Witch {Book One} [UNEDITED]

XVIII: Cut the Static and Turn the TV on, You're gonna Die Soon!

I stumbled back, not sure how to even begin to react at the message. I was used to death threats by then. I was used to actually getting killed. But never have I had a threat written on my window and never have I actually had someone purposely murder me. Besides Alice. 

Finally I scurried off, returning with my arms full of cleaning supplies. Gabriel watched with one eyebrow raised as I scrubbed the threat off the glass as quickly and as furiously as I could. Eventually he grabbed my arm and slowly pulled me from the window. 

"Any idea who wrote that?" He asked once I forced myself to look at him. I shook my head and raked a hand through my messy hair. 

"No idea. They won't kill me. Don't worry. C--" I stopped myself for a moment. "Call Sammy. Tell her to come over. I-I have to . . . Just call Samantha." I turned on my heel and swiftly walked off. Once Gabriel was out of sight I went to the bathroom and locked myself there. I pulled off my shirt and stared at myself in the mirror. I counted all my tattoos and traced all my scars. The freshest ones were the ones that could have been--or were--fatal; the one that appeared mysteriously on my arm when we were at Miss Jemma's School of Evil, the one on my stomach from when Not-Alice killed me, and the one along my spine from when I picked a fight with someone that I shouldn't have fought with. 

I slid to the ground, reaching into one of the drawers in the counter and pulling out my lighter and box of cigarettes. I lit one and stuck it between my teeth, using the tobacco to calm myself down. I lost track of time before someone pounded on the bathroom door. I groaned and stood up, opening the door slowly. 

Sammy stood in the doorway, an unreadable look on her face. I took the cigarette from my lip and swallowed back the smoke, snuffing it out on the wall. The wallpaper bubbled up at the heat. I let the butt drop to the floor. Sammy looked from the cigarette still smoking on my linoleum tiled floor to my shirt in a crumpled heap next to my feet. I bent down and picked it up, quickly pulling it over my head. 

"Who wants to kill you?" She asked in a gentle voice, carefully adjusting my shirt which had ridden up slightly. 

"I have no idea," I whispered, holding my hands behind my back so she wouldn't see how scared I was. I ran my tongue over my dry lips. "Gabriel just woke up and showed me the death threat . . ." 

"I didn't see this 'death threat.' What did it say?" She asked. 

I opened my mouth, ready to lie and tell her that I didn't remember. But the words burned inside the back of my head with an angry flame. "Something about me just going to die soon," I eventually said. It wasn't a direct lie but I still felt awful telling it to her. 

Sammy shook her head.

"Would you like me to stay here with you? Just in case?" She asked, reaching behind me and taking my shaking hands. I nodded a bit too quickly and instantly thought that I might've just screwed everything up. She managed a small, weak smile and led me out of the bathroom. 

That night Sammy fell asleep on my chair and Gabriel went to Thomason's and Glitch's to crash. I slept very lightly, aware of every little thing going on around me. 

It's around the middle of the night that I heard the beeping of an amber alert. I jolted up and looked at Sammy. She was already awake and looked like she had been for a while. 

"I hear it too. It's nothing," she whispered, brushing her orangey hair back behind her ears. I wasn't convinced. Swinging my legs over the side of the bed I pushed my covers off and started walking downstairs. If it really was nothing, why not just turn the TV off to shut the annoying angry-sounding beeping off? Sammy shuffled after me, grabbing my arm once I was halfway down the stairs. 

Too late. 

I caught a glimpse at the TV and the familiar blue screen of an amber alert wasn't present. However the beeping still was. 

Instead of the blue screen describing what happened to whom, there was static and a muffled voice talking. I rushed towards the television to hear what it was saying. 

ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA ADA!

My breath hitched. 

Suddenly the static was cut and the repetitive voice and beeping ceased. 

Replacing them were a series of pictures. First was one of a mental asylum that was clearly closed and had been closed for a while. The next was a porcelain baby doll with a crack in its skull and a black widow spider crawling from one of its eye sockets. Following that was a chain of bloody barbed wire that was wrapped around a large black dog with glowing red eyes. Then a picture of a school bus that was also clearly abandoned with a human in a Peter Pan collared dress and a freakish bunny mask staring out the window. The pictures continued, each more grotesque and freaky than the last. I watched bloody walls and clawed doors and floating girls and boys hanging by their throats off of ancient tree branches and crows circling the moon. The final one was of a graveyard in the middle of the woods. There were maybe twenty or thirty ancient looking cement headstones and in the middle was a tomb with ivy and thorny vines covering it. A skull was engraved on the front. There was no family name. 

One the final picture faded the static returned along with the beeping and the talking. This time, instead of saying Ada over and over again, it said: Four weeks. Complete the tasks. Four weeks. Complete the tasks. Four weeks.  Or the Hell Hounds will get you.