Chapter 9
((Sorry it's been so long since I uploaded. I just started school, and trust me, I received a hectic schedule~ XD. But I'm back~! And with a new chappie too! So I hope you enjoy~))
There was giggling...
It was gentle and hard to hear, but it was there nonetheless.
The sound of a child's giggling, except with a lower, sinister pitch...
...It was forced, it was nervous, and it was strained...
It made the blonde's skin crawl...
Sister Helen found herself within the depth of the orphanage, everything covered in an endless black and dead silent.
All except for that stained, nervous giggling...
She trended cautiously, her hand placed gingerly on the wall in search for a light switch.
She could hear her footsteps echo through that dark hall, the giggling weaving in and out for minutes at a time.
With each time she took, her heart thumped loudly in her chest, and Sister Helen felt more terrified than ever.
"..Is...Is anybody here?"
The giggling started again, and the blonde became startled as it echoed through her ears.
Darting her eyes in front of her, the nun's baby blues widen, and she stumbled back a bit.
There, a door lingered before her.
It looked innocent enough, the bright pink and yellow flowers decorating the white paint: perfect for a little girl's room.
It floated in the darkness, a light coming from under it.
The giggling echoed from behind the wooden frame, its low, sinister tone taunting the fear in the poor woman.
Yet, despite her mind pleading her not to, Sister Helen stepped closer towards the pretty little door.
Grasping the brown wooden door knob, Sister Helen braced herself as she turned it slowly.
The door came alive with a slight creak, and the giggling grew louder, since the door didn't muffle it as much.
While the light from the room pierced the hall's darkness, Helen felt her heart drop.
Kathy sat in the middle of the floor, her little back turned towards her.
Her little shoulders shook with violence as the giggling bubbled out of her, filling the room with such malicious.
Around her, the nun noticed that the room was decorated with hundreds of pictures.
Pictures of Kathy and Mister...
"...Kathy?"
..The giggling stopped.
Kathy straightened her back and turned to the nun with eerie slothfulness, her big blue eyes hazy and a large smile plastered on her face.
"..K-Kathy?"
"...An enemy of Mister..."
A strong hand slammed on the nun's shoulder, making Sister Helen jump with terror. It curled its long, white, bony fingers, almost breaking her shoulder.
"...Is an enemy of me..."
The blonde nun jerked her head back to feel pain sear through her eyes...
Then...red...
A gasp escaped from her lips, and Helen's blue eyes flashed towards the night sky...
Stars littered the navy blue sky like splatters of white dots, and the blonde nun blinked her eyes with slight confusion.
"..What?"
She got up slowly, looking around with a hazy feeling in the back of her head. The darkness surrounded the playground, and owls hooted softly in the distance...
Night time had already fallen...
"...No way..."
The young nun was still foggy in the brain, yet she still managed to shake Sister Anna awake.
"..A-Anna..Anna, wake up..."
Sister Anna opened her eyes tiredly, peering through long strands of red hair to her friend.
"..H-Helen...?"
As she struggled to sit upright, many of the other adults began to awaken as well, stumbling to their feet like infants learning how to walk for the first time.
The blonde nun helped up her redhead friend, who look around the playground with blurry eyes.
"W-Where...Where are the children?" Sister Anna asked softly, straightening up to rub her eyes.
...The children...
They froze suddenly, their eyes losing their blurred visions.
Completely forgetting about their dizzy states, their hearts began to thump in anxiousness again as they began to look around frantically...
They had every right to be afraid at that moment...
The children were missing...
Except for the adults that had once laid scattered on the ground, the playground was completely empty of children.
Every one of them were missing from their previous games and places on the swings and slides.
Sister Elizabeth darted her eyes around urgently, running closer to the playground as fear sent a cold tingle down her spine.
None of them could spot a single child in sight.
"..O-Oh no..."
Father Matthew got up lazily, wincing at the strain on his back; as he focused his gaze to the forest, his green eyes widen with horror.
