☾☾☾☾
we have now entered 3b ladies and gents...
☾☾☾☾
Chapter twenty-eight✓
It was cold.
Shivers crawled up and along Olivia's arms that were covered with thin fabric.
Her bare feet carried her along the cold tiles of the deserted high school, feet blue from the frigid contact. Somehow, the tile seemed colder than the actual place. She looked around the hallways where students used to walk and talk with their friends only to find empty classrooms. Her feet guided her about the building, roaming free. Each turn she made she found not a single soul in the building. Her feet that were once guiding her, stopped abruptly in the middle of the hallway, her heart plummeting to the ground.
A feeling made her halt, the paranoid feeling of being watched from afar.
But it was an empty building as far as she knew.
The feeling settled in her stomach, tying tightening knots that caused alarm to shoot through her system.
Olivia kept walking. Every once in a while she would turn around, feeling as if something was following her, but nothing was there every single time, like she was just a split second late with spinning around. The girl came to a fast stop when she heard a loud noise echo throughout the building. Her breaths fastened, not knowing what the noise was or what was causing it. It sounded as if it were coming from everywhere, surrounding her entirely. Every instinct in her body told her to run, keep moving — and she always trusted her instinct.
So, she moved forward, toward another empty hallway...or so she thought.
Once she rounded a corner near the boys locker room, her eyes immediately found another figure roaming the place, and a familiar one too.
Stiles was also in the school. He was in his pajamas, bare feet and wandering around with no destination just as she was.
"Stiles-"
Olivia had many questions but no chance to ask them as she felt her shoulders tense and her stomach drop once more. Something was directly behind her. About to turn around and face whatever was there, she was pulled from behind, being dragged farther and farther away from Stiles who acted like he couldn't even hear her.
She screamed and clawed at the tiles, desperately trying anything to get away and make a break from it. She felt so helpless being dragged away and not being able to get help that was only a few feet away. It was like whatever was pulling her wanted her to find help only to pull her away from it for amusement.
Her nails scratched along the floor of the school as her voice cracked from all the yelling and screaming.
Stiles turned for a second like he had heard something, but he then kept walking.
The tears clouded her vision and once it cleared, she was tied to a chair with a gag in her mouth, preventing her from making any noise other than incoherent grunts and mumbles. It looked as though she was still in school, but just in an empty classroom.
The chair was wooden, a rope tying her from the waist down. Her breathing picked up once again, panic closing in on her throat.
"Do you like riddles?"
Olivia flew into panic mode, that specific voice made her fight the restraints, the voice that has been haunting her for days on end. In her dreams — no, nightmares, it would taunt her, not leaving her alone for a single second. The shuffling got closer.
"I, myself, love riddles. Do you know any?" the deep raspy voice asked, still walking behind her so it was out of her sight.
She couldn't even talk with the gag in her mouth so why bother asking questions? Olivia continued to struggle against the ties that bound her hands, but it was no use. They were too tight and her strength felt like it was zapped from her system entirely.
"Ah, sorry. I forgot you can't speak." The creature chuckled at its own point. Olivia's cheeks were stained with tears as they fell down her face. She wanted to scream, yell, call anyone to help her, but who was gonna come? Who knew she was at school? How did she even get here in the first place?
"You know, we're going to have some fun together eventually." It began. "If you let me in, we could have so much more. We could be so powerful, destroy anything in our way. Destroy the people you love–"
Olivia's head turned sharply at those words. She didn't want to hurt anyone, especially anyone she loved. Why would it even say that in the first place if it knew that that would be the last thing she would ever wish to do?
"Your friend, Stiles, yes, that is his name. He's going through the same thing as you. But, he'll be much easier than you — persistent one you are." It started to walk up the front of the room, granting Olivia the opportunity to finally see the form of the voice she had been hearing. The familiar mummified creature limped itself forward, the cloth barely hanging onto what body lay beneath. The stench was the worst part. It was as if rotten flesh or, more precisely, burning flesh was somewhere inside the vents. The smell burned her eyes so much that more tears fell due to the potent scent.
"I wonder how Stiles is doing at the moment?" The mummy prompted, staring at the girl in front of it who thrashed around in the chair.
Olivia shot her head up at the mention of his name. She shook her head from side to side violently.
The scenery changed right before her eyes. The chalkboard that she was once looking at was replaced with woods and deep green trees that went on for miles and a dark sky that seemed too real to be true. In the middle was the Nemeton, something she knew all too well. Before she could really take in the scene before her, a hand suddenly grabbed her chin harshly, forcing her to stop moving and to focus ahead of her.
"Watch." it whispered right in her ear.
Olivia saw a faint shadow in the shape of a person emerge from the dark forest of the thick trees, moving hesitantly forward. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could finally see the details. The shadowy figure was Stiles and her focus only intensified.
He walked up nervously to the stump, face evident with fear and terror. She could only watch and do nothing to stop or help him because she, herself, was as helpless as him. The feeling of being powerless was horrible, only being subjected to watch the events unfold before her.
She tried to get out of the creature's grasp, but it's bandaged hand only strengthened its grip around the sides of her face.
Stiles continued to walk up, now holding his head, no, banging it; yelling at himself. The boys' yells grew louder, making Olivia's ears ring with a loud buzzing noise, her head pounding. The mummy released its grip and backed away abruptly.
"More to come..." it said as it crept back into the forest leaving Olivia still tied to the chair, a crying mess. A loud noise erupted out of nowhere and a white light consumed her sight.
