Noelle||Jordan Parrish

Chapter 33

I walk into my old room at my parent's house, which was still so weird to say. I came here to get a few things I had left behind from my room before I headed for school. My room, since I moved out, felt empty and cold the few times I've been in it. I walked around the bed and picked up the picture that sat on the nightstand on my bed. It was a picture of me, and only me, which was strange because I wouldn't frame something like that and have it on my nightstand. Even stranger was the fact that I was offcentered and my head was leaned into the middle as I smiled. I couldn't remember the day it happened, but I knew I had to be about 10 years old. My smile was wide and my teeth were crooked with one missing. I continue to frown in confusion, why didn't I remember why I put this here. I let out a sigh, and placed it into the box and picked it up, heading out of the room. I pause as I stand in the hallway, looking at the door to wall right across from mine. Slowly I set the box on the ground and walk towards the wall. I press my hand against the wall, gasping when I'm suddenly pulled from reality.
The laughter of children echoes through the room I'm standing in. It was obviously a boy's room with the the blue flannel sheets covering the twin sized bed, and the various trucks and cars strewn throughout the room. I turn around to see a young boy shaggy light brown hair and big, bright, golden brown eyes, and pale skin. In front of him, facing away from me is a little girl with long curly brown hair, that was the same color as the boy just a few feet from her.
The little boy looks over to the girl, a pout on his face,"Noelle! I want to to be Sherlock this time, you always get to be him!"
My eyes widen in shock as I walk over to the that the little girl was me, dressed in the same clothes I was in the picture that was currently sitting in the box of things I had taken from my room. Why wouldn't this little boy be in the picture with me, and more importantly, who was he?
I watch as younger me frowns and crosses her arms over her chest,"Fine, you can be Sherlock, this time."
The young boy rolls his eyes as he stands up, fixing the collar on his flannel,"It's about time."
"Noelle!" I hear someone call out.
I pull my hand away from the door handle and look over to see my mom standing in front of me, a look of concern on her face,"Are you okay, I called your name like three times."
I smile at her and pick up the box from the ground,"Yeah I'm fine, sorry. Question, did I have any other friends besides Scott and Lydia when I was younger?"
She shakes her head,"Not that I know of. You know, I always used to think that you and Scott would end up dating, you two were always together, now come on, I'll make you breakfast before you go."
After breakfast with my mom, I head to school, just a little late, as usual. When I rush in the door, I see Lydia leaning against a row of lockers, staring off into the distance. I walk up to her and put a hand on her shoulder,"Lydia?"
She lets out a gasp, then looks at me,"Oh hey."
"Are you okay?" I ask, frowning in concern.
She nods and grabs my arm,"We'd better get to AP Bio before we're late."
After AP Bio, I follow Mason into the library as he explains that last night he and Corey had seen the Ghost Rider here last night, but couldn't remember what they did. We walk into the library where it happened, and ran into Corey, who was standing in the doorway looking up towards a corner of the room.
"Don't you have class?" Mason asks, causing Corey to turn around.
"Don't you?" Corey replies, causing one of the students to sh him.
Mason lowers his voice and leans in close to the two of us,"I can't stop thinking about last night."
"Me either," Corey replies only to be sh'd again.
"I've read everything about the Wild Hunt. You know, how they come in by storm, collecting souls, riding lightning. But I just don't know why they were here. You know, they're Ghost Riders, what were they doing in a high school library? Wait, what are you doing here?" Mason asks, turning to Corey as we walk through the library.
"I just had a feeling." he replies.
"About what?"
"Shhhh!"
I roll my eyes and turn around,"Stop! We're not even talking that loud." I then turn to Corey,"Well, you only saw them because of your power. So what if you have some kind of special ability that no one knows about."
"So, what do you feel?" Mason asks.
Corey lets out a sigh,"When the Ghost Riders were up there, I think they were holding someone. Why can't we remember what happened."
"What if they weren't holding something, but someone? The Ghost Riders take souls, so what if they were taking another one last night?" I suggest. 
The day flew by quickly and soon I was sitting in the last class of the day for me, next to Lydia. I look over at the desk behind me, and frown in confusion, that person hadn't been here at all in the last three days, and the teacher hasn't said anything about  it.
"I'm impressed...with most of you. It really speaks to your studying habits and your commitment to your own education. Everyone else, see me for extra help." Our teacher says as she begins to pass back our tests from yesterday.
I look over and see a D- on Malia's test, and my eyes widen when she curls her fingers around the edge of the desk, her nails turning into claws.
