"They answered my questions, they told me stories. But I know it's not the whole truth. They're hiding something."
Stark darkness, mysterious faces, and memory loss. A girl wakes up all alone in a strange place, and she doesn't even know where to ru...
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To get a better view of the snow capped mountains and a small portion of the houses on Olivier Street outside of her bedroom window, Luna pulls the shade that obscures her vision and it rolls up and wounds around the rollers. She rubs her eyes and walks over to her vanity, a hand-me-down from her mom. She picks up the silver hairbrush placed on top of it and brings it up to her hair, brushing it as she slowly paces around the room.
It has been two days since that strange encounter in the woods and since then, she hasn't said a word about it, even to Ivy who was with her that time. She doesn't feel like she should talk to her about it. She just wants that unpleasant experience to be forgotten entirely, and she's trying to pretend like it never happened and maybe - hopefully - she would convince herself that it never even was a figment of her imagination.
As much as she doesn't want to admit, it left her scared of going back into the woods. She's scared that maybe once she'll wander off the path she always took, she'll come across that old house again, stumble upon something odd that's the only choice to get away from it is for her is to get in, and then never get out again. It's a recurring nightmare, and she doesn't want any more of it. Sometimes, when she's staring at her blank ceiling at night with beads of sweat forming on her forehead and at the back of her neck, she would think of certain things: what if she never asked Ivy to come with her to the woods? What if they went to an arcade instead, or the closest mall at Christiansburg? What if she could just turn back time...
Her eyes sweep across her room from left to right, lingering longer on the corners, and she remembers its yawning darkness at night. These past two days, when she wakes up from a nightmare she'd forget just right after she opens her eyes, she would see black shadows shifting on those very corners of her room like someone's there, crouching in the dark and quietly watching her as she sleeps.
She sighs and places the brush on the bedside table, just beside the digital clock displaying the time. It's only 4:36 AM, the morning light only a distant glow from beyond the mountain tops not so far away. Everything seems to be covered all over by blueish gray fog, with the night now leaving and the sun creeping slowly on the eastern skies. Luna slides her window open, and the smell of the crisp morning air greets her, as well as the chirps of early morning birds. It almost washes away all her fears and worries, but she can still remember why she got out of bed earlier than usual, and it's because of another dream. The same dream, the same house, the same woods. And she doesn't know when it will end.
꘏
As Luna makes her way downstairs, she can't help but feel like there's an earthquake going on. She groans as she leans on the banister, massaging her head. Her flip-flops make a padding sound even if she slowly descends the stairs one step at a time. As she's halfway down, she can hear the clinking of china and metal and the sound of running water from the kitchen.
Earlier, she decided to sleep again as she woke up so early in the morning. She pulled the covers over her head with reassuring thoughts like 'It's okay, it's not dark anymore so there's nothing to be scared of'. With one last look at the sunbeam slowly pouring into her room through the open windows, she closed her eyes, only to open them again because of another strange dream.
