Voices From Beyond

Chapter 14

"I want this moment to never end," Sydney mumbles as we all look at the swirling colors of the sky.

"Guys," Bruno sounds saddened.

"Yeah?" I ask him, sitting up a little bit.

"Do you think this will ever be over?" he asks but it's clear by the tone of his voice that he's already decided on an answer.

"The sunset?" Sydney chimes.

"No. This ouija shit," Bruno sighs.

"If we die..." Mitch begins but Sydney cuts him off.

"Stop, no. Don't talk like that," Sydney's eyes gloss over.

"If we die, I just want to say I'm glad to have known you guys," Mitch closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.

"By the looks of it, we don't have much longer," Noah mumbles.

When we pull into the diner parking lot, my heart drops into my stomach. The windows are in one piece, there's no birds. Everything looks normal, as if yesterday had never happened. "What the hell?" Mitch looks shocked as he steps out of his car.

"It's all in one piece," Sydney observes with her head poked out of the car window.

"Holy shit, thank god!" Mitch jumps into the air and pumps his fist with excitement.

"There's no way we just imagined it," Bruno squints his eyes suspiciously.

"It wouldn't be illogical to believe it was a hallucination, a lot of unexplainable things have happened," Noah shrugs as if he's unfazed.

"Well I'm not complaining, I'm honestly relieved," Mitch admits. I stay quiet, my mind drifts off as I stare into the trees behind the diner. I see Ryan and Kennedy running through the trees in the distance. Everything around me is quiet as I tune into them. They're laughing and shoving each-other as they snake around branches. I imagine snow falling, though it isn't really happening. The second the snow starts to fall, Ryan stops in his tracks and looks up at me. When his eyes meet mine, suddenly the image of his pale hand behind the tree, lifelessly rested in the snow, flashes through my head and I flinch. Then Kennedy stops, I feel the pressure in the palms of my hands as I drove the knife through her chest. I gasp and stumble backwards, I look up at the sky. The clouds are swirling faster than usual, my legs begin to shake. I fall backward, hands catching me as I go tumbling down toward the pavement.

"Oh my god, Cora!" I faintly hear Sydney's shocked voice through the ringing in my ears.

I blink my eyes, a worried face leans over me. For a brief second, my vision focuses on the grey eyes looking down at me. I realize that it's Noah before everything goes black.

When I regain my consciousness, I'm laying in a bed. I'm not sure who's bed, I'm not sure where I am. Everything looks unfamiliar. There's a glass of water on a desk next to the bed, I reach out for it. My arms are shockingly pale, my hands are shaking. No matter how hard I try, I can't get a firm grip on the glass of water. I struggle for a few minutes before I finally clench my fingers tight enough around the glass to pick it up. Just as I'm lifting the cup over to my mouth, my fingers lose strength and the glass goes tumbling to the wooden floor. The shattering sound pierces my eardrums as I grow more and more uneasy. I whip the covers off of my body and that's when I see it.

My stomach is round and bulging out of my nightgown. My heart is racing as I try to put everything together. My frail hands rub my stomach as I feel a light kick. I'm pregnant. I don't feel like myself. Rubbing my head in confusion, I step off of the side of the bed that I didn't drop glass on. My feet slide into a pair of slippers and I shuffle over to a door. I assume it's a bathroom, slowly I twist the handle. Sure enough, the door swings open and there's a bathroom on the other side. Tiresomely, I make my way inside. I stop at the counter and glance up at myself in the mirror. Instantly, I realize who I'm looking at.