Hidden In The Attic: An AJR Fanfiction

Chapter Fifteen

↤↤↤↤↤ Hanna ↦↦↦↦↦

"Ryan?!" I crouch down to him, where he's curled up into a tight ball and rocking back and forth. "Ryan? What happened with you?"
The only thing that comes out of his mouth is a bunch of "no"s and sobbing and incoherent apologies. His left hand clutches his right shoulder harshly.
Behind me, I hear Kib start to yell at Adam.
"Hey! You piece of shit. Why aren't you doing anything? Everyone's fucking losing it and you're just sitting here! What's your problem?" I get up from next to Ryan, as there's no use in trying to help him, and stand next to Kib. Adam's face is almost blank. Similar to Jack's the night he fell.
Something is wrong.
Kib starts snapping their fingers right in front of his face. "Hey, dipshit. Can you hear me? Why haven't you been helping us? You're the one with the most muscle here! You could break down the closet door."
Adam continues to stare blankly at the couch. Both me and Kib glance to Adam and then to each other. I think we've both realized that everything that has happened this week is connected. The murder that took place here, the hand in the lake, Jack in the forest and falling off the roof, all of our friends collectively going insane in the living room, and now Adam acting strange since last night.
"Adam..." Kib starts to move closer to him.
"...Tell us what's going on." I continue. He stops staring at the wall and jerks his head to look at us now. His eyes don't have the same gentle look, instead they're emotionless.
Out of nowhere, he raises his hand and strikes Kib in the face, giving a terrifyingly loud shout.
"Dude! What the fuck!?" Kib scrambles to get up and I back away from Adam. But I don't think that's Adam anymore. He faces me, his face wearing an enraged look. I stumble over the carpet and try not to get trapped into a corner.
Oh God. He's going to kill us.
I hear a yell coming from behind Adam and flinch, seeing a baseball bat swing at full force towards his head. The bat snaps in half once it makes contact, and Adam doesn't even fucking move. Blood starts streaming down his temple and turns around to see Kib, horrified at what just happened. They glance at whatever's left of the bat in their hands and look back at me.
"What the fuck?" I hear them say under their breath, a tremor in their voice. Adam's about to grab them, but they manage to slip away and come to my side. They pull me to the stairs and we head for one of the bedrooms.
As we sprint up the stairs, we can hear Adam's heavy footsteps following us, each step giving me goosebumps. We turn the corner and hastily rush into Adam, Jack, and Ryan's room. The lock won't be able to hold so we push the dresser to barricade the door, my limbs stinging with the effort. On the other side, Adam slams his body against the door continually and the two of us back up against the wall.
"Oh God, what do we do?" I ask, with fear in my voice. The dresser shakes as Adam pounds the door, and I'm not convinced that it'll keep him out.
"I don't know!" Kib answers, waving their hands frantically. "All of our friends are having mental breakdowns downstairs and one of them is literally right outside that door trying to murder us."
I try to think about everything that's happened over the past couple of days. What we read, what we witnessed, what we found. I can't think clearly with the constant thought of Adam being right on the other side of the door, struggling to get it open.
Come on, Hanna. Think!
Kib speaks up. "Do you think this is connected to the hand in the lake and Jack?"
I stare at them for a bit for asking that question. "Yeah, no shit it's connected."
"I'm just asking!!" They pause for a moment and then turn to look at me again. "Ohohohoh, what about that pentagram in the attic? That has to do something. I don't know anything about demon shit, that's your area of expertise."
Lightbulb moment.
"We could perform an exorcism." I snap my fingers and point at the door.
"On... Adam?"
"Yes, of course Adam. He's obviously possessed or something." I pause slightly and cross my arms. "Do you think the real Adam Metzger would hit you and then try to murder us?"
"Okay, okay, I get it. How does an exorcism work anyway?"
"I can barely remember-"
They cut me off. "You've done one before?"
"What? No, I read about this a long time ago. I was bored and read up on everything about the supernatural."
"Oh."
"Anyway, I think there should be a book or whatever since that guy who murdered his kid was a Satanist."
Kib's about to say something when they get interrupted by the furniture shifting. I had completely forgotten about Adam for a couple seconds. I'm getting worried at the thought of him when he finally breaks in.
"Quick." I point to the window. "Out, out, out, out."
The two of us climb through the small window and hop out onto the roof, the sounds of Adam or the demon or whatever fading behind us.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Close the window."
"What? Okay. Why?" I shut it and turn to Kib.
"Have you not seen those movies where someone escapes through the window but they leave it open so the chaser knows where they went? I don't want Adam tracking us down or whatever."
