Straight On Til Morning

Chapter Two: Looking For Answers

“Harlan?” I called again, and again to no avail. I switched tactics, calling out for his brother instead.

“HUNTER! Come quick!!”

He responded quickly, bounding into my room.

“Let go of him, Liv.” He snapped at me.

“I don’t know what happened. We were in here, and then this little kid came in and bugged us. The kid jumped out the window, and then this started.” I was crying by this point.

Hunter sat down on the bed, and pried Harlan away from me. When my skin stopped touching his, he stopped screaming. Now it just sounded like he was whimpering slightly.

“Go get rid of everyone.” Hunter wouldn’t look at me. It was clear that he thought this was my fault.

“But..”

“Please, Olivia.”

I took a deep breath and swiped at my eyes before leaving the bedroom. Everyone was talking in hushed tones as I entered the living room. I looked around for the little redhead, but I didn’t see him anywhere.

“Hey guys, I’m gonna have to ask everyone to ship out- Harlan’s having a really bad allergic reaction to something, and we might need to take him to the hospital. Also, whoever’s kid is the little redhead boy, I think I noticed him slip outside, so he’s probably playing away out in the yard.”

I ushered everyone out the door as quickly as I could. Everyone was nice enough to simply gather their things and go, rather than drag it out. When they were all gone, I ran back to my bedroom, to find Harlan crouching in the corner, with Hunter on one knee in front of him.

“How we doing in here, guys?” I tried to sound cheerful.

Harlan flinched at the sound of my voice, and started banging his head back against the wall. I backed out of the room, as Hunter glared at me. I didn’t want to risk going back in my room to check on them, so I stayed in the living room. I snuck into Hunter’s bedroom for a moment, and pilfered his laptop. I stayed awake the whole night, searching for an answer to what had happened to my boyfriend. Unfortunately, the internet seemed determined to fail me. Around five AM, Hunter came out into the living room.

“How’s Harlan?” I asked.

“I finally got him to go to sleep a little while ago. What exactly happened, Olivia?”

I told him the whole story, every detail that I could remember. When I finished, Hunter looked as confused as I felt.

“Does he remember any of it?” I asked Hunter.

“He doesn’t seem able to. That’s another thing, Liv, he’s acting like a child. I think that he thinks he’s a child now. It’s like his memory regressed. Are you sure he didn’t hit his head or something?”

“I’m sure. I’m also sure it has something to do with that demon kid.”

By the time we finished talking, Hunter had decided that he needed to take Harlan to the emergency room, so that they could do some scans and maybe help figure out what had happened to him.

“I’m coming with you.” I told him.

“No, you’re not. Harlan flinches every time he hears you. You can’t come.”

“You can’t keep me from coming, Hunter. I’ll drive separately, and wait until the doctors have taken him back to come inside or something. I want to be there when they fix it.”

“Fine. Let me go wake him up.”

“Once you get him out of my room, I’ll slip in and change, then we can go.”

“Okay.”

I hid in the kitchen, while Hunter got Harlan out of the bed. He looked the way he always did in the morning, and I longed to reach out and touch him. But I refrained. I changed clothes inside my walk-in, as was my practice, in case either of the boys walked in on me. As I pulled my shirt over my head, I saw something move inside my room. I peered out the crack to see a man’s silhouette. It wasn’t Hunter or Harlan. I grabbed a baseball bat that I kept in the corner, just in case of something like this.

“Who the hell are you?” I leaped out, brandishing the baseball bat menacingly.