"...My god..."
The two nuns looked to him with worried expressions, watching as he pointed towards the dark woods.
His whole body began shaking as his mouth went dry.
"...The gate..."
Th adults froze, now looking towards the woods...
Before them stood the once strong, steel gate...
The one they thought could keep the children safely in...
The one they thought could keep the evil completely out...
But...as they gazed upon the crushed gate, which was bent every which way rather maliciously, the adults felt a child-like fear spread over them...
This wasn't a monster under the bed, in the closet nor even a silly nightmare...
The nuns and priests stood at complete loss, realizing that they could not stop this kind of evil...
"Oh god, no...the children..."
Sister Anna bit her lip hard as she hid a bit behind Helen, her big eyes widen.
"H-He took the children..."
Sister Helen looked on, listening to the swooshing of the wind through the dark, plain woods...
He took the children...
He took the children...
He took...Kathy...
"...Kathy..."
Without hesitation, Sister Helen ran forth and disappeared into the woods.
"Helen..Helen, wait!"
Sister Anna ran after her, Father Matthew and the others beginning to follow after...
Despite feeling like little children afraid of the Boogeyman...
Sister Helen huffed lightly as she hurried through the woods.
The tall bare trees towered over her like giants, their branches stretching out and looking eager to grab her.
Her blue eyes were panicked, and her mind was a mental mess.
She couldn't see a single child in sight, and the shadows didn't make it any easier to do so...
The nun gazed up, the moon the only thing serving as a light. But even so, it only did so much...she couldn't see anything nor anyone...
The trees seem to stretch up for miles and miles, looking lumpy and bending in weird angles...
But the nun quickly dismissed this as a voice called out to her through the thickness of the dark.
"Sister Helen!"
The blonde slowed her running and came to a stop. Her breathing was hitched as she looked back, seeing Sister Anna and the others running towards her.
"Sister Helen, you shouldn't have ran in here!" The redhead replied frantically. "I-It's too dangerous!"
"B-but the children...They mustn't have gotten far!"
Something inside her knew something was wrong...
There was no way that all 50 children could disappear...these woods were so big...
Even if it had only been a few hours, they couldn't have gotten far...
"Please, Helen...We must leave..." Anna tried to grab a hold of her robe, but the blonde stepped back with determination.
"This isn't time for stubbornness, Helen! We must LEAVE!"
"NO! Not until I find the children! We can't let him take them awa-"
A soft giggle erupted through the darkness...
It was loud enough to make both of them freeze and grow silent.
The giggle was sweet and full of energy, and Sister Helen knew who that voice belonged to.
"..Kathy? Kathy?!"
The blonde wandered a bit farther ahead, Anna reluctantly following after her.
They came to a small clearing, the giggling growing louder as they saw little Kathy alone...
She was playing with a jar, several fireflies blinking and fluttering inside it.
The little blonde girl giggled again, her eyes gleaming with happiness.
"You guys are so cute~"
"Kathy!"
Her big blue eyes met Helen's, and Kathy gave her a soft wary smile...
As much as Mister hated the nun now...She still couldn't bring herself to hate Sister Helen...
"Sister Helen! You're awake!"
The blonde woman ran to her, pulling her into a deep hug and shaking with relief.
"Oh thank god..." She pulled back, narrowing her eyes at the welt on her little cheek.
"...What happened here?"
"Sister Elizabeth did it..." Kathy said sadly.
Sister Helen flinched, her heart thumping a bit more.
'Sister Elizabeth was here as well...?'
"A-And...Where is Sister Elizabeth now?"
Although Kathy's big blue eyes began to grow dark, her wide cute smile reappeared on her face.
"Mister said we didn't need her around..."
Anna gave a strangled attempt of a whimper and gasp, and Helen fought the urge to step away from the child.
The redhead's eyes darted to the ground, picking up a gleaming object.
"S-Sister Helen...L-Look..."
