Hauntingly Lovely

Chapter 8

Jack's P.O.V.

I wake up in a hospital bed to the sound of a beeping heart rate monitor. My parents are sitting next to my bed and there's a needle in my arm.
"Are you alright?" My mother asks, I hear the concern in her voice. I'm about to talk to her before my father interrupts me.
"He obviously isn't and he obviously knows that! He did this on purpose! Just to get back at us for grounding him!" He shouts. The doctor comes in and tells him to calm down. They leave and I hear him yelling at the poor doctor outside the door. When he comes back the doctor tells them that visiting time is over and that I need to sleep.
"But I don't feel tired." I tell the doctor when my parents leave.
"Here, take this." He replies. "It will help you sleep and you can see them again when you wake up, your highness." He continues.
"Don't call me that." I say before I put the pills in my mouth. I take a drink of water and he leaves....... and I spit out the pills. I quietly get up and pull the needle out of my arm, I take everything off me and open the window. I'm on the ground when I see the light turn back on in my room. I start walking and then I see a name written in the dirt near the woods, "JACK" and the stick that was probably used to write it. I know it was Max, how did he get out? How did he know I was here? I follow the arrow and go into the woods. When I get far enough in that I'm out of sight, I hear him shout out to me from a tree as he's climbing down. He looks really hurt, he limps to me and his arm is in a makeshift sling.
"What happened to you?" I ask.
"I could ask you the same thing." He says.
"Well, my window was barred up with a metal grate. I kinda freaked out about the idea of staying there so I stabbed myself and almost bled out. You?" I tell him.
"I freaked out, destroyed everything in my room, used a metal pole to pry the thick wood off my window, and jumped out. Then I narrowly avoided being caught by my parents by running into the woods and climbing a tree one handed." He tells me. So it turns out we both got fucked up.
We walk and talk and he tells me about River and I talk about Michael until we get back to the house where the Halloween party had been. The cat sits near the gate and we pet it on the way in, we pass by the rotting body of it and I know that this is real. We walk in and the house seems empty, it's cold and dark inside and the wind blows through the broken windows. We look around and we don't find anything, we're about to leave before we hear a voice behind us.
"Welcome back."