Chapter 14: Luring Shadows Part 1

Dinner was good. I found my appetite as soon as I got down there. The smell of roasting potatoes, mint and other herbs was enough to make my stomach grumble again. I ordered something hot that way it would get rid of the cold chill that had spread throughout me. I ate some of it but then lost my appetite just as quickly as it came and just played with the rest of my food. It was like I wasn't hungry anymore. During diner Fiona and I hadn't talked much as she was talking to her other friends and I kept staring out the window, pondering what I had learnt. Everyone on the table apart from me had ordered dessert. While they waited I excused myself from the table. Fiona looked at me asked if I wanted her come with me. I politely refused, and stepped outside and onto the elegant patio. No snow was falling at the moment. It must have stopped while I was in my dorm. The sun was just on the verge of setting, giving the whole world a soft flame glow. The same glow as the flame Cam had in his fingers in my realistic dream. I shivered, not because of the cold but because of the intensity of the flame he had in the palm of his hand. Aside from that the sunset was nice. There was no wind which was good considering that I had no thick coat to protect me from it. It wasn't all that cold anyway so I felt fine in just my long-sleeved top.

For the next five minutes all I did was stare into the trees with the sun poking through them as the lights slowly faded away. The whole thing was beautiful, the snow covered leaves were sunken down a bit by the heavy snow which and had been layering since the first fall that happened at the start of the month. The light itself had a warm glow to it, and I was surprised that it hadn't melted the snow just from the colour of the setting sun. Someone had moved next to me and broke me out of my daze. What I hadn't noticed was that the temperature had gotten colder. My hands which were just poking out of my sleeves had goose bumps on them. I rubbed my arms to get them warm. I contemplated going back inside when the person beside me spoke "Are you cold?" It was Murphy. I looked up at him and gave a slight nod. I looked in his eyes, but all I saw was the conversation that he and Francesca had.

"Their trying to find her, aren't they?"

I don't think that I imagined the pain is his voice. Murphy tugged off his coat "Here" and placed it on my shoulders. I gave him a small smile and turned back to the trees, but it had already gotten dark and the lamps above us were on shining a light through the dark. How did it get to dark, so quickly? "Are you okay?" I sniffled back and small yes and nodded. "Not going to collapse anytime soon?" he joked.

"I don't plan too" I replayed quietly. Then I saw a light in the forest. It flickered and then it was out. It was strange as no one really goes in there... maybe apart from me,but I wasn't there. I was going to brush it off as something in my head but then the light was there again. It was right near the front of the trees. Beside me Murphy was talk and I stopped him in mid sentence. "I'll be right back." I moved away from the edge of the patio and walked down the stairs to my left. I kept an eye on the light, hoping it wouldn't flicker off again. I was captivated by that light. The ground beneath my feet was covered in snow. Each time that I stepped in the snow, it went to midway my shin. The frostiness from the snow clung to my leg as I walked. I ignored the cold pain and continued my walk into the forest. I got to the edge and saw that the light had moved further in.

I continued to follow that light deeper and deeper into the forest, even though I didn't know where I was going. Someway on my walk I had lost Murphy's coat and the bitter cold of the night air was hitting against me shoulders and back. I should have worn warmer clothes. I stopped following the light and looked behind me while I rubbed my arms. The only thing I could see was darkness and barely visible, thick, dense tree roots. Wherever I was, I was nowhere near the school anymore. I turned back when I found that I was complete darkness. The light was gone. Then the panic had set in. I cursed myself mentally for walking into the forest at night with no way home. I was stupid to follow a light that wasn't real. I was even more stupid to have known that I had left school ground and was well on my own. I didn't have a way to get back, or any way of letting anyone know that I was alone and trapped in the woods be myself. I turned around fully to see if I could find my way back but it was almost pitch back and I could see nothing. I spun back around but it only confused me even more.

