The Cheerleader's Freak (In Progress)

21

The group had successfully gotten to the school and got into the office, but it had to involve Max stealing Ms. Kelley's keys and sneaking to the school with the other boys. They were in her office and Steve was leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, keeping watch while Dustin tried to make conversation to keep it from being super quiet. 

Max was looking through the files, Christopher's file laying on the desk and she was currently looking for Fred's. Apparently a lot of people had come to see Ms. Kelley. "Aha, Benson," she says as she pulls out the file, tossing it on the desk. 

"Great," Dustin grinned as he picked up the file, and Max picked up Chris's, opening it and looking through the notes. She read the intricate writing that Chris mentioned he was seeing things based on his abusive background, he had nose bleeds, headaches, and he was hearing and seeing things like spiders and grandfather clocks. 

Her blue eyes widened, as the symptoms sounded familiar to her. She put the file down and immediately went back to the files, opening another drawer and searching through it. "What are you doing? Did you find out something?" Steve asked as he looked at Max as she found her file and grabbed it, looking at it. 

"Says here that Fred was seeing things based on his past, saying there was a car accident that killed his friend, and he's been having nose bleeds, headaches, and hearing and seeing things like spiders and grandfather clocks." Dustin furrowed his eyebrows. "That's really weird," he says as he puts it down. 

Max felt her heart drop as she read her symptoms had matched the others. To Chris, to Fred's. And Fred had died seven days after his symptoms had started. The gears clicked in her head, remembering seeing things in her head based on her trauma with Billy's death. 

"Max, what's going on?" Steve asks as Max looks up, snapping from her trance of reading. 

"Oh, uh," she says as she looks at the file and closes it, putting it back. "I think I found so-" she says, turning around to see Steve and Dustin not there. "Guys?" she asks as suddenly she hears a loud ominous chiming, and ticking. Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

"The hell?" she whispers as she walks around the desk and into the hallway, hearing the ticking get louder as she walked down the hall, and then stopped when she turned the corner. Embedded in the wall was a large wooden grandfather clock, the golden pendulum swinging back and forth as the clock ticked. Max's eyes widened. 

The memory of her headaches and taking pills. Her nosebleeds. The clock she was currently seeing in front of her. She knew that there were clocks involved too. She had the realization and she knew for a fact there was a good chance she was going to die.