Finding home

keeping track

I was running through a dark forest, with thick trees. The wolves started to go faster and faster until they were five feet behind me. My heart was pounding against my chest. There was a light through the trees, my last hope. I sprinted towards it even faster. Elizabeth jumped in front of me, her blonde wavy hair stuck to her face and her eyes wide in fear as she yelled

"Don't go towards the house! It's not safe. Stay away!"

I was so mesmerized by her voice, tears streaked my cheeks. I grabbed her wrist and started to drag her with me, but she wouldn't move.

"Hurry Bethy they're coming!" I squealed.

She started to fade. I cried out her name before I started to run towards the light again. The brightly lit house was in view; as I got closer I realized it was Mike and Heathers house. I kept running until I hit the grey door then quickly opened it. I turned around to face the entry way, there was a heap of dead corpses near the stairs. I screamed.

I opened my eyes to the blinding morning light coming through my bedroom window. A yawn escaped my mouth. I sat up, my neck was sore. My arms reached over my head as I did my morning stretch and then it hit me, everything that happened the previous night. I remember being chased by a van and tripping over my clumsy feet. What happened after that? I didn't remember walking up to my room, in fact I didn't remember getting to my house. I started to panic when someone knocked on my door.

"Good morning Avery, did you get some good sleep?"

Mike walked in with a grin on his face. I was so frustrated with everything I just wanted to smack it off.

"Yeah, I got a ton of it."

"That's good. Your birthday's tomorrow, anything you want to do?" Mike asked.

I was about to say I was going to hang out with Lynn but then remembered what that creepy guy said. Judging by what happened last night I wasn't going anywhere until I figured out what was going on.

"I just planned on staying home, watching movies."

"I thought you'd want to go do something. You sure you don't want to go out?"

"Yeah, I'm sure." I tried to convince him. He gave me a weird look before saying,

"Okay" and walking out of my room. Why did he want me to go out on my birthday so much?

I got up to take a nice, warm shower. As soon as the water hit my body my tense muscles relaxed and I closed my eyes. I loved the feel of the water brushing off my shoulders and going through my toes. When I was younger my mom could never get my sister or me out of the pool because we loved the water so much. The memory made my chest ache. I missed my sister. No one really knows what happened to her; the day after her birthday she suddenly went missing. She hadn't been in my dreams for months, seeing her last night made me miss her more. I stepped out of the shower and got dressed into a pair of skinny jeans and a blue shirt. After I was dressed I went down stairs to get some breakfast. There wasn't much to eat so I settled for a bowl of fruit loops. Mike was at the table reading a newspaper and drinking some coffee. I sat down and slowly began to eat. A few minutes went by when Mike finally broke the silence.

"Heather told me she wanted to talk to you about something in private after you got done with your breakfast."

"Alright, I'm almost finished." I mumbled looking at him. The headline on the newspaper caught my eye "Jared Right missing". I felt like I knew that name somewhere.

Heather's door was open; I called her name before entering. There was an orange glow and some noise drifting from her bathroom. I sat on her bed waiting for her to finish with her conversation. For a while I sat and looked at the walls; she had coffee brown walls with shelves full of pictures of her and her family. I looked at the pictures closely; she always had a serious expression in her pictures. Next to her bed there was a table that had a box full of jewelry, I went next to it and examined some of the pieces. She had a gold ring with a weird scale design of some sort; a black journal next to it caught my attention. I ran my fingers over the edges before taking a peak. The first page was about my "strange" behavior around water and how she suspected I was the "one". What was she talking about? The next page had a picture of me with a finger print taped next to it. It freaked me out that she had been watching me and kept track of what I did. But what startled me was the next page; there was a picture of me from my bedroom window sleeping. There was a big X through it.