After Nancy left, I made my way up to my room and laid down. I stared at the ceiling and mulled over the events from the past week. I thought about everything that has changed, seemingly overnight. Turning over on my side, I sighed, closed my eyes, and drifted off into a restless sleep. I dreamt that I was fighting this big ugly creature, I had no idea what it was but it kind of looked like a really fleshy plant monster. The way its entire face opened up and showed off multiple rows of teeth. It loomed closer with its claws spread out as I tried to back away from it. I don't know what led up to this moment, but from the looks of everything, it wasn't good. Taking a look around, trying to find something, anything, to fight back, I saw bodies laying on the ground motionless and caked in blood. One person, in particular, caught my eyes, and I instantly recognized the pale face and the long, dark hair. It was my brother. It was Ezra. I screamed and held back tears as my hand finally found something cold and hard, I had found a crowbar. I grabbed it and scrambled onto my feet, ready to fight back, even if it meant my demise. The thing screamed and lunged toward me. I swung the bar toward the thing's face and surprisingly made direct contact with it. The force of my swing didn't do much but make it angry, but at least I wasn't going to be an easy kill. I backed further away from it, not daring to turn around and lose sight of it. It swung its claws at me and almost made contact but then I heard a loud revving sound, almost like a car engine. I looked to where the sound was coming from and saw a car speeding in my direction, and I jumped out of its way. Landing on the ground, I turned my head right as the car smashed into the creature that was previously attacking me, whether the blow killed it or just knocked it unconscious, I didn't know. I wasn't getting close enough to see. The car swerved and came to a stop before someone got out of the car. They started walking over to me, and before I was able to make out their face, I was being woken up.
I shot upright in bed and managed to hit my forehead on something hard. Groaning, I rubbed my forehead and opened one eye to see what I hit. My mother looked back at me with a mixture of pain and worry on her face. "Sweetheart, you were screaming in your sleep. I thought someone was attacking you." Once I was finally able to open both eyes, I looked at her confused. "I was having a night terror. I'm sorry for smashing into you with my big head." She ruffled my already messy hair and laughed. "You do have a big head. I remember how easy it was to deliver Ezra, but you were a pain in the ass." I laugh and lightly push her hand away. "You wanted me, so you can only blame yourself." She shakes her head at me and smiles. "I did want you, I wanted both of you. Are you gonna be alright?" I nodded and looked at the clock to see that it was late into the night. I had slept right through dinner and could hear my stomach grumbling. "I tried to wake you up for dinner, but you said you weren't hungry." "It's okay, momma. I'm gonna make myself something quick to eat and try to get back to bed. You should go back to sleep, I'm sorry for waking you up." I got off of my bed and hugged my mother tightly. "I love you, momma." "I love you, too sweetpea. Get some rest." And with that, she walked down the hall and back into her room.
It took a couple of hours, but I managed to fall back asleep, and the rest of the night went off without a hitch. No dreams, no screaming, absolutely peaceful. I woke up the next morning to a knocking sound on my bedroom door, slightly annoyed at whoever it was for not just coming in to wake me. I stumble out of bed and open it to find Nancy standing on the other side. "Hey, what are you doing here?" I rubbed the sleep out of my eyes and walked over to my dresser to grab an outfit while Nancy walked in and sat down on my bed. "I thought that maybe you and I could drive to the funeral together, I have another thing to talk to you about." "Oh shit! The funeral's today? How much time do I have?" I start frantically searching through my room to pull together an outfit, effectively making a giant mess, until Nancy stopped me. "Don't worry, you have like an hour and a half until we have to be there." Upon hearing those words, I stopped rushing around my room and took a deep breath. "Okay. I'd be happy to drive with you, but I think Ezra is gonna wanna come with us. Does what you want to talk to me about have anything to do with what we talked about yesterday?" She nodded, confirming that I could keep talking. "So, I didn't tell Ezra about it, but he's been with me the entire time and he knows about the things happening with Jonathan's mom, so if you're comfortable with it, you can tell Ezra about it too." I finally found something suitable for a funeral and looked over at Nancy to see her looking a bit nervous. I sit down next to her on the bed and grab her hand, forcing her to look at me. "If you just want to talk to me about it, I'll just have Ezra drive himself to the funeral, don't feel bad about not being comfortable with him knowing." "No, it's not that. It's just that this whole thing has me on edge. I don't mind if he comes with." I nod and walk across the hallway to the bathroom to get ready. I make quick work of my makeup and start to get dressed when I was interrupted by a knock at the door. "Hey, are you almost ready? Nancy looks like she's getting restless." Thankful that Ezra was awake, I finish getting dressed and open the door to see him in a shirt and tie. "Looking sharp dickweed. Yeah, I'm ready. Let's get this thing over with." I walk out and down the stairs, Nancy and Ezra following closely behind.
I had been filling Ezra in on what Nancy told me yesterday before she began speaking. "After I left yesterday, I spoke to Jonathan about one of the pictures he had taken from Steve's party. At first, he thought it might have been some distortion from his camera, but when I started to describe what I saw, he told me the same thing you did. About how his mom saw the same thing come out of the wall. We went to the school's red room, and he developed another copy of the picture, only this time he brightened it up and made it bigger. The thing was in the picture... the thing that I saw, and the thing his mom saw... If you want to see it, the picture is still in my bag." I grabbed the bag that was by my feet and began to rifle through the various neatly kept papers until I came across the picture in question. I gasped and studied the creature, uneased by how bony it looked. The longer I looked at it, the more I feel like I'd seen it before. It finally hit me, and I almost let out a shriek. It was the thing from my nightmare last night. Handing the picture to Ezra, I turned back around to speak to Nancy. "If you're positive that that's what you saw, then I've seen that thing too, only it wasn't a physical encounter. I had a night terror last night and that thing was there. The area where its face is supposed to be, it just opened up. Like a black hole full of teeth." Nancy stopped a little too hard at a stop sign and looked at me, making sure that no one was behind her. "You serious? It can't be a coincidence then." I was about to speak when you were interrupted by someone honking their horn at us. Nancy began driving again as I turned around to see that Ezra's already pale complexion had lost all of its color, making him look like a corpse. "You okay?" He tears his eyes away from the photograph and hands it back to me. "I'm fine, but that thing is straight out of a horror movie. I don't know if I want to take my chances with that thing." I gave him a sympathetic look and turn back around. The rest of the drive to the cemetery was silent, no one daring to speak as we shared a sense of dread over what that thing was and how dangerous it looked.