It was adrenaline that got Piper moving. Henry's door was closed, but she knew that it wouldn't stop anybody, from the sound of what happened to the front door.

Anyway, the footsteps started getting closer. Piper finally found the will to move. She dropped the sign and bolted for the window.

And just in time, too. Piper had barely gotten a branch above the window when she heard Henry's door come down.

Piper fought hard to keep from shrieking as she climbed as high as she could. Trying to keep her breath steady, she hugged the trunk of the tree, listening.

Things were clearly being knocked over and broken, but Piper couldn't distinguish what was shattering from what was smashing. Her arms shook.

Finally, after a few minutes, a voice shouted something Piper couldn't make out, and the footsteps retreated.

But not before someone slammed the window shut- and locked it.

Piper's first instinct was to start climbing down to try and open the window somehow, but fortunately she ignored it, because a tightly packed group of dark-clothed people- there appeared to be a dozen or so in all- were all speed-walking towards a dark van.

Cliché, but still scary.

Piper watched the van drive away, hoping to catch the license plate, but it didn't have one on the front or back. "Helpful," she muttered under her breath.

Shaking, Piper climbed down the tree and attempted to open the window. Sure enough, though, it was locked from the inside. Piper grumbled and climbed all the way down, heading for the front porch.

The front door was completely ruined. Some of it was in shambles on the floor, and a small chunk of it was still attached to the hinges, like those swinging doors in Western movies. Piper was almost afraid to push it out of her way.

The entire first floor- excluding her parent's room and bathroom, and the downstairs bathroom- was as bad a wreck as it's main entrance. Almost everything on the shelves was on the floor, some of it broken. The blocks that spelled DANGER had been knocked over, and the D has a huge crack in it. The couch had a huge tear and was overturned. The family's favorite pillow- the one with the dog- had a long tear in it. So did all the other pillows, like the couch. There was food on the floor in the kitchen, and Piper almost stepped on a broken glass. Next to it was a puddle of what Piper at first thought was blood, but it was actually Hawaiian Punch.

The back door and the garage seemed fine, and the basement where the laundry room was had an overturned table but no other disturbances.

After a few minutes of examining the damage, Piper ran up the stairs. Her room looked untouched, and so did her and Henry's bathroom. It was Henry's room that was majorly messed up.

Both the main door and the closet door looked just like the front door downstairs. The mattress had been thrown into the floor, boxes under Henry's bed overturned, and the couch, aside from being upside down on the floor on top of the sign, had a huge rip in it, just like the couch downstairs. The half-lit PLAY sign had lost the A,which was now cracked sand on the floor, dim. There was a bunch of other stuff all over the floor, including Henry's little dog statue, which was broken in half.

Henry! Piper suddenly remembered her brother. Where was he? He had been downstairs when all the chaos started.

Piper gasped and covered her mouth. What if they took him?

Piper pulled out her phone and opened her tracker app. Okay, so Henry is... in the basement?

But I was just in the basement.

Maybe he's hiding down there somewhere.

Piper ran downstairs and, after a minute of searching, found Henry's phone behind the overturned table. She tried calling his name a few times. Nothing.

Piper's breathing started to get heavy. I have to do something, but what?

As if answering her question, Piper's body seemed to take over.

She found a dark backpack in her parent's room, and filled it with a dark change of clothes, some food, two plastic water bottles, her phone and a charger. She pulled back her hair into a ponytail, donned her bike helmet and climbed onto her bike. She rode away.

Piper wasn't exactly sure what she was doing, but she knew she had to do it.

"I'll return it tomorrow, he said," muttered Charlotte as she rode her own bike toward Henry's house. "I'll give it back to you on Sunday, he said."

A few days before, on Thursday, Henry had borrowed Charlotte's science textbook to study for a test that was supposed to be the next day. He had promised to return it as soon as he could, but they both forgot, and Charlotte wanted to study, so she decided to just go get it herself.

Charlotte left her bike on the driveway without taking off her helmet.

Charlotte approached the front porch, still muttering to herself. "'Yeah, Charlotte, you'll get it back before-' OH MY GOD!"

Guess what she saw? Yep, that would be her best friend's house completely trashed- the broken items, the overturned furniture, all of it. She almost gagged when she saw the Hawaiian Punch, thinking, like Piper, that is was someone's blood.

Charlotte's first instinct was to get the heck outta there, but she had to check for one thing first. Shaking like a leaf, she ran upstairs to Henry's room.

She swore upon arrival, not just because of what she saw, but also because of what she didn't see.

The picture of a bug that hid the hollow area in his wall was broken in half and on the floor. The hollow area that normally housed his extra gumballs was empty.

Okay, now I can leave. Without hesitation, she unlocked and opened the window, practically jumping onto the branch that allowed you to get down.

Charlotte rode her bike until her legs were burning. She pulled her phone out of her pocket and called Ray, not even giving him a chance to say hi.

"Ray, something's wrong."

Ciao, and Happy Reading!