"Alright." We slowly scale down the side of the cabin and drop onto the grass. God, I hope he doesn't track us or anything. I can't hear banging anymore and I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing.
"Do you think everyone's still losing it inside?" Kib asks. The both of us hunch down and avoid being seen through the windows just in case Adam came downstairs.
I remember seeing everyone so terrified and scared in there, especially Ryan. Seeing him like that wasn't a normal sight and scared me. "I... don't wanna know."
"Ok, well, we're gonna pass by them anyway if we're going to the attic. At least just check to make sure they're alive or whatever."
As slowly and quietly as possible, we go through the front door and make a detour to the living room. Everyone's there, but they're not moving. Jay and Julie are still in the corner. They must have gotten backed into the same spot eventually and now they're sitting upright, their limbs tangled together and their skin all scratched and bruised. Ryan is laying down with his knees to his chest, his body still tense. And there's no sound coming from the closet where Danny is. I go over to Ryan while Kib heads to the closet.
I shake Ryan's shoulders and check his pulse. Oh thank God, he's alive. But his heartbeat is really shallow, and it takes a bit of time to find. I go to Jay and Julie to check if they're breathing too. They're okay. I see Kib open the closet door to reveal Danny, who I assume is also passed out, face flat near the doorway. I head back to Ryan and shake his shoulders again to wake him up.
"Hey. Hey, Ryan. Ryan. Ryry. Hey. Hey. Wake up. Hey. H-"
"Yeah, uh, I don't think he's gonna wake up soon. You can stop now." Kib shuts the closet door with Danny still inside. "None of them might wake up soon if we don't find that dumb book. Everything that happened is probably that demon bitch's fault."
"Don't say that. You're just going to make it more upset."
They scoff and head for the attic. "Coward. Both you and the demon."
I follow them upstairs to the attic and head towards the dusty boxes. I hear Kib behind me kicking the painted pentagram on the floor, muttering something under their breath. God, what an idiot.
"Okay," I turn around to face them. "We need to check every single box up here. We have to find it. If not we're going to have to go check the bedrooms... where Adam is."
"Oh God, ew, okay."
A couple minutes pass by of digging through everything when Kib breaks the silence.
"Uh, Hanns?" they ask, the sound of their rummaging stopping.
"Yeah?"
"Where's Jack?"
Oh no.
"Oh my God. I completely forgot about him." I glance towards the door, expecting to hear chaos explode at any second.
    "Isn't he still in his room? Didn't Ryan send him up there to rest?"
"Shit, you're right. What if Adam fucking killed him or something?"
"Uhh, that'd be BAD."
I'm still looking through a box when I see something black and rectangular.
"Oh, oh, oh, oh. Hey, hey, look at this."
Kib looks over my shoulder and I dust off whatever I just found. It's a book. There's no visible title or anything on the front or the back of it, but inside is a bunch of words that mean nothing to me. I assume it's Latin because some of the words look familiar, but I still don't know what they mean.
"Oh, shit. Do you think that's it? Are there pictures or something? Usually there's pictures, I think."
They reach over and flip some of the pages, skimming some of it.
"This needs a table of contents or something. What bad organization," they jokingly say.
I kinda want to hit them in the face because right now is not the time for joking around, but the joke was funny so I'm giving them a pass. 
Flipping through the pages, we come across a page with the title "Sed exorcismus."
"I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that that means 'exorcism'." I analyze the page more, trying my best to figure out some of the words.
Kib looks up from the book. "Okay, cool. Let's, like, grab Adam and do this thing so we can book it and get out of this shitty place."
    "What, no. We can't."
    "What? Why?"
"We need a priest, dumbass."
    "I..Why can't we just do it ourselves? We have the book and we have the Adam. Let's just sound out everything and hope for the best." I can hear the urgency in their voice.
"Because we need someone holy. And obviously, neither of us are holy. I think there's a town somewhere in the vicinity."
"Can you drive?"
    "Ohohoh, no I cannot."
    They put the book down. "I know some of the basics. I can drive us. It's the middle of the night, so no one should be outside anyway," they say, raising their eyebrows and wearing a dumb grin. I absolutely do not trust them at all, but it's better than walking on foot to the nearest church.
We head downstairs quietly, just in case Adam's still upstairs and can hear us. I check the living room one last time before we head to the car. Everyone's still out cold. I worry that we can't do shit and we're going to die in this stupid, demon-infested cabin.
"Hey." Kib grabs Adam's car keys from the hook by the door. "Let's go."