Scott walked quickly down the hallway, hearing the wind rattle the window panes violently. He walked down the stairs of his house and opened the door to be greeted by the cold squall, huddling his jacket closer to his body. He stepped outside and after locking the door behind him, ran up the beach in the pouring rain towards a house not too far away from his.
He stepped up the front door and just before he was about to knock, the door opened. "Scott?" the voice said in surprise, huddling her jacket in reaction to the cold rain that blew in past him. "Was that you I saw moving around outside?"
The girl's name was Leahna. Her friends usually called her Larnie. She was heaps shorter than Scott and had an average build for a girl her age. She usually had green eyes, but whenever Scott looked into them they always seemed to slightly change in color by a trick of the light. At the moment she had light brown hair, as sometimes she liked to color it different shades of brown, sometimes black. She was wearing her jacket, with her favorite top with a hood underneath, gray jeans and black Converse shoes.
She and Scott were good friends and had lived in their own houses on the beach, like they had always dreamed of doing when they had first met. They hung out with each other whenever they weren't doing anything on the beach or in their houses, and even though they had different opinions about things which sometimes led to arguments, whenever there was something wrong they always visited each other to share their problems. This was one of those times.
Scott shook his head. "Not me. But I saw it two. Larnie… you better come see this."
Leahna nodded as she closed the door behind her and locked it, then stepped past Scott towards the movements in the distance that she and Scott could barely make out though the rain and lightning. Scott followed after her, scanning the dark as they turned their torches on.
"Did you get woken up by the storm?" Scott asked, wondering why Leahna was awake at this time late at night when everyone was usually asleep.
"Not really." Leahna answered. "I woke up from this weird dream… I was on the beach and I got pulled underwater by this wave. Then the scene changed and I was on this giant stain-glass window. I was attacked by these shadows and then this sword shaped like a key appeared in my hand, so I used it to fight them."
Scott stopped in his tracks when he heard Leahna say this. "And the stars in the sky on the beach were falling, right?"
"Erm yeah…" Leahna said. "How did you know that?"
"For one, I had the exact same dream. But we'll talk about that later." Scott told her, having a short flashback about the dead girl and his look-alike stabbing himself in the chest. "Two… it's happening. Look."
Scott looked up towards the sky with Leahna, and sure enough through gaps in the storm clouds, the stars where trailing out of the sky like slow shooting stars, leaving the sky empty and hollow of nothing except the storm clouds themselves.
"How does something like that happen!?" Leahna wondered incredulously.
"I bet he knows." Scott said, spotting the mysterious figure moving around in the dark again, and started running after him.
"What makes you say that?" Leahna called after him.
"He's the only one who's not looking up into the sky in surprise." Scott called back, looking at the people who were coming out of their homes to look at storm. Leahna looked at them for a moment, then ran to join up with him. They chased after the figure who was heading for the secret beach.
Scott and Leahna called a hidden part of the beach the secret beach. It separated from the main beach by rocks, hidden around a corner; but the rocks only went a short way down the coast and opened up to soft sand and trees again. Only Scott, Leahna and a few of their closest friends knew about the beach, and those that had been there had left their marks and tags in chalk and paint on the huge rock wall on the secret side of the beach. They nicknamed this rock wall the 'message wall'.
Scott and Leahna rounded the corner towards the beach and over the rocks, being careful to go as fast as they could without slipping on the wet rocks caused by the rain and the ravaging waves smashing against them from the storm. They didn't have to get very far, as the figure was standing around the corner from them hidden from view, staring at the message wall. Then suddenly, there was a light from the message wall, and a rock was highlighted in the same light, the one Scott remembered was about the same shape and size as the door. Scott remembered that he and Leahna had always agreed the rock looked so much like a door that they joked about where it led to, like the mines of Moria, or the Land of Narnia, but they could never open or even move it. In the middle of a door, another shape appeared traced in the same light – the shape of a keyhole. The figure reached his hand towards it and touched it.
"Hey, what are you doing to our wall?" Scott called out to the figure, revealing their presence. The figure turned towards them, clearly showing he or she was wearing a brown cloak with a hood, with the hood concealing their face and the cloak their body. The cloak also hid the hands, so whomever it was now paused with their sleeve outstretched towards the rock. The hooded stranger lowered the sleeve and turned to them.
"This world is connected." a man's voice said in a deep, ominous tone.
"What?" Leahna called out in surprise.
"Tied, to the darkness…" he spoke mysteriously again.
"You know about the stars, don't you?" Scott demanded. "What's going on? What do you know about the wall that we don't?"
"It is already too late…" the deep voice simply answered, and raised his arms to the sky. As he did, shadows appeared on the ground, shadows that were hauntingly familiar to both Scott and Leahna. The cloaked man had summoned them.
"What the...!?" Scott trailed off in a mixture of confusion and horror, as they both watched the shadow creatures rise from their pools of darkness. This either had to be some kind of really weird dream he was having again, or their friends had really gone to some trouble to play a random trick on them. The creatures quickly rose up and suddenly attacked, slashing their claws towards them. This had to be for real, Scott realized in thought. If it was anything else, the creatures would have stopped by now, and it feels too real to be a dream... Scott stepped back towards Leahna and selflessly absorbed the blows from the first lot of them, allowing them to pile up on top of him in order to take the hit. "Leahna, RUN!" he urged her desperately, trying to give her a chance to escape.
"I'm not running anywhere." Leahna refused. "I don't need rescuing." She tried to hit the creatures latched onto Scott with the torch she had brought with her, but they only just dug their claws into Scott tighter.
Scott felt his strength fading. More shadows jumped out at Leahna and scratched at her, grabbing onto her with their claws. Scott got angry that his effort to get Leahna out of harm's way failed, and lifted his hand up to swat at the closest shadow, when a flash of light appeared in both his and Leahna's hands. The light grew and formed into the shape of something Scott and Leahna almost half-expected, but couldn't believe themselves - a key-shaped sword. They could feel the light weight and grip in their hands.
The shadows let go of them both and retreated from the light shining from the blades, almost if they were afraid of it. Leahna and Scott knew what to do almost instantly; they had little choice as the key weapon was the only weapon they had. Together they moved forward and swung at the shadows with their blades, with some difficulty as they learned how to use the swords while the shadows tried to flatten themselves against the ground to avoid getting hit, destroying the dark creatures one by one until there was nothing left but the sounds of the storm and the ocean.
After the fight, they stopped to catch their breath, both cold and tired from fighting in the heavy rain. Both looked around for the man in the cloak – but he was gone. But the glowing door in the message wall, with a keyhole in its center, was still glowing. Scott looked at the giant key in his hand, wondering if the purpose of the key was to unlock the keyhole in the door. Leahna must have had the exact same though, as she moved towards the door at the same time Scott did. But before either one of them could reach it, it did something they didn't expect.
As they stopped in their tracks and looked on in wonder, with a loud stone tumbling noise, the ancient door slowly swung open.