Road to Ghost Town

Prologue: The Storm

Libby

Does it ever occur to you to think about how the little things you do in life can change everything? That the slightest decisions you make can determine your destiny – or fate?

It all started on a perfectly normal Autumn day after school, and became a perfectly horrible one in less than a minute.

I laced up my worn out blue and grey Adidas. It was dark outside. No, not dark, but something in between light and dark. It was barely windy. Nothing stirred – not a leaf on the ground so much as moved an inch across the grass, and it was eerily silent. Clouds covered the sky like a blanket, and there was not a blue patch of sky as far as the eye could see. It was the perfect setting to give the feeling that something bad was about to happen. That something was out there, watching, waiting.

My house was surrounded by a Pine and Fir tree Forest, like most of Maine, so all I could see was trees outside the house, and a long dirt driveway. All our neighbors were at least a quarter mile down the road, and nobody ever came up here unless they were miserably lost. The fact that we lived in the middle of nowhere, and that I was almost fourteen years old, my parents felt like it was safe to leave me home alone.

I was startled by a sudden vibration in my shorts pocket. Realizing it was just my phone alerting me that I had an incoming call, I quickly dug it out of my pocket. A look at the glowing screen revealed it was my mom.

Sighing, I hit accept and plopped down onto a bench. What could she possibly want? "Hey, Libby. How's everything going?" she paused for me to reply.

"Good," I answered with cheer added to my voice. "When are you coming home?"

"I'm on my way. I'm almost to the town boarder. You can have some pasta in the fridge. I had to work late again today so I'm not bringing any dinner. It's going to have to be leftovers today." She didn't sound enthusiastic.

"Ok, fine," I groaned. Having the same meal three nights in a row wasn't exactly my idea of fun, but it's not like I had much of a choice, either.

"I know," she sighed. "I haven't had much time lately to do anything after work," There was a long pause before she continued, "Oh, and Libby?"

"Yeah?" I replied, anxious for her to hang up.

"I love you, bye" I could hear breathing on the other end as she waited for me to reply.

"Bye." I said. I waited with the phone in hand, as a breeze gently brushed across my face. After a few seconds, a soft beep emitted from my phone, and my screen returned to my home page - a picture of my cross country running team, taken some time this season.

I set my phone down on the bench to put my brown hair into a ponytail. It was not hot, nor cold. The perfect weather for a run. But then I looked up to the sky. Far into the distance, the sky was darkening, and the gray clouds lit up as a faint yellow.

Not a good idea to go for a run. Rain would be fine. Even lightning was fine with me, but I knew my mom would flip if she found out I went outside during a lightning storm. And besides, I had a project I should be working on for Social Studies. I would have rather been running right then though. Well, I almost always would rather be running.

Groaning, I pushed open the front door, and stepped inside my house. The door shut behind me, leaving me in the dim front room.

I lazily kicked off my sneakers, not wanting to untie them, and flicked on the kitchen light. For a moment, I squinted until my eyes adjusted to the light. I strolled into my room and flopped onto my bed. I would have gone to sleep if it wasn't for needing to finish my project. I needed to face-time my best friend Olivia, because she had the poster at her house, and the project was due tomorrow.

Our eight-grade social studies teacher tends to give us impossible tasks to complete with the given time. Luckily, she let Olivia and I bring our poster home to complete because Olivia had been out of school sick for the first two days our class had to work on it had to work on it.

I reached into my pocket for my phone.

Darn it.

I had left it outside.

Hopping out of my bed, I dragged myself to the front door and squeezed on my tied sneakers. Turning the knob, I flung open the door and strode outside, to where my phone was on the bench, in the exact spot I had left it. Picking it up in one hand, a press of the home button revealed one missed face call from Olivia Blake.

Something shuffled behind me. Swiftly, I spun around. Nothing was there. But I had sensed something. Then, in the corner of my eye, a flash blurred through the trees.

I don't know what it was that made me need to find out what that was, although it might have been just an animal. I sprinted through the trees, seeing nothing in the woods. No movement at all. If something, anything was out there, that was any bigger than a squirrel, I should have seen it. And it might have just been a squirrel that I saw in the woods that day, but I doubt it.

Disappointed in not finding anything exciting, I sighed and turned around to face the house, and jogged back.

Suddenly, my foot caught on something, and my body hit the forest floor, my head taking the hardest hit. I nearly lost my breath when I went down. I let out a wheezy breath and rubbed my elbows, in an effort to get up. I felt sore, but I knew that I'd be fine. I have taken many falls in my lifetime of running, and I lived through all of them.

My moods darkened the moment I saw my phone on the ground only feet away from me – the screen completely shattered.

"Crap." I muttered under my breath. I tried to crawl my way over to my phone, and once I made it, I groaned and brushed myself off, freeing a majority of dirt I had collected on my fall.

Looks like Olivia will have to finish the project by herself.

A cold drop of water landed onto my head, then another, and another. Looking up into the sky, I could see the dark clouds right above me, through the treetops, that covered the sun and cast a shadow over my house. In a few long seconds, it was nearly pouring on me.

Well this is fun, I thought sarcastically.

I squinted in pain as I began to lift myself up. My head throbbed and pounded even harder when I felt something behind me. Something grabbed my ankles, and my heart began racing, unsure of what was happening.

I screamed and thrashed, sending my phone flying. I could care less. I flipped my body around, to try to see my attacker. It was so dark that I could not even see the hands on my ankles, but I could sure feel them, fingernails digging into my skin and dragging me away from the house.

My heart beat in my chest as I kept thrashing, in a wild attempt to free myself of my attacker's grasp. The hands squeezed tighter the harder I struggled, the fingernails felt on the verge of breaking skin.

I am going to die. I am going to die.

My mom won't get home until after ten minutes if she was near the border as she said.

I could imagine her getting here, and me being missing. Nothing but a shattered phone on the forest floor. Or worse-the dead body of her only child lay in the woods.

I managed to free myself from the grasp, and my head throbbed from the impact of the fall.

But my freedom was short-lived when I felt something strike my head, and everything went dark.