Up On Hickle Hill

Chapter 2 - Plan

The following night I dreamt dreams of dancing lights in the sky. I confessed to everyone I knew and apparantly everyone I will know that I was taking off into the sky to join the lights. I don't know how I knew that I will know them later on in life, but it was a dream; it doesn't have to make sense. I started weaving in between all the green lights like I was a world class ballerina. I was flying. I was really flying. No. I started to fall. I looked down, everyone was looking at me. Billions of eyes. All looking at me.

I hit the ground with a thud and looked around myself. I was still on the ground when all the lights shot down towards the billions of faces, still staring up at them with wide eyes. Each light found a human each and entered the body in any way possible. All their eyes turned green, their mouths dropped open and for a moment I thought more green ights would shoot out, but they all started to scream. Every single person on the planet. Screaming in unison. All but one. Me. They stopped screaming and advanced towards me. That's when I started screaming. I woke up almost instantly as soon as the alarm clock started to ring for school. I guess I had all but forgotten about those mysterious lights. I was definitely going back. I wonder how I'd never noticed them before now though.

I got dressed as quickly as possible. I knew this day was going to drag on. Oh how I had wanted it to be after school already. Before leaving, I made up some rubbish story to my mum about how I was

"going to Alicia's after school." I don't even know where the name Alicia came from to be honest. But disaster struck when she offered

"Oh, I'd really like to meet her. How about I pick you guys up and drop you off at her house?" I had to say something quick. The best I could come up with was

"Oh, no thank you, mum. She actually just lives right next to the school. Don't worry about it." I praised myself for the quick reaction as I left through the front door for school. The school is at the opposite end of the village than my house. Twenty-five minute walk. Hicke Hill lies somewhere in between. and to the North a little. As I leave the  house I squint my eye to see through the fog. I was back and forth between watching where I'm going and watching the hills.

After five minutes of walking, I was still squinting and almost tripped over a cat. It was just sat in the middle of the pavement, probably wanting someone to trip over it. That's just how cats are. I continued walking making sure to watch where I was going this time and realised that the cat had followed. I stared at it and upon closer inspection I could see its eyes were shining a greeny blue colour, its fur was as black as night and it was wearing a black and white striped collar. The cat turned and ran. I think it wanted me to chase it. It was all part of their plan. I gave chase. We dodged past oncoming people, darted across roads and I had to jump a fence or two. We came to an alleyway. The cat walked in, I ran after it, but as soon as I went to turn the corner to the alley and od woman walked right into me. I apologised and asked

"Need a hand picking your things back up, Miss?" The woman shook her head, picked up hher things - which turned out to be an old book titled "INGREDIENTS" - and waddled off. I saw something. She was carrying it. A black and white striped collar. The same as the cat. I started to laugh as if it were all some joke and the old woman looked back at me. Her eyes glowed the same shade of green as the cats too. "Impossible" I thought as the woman smiled and me and hurried off.

I ran into the alleyway to see where the cat had disappeared to. I came to the conclusion that there is no way that it climbed the buildings or got out of this alleyway any other way. So where was it? Had it simply vanished? I really wish it had been that simple. I removed the thought of magical cat woman from my head and continued on my trek to school.

At school I sat in silence for most of the day, just wanting and waiting to get back to the hils. Thoughts of the old woman popped into my head every now and again and I tried my best not to think about her.. it. Lunch was the same as usual. No one wanted to sit with me.

"We might catch your Englishness, ew". "Oh yeah, because that's possible." I said to myself. Anyway, lunch passed with just the same amount of trouble as usual so nothing I couldn't handle.

The rest of the day flew by. English, followed by Biology wheree had to watch a video of a lung being disected. Don't ask what sort of animal the lung once belonged too. I didn't want to know and still don't. After biology, I was kept behind to be asked about my late homework. I was going to do it last night but completely forgot about it because of my little trip to the caves.

"Ellie, what's your excuse? You never hand homework in late."

"Oh, I just completely forgot to do it, Mr Barnes. I'm really sorry."

"Don't worry about it Ellie, just remember it for tomorrow, yeah?"

"Yeah, Mr Barnes. I will do. Thank you!" I said as I started to slowly make my way to the door. Mr Barnes caught on and excused me.

I ran down the now empty school hallways. It's amazing how quickly eeveryone leaves the school to go home compared to how slowly everyone gets here first thing in the morning. As I reached the staff car park and started heading in the general direction of the hills. I stood at one end of the car park, staring up at the hills and as I looked back down to navigate my way across the car park. I saw Miss Murdo, the scool principal, walk behind a car and from out the other end, appeared a cat. I scratched my head in confusion and shouted

"Miss Murdo!?" pretty loud. The cat turned to look at me.  It fleed in the exact direction I thought it would: Hickle Hill.

I gave chase. Chasing cats was slowly becoming a habit of  mine.