Voices

Chapter Three

 I gasp as soon as I wake up. I desperately flail in attempts to sit up, a dull pain in my head. "Woah there, calm down. You're okay," A soft voice says. Squinting in the sudden light to see, I see Andrew against a wall near me. I take a deep shaky breath in and nearly fall out of the bed. "You might want to process where you are before you try to get out of here." I glance over at him before nodding and trying to calm myself down.

My hand and arm are bandaged. It seems like they've been changed recently, as there's barely any blood on them. The room is the same bedroom I first went to, but the dust on the floor has been stirred up. Wind still howls outside. I gently bring my fingers to a bandaged spot on the back of my head. It's tender to the touch. "You hit your head pretty hard there. When I walked in I just saw you lying against the tub with a bleeding head. Mirror was in pieces," Andrew states.

"Wasn't there a shadow?" I softly ask. "Or.. a weird maroon form of some sort?"

"What? No. There was nothing like that," He responds.

"Blood in the sink?"

"No. You really must've hit your head hard." I blankly stare at him before getting to my feet. My head spins for a moment before steadying.

"What time is it?" I mumble.

"It's one in the morning. I found you at five or six," He responds. I pause before nodding and shuffling out. "Do I not even get a thanks?" He calls after me.

I turn to look at him before mumbling a thanks and walking away. I sit on the couch, a cloud of dust rising around me when I sit. My thoughts begin to drift as I let myself relax. The first thing that drifts into my mind is Jane. She had nursed me back to health when I had gotten sick years ago. She was always there for me, even when I was a paranoid mess.

She had such a beautiful laugh, such a perfect smile. When she looked at me, there was genuine care and kindness, something that had been rare for me. When we ran away, we camped near a cherry blossom tree. We spend hours under that tree together. I felt like I had a real friend. Then, everything began to go wrong. Her skin became pale, and her fever came and worsened. She insisted that she was okay. I wasn't dumb enough to believe it. After nearly three weeks of trying to help her, to try to stop the fever and the blood she began coughing up, the life left her eyes. She gave me a last smile and swore I would live without her.

Alice found me not even a week after she died. She was closed off and a bit sarcastic at first, and refused to admit we were friends at all. Only when I told her what was wrong with me did she open up. The moment she let me see who she really was, I knew that she was someone that would be important to me. She showed me a sisterly sort of love through my mourning, and the support of a close friend through all other trials.

Maybe now I've lost her too.

A loud roar of thunder sounds, shaking me away from my thought. I can hear sleet beginning to pour down on the roof. Wind still shakes at the windows and walls. Worry for my friend washes over me. If she was still out there when the storm started, she could be dead. I try to push that thought out of my head, and try to remember pleasant things instead.

"Come on, Mizu, we don't have all night!" Jane whispered at me as I climbed out of her bedroom window. I quietly hopped down into the hedge and stumbled out of it. "My parents will literally kill me if you make too much noise, Mi," she quietly stated. "Or if they find us. Oh jeez, if they find us..." I followed her gaze back to her house as trees began to block it from view.

"I guess we'll just have to find a really good hiding spot, huh?" I asked, in a tone way too cheerful to be my own. She softly laughed and nodded in agreement. We roamed the forest for two days, only speaking to each other once we were far enough from the city we had run from.

At the dawn of the third day, we had found the spot we would settle on. A lake stretched across the horizon, reflecting the last of night as the sun rose on the opposite side of it. A cherry blossom tree bloomed next to it, decorating the water with its pastel petals. A small, empty cave a two minute's walk away is where we decided to make our home.

"I guess we made it," I stated, watching the remnants of night disappear under the lake. She nodded in agreement.

"Yeah. We definitely made it."

She went into the cave to craft makeshift beds for us and to rest. I found myself unable to sleep, or even sit still. The excitement of feeling free was too much to allow that from me.

I'm shaken out of the memory as whispers slowly begin to surround me again. I heave a heavy sigh before getting back up and trying to find something to occupy myself with. I don't want this to get as bad as it did in the bathroom again.

I find an empty journal on the study's desk, and decide to make it have a use that it deserves instead of letting it simply collect dust. I begin a sketch of the maroon shadow, making notes of it once I'm finished.

I doubt that it will be understood. It simply vanished. Andrew will simply say I was hallucinating or I hit my head too hard, but I know what I saw. At least, I think I know. I am almost completely sure that it was real. A distant giggle sounds from across the room. I try to ignore it. "You're not sure of anything." "Couldn't help, couldn't help."

"You're not strong, either." The last voice is clear enough to nearly make me fall out of my seat. I turn to see nothing where the voice would have originated. The familiar sense of something being wrong comes over me again as I close the journal and stand up, quickly going into another room. A ringing fills my ears as I return to the guest room and lay down. I need more rest. My head is still too foggy to try to process normal things.

The last thing I hear before I fall asleep is a faint knocking on the window.