HAUNTED

Ten

The vibrant white lighting from the end of the scene in the vision sparked all around him. It formed patterns of various sizes and shapes - there were dragons and demons, lost hopes and crushed dreams, fire and ice and death and destruction. All the while, Agatha's pained scream carried over like an echo, the pitch getting higher and lower in time with the ever-quickening pace of the lightning before him.

It occured to Norman that it was a dance - one of pain and sadness and countless years of suffering in the dark.

The scream began to fade until it was no longer audible. The bands of lightning, one by one, winked out, leaving behind only smoke where they once arced.

When the smoke cleared, he saw two familiar faces: the same men, Musket and Pitchfork, watched Agatha make her final struggles on the tree, and then left the clearing, leaving the body to rot.

Norman had just watched Agatha die.

Suddenly, a woman burst into the clearing, carrying a small pocketknife that was unfolded. When she saw the body hanging from the tree, she immediately burst into tears and began to shake on the ground, leaving her long dark hair to sheath her face and protect her pale skin from the cold.

Eventually, the woman couldn't bear it anymore, and ran back out of the clearing. Norman only caught one word as she left.

Pay.

"Norman, please, wake up!"

Someone was kneeling over him. His head hurt; it took his eyes a few seconds to focus properly.

"Coraline?" he asked her.

She sighed, and a few strands of blue hair brushed her cheek. Coraline ran her left hand through her hair and it revealed as it passed two small burns on her forehead and some wiry singed hairs near them.

Her expression then settled into one of playful anger, and Norman earned his very first punch on the shoulder.

"Don't ever do anything like that again!" she shouted.

He wanted to laugh for a moment, but she looked really upset. He settled with sitting up instead.

"Where is everyone else?" he asked her as he stood up. Coraline raced with him through the streets of the town, barely noticing what they were passing. He focused instead on where she was leading him at her breakneck pace.

"They're following one of the zombies," she told him in little spurts. "The mob wanted to kill them all, but I saw what you did with the zombies earlier. We barely got the mob under control, but they relented eventually."

"How long was I out?" Norman asked, almost out of breath. They'd run several blocks already.

"About fifteen minutes," Coraline answered quickly. "There they are!"

The two of them shot up a small hill to the end of a gravel road. There was their group, waiting there for them. Once reunited, the group proceeded into a dead forest.

That was when everything went bad.

The trees almost came alive and moved by some unseen force, trapping his friends behind him. More seemed to move by the second, blocking his way back. They were beginning to crowd around him as well.

"Norman, just go!"

Norman looked back and saw Wybie peering through the trees at him.

"Coraline won't be happy, but you just have to stop this! Go!"

Norman bolted down the narrow path, one that seemed to grow more aggressive as he progressed.

He stood in the clearing, the clearing where bits of each of his visions had taken place. There was the tree Agatha had died on.

Norman sensed the sinister presence that had been speaking with him, the electrical ghost that haunted him.

It said one final thing to him before their battle started.

"I don't want to go to sleep. And you can't make me!"

(A/N): If you haven't already guessed, I don't care about ParaNorman's canon plotline anymore. It's been over a month since I saw the movie, and I barely remember a thing about it. Just thought you'd want to know.

Also, this is the third-to-last chapter in the first half of the plot! By Chapter Thirteen, a ton of stuff happens:

A. Cat shows up. Team Cat FOREVA!

B. Why am I spoiling my plot?

C. Loser. You thought I would list more than several pointless ones?

And then, after that, we get into the part that I've really had fun with. Anyone like character studies? Hehehe...

I actually have pretty much everything after this point completely planned out for months. I'll roughly be able to double my publishing rate now, so get excited! :D