The Blainter

23...

A door, down the hall from the girls, had begun to open. Abbey and Lina looked at the door with equally horrifying expressions. They had just escaped their confinements, and now they were smacked dead in the middle of the third corridor. Abbey held Boomer in her arm protectively, afraid of losing him in the gigantic art gallery again. Lina stood inches behind Abbey with her right hand squeezing the master lock that once held her strapped to a chair.

Abbey knew that they had to think fast, so she grabbed Lina by her arm and pulled her from her spot. Lina looked at Abbey's hand in confusion, but she didn't pull away from her. She allowed the smart girl to quickly guide her to the room door, which was directly across the hall from the room that they'd just ditched. The door was without a padlock, and Abbey quickly swung it open. She pushed Lina inside and peeked behind herself, into the corridor. The last thing she saw, before jumping into the room herself, was a red boot stepping outside of the door down the way.

She quickly but quietly pushed the door closed behind her, and silently prayed that the robed killer didn't see them. She leaned against the door and took deep breathes. Lina stood in the center of the room, staring at Abbey with a strong sense of worry. She felt that every time that they were close to getting away from the killers' clutches, something always seemed to change their luck. It was almost as if the killers had placed a tracking spell on them or had hidden cameras watching their every move.

Whatever the killers were using to keep up with the students, it seemed to work best in the psychopaths' favor. With the thought of hidden cameras being placed in the art gallery, Abbey instantly felt that running into a different room wasn't going to be the only thing they needed to do in this case. She knew the killers would check their prison room, and realize that they had escaped, at any moment now. They had to hide!

Abbey could hear the footsteps, slowly approaching, outside of the room. The footsteps were still a distance away from their door, but she could faintly hear two voices, deep, in conversation. It sounded as if the killers were trying to keep a certain level of quiet. She couldn't decipher any of the mumbled words that were spoken, but she decided that they weren't very important right now. Their main goal, at the moment, should be to hide or prepare to battle sooner than they thought they would have to.

Dang, it! We only have these locks! Abbey thought.

She looked past a worried Lina, and let her eyes briefly scan the room they'd retreated into. This room was a lot larger than any of the other rooms, that they've entered, in the art gallery. There were two large ten-seated dining room tables on the far back wall of the room, each covered by long camouflage-designed table cloths. Two torches were ablaze on each wall, and large paintings were centered in between the torches on each side of the room. On the far left side of the room, there were another one of those tiny doors that Lina had the pleasure of discovering much earlier in the day.

Lina remembered how that minuscule door had saved her life, and she quickly inspected the little dwarf-sized entrance, while Abbey looked over the rest of the room. To Lina's disappointment, the door had a padlock on it! The tough block of hardened steel looked fairly new, and she knew they didn't have enough time to force the door open on their own. There was only a couple of rotted wooden chests, with huge holes in the boards, on the far right side of the room. From what the girls could distinguish, the chests were both empty. Useless! Lina looked at Abbey, tensions increasing with each passing second.

Abbey had focused her attention back on the pretty girl and shifted Boomer to her other arm. She didn't know what to say, and she was beginning to be affected by Lina's nervous energy. The steps, outside, were getting louder and louder. The voices were getting louder as well, and Abbey could start to pick up on some of the words that were being said. The people, that were responsible for the talking, sentences were very choppy, but she was able to decipher a select few of the words.