Something white and bright exploded to the left of me. It was externally bright and I had to cover my eyes from the intensity of it. Once my eyes adjusted from it I looked towards the light and all that was in front of me was a small square of white that was floating in mid air, and as soon as I got a proper look at it, it shut itself off. Then I was encased in darkness again. I was now blinded by the black of night. I stood there for a moment while my eye took their time to adjust to the dark again. Taking one small step forward my hand had knocked against a tree. At first it hurt and I stood there clutching it but once the pain ebbed away I took hold of the tree and used it as post to let me know where I was going. My hand slid off the tree and I had placed it out for the next tree, but instead of grabbing a tree I grabbed something else. A tree was hard and had pieces of bark that hung to it, but what I had grabbed was soft, squishy and slimy. I jerked my hand back fast and ended up falling backwards in the process. I gave a soft yelp. I don't know if I had grabbed a person or something else but it was the weirdest thing that I had ever touched. It was creepy. My other hand then surveyed the hand that touch the slimy thing and from that it touched there was no residue that was left be hide. There was no slime. Then a noise came from in front of me. It was a sort of buzzing noise like a sound that came from an old, black and white TV when you turned them on. Another square of light came in front again but this time it wasn't as bright as the last so my eyes adjust quicker. In the square of light it wasn't just a white screen but it had people inside in a dorm room which I already knew as Shoreline. I backed up, until I softly hit a tree trunk, and the square followed me. The people in the square were moving around in what I guessed was a screen. I looked at it more closely and found that there was two girls and a boy. They all looked my age. The boy had brown hair that was hidden under a baseball cap. He looked strangely like Murphy to me. Then one of the girls had dirty blonde hair and green eyes they looked like the same green that Murphy has -funnily that- then the other girl I knew right away. She was my mum. All of them were looking into a shadow which had a screen that they were looking into it. I was too far to see was that image was. I reached out and touch the screen and it had the same slimy feeling as what had I grabbed just before.

"Is that you?" the boy asked. He had such a similar voice to Murphy it was creepy. It like how my mother's young voice in that dream was so close to my own. It would make sense if there were related. Then the blond girl spoke flatly "No! That broad is old. And Luce only lives to be seventeen." That couldn't be it my mother, she was alive, had kids and was forty. She didn't die at seventeen clearly. This was something out of my imagination. I properly hit my head on the way or I am in a dream and still haven't left the infirmary. Or I was awake but my panic may be casting illusions on my mind to make me think that I am not alone. I went through another few reasons, logical reasons when the volume on the screen picked up again. "Stepping through?" my mother asked.

"Stepping through" the boy repeated back while he was kneeling on the ground, picking up fragments of the screen they had just looked at.

The picture inside the screen then jumped as if it were a CD playing music in a stereo and the stereo jumped and the song playing would jump ahead further in that song. It did just that to the picture but the screen hadn't moved at all since I was started staring at it. What it had jumped to was that my mother was pulling on the shadow like she was looking for something on it and a door of shadows had opened and they all stepped through. The picture then shatter and I was left alone in the darkness. I felt the slimy fragments on my legs while they slipped down into the cold snow under. A buzzing came to my ears and the head start to feel pain. It similar to the one I had when I slept but this was real. I held on to my head.

Miles, that boy is Miles. He is my friend and reflected my image to save me from the Outcasts.

There it was again. Outcasts. Where have I heard that before? I didn't think it was a TV show. Miles isn't my friend, I didn't know anyone called Miles, he must have been my mother's friends but yet I doubted that. Then I knew what the other girls name was it was Shelby she was my friend too but yet again I didn't know anyone called Shelby, I never had. The only thing I could pass it off as was that they were old friends of my mothers or people that I had made up in my mind. I was sitting up while I watch my screen play and now I was on the ground covered in snow with my hands to my head to make the pain make stop. I couldn't bit back the pain I felt so a cried out loud. It seemed to be the only thing I was able to do now. I don't know if I liked that. Through the buzzing in my ears I heard the crushing on snow that was coming towards me and something flapping in the wind. A pair of hands grabbed one of my wrists and pulled me up. I couldn't tell who it was that was pulling me. They were taking me up as I no longer felt the hard, biting pain of snow on my exposed skin. Once I was up fully the pain had momentarily stopped I opened my eyes to find that a figure was holding one of my wrist with his pale hands. Out of a pure moment of confusion and panic I slapped them where I guessed was their face.