Chapter I

It was a clear and cold October morning and I were sitting in my small, black Honda, driving towards school. It was like if the fall had been skipped completely and winter hade came at once after summer. Dressed in a darkblue fleece and a fluffy, black west I was still freezing and I even had a pair of gloves on.

"I have feeling that this isn't my day." I mumbled to myself, yawned and turned up the heat in the car as much as I dared.

It was a 15 minutes' drive from my house to school. My two younger half-siblings, Danny and Alyssa, got to ride with Jim every morning so I never had to drive them there, which was good since their school laid 5 minutes in the opposite direction. Jim was my mother's husband and the man that I called my father. He wasn't my biological father but he was the only father that I had even known and he treated me just as good as he treated his own kids.

As a Tyler Swift song played on the radio I sang along and looked down to pick up my Starbuck's coffee. It didn't take long but when I looked up my heart jumped and I stamped on the brake pedal. The car stopped but before I could see what had been in my way it was gone. My heart was beating fast and I was breathing unregularly. I sighed and looked over my shoulder; I was lucky that no one had been driving behind me.

I turned my gaze forward again, looking for the thing that had scared me so badly. Where was it? How could it have disappeared so quickly?

I didn't have to wonder for very long. The sound of something really heavy landing on the roof and I screamed. I looked up and I could already see how the roof was bending inwards. After that I heard scratching sounds, like if something was trying to dig its way into my car. I reached for the lock-button but hesitated; did I want to lock myself in or try to run away. I had always been very fast but I just couldn't make myself leave the car, so I pressed the button.

The scratching and smashing on the roof continued and I started looking around for something that could help me. My eyes stopped at my purse and I quickly started digging it through, with shaking hands, and soon found my phone. Before I knew it I had dialed 911 and I was just waiting for the tunes to stop. As soon as it did I started talking, I didn't even wait for the answerer to say anything.

"Help! I'm on South Church Road and…" A loud smash made me stop and I felt my heart beating so hard in my chest. "Something is on my car! It sounds like an animal is trying to get…"

One of the windows in the back smashed and scattered all around my car, and I screamed and dropped the phone. I tried to protect my head by leaning forward and covering it with my arms. Then I saw how the inside of my car lightened up, so I looked up. I saw a car coming towards me and I was stunned.

The beating on the top of the car stopped for a second, then it continued worse than before.

It took a while for my eyes to go back to normal but then I saw the number plate and my heart dropped. I knew that number plate and I knew who was driving that car.

"No!" I screamed even thou there was no way that I could have been heard. "Go! Don't stop, go!"

I was going to waive to him to keep going but the car started tilting to the right side and as I looked back I saw two pair of big, yellow eyes in the dark.

I screamed as the car rolled over and landed on the roof. I was hanging upside down and I felt all my blood rush to my head. I heard scraping of metal against stones… I had never been in a car accident, if you could call this an accident, before and I was terrified.

The poor man on the phone must have been really confused by this time, or he could have just hung up the phone. At the time it wasn't something that I was thinking of but later I've actually thought about it quite a lot. A weird thing to do but afterwards you always analyze everything, at least I do. I have even had dreams about it.

The sound that reminded me of a crying dog cut through the air and I badly wanted to look for the source of the sound, but I was so dizzy and I might even have fainted for a while.

I heard more sounds but I couldn't see anything. I had black spots dancing in front of my eyes, my body felt numb, and I felt sick; the rest happened in a blur. I felt hands pulling me out of the car and then up on my feet.

"Come on! Get on your feet! Now run, this way! Come on!"

Chip's voice came to me over the chaos and when I came to my senses again I was running towards his truck. I didn't look back at my car, I just let him drag me along. We jumped in the car and he hit the gas at once, heading back the way that I had come from.

"Chip, what's happening? What's going on?"

"Don't think about it now, okay. Trust me, I'll tell you when we are safe."

I had never been in a car that speeded that bad, not before or after that morning. None of us said anything for a while and then Chip sighed.

"Is your mom at home?"

I glanced over at him and saw, what looked like, bloodstains on his hands, up his arms and all over his shirt.

"Mandy?"

"She might be, I don't know."

"Is she or is she not?"

I was confused but I really tried to focus on what she might have said this morning before I left.

"She could be in the store. Yes, I think she is."

In the 2 and a half year that I had known Chip he had always been a cheerful guy that had a hard time with being serious. He was always joking and goofing off, that why he was such a great friend, now he was focused and mysterious; it was like if he was a whole new person, a person that I had never met before.

5 minutes later we pulled up outside my house and Chip turned towards me with a serious face.

"Run inside, and get some stuff that you really need. Clothes and stuff, okay? Leave anything unimportant, and take as much money as you can find."

"Wh…"

"Just trust me, Amanda. Your mother will understand, I'll leave her a letter. I'll fix some other stuff and I'll stay downstairs. Now, hurry up!"

I was out of the car before him, and I headed straight for my room. I could hear Chip go to the kitchen but I just started pulling clothes out of my dresser and wardrobe. I didn't know what to take with me, since I had no idea where I was going and how long I would be gone, so I threw a bunch of stuff in an old black backpack.

I was just going to close the wardrobe, after taking the money that I had been hiding there, when I saw an old wooden box in the corner. I hadn't opened it in a while but I couldn't leave it. I picked it up and threw my backpack over my shoulder before leaving my room. I didn't know that it would be the last time that I saw that room…

When I came downstairs Chip was waiting for me in the hall. I passed the kitchen and saw an envelope on the kitchen bench. It made my stomach turn sick and I quickly kept walking.

"Let's go."

Chip put his arm around me and walked me out of the house.