Lydia must have seen it too, because she calls out,"Ms. Flemming!"
She turns to Lydia,"I already told you, Lydia, I don't give extra credit for alternate equations based on your own theoretical findings.
When she walks away, I lean in and whisper,"Malia claws. Malia."
She takes a deep breath and they go away, Lydia and I letting out a sigh of relief. After a brief lesson, we begin working on our assignment. When I look over at Lydia she's looking at the empty desk behind me.
"What are you doing in this class?" I hear her ask. She then holds her hands up to her ears and winces as if hearing a loud noise.
Seconds later, she snaps out of it and looks around gasping in panic. I lean over and look over at her in concern,"Lydia what just happened, what did you see?"
She gulps, trying to catch her breath as the bell rings,"There was a woman, a doctor or a nurse, and when she opened her mouth, all I heard was was a train, the same sound I heard last night when I was laying in bed."
I frown in confusion,"What do you mean about last night."
"Last night I was laying in bed, and all of a sudden, I heard this sound like a train was going through my room, and it was so loud, just it was just a second ago.
I nodded,"This morning I had a memory of me and a boy playing in a room, and I have no idea who it was, and I asked my mom if I had any other friends besides you and Scott. I think that I'm forgetting something important, someone important.
After talking with Lydia, I meet up with Mason and Corey in the office to see if anyone was absent, and didn't call in. The three of us were looking at the list when it was pulled from our view.
We look up and see Lydia's mom standing in front of us,"You want to see the absentee list?"
Mason nods,"Yes."
"May I ask why?" She replies.
I look around at the two guys, before replying quietly,"Werewolf stuff."
She lets out a sigh and pulls the glasses of her face,"I thought I made it clear that Beacon Hills High School is a dedicated safe place. I had to convince 23 students that what they saw in the library last semester was a large bear, and that the fangs on Scott McCall were the result of acute Teenage Hallucination Syndrome."
Corey frowns in confusion,"What's Teenage Hallucination Syndrome."
"I have no idea."
"Look, we think someone could be missing. And they could be in danger." Mason states.
Lydia's mom shrugs her shoulders,"Well, I can assure you that nobody has reported a student missing. And all absentees are all accounted for. I appreciate your concern and I thank you for your vigilance. Remember, safe place. Now, go back to class."
She pushed us out of the office as I state,"We don't have class."
"Then go back to something, anything." She replies, before shutting the door to the office.
I let out a sigh,"So, I'm done for the day, what do we do now?"
Corey shrugs, while a smirk grows on Mason's lips,"Well we could visit that hot boyfriend of yours."
I raise my eyebrows as Corey and I state in unison,"Hot?"
"No one's unaccounted for?" Corey asks as we follow Jordan through the police station.
"You can reword the question as much as you want. The answer is still no." Jordan replies as he pulls out a file and turns to face us.
Corey narrows his eyes,"Do you feel anything."
Mason looks around, his eyes wide in interest,"Does your Hellhound intuition sense something wrong with the supernatural?"
"I'm a harbinger of death, not a harbinger of kidnapping. I'm also a Sheriff's Deputy working on an unsolved murder, that for once doesn't involve shape shifters,resurrected 18th century serial killers, or me. It's just a straightforward robbery-homicide." Jordan replies.
Mason looks at him in bewilderment,"Straightforward. He was bludgeoned to death and stuffed in a high school air duct."
"And I already have your statement. Have a great day, Mason. You too Corey," Jordan replies, before pulling me into an office with him.
He frowns in confusion,"What was that all about?"
I smile at him as he grabs a chair for me to sit in and reply,"Well, Corey and Mason saw the Ghost Rider's again last night, but they can't remember what they were doing. But Mason and I have done a lot of research into these Ghost Riders, and in every myth book that I've read, the Ghost Riders come by storm and take souls. But what I don't understand is that the storm is gone, and there's no one missing, but why else would they be here?"
He lets out a sigh and moves his chair in front of mine, taking my hands in his,"I have no idea, but I'm sure you'll figure it out, you always do."
I nod and let out a sigh,"I know, but it's driving me insane. All day I've felt like something's missing, I don't know, maybe someone missing. If this person was so important to me, why can't I remember anything."
"I couldn't tell you, but I do know that you should relax a little. All this stress cannot be healthy." Jordan tells me rubbing circles on his hands.
Just as I'm about to reply, my phone dings, and I pull it out and see that Scott had texted me to meet him at the Clinic.
