Inner Demons✔

Chapter 24

Wes and I ran out into the basement hallway to find Declan and Sage already there. The looks on their faces clearly showed how surprised and panicked they were feeling.

"What the hell was that?" Declan asked looking at the two of us.

"Wasn't us, it came from the first-floor," Wes answered so quickly that most of the words blended together.

I looked at Sage and Declan and realized we were missing a few people.

"Wheres Lolly and Lucas, or Alicia?" I asked them.

I was starting to grow more worried by the second. The scream had died off but the high pitch sound still echoed in my head. It sounded like one of those horror movie screams, and just thinking of it brought goosebumps to my skin.

Sage was nodding at me, as if agreeing with me before she answered, "Lucas and Lolly went for some alone time, I don't know where Alicia is."

That was all it took to make Wes and Declan take off in a full sprint towards the stairs, with Sage and I right on their heels. We ran up the stairs and burst through the first-floor door. When we made it around the corner going into the main hall, we spotted Lolly and Lucas at the other end staring at something on the floor. It didn't take us long to run the entire length of the hall to reach them. But once we got within a few feet of them I started to slow down, my eyes immediately were drawn to the floor.

At the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor, laid big Betty and her brother Toby.

Betty's warn and ripped teal dress flared out around her, while her dull brown hair covered her face. Toby was only a couple feet away, in a wrinkled tan suit that looked two sizes too small for him. But it wasn't their clothes that caught my attention, it was the blood.

Blood surrounded both their bodies and merged together so it was hard to tell who's was who's. But it was easy to see the massive hole to the side of Toby's head, and Betty's mangled leg that was turned in the wrong direction. Even worse than that was the completely vacant look in Toby's open eyes. It was like he was permanently doomed to stare at the ceiling above. I couldn't see Betty's eyes, but I had the horrible feeling that they would look the same way.

"Dear God, Lucas, what happened?" Wes asked, his eyes so wide they took up most of his face.

Lucas stepped back, hands raised out in front of him, "We didn't do this, man. They were like this when we got here."

Lolly turned and wrapped her small hands around my arm, "I swear, Chloe, we heard the scream while we were making out in the stairwell. We got here right before you guys did." 

Her big brown eyes pleaded with me to believe her.

It may have sounded weird to some, but I did believe her. Lolly was eccentric and a little over the top, and yeah, she killed her mom. But that was her demon side, not her, and this wasn't her either. Even Lucas, filled with a fiery rage, wouldn't lie about this. I felt their stories to be true, all the way down to my bones and was willing to bet my life on their innocence. Too bad it wasn't my judgment that mattered.

The sound of many footsteps and several voices echoed at the tops of the stairs next to us. We would have company soon, and there was no way we would be fast enough to run away. So we stood there, staring at the bodies in front of us like we hadn't a hope in the world, and that was how we were found when Ms.Pierce, Mr. B, and several other students and guards arrived.

The students screamed and ran back up the stairs while the guards immediately grabbed the six of us and threw us against the walls. Ms. Pierce was on a cell phone right away while the sounds of screams and shouts filled the air. I felt numb, my body, my mind, everything was too much. The feeling of cuffs being slapped around my wrists barely registered to me. With our arms bound behind our backs, the guards forced all of us to kneel on the floor along the wall. One of them spoke about back up being on the way I couldn't help but wonder why. Why would they need back up? We didn't do it and even if it looked that way, we were already contained. Whatever had happened was done.