Author's Note:

Hello! This is chapter eight (duh). The story is getting close to its end - there will either be nine or ten chapters. Thank you chapter seven reviewers:

Esmarelda Gamgee

Charlie'sPunkDrugAngel

CharlieLOVER

Evermore aka October Sky

Jillybean

drive-shaft

Thank you very much for reviewing, and I hope you enjoy Chapter Eight: The Note

Fires

Chapter Eight: The Note

Locke put down the knife he had been sharpening and looked at Hurley, who was sitting on the ground holding a piece of paper.

"What are you reading?" Locke asked, picking up a second knife.

"Huh?" Hurley looked up. "Oh, the passenger list."

"I thought it was lost," Locke commented, a perplexed expression on his face.

"It was, but I found it in my bag. I guess it was there the whole time."

Locke nodded his head and went back to his work. If the list had never been stolen, then Charlie must have been imagining things that night. But what if the robber had returned the list to Hurley's bag before any great suspicions were aroused?

-

Charlie sat, drumming his fingers absently on the ground, trying to keep his mind off of the creature in the tree. Jack had wanted him to come to the beach, but Charlie couldn't bring himself to go back into the woods, even if they did stay on the path. He just didn't want to look up and see it waiting to jump down on his back and strangle him or something.

Boone walked past, holding a note in his hands. After scanning it once, he crumpled it angrily and threw it down by his things. Charlie thought about stealing it and reading it, but, he figured, Boone was too close, and would notice if he tried anything.

-

"So, what are you asking me?"

"I'm wondering if you have any idea what he might have seen," Jack explained, watching to see how Kate would react.

"He says there was a creature in a tree, right?"

"Yeah. He also says I stole the passenger list from Hurley's bag. I mean, what would I want with the passenger list?"

"I wasn't aware it was missing."

"Neither was I, until he started accusing me. Oh, and Locke just told me that they found it again."

"Why would Charlie think you stole it?"

"He said he saw someone who looked like me searching through Hurley's stuff in the middle of the night. I think he's gone crazy."

"You'd think so," Kate mused.

"What do you mean?"

"I think I know what happened."

-

Jack approached Charlie, pondering the discovery Kate had made. He furrowed his eyebrows. It couldn't be that simple, but it had to be the answer!

"Charlie?" he said, looking at his friend and licking his lips. "I think I know what that creature was." There was a long pause as Jack waited for Charlie to respond.

"Well…?"

"Okay. You know how withdrawal can sometimes cause… hallucinations?"

"You think I hallucinated the whole thing," Charlie said, disbelief evident in his tone.

"Well… yeah," Jack answered, confused by his inability to come up with the right words to properly explain the situation.

"The bloody footprints, the creature, the man starting fires, everything?"

"Charlie, you don't understand - "

"I understand perfectly, Jack."

"No, you don't! Hurley found the passenger list in his bag, Charlie. It was never gone. Do you remember Hurley's story?"

"Yeah…"

"Do you also remember the ghostly figure in the upstairs bedroom?"

"What are you - "

"Doesn't it sound familiar? The creature you saw in the tree was a hallucination of the ghostly figure from Hurley's story!"

-

Charlie sat away from the rest of the camp, wondering how it was that he hadn't realized what he had been hallucinating – wondering how it was that he hadn't realized it was a hallucination. He felt like he should have been relieved, but he wasn't. He still wouldn't go into those woods to save his own life – he could still look up and see it, hissing his name from between its teeth. He didn't want to be alone and find blood splattered across the ground again. He didn't want to be seeing something so terrifying, that no one else could see.

Charlie sighed and looked around, noticing that Boone's note was still lying next to his stuff. Glancing up, Charlie made sure that Boone was distracted, before snatching the small piece of paper into his hands.

The text was short and to the point – it only took Charlie about two seconds to read it. All he could utter was, "Oh my god… Shannon."

-

Okay, so that was cruel, but I love ending with a cliffhanger. It drives people crazy and forces them to read the next chapter of your story so... yeah. Thank you for reading, and Chapter Nine will be up soon!

- Setszuki

In the next chapter of 'Fires':

Okay, I've got a problem. I couldn't find a good line from Chapter Nine to put here, because Chapter Nine is kind of short. Oh well. REVIEW!