☾☾☾
Olivia woke up in a cold sweat, screaming, her covers pushed off her bed and the room shaking. Her breath was knocked out of her. The door swung open and Scott emerged out of the darkness in his pajamas, his eye's full of worry and concern. He ran up to the wailing Olivia and hugged her as tight as he could. That's all he could do. That's all he could ever do every time this happened. He just held her until the room stopped shaking and get her some warm milk. Almost every night he awakes to the loud screams of his sister.
"Hey, hey, you're alright. You're home." he said as she continued to weep and shake into his shoulder.
Olivia promised herself she wouldn't go to bed anymore, nothing pleasant waited for her there anyway. Sleep provided her with nothing but nightmares of her friends being impaled by black swords and shadows coming out of the dark to only drag her father down into it. She must've dozed off and fell asleep while writing in her journal or reading The Mark Of Athena that Stiles had lent her a week ago. Sleep wasn't really normal for Olivia at this point. She avoided it as much as she could. Her dark circles only grew darker and darker as the days went on.
☾☾☾
Running from his own shadow.
Scott McCall ran down the steps of the school, looking behind him to see his shadow had mutated into a huge wolf. His heart was rapidly beating in his chest, it taunted him as it followed powerfully. He was so focused on getting as far away from his own shadow that he ran into someone.
"Hey, hey. You alright?" Stiles caught his best friend from almost falling over in fear. He studied Scott's face as he nodded. "Well, you don't look alright, Scott." he said with a serious underlying tone. He, himself, had been having some 'issues' and if you mean issues as in never ending nightmares then yes.
Issues.
Scott tried to catch his rapid breathing and slowed it down. "I'm okay." was all he could get out.
Stiles looked at him once more and didn't take that as his answer because he knew that he was lying. "No, no you're not. It's happening to you too, isn't it?" he asked while his friend was sweating in thirty degree weather.
"You're seeing things, aren't you?" Stiles asked, his eyes fixated on Scotts lingering ones.
His eyes shot up. "How'd you know that me and Olivia are-"
"Wait, Olivia-" Stiles cut him off, his heart skipped a beat. He didn't know anything about Olivia being affected.
"Because it's happening to all three of you." He was interrupted by Lydia walking over to the two boys, Allison following shortly behind.
They all walked into the School by Lydia, "Well, well, well. Look who's no longer the crazy one." she sighed proudly.
Allison rolled her eye's at the statement. "We're not crazy." she said rather hesitantly.
Lydia turned around to face the three skittish teens. "Hallucinating, Sleep paralysis?-"
"Making the house shake in the middle of the night because of nightmares." Scott added and all of them stopped dead in their tracks and turned to face him. They all wore the same shocked and worried expressions. Scott looked up at them, clueless.
"What?"
"The house shaking-"
"Did I sleep through an earthquake?"
All three of Scotts friends were confused as it seemed, unaware of the events that were going on at the McCall house.
"Um, well. It's been happening for almost three weeks now. She would-" Again, Scott was cut off.
"She?" Stiles turned to face Allison and Lydia who was just as clueless as him.
"Olivia." Scott said and all of them starred with wide eyes almost bulging out of their heads. "Yeah, she wakes up almost every night, screaming and the house starts shaking and I go into her room to see her crying and her covers pushed off her bed, scattered all over the floor." He finally finished, meeting their very wide eyes.
Their jaws were hanging open with raised eyebrows just standing there, not sure what to say. No one knew but Scott.
"And you didn't think that this was very important information?!" Stiles exclaimed at his best friend as he ran his hand through his hair anxiously. Is she alright? Was his first thought, but no one was okay at the moment but it's the thought that counts, right?
"I-Is she okay?" Lydia whispered, yelled at him, annoyed that he didn't tell them sooner, but the worry overpowered the annoyed feeling. "And what do you mean the house shakes?"
Scott's mouth opened like he was about to respond, but his eyes caught something in the distance and his face dropped completely. The rest of them followed his gaze to see a familiar brunette at the end of the hallway at her locker putting her books away.
At first they noticed nothing wrong, just seeing her put her stuff away. But as their eyes focused in on the girl, they saw how she jumped or flinched when a locker shut, how she stopped and breathed with her eyes closed. It was more than odd. Sure high school students are sleep deprived as fuck and stressed, but she looked awful.
The girl looked like she'd never slept in her entire life, worse than Stiles — and that says a lot.
Meanwhile, Olivia kept her gaze on her locker and nowhere else.
She felt its presence again. She slowly turned her head, just slightly and her breath hitched in her throat. Her jaw clenched, chills made their way up her body as she eye'd the wretched thing. Another locker closed and she flinched just at the sound itself. Her nails dug into the palm of her hand as she slowly put her books away trying not to make any sudden moves.
Turning to the right, her eyes found her friends and she could instantly tell they knew something was up.
The way Allison watched her with eyes full of concern, Lydia picking at his cuticles, which she never does, and Stiles.
Her heart momentarily stopped beating as their eyes connected. From the nightmare to this morning, all she could think about was how Stiles was in her dream. One thing was him actually being there, but another was the fact that he did nothing to help her as she was being dragged away against her will. It could have been that she didn't scream loud enough (when she most definitely did), but he never came to her rescue that she desperately awaited.
He looked at her with some sort of expression that she couldn't label, but it made her palms clammy and pulse speed up. A lump in her throat formed and very quickly she walked away, leaving the hallway and her friends to her next class.
"We keep an eye out for each other today, Okay?" Stiles said, his thoughts still lingering on that image of Olivia in front of him, deteriorating right in front of his own eyes. It hurt him to see her like that — hurt everyone to see the already traumatized girl even more traumatized which didn't seem to be possible considering her whole family was murdered, but there she stood. They all nodded and headed their separate ways.
—
rewritten✓
Laugh out loud.