Underestimated [COMPLETED]

Chapter 2 - Little Girl

LUCY'S POV

Lucy woke up with a great start, positive that someone had been moving and rustling leaves in her front garden. She shouldn't have worried much because she always woke up in the middle of the night to the feeling of someone being close by. Her parents thought it was just a stage that she was going through but Lucy thought differently. She was a light sleeper and it was most likely to be a passer-by in the street coming back from the pub on the corner that had probably crashed into something, made a noise, and woken her up.

In fact, it was around the same time she had woken up the night before, and the night before that. She knew because she'd started a habit where she'd sit up and look at the clock on the side of her bed automatically to see the digits form 00:03.

However, tonight was different. She couldn't figure out why she suddenly had the distinct feeling that something more was happening this night but whatever it was made her stir sleepily and move her body upwards from her pillow. Maybe the noise had been different. Maybe there was actually something outside in her garden this time.

Not like her parents would believe her.

She climbed lazily out of her lumpy Barbie patterned bed and stumbled to her pink lacy window in the attic, tripping over her doll house and groaning quietly as her toe banged into the wooden opened front door.

That doll house had always been in a stupid position, Lucy thought irritably.

She always seemed to fall or trip or stub her toe on the silly thing. She really should move it and place it somewhere else in her pretty pink bedroom but she had never actually got round to it. Being too busy playing with everything else, she hadn't paid much attention to the abandoned building. Her larger dolls were now her favourite. They sat delicately on the end of the bed in a perfect line as if being judged by a panel for the prettiest, well-made doll, the last one leaning on a slight tilt to stop the group falling off the end.

She opened the window after hitting the lock several times to get it to open. This was one of the reasons why she got given this bedroom. Her mummy and daddy were worried about her hurting herself or falling out of the window or something silly like that. With a faulty lock, it was difficult to open, especially for young children, not that she was young of course. She didn't need any permission from her parents to open her own window. She wasn't like her sister. Nevertheless, it was irritating that they still gave her a faulty window on purpose, though they probably didn't know that she could open it now.

            It creaked open just enough to get her little 8-year-old head through so she could peer down the unlit road of Grenville Lane. It was an unusual blackness, blacker than black, which hung in the sky, a chilly mist descending over the whole town, coating it with a frosty blanket. It was getting harder and harder to see down into her lawn or road to see the small details of her piled up toys or the rickety swing in the middle of the garden. It didn't really matter about the small details. She couldn't tell which one was which now because the mist was so thick, and it was so cold that it must have blinded her eyes from the frost.

Lucy's baby pink bed lamp flickered as a strange coolness entered the badly lit bedroom. It must have been the weather creeping up on her and she didn't like it. Her room had been warm before. Now she regretted opening the window. It was far too cold to keep it open for long.