under my breath and scurried off around the corner, getting somewhat nearer to a more secure and safer area of town – but I wasn’t completely gone from the grounds just yet. My phone suddenly let out a buzzing noise then fell dead in my hands.

“No, no, no!” I groaned and shook it in the air. “Why, oh why?”

A subtle squabble of voices suddenly caught my attention. I whipped around in response and searched wildly into the shadows of the trees and empty houses around me but there was nothing there – just the shadows dancing under the moonlight and the fireworks.

“Just run, Audrey, run,” I whispered and started to break into a full jog. My phone was dead, I was alone in the night and I was probably going to get lost and get kidnapped and – “Shortcut!”

I picked up my pace and started sprinting towards a narrow gathering of trees I remember I always used to walk through with Aimee a few years back. Well at least as far as I can remember.

“Come on, faster!” I hissed to myself and dashed through the trees. This must have been an awful choice because the sudden squabbles of voices filling my ears were soon followed by loud whistles and screeches.

These were definitely not fireworks!

I started to pant and wished I had listened to Audrey about raising my fitness levels until I saw a little radiant beam of moonlight far up ahead, almost two hundred metres from where I was running towards right now.

“Yes!”

The voices grew high pitched and almost immediately, the moonlight disappeared from view and shattered any slithers of hope left within me.

Almost too quickly, a dark figure leapt between the trees and tackled me to the ground before I could comprehend what had just happened.

Sharp clicks and shrieks filled the air like a chorus of agonised choirs. It grew to a point where it was too deafening to endure.

The shadow leapt off me, let out a hiss of pain and disappeared yet three more figures leapt through the air, momentarily appearing in the shafts of moonlight. They dropped on me like a tonne of weights straight above my crumpled form on the ground, tearing a scream from my lips.

“Get off me!” I screamed and managed to roll over though my shoulder was pulled back from the incredible and invisible weight pressing down on my right arm. “Ah!”

A burning sensation crept up my arm and started to flare at a dangerously hot temperature. Sharp pinpricks had started blending in with the heat, only inflicting more pain throughout the core of my body.

“Somebody, help!” I cried out. I felt my chest squeeze and tug painfully at the fact that I knew nobody would hear me. Chances were, I was going to die right then and there from – from whatever these things were!

Darkness clouded my vision followed by brilliant flashes of light from the corners of my eyes.

Almost immediately as my vision went funny, the dark spots disappeared as fast as they came. The pain lifted from my arms and my body, automatically rolling me back into place though my shoulder was still somewhat dislocated or something.