I let out a sigh,"That was Scott, he wants me to meet him at the Clinic."
He nods and stand up, pulling me up with him,"Be safe please, and call me if you need anything. I'll be home late tonight, so don't wait up."
I walk over and press my lips to his for a moment before pulling away,"You be safe too, straightforward murder cases aren't exactly what you're used to."
Scott and I watch as Deaton observes the piece of glass that Scott and I had taken from the impound lot, but had no idea why. This seemed to be a recurring thing right now, there's things that all of us seem to be missing, and we have no clue what or who it is.
"We keep having this feeling like there's pieces missing. Holes in our memories. Like this. We took that from a windshield at the Sheriff's Impound Lot, but I can't remember why we were there."
Deaton nods and continues to observe the piece of class,"The subconscious can be a conduit for our memories. Dreams and waking dreams can be powerful tools to help us remember."
"Could it all be connected? The Ghost Riders, the Wild Hunt, the holes?" I ask.
"The Wild Hunt are drawn to war and mayhem. I've never heard of it doing anything to anyone's memory. It's almost like you have a form of Phantom limb syndrome. It's common in war. Amputees can have the sensation of an itch they can't scratch or a pain that couldn't possibly be there. The missing limb is so important, the brain acts like the limb's still there." Deaton explains as he hands us back the piece of glass.
Scott nods, frowning in concentration,"So, our subconscious is trying to tell us what's missing?"
"It may be."
I let out a sigh and pace back and forth through the room,"So how the hell do we figure out what it's saying."
Deaton shrugs his shoulders,"Well, the easiest way to go that would be to simply go to sleep."
After that, Scott takes me home seeing as it was beginning to get late. When I get home, I wander around the empty house, not ready to go to sleep yet. I make my way to the kitchen to get some ice cream, when I hit my foot on a box on the floor, knocking over it's contents. I begin picking the stuff up, when I come across another picture. I pick it up and see that it's a picture of Scott and I, and I remembered it was from the first day of freshman year, but the strange thing was that Scott and I were on opposite sides of the of the picture, a big gap between us as if there was supposed to be someone in between us.
I gasp as I for the second time today am pulled into a memory. I look around, and immediately recognized my house, but it had much less decorations then it does right now. I hear yelling, and down from the stairs is two boys, and I immediately recognize one of them as Scott. His tan skin, dark shaggy brown hair, and face like a little puppy. I look closer at the other young teenage boy, and remember he's the same boy who I saw earlier today, except grown up, his once longer hair was cut to a close buzz cut.
I watch as Scott turns to the boy,"Dude, get your sister, we've got to go. We cannot be late for the first day of freshman year, and we have lacrosse."
The boy nods and takes a few steps up the stairs,"Noelle! Let's go!"
My eyes widen in shock, sister? That can't be possible, I would remember my own brother, wouldn't I?
I watch as younger me runs down the stairs,"I'm coming, calm down."
Just then, my dad walks over to where the three of us were standing, hold on a second you three, I need a picture before you go."
The boy, who I think is my brother rolls his eyes,"Fine, but only one."
I watch as the boy goes in the middle, and Scott and younger me go on either side of him, leaning in with a smile.
I let out a gasp as I look down at the picture, back to what it was with only Scott and I. I jump slightly as I hear my phone ring from across the room, I walk over to it, and answer it, seeing that it was Scott calling.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Noelle, do you remember where we went the day before we started Sophomore year?"
I think for a moment, before responding,"Yeah, I think so, why?"
He lets out a sigh,"Well I just woke up out here, and I think this is what Deaton was talking about, meet me out there?"
"Sure, I'll be there in 15." I tell him before hanging up.
I grab the picture that I had been looking at only moments ago, throw some shoes and a coat on, before grabbing my keys and heading out the door.
When I get to the familiar edge of the woods, I see Scott's bike, and Lydia's car pulling up beside me.
I get out of the car, and walk up to Scott, who hands me a flashlight as Lydia and Malia walk up to stand next to me. "Hey, so, I went to bed at home and I woke up in the woods about a mile out. I think there's a reason why this has happened. I've been out here before. It was the beginning of sophomore year with Noelle. It was the night before tryouts for the First Line. I remember because it was all that I could think about. " Scott explains as we begin walking through the woods.
"What were you two doing out here?" Malia asks.
"We were looking for a body." I reply.
Lydia raises her eyebrows,"That's morbid."
I nod,"I remember I didn't enjoy it, and neither did you, so what were we doing out here all alone if we both didn't want to be here in the first place."
