Double Cross

CHAPTER ONE

RHEN POV

"Rhen! Rhen! Wake up!"

I grunted in dismay as I heard Shan bang on my door, it took me a second to recognise her voice and realise that since she is here, it means I am late. I frantically kicked off my sheet and dropped on the floor like a fish out of water; I ran as I stripped and dived into a cold shower. My body was shaking, but I knew Shan was getting impatient, especially since she took the time to walk to my house so we can leave together to go to the mall.

"Alright, Shan, let's go."

Shan and I have been best friends since birth, ever since our families were friends and we have lived in the same neighbourhood just as long. The path walking to the mall was one we walked nearly every day, but something was a little off today. The air was denser, but Shan didn't seem to notice while she walked and talked, I tried not to let it bother me, but someone was running or limping, up to us. The person got Shan's attention, and I could see a look of recognition cross over her face, then sadness. Shan mumbled out the last word I would expect her to say, Mom.

Her mother collapsed right in front of us and tried to hand Shan a gold cross, she was bruised and beaten with purple swollen marks all over her body and scratches with black muck oozing out of them. I couldn't help but feel sorry for her, she was frantic and wheezing, looking to the back of her like something was chasing her, but no one was there. Shan's mother grabbed her hand and placed the gold cross chain into her hand when the chain came into contact with Shan's skin; it glowed bright white like how mine glows bright red randomly. The white glow washed a sense of relief over me, and I could see Shan physically relax. Our peace was disrupted by a shrilling scream coming from her mother.

"PUT THE NECKLACE ON NOW!" her face deadpanned "YOU AND RHENETTA RUN HOME, CALL YOUR FATHER, LOOK FOR THE BOOK AND DON'T LOOK BACK."

Shan looked at me conflicted, and I understood why, as black girls, we are thought to always listen to our parents no matter what. She pleaded with her mother to go to the hospital, but her mother kept screaming with panic for us to go and looking back. Shan was focused on her mother, but I was more focused on the fact that she kept looking behind her as she screamed, then I saw exactly what she was crying for us to run from.

The wind screamed, and I screamed with it. It was like the cry of a woman drowning in the kind of pain the charts in the hospitals can never describe. I staggered backwards, and fearfully grasped for the neck of Shan's jersey. My heart was pulsing faster now, and Shan finally looked up. We both froze from fear.

It was a colossal and nameless blasphemy with glaring red eyes, and it held in bony claws a thing that had been a man, gnawing at the head as a child nibbles at a stick of candy. Its position was a kind of crouch, and as one looked, one felt that at any moment, it might drop its present prey and seek a juicier morsel. It wasn't even the fiendish subject that made it such an immortal fountainhead of all panic—not that, nor the featureless face with its pointed ears, bloodshot eyes, flat nose, and drooling lips. It wasn't the scaly claws nor the mould-caked body nor the oversized feet with claws instead of toenails that scared us still but the look of recognition when it seemed like he picked up Shan's mother's scent though any one of them might well have driven an excitable man to madness.

"RUN! GIRLS! RUN!" her mother screamed while getting up to block our path.

Shan got up, grabbed my hand and pivoted in the opposite direction, my mind in a state of stun, but my body knew what to do instinctively. I looked back only to lock eyes with the creature, and it seemed to suck the life, literally, out of Shan's mother.