Revelation

Chapter One

Neviah

The curfew is now in effect. For your own safety, please return to your property. The hunt will begin in one hour. The curfew is now in effect. For your own safety, please return to your property. The hunt will begin in one hour. The curfew...

The voice bounced from every angle of the empty parking lot. Although the curfew didn't start until nine in the afternoon, the council insisted on playing it every hour from seven. Neviah wrapped her leather jacket around her body and watched as the street lamps casted dark shadows all around her. Tonight was exceptionally cold for mid-June, and she could feel the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

They were late, but they always were.

Neviah pushed her right sleeve up and squinted down at her silver watch and admired the azure hand ticking away the hours. It had been a gift from her mother, which had been passed down through her family line for generations. It had been renovated since, but the face never changed. It was as white as snow and in the centre was a green compass.

The church bell from across the lot began to chime. Neviah looked up and noticed the hands pointing to eight. There was only one hour left until the hunt and Neviah would rather be in the club Midnight before then.

It was a known fact, she was sure, that half of the teens from Peak Valley snuck out to enter the forbidden world of Midnight. Not only did it allow her classmates to escape the repression of Peak Valley's finest, but it also allowed the others to fit into a world they were shunned from.

A howl suddenly echoed in the woods beyond the parking lot. Neviah spun around where she stood and glared between the trees. All she could see were the shadows from the branches which looked as if they were scratching at the floor below them. Neviah turned to look towards Freddie's Diner which was closed until further notice.

The sign that sat across the glass windows no longer glowed its florescent pink and blue, in fact it hadn't glowed for a long time.

Neviah had been going to Freddie's for as long as she could remember. It used to be open all hours of the day and the man that owned the diner was like family to the town. Half of her classmates would be sipping milkshakes and snacking on toasted waffles with blueberry jam right now, had it not been for the incident last year.

Neviah had been out of town with her parents, but in Peak Valley murders don't stay quiet for long. She wished she could say it was rare, that a thing such as murder didn't happen that often but she would be lying to herself and to anyone else that entered this strange and cursed town.

It had been her best friend Charlotte that had told her what had happened. It had started like every other Saturday night, the teens at Peak Valley all gathered at Freddie's for a shake and a dance to celebrate the weekend.

Charlotte had gone to order her usual chocolate chip sundae and Corey's strawberry milkshake, which he would later add a shot of Gin to, when she had noticed the Sherriff's daughter Mandy talking to a bunch of girls.

Mandy had only just turned fourteen, but after her mother's death, she had started to hang around with the wrong group of people. People that thought it was acceptable to push others down flights of stairs and throw muffins at people minding their own business. It was no secret that Neviah despised those girls at her school, but she had kept her mouth shut. Although, now she wished she hadn't.

Despite the warnings from her father, Mandy always managed to sneak out. Maybe if she had listened to him, things would have turned out differently but that wasn't the way things worked. There wasn't a way to change the past.