They gazed upon the broken cross, dirt and scratches marring its silver shine.
It...It was Sister Elizabeth's cross...
"Mister said we didn't need the others around too..."
"..Kathy.."
The little girl looked up to the other adults innocently, gripping her jar of fireflies in her tiny hands.
They all stared at her with a primal fear...
Something was terribly wrong, and they knew that...
But they needed to know...They just needed to know...
Sister Helen stepped closer again and lowered to Kathy's level, her skin crawling as she placed her hands gently on her shoulders..
It wasn't Kathy that repulsed her...
It was the feeling that encircled the child's tiny being.
The blonde almost choked on her words, and her voice quivered a bit.
"...W-Where did he take them...?"
Kathy let her smile falter altogether, still holding the fireflies closely. Then, her eyes never leaving the nun's, she lifted a tiny finger and pointed upward.
Sister Helen looked up into the darkness, her heart thumping with dread.
She couldn't see anything, but something in her mind convinced her that she should be thankful for that...
Hearing a twisting of a plastic cap, Helen frowned her eyebrows and watched again as the little girl opened the jar.
Dozens of fireflies flew free from their prison, blinking brightly in the darkness and fluttering higher and higher into the sky.
The nun followed the bugs' lights, which went higher and higher and flashed yellow along the bare oak trees.
One little firefly flashed higher than the rest...
Lighting up the face of a dead child...
A strangled gasp escaped from her mouth, and Sister Helen stumbled into Father Matthew's chest.
The young priest quickly grabbed his flashlight, shining upward to reveal a horrid sight...
Following the light like moths to a flame, the adults began a sudden mixture of screams and cries..
This...
This is where all the children were...
Each body was impaled deeply into thick, sharply jagged branches, which kept them pinned to the cold bark of the trees...
Limbs dangled slightly in the night wind as blood slowly dripping down the bark like dark, thick molasses...
Their heads were bowed to the audience below, giving everyone a full view of their faces.
The constant yellow of the flashlight danced shadows along the children's features, which were surprisingly relaxed instead of panic and pain...
All pairs of eyes were gazed over in a look of tiredness...
And wide, desperate smiles stayed plastered on their faces, almost splitting their cheeks...
"G-good God in heaven..."
Father Matthew panned the tree tops with the light, the body of each child shifting in and out of the surrounding blackness.
He came to a stop at one body, his green eyes narrowing in misery.
"S-Sister Elizabeth.." He choked out with disbelief.
The older woman was pinned just like the children, but her arms were spread out on either side of her like a dove.
Dark blood stained her robe and ran along her legs like red wine. Her hair was tangled every which way, the branches and bark tugging it from her scalp.
Her eyes were blank like the others, showing more terror and hopelessness in them; blood filled them, seeping along her cheeks like tainted tears...
And her smile...
It was as wide as the children's...but held defeat and desperation in it, almost as if she was laughing mid-death...
"Sister Elizabeth..."
"They hated Mister..."
The adults, now fearful for their lives, gradually gazed at Kathy, who stared up blankly at the cold corpses.
"They all came to him willingly, those sick smiles on their faces...they didn't mean any of it..they didn't care about Mister..."
She looked at them all, her big blue eyes tainted with something more sinister..
"They all didn't love Mister...not like I do..."
Sister Helen gazed at the child, not really knowing how to feel...
Her thoughts flashback to what Kathy said long before all this terror occurred...
Before all the carnage...
"I'm coming for you...that's what he always says before leaving..."
...He was coming for her...
...He would come for her...
And he would...take her away...
The blonde fell to her knees, slowly pulling the child into a deep, fearful hug.
She feared for their lives...She feared for her life...
But most of all..
She feared for Kathy's life...
Feeling tears burn at her eyes, the nun hugged the little girl closer to her chest like she always did...
Kathy didn't hug back...
End of Chapter 9
((I hope this makes up for the days I haven't updated~))
