The Diary of Holly Campbell

Four

NO CALLER ID: 

Open the letter, Holly.

She stared. She was shocked. They had her phone number. Alice and Peter Woods had her phone number.

'What the...' Holly whispered. She got up from her bed and tiptoed over to the window. The time on her phone, which she had snuck into her room, said 10:06pm. She carefully pulled back the curtains just about an inch and peeked out through the gap. The moon was hidden by the gloomy grey storm clouds, and the only light was the streetlamps, each around 5 metres away from the last.

A quick but noticeable movement caught her eye, and that's when she noticed the people sitting on the gutter in front of her neighbour's house. The massive hedges weren't enough to conceal them from Holly's view. They looked up towards her window, and she quickly let the curtains close. She lightly treaded over to her door, flicked the light switch off, and returned to the window, only just finding the couch in the dark.

She pulled the curtain back a little bit again, and now the people were standing in front of her house. They were wearing black and one of them was pointing up at her window. Her heart beat controllably out of her chest, jumping up into her throat, thumping in her ears. The other one lifted a phone, and the flash of a camera light blinded her. She saw them lower the phone then, and they both studied it for a minute, before they looked back at the window. They each took a step forward to squint, then the phone was lifted back up and the torch was on. Once again, the light blinded her, for longer this time, until the phone was lowered again.

Oh no. They had seen her. They had a photo of her. The camera flash had captured her peeking through the curtains. Then they had shined the torch at her to see if there actually was someone there.

'Fucking hell,' Holly murmured, drawing the curtains closed, grabbing her phone and jumping back into her bed. She squeezed her eyes shut, and breathing shallowly, listened carefully for any sounds.

She thought for sure they were going to break into the house somehow. Hurt someone. Take Clover or Dolly, or both. Because if they know her phone number, they'd know which pets were hers.

But she soon heard the faint sound of retreating footsteps. She slowly opened her eyes, and after letting them adjust to the darkness, she slid out of bed and over to the window. They were gone. 'Thank you, God,' she whispered, and got back into bed. It took her a long time to get back to sleep, as this was too big of a scare for her to cope with.

---

Holly had only just fallen asleep when her alarm went off at 6.30am the next day. She slammed her hand down on the button to stop the screeching sound of the alarm and groaned as she rolled out of bed. She slid her phone under her shirt to conceal it from the potential view of her parents, and shuffled out of her room and down the stairs to the pantry, where she plugged it in. She sniffed and went back upstairs to her parents' room and went to stand on her mum's side of the bed. 

'Mum,' she said, tapping her shoulder. Tiff didn't move. 'Mum,' she said, louder this time, gently shaking her shoulder. Again, Tiff didn't move. 'Mum!' said Holly, and Tiff woke with a violent jolt and a dramatic gasp.

'Holly!' she exclaimed. 'You scared the crap out of me!'

'Sorry,' she said.

'Right, what do you want?'

'Can I stay home today? I barely slept all night.'

Tiff looked at her vaguely, still half-asleep, before she said, 'So? That doesn't mean you can't go to school.'