Hidden In The Attic: An AJR Fanfiction

Chapter Six

↤↤↤↤↤ Jack ↦↦↦↦↦

"Okay, everyone, get up!" Adam's voice comes from behind me. It's 10:00 AM, and everyone's laying around the living room almost silently. I'd still be asleep if he hadn't made breakfast so goddamn early. I'm sitting on the back on the couch, talking to Danny, who's on the beanbag in front of me. We both turn our heads to look at Adam in absolute confusion.
"What?" I ask. "Why?"
He surveys the room, which remains still. "We haven't gone out in a while," he says. "I heard there's a hiking trail through the forest. We should try it out."
"Oh, my God," Jay groans from his position on the floor under the coffee table. "Why do we have to do something?"
Adam rolls his eyes. "Come on. We need to go outside."
I run a hand through my hair. "Adam, you're the only one who wants to go on a hike."
Kib walks past me and slaps me on the shoulder. "You're a loser."
I feebly kick my leg out at them as they pass, but my foot doesn't make contact. "Ow! Stop hitting me."
"Guys." Adam says, silencing me. "It's not that far. Let's just go."
Everyone slowly and reluctantly gets up to follow Adam. We fill water bottles and put some food in backpacks, preparing to be in the forest for a while. I think it's a bit excessive, but I haven't hiked in a long time, so what do I know? I just hope we don't get lost.

"I'm tired," Danny complains, using a big branch he found as a walking stick.
Jay, from ahead of him, turns and walks backwards to talk to him, taking one side of his headphones off of his ear. "We've been out here for less than five minutes," he says.
"That's five minutes too long," responds Julie, who has a stick of her own.
Jay turns back around and the group falls into silence again. I'm walking in the back with Danny and Julie, hating every moment of this. Usually, I enjoy walking in nature and exploring, but it's starting to go really uphill and it's even raining a bit. Adam, in the lead, keeps going as if it's a perfectly sunny day. Maybe he's fine with the cold rain because he's always wearing a sweater.
"Can we go back now?" I ask. "I'm hungry."
Adam raises his voice so that I can hear it. "You have food in your backpack! One more complaint from you and I'll hit you with a stick."
I sigh. I'm not actually hungry— I just want to get back inside.
A few minutes of silence follows once more. The wind starts to pick up, leaving everyone more annoyed than before. If the wind can reach inside the trees, it must be really strong outside. Adam probably led us into a strange forest to die in a thunderstorm.
After a few minutes, though, the wind dies again and the forest is completely still. Weird.
Danny stops walking. "Does anyone hear that? It sounds like someone's crying."
Julie stops, too. "What? Oh, wait," she adds, "I hear it too. Oh, God."
"Oh, I don't like that," Hanna says nervously.
I stop walking and listen. I hear a faint noise that sounds like a child sobbing in the distance.
"Ryan, stop crying!" I yell to the front of the group, starting to walk again. A few people laugh nervously and I laugh at myself, too. I'm pretty funny.
Kib slows their pace to the left of me. Everyone is slowing down, meaning I'm almost at the front.
"Adam, let's go back. It's been too long and I don't wanna deal with random crying shit," they say indignantly.
Adam slows, too, looking back at the rest of us. "There's probably some kid lost, or something. We should help them."
Ryan is looking toward the sound, his brow furrowed in confusion and his hands in his pockets. "Yeah, it sounds like a little girl," he says quietly. "But aren't we the only cabin out here? Why is there a little girl in the woods?"
I shift on my feet, aching to sit down. But the ground's all wet and dirty and I don't want to have to change my clothes once we get back.
"What, uh, what if it's a ghost?" Danny queries, holding his stick horizontally in both hands and twisting it around nervously.
I laugh as soon as my brain processes what he said. "A ghost?" I repeat through chuckles. "God."
He kicks a stone through the grass in front of him. "It's just an assumption, Jack."
I roll my eyes slightly and look around at the rest of the group. Adam's staring at us with thinly veiled annoyance. Jay's climbed onto a low tree branch and is watching us with a similar expression, but he also looks amused. The rest of them, though, are shifty and nervous, bordering on fearful.
Good Lord.
"God, fine, I'll go ahead and look," I offer, walking forward and passing my brothers.
"Take someone with you," says Julie. "Like Ryan. It might be dangerous."
Ryan gives a small laugh. "No."
"Don't go at all," Adam sighs. "Let's just go and find out together."
Once more, Ryan gives a single no. "Seems sketchy. I'm not going," he says, backing up and joining the rest of the group.
I sigh, annoyed, before walking ahead briskly. Just so that everyone can shut the fuck up about it. Maybe there actually is a lost kid and they're just being idiots.
The crying, though it sounded close, is way farther away than I would've imagined. I've lost the voices of my friends and instead all I can hear is the sobbing and the swaying of branches over my head. I don't notice when it happens, but I can tell now that the birds have stopped chirping.
I keep walking, the sound getting louder and louder, until the trees open to a small clearing. In the corner, leaning against a large tree stump, is the figure of a small child curled in a ball. She's sobbing, her shoulders shaking with the force.
"Hey," I greet softly, walking over to her. "Are you okay? Are you lost?"
I crouch next to the girl and reach my arm out to put a hand on her shoulder. As my hand makes contact, I feel a chill go through my body and she stops crying.
Oh, I think. She's okay now.
The girl turns her head to look at me, and that's when I see that it's not a girl. It's definitely not human. I didn't see any of its skin before, but now I can see that it's pitch black. Its eyes are red, glowing spheres sunk into its head and its mouth is open in a gaping screech that fills my head and my mind, causing me to freeze.
What the fuck?
The girl's body convulses and changes into some sort of dark cloud. I don't have much time to speculate, though, as the figure leaps at me and my vision blurs. I'm knocked backwards into the leaves and grass, struggling to breathe for a few seconds until my lungs finally decide to function again.
"Fuck!" I say, in shock. I'm not sure how loud I'm speaking or how long, but I must have made a sound loud enough for the rest of the cabin to come search for me.
"Oh shit, Jack!" I hear a voice to the left of me and I turn my head, shaking and heavily breathing, to see Ryan hurriedly crouching next to me. "Are you okay? What happened?"
My back is uncomfortable on the forest floor so I sit up, keeping my eyes away from the stump I fell away from. "I... Uh, I j- I saw something. It-"
"Oh, so now you're scared?" Danny asks, stopping me from elaborating. At least, I think that's what he says. He's far away, and my ears are ringing.
"Ha!" Kib exclaims. "Loser."
Julie is on the other side of me now, extending her arms to help me stand up. I take the offer, my head swimming, and manage to stand after a few wobbles.
"Can we leave now?" she asks Adam. "Jack's injured. That should be a good enough excuse."
"I'm injured?" I echo. My brain has had so much to process that I haven't felt any pain. But now that I'm reminded of it, My head is throbbing, and I look down at my hands to realize that they're scraped and bleeding.
"Oh, fuck," I mutter. "How did I do that?"
Kib snaps a twig in their hands. "You fell, idiot."
"Okay, that's enough. Jack," Adam adds, "let's get you bandaged up at the cabin."
Julie jogs ahead to join the rest of the group while Ryan stays next to me, asking me questions that I'm not really paying attention to and I can't hear. I'm too focused on the permanent chill residing in my body. I feel something strange on my back and in my head, as if someone were watching me. I jerk my head around to the tree that the girl was at, bracing myself to run if I saw her— or it— but I see nothing but the flattened grass where I crouched.