"I wish I could help you, but I didn't know you at all Scott, and I hardly knew you," Lydia says to me, letting out a sigh.
"I was still a coyote so I might've tried to eat it," Malia adds.
Scott seems to ignore what they said as he states,"Deaton said that my subconscious is trying to tell me something. But I need you guys to help me figure out what it's saying."
"Maybe you guys were just curious teenagers. You heard there was a body," Lydia suggests.
I frown in confusion,"But how? Scott never watched the news, and I never listened in on my father's police scanner, I was too scared."
"Well, Scott, your mom works at the hospital. Maybe she got called and you overheard her," Malia suggests.
Scott shakes his head, "My mom wasn't home last night. And, I live five miles away from here. How did I get here?
"One of you drove."
I shake my head,"Neither of us had cars."
"You ran."
Scott shakes his head,"I couldn't have. I had asthma... We were hiding, but they knew we were there.
"Maybe you made a ton of noise with your asthmatic breathing." Malia says, causing me to let out a small laugh.
"How would they know that it was me?" Scott asks.
"Scott! Noelle!" I hear my dad's voice yell, just like that night.
I look over to Scott who seems to have heard the same thing I did,"Why would my dad even think that we're out here, he was at work at night, he wouldn't have known I wasn't at home."
"Because like most deaths in this town, it was related to the supernatural." Lydia states as we continue to walk through the woods.
Scott shakes his head,"Neither of us were supernatural. This was the night I was bitten. I wasn't a werewolf, and we weren't out here alone. Guys, I know this sounds crazy, but I think I had a best friend, and I think he was out here with us that night."
Malia shakes her head,"It doesn't sound crazy. I know that someone chained me up and I think they wanted me to stay human."
"I came to school this morning and I was sure I was supposed to meet someone. But I couldn't remember who it was supposed to be. I have been looking for them all day...Whoever it is, I think I loved him." Lydia explains sounding relieved to tell us.
I nod in agreement and pull out the picture I had in my pocket,"I had a vision or something  today, I saw this boy, he looked a lot like me, and in the second one, you were talking to him and you called him my brother. How could I forget my own brother?" I show them the picture as I talk to Scott, his eyes widening when he saw the picture.
"What if we're all missing the same person," he says as he pulls out a picture out of his own pocket, and shows us a different picture of all of us sitting on a table at school, this was taken not that long ago, but still, I don't remember it very well. There was a considerable gap between Malia and I, there had to have been someone there.
"I think we need to talk to Deaton."
We watch as Deaton ties a string connected to a piece of glass to an object he found in the closet, putting a small flashlight underneath it, causing the piece of glass to give off a green hue.
"Now she just magically writes down all the answers?" Malia asks as Lydia sits down in front of the glass piece, and pen and a paper set in front of her.
Deaton shakes his head,"It's not quite that simple."
Lydia shakes her head,"It never is."
"In automatic writing, the hand moves outside of any conscious awareness. Now hopefully the silence, the darkness, and the light will allow you to find a more comfortable, relaxed, trance-like state. Lydia, I want you to stare into the light. And let go of all thought."
As she picks up the pen, and begins to stare into the light, the four of us move to the corner of the room, watching over her quietly.
"I have to warn you. We may not be able to access these memories." Deaton states, drawing our attention away from Lydia.
Scott frowns in confusion,"Why not?"
"The legend has always been that the Wild Hunt takes people. But if what you're telling me is right, the truth is much worse. They erase people from reality." Deaton explains.
I let out a sigh, glancing at Lydia who was writing wildly,"How did we remember someone who has been completely erased from our minds."
Malia looks over to Lydia,"Maybe we haven't."
"Is she okay? Should we stop her?" Scott asks, looking at her in concern.
Deaton stops him, and instead walks closer to her,"Lydia, Lydia. Slow down." When that doesn't work, he moves forward and shuts off the flashlight, causing her to stop writing and drop the pen.
When she continues to stare down at the paper without responding I lean forward,"Is she okay."
As the three of us try to help her, Malia pick up the paper, reading it in confusion,"What does mischief mean?"
Scott sets the paper back down at the table, as all of us read it he turns it until it reads "Stiles."
Suddenly Lydia looks up letting out a gasp,"What the hell is a Stiles?"
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Hey guys!! I'm back! I'm so excited to get into this season!! And I've got big plans, thank you all so much for all of the support, I'm so thankful!!! Please feel free to comment and vote it's much appreciated!
-S