It Lurks in the Darkness

Chapter 3: Stuck

It had officially been an hour. An hour since Harmony had been shoved into the janitors closet and forced to clean it until it was spotless with some of her least favorite people in the entire school. She had done a majority of the clean up and at this point she reeked of dirty water and cleaning chemicals. As expected, Alisha and Daniel did absolutely nothing and we're still glued to each other in the corner of the room. Much to her surprise, Lexi and Jack briefly attempted to help clean a bit with Harmony but quickly gave up. At last, Harmony collapsed on the floor exhausted and leaned her head back against the cold wall trying to catch a quick breather before continuing. She had had enough. How was it fair that she did all the work and they would get to walk away scratch free?! It wasn't. Alisha noticed her huffing and puffing and snickered, "Wow. Somehow you look worse then before." Daniel laughed obnoxiously at that comment while Lexi and Jack stood off to the side hardly paying attention. Ok that's it, I've had enough Harmony thought. She leaped to her feet and yelled, "Ok Alisha I'm done with you and your pathetic games. I've had it. I've done NOTHING to you and your always a complete bitch for no reason. When you were a kid you were a sweet innocent child that everybody loved but once you hit high school and got a taste of popularity?! Forget it. You turned into Regina George. A blonde idiot who thinks she's the prettiest human on Earth when in reality, you have the ugliest inside." Alisha gaped at her outburst, shocked and then slowly began to snicker. She stalked towards Harmony with a predatory look in her eyes and whispered "Doesn't matter what you think. Your just jealous I'm way better than you." Harmony snapped suddenly and lunged at Alisha tackling her to the ground, spurred on by sudden aggression. Daniel yelped and threw himself onto the ground trying to wrestle them apart. Jack soon joined in too to help and Lexi stood with her arms crossed watching the scene with utter distaste. At last Alisha and Harmony were yanked apart and sat on the tiled glaring at each other. Jack sighed, "Ok I know you guys don't like one another but now is not the time to fight. We need to all pitch in and knock the rest of this out together. The sooner we do that, the sooner we can all go home back to our own lives." Instantly Alisha protested, "No freakin way! I spent 80$ on this manicure and I'm NOT going to mess it up with this crap." Harmony exclaimed with venom laced through her voice, "I've already cleaned up more than half of this myself. If your even DARE—" Jack intervened and pleaded, "Alisha please." Still looking annoyed, Daniel wrapped his arm around her waist and said, "Babe, I cant believe I'm saying this but they are right. The sooner we work together the better. And if it does mess up your manicure, I'll bring you to the salon right after to get a new set. Ok?" Groaning Alisha silently complied and slowly grabbed a sanitizing bottle off a tiny dusty shelf. With that, everyone got to work dusting and scrubbing wordlessly for the next 30 minutes. Then out of the blue, the lights began to flicker and commotion was heard outside the door. They all turned and looked at each other in confusion. Jack walked over to the door and leaned his ear against it and then shouted, "Hello?! Mrs Oliver?! Parker?!" Suddenly a blood curdling shriek sounded through the hallways outside the door and someone could be heard struggling immensely. Then there was a loud thud and what sounded like some weird unpleasant squelching sound as the other person involved in the squabble walked away. Getting a sense of dread in the pit of her stomach, Harmony shared a look of terror with Jack. Alisha was about to scream, when Daniel quickly clamped a hand over her mouth silencing her. Lexi whispered, "you don't think.....?" Nobody answered, too terrified to speak. They continued to listen closely for any more loud noises or yelling but heard nothing. At last, Daniel spoke in a trembling voice, "ummm what are we supposed to do?!" Harmony explained, "I think that we sit here for another five minutes and if it's still quiet we leave ASAP. Then call the police the second we get out of here to safety." They all nodded their heads in agreement and stood anxiously for the next five minutes hardly moving. After a slow five minutes, Jack started to carefully attempt to open the door but his efforts were quickly put to a stop. Alisha whisper yelled, "Open the door, what the hell is wrong with it?!" Jack responded, "It's jammed....by something. I can't open it." Harmony nudged him out of the way and slammed her body against the door using all the force she could to try and open it. It didn't budge. "Well great. Looks like I'm gonna die in here with a bunch of losers" Alisha huffed. Harmony sighed with irritation. "Look, none of us want to be in this situation either blonde but there isn't anything we can do about it. The most we can do is wait and try to contact help ASAP. Does anybody have cell service in here?" Everyone pearled down at theirs phones quickly and shook their heads with defeat. Lexi laughed, "Guess we are stuck in here for a while guys. Better get comfy."
     Another two hours had passed since the five of them had attempted to exit the closet and currently they were scattered in various parts of the room looking bored, uncomfortable and worried. Lexi was leaning against the far left corner of the wall twirling a piece of her blue striped black hair through her fingers while whistling quietly under her breath. Daniel and Alisha were in the far right hand corner of the room and were huddled together comforting each other. Jack and Harmony were on either sides of the door trying to brainstorm ways to get out or contact help. Abruptly,  a racket was heard right outside their door. Something or someone was being moved to the side. In the background exerted grunting could be made out too just barely. Harmony slowly slid to her feet and motioned for the others to grab an item in the room for a makeshift weapon. As she grabbed a nearby broom, Alisha picked up her spray bottle she was using earlier and Jack found a random sharp looking needle. Harmony and Jack stood right next to the door ready to attack with the others behind them, when unexpectedly the door popped open. Everyone's mouth opened in disbelief when they took in the girl standing in front of them. She was fairly short with a height of around 5'4 and was wearing cargo pants with an army pattern on them. Paired with the pants, she wore a plain black tank along with some worn, black combat boots for shoes. Her dark brown hair was swept back into a messy unkept ponytail and there even appeared to be a bloody cut across her right cheek, hardly fazing her. She eyed down everyone in the closet with a serious look in her eyes. "Well how did you bloody idiots end up in here?!" she asked in a smooth British accent. Harmony was the first to speak up and stated, "We were cleaning it for detention, when we heard commotion outside. There was screaming and unusual sounds. When we tried to leave ten minutes after, the door wouldn't budge, it was jammed." "Ah, yea there was a toppled desk blocking the door. I heard whispering in here so I figured I'd check. Low and behold here you are" the mysterious girl remarked. She then moved aside opening the door wider, allowing all five of them to stumble out. Alisha was the first to gasp when she saw the damage. As expected there was a broken desk pushed off to the side with papers scattered everywhere, assumably, where Mrs. Oliver was working. But the most horrific part was right across the hall, Mrs. Oliver's body lay on the ground completely encased by a pool of blood. She had a kitchen knife sticking out of her side and much like other victims of the murderer, her arms were amputated and nowhere to be seen. Daniel looked away gagging and puked into a trash can nearby. Alisha started crying and the other three looked purely terrified. The girl said, "I'll explain everything later. Right now we need to get out of here." There was a chorus of nods before Harmony asked, "What about Parker?! He was working in the library before we got brought here! We need to find him." The girl said, "alright I understand your concern but right now, we don't know where the killer is and it wouldn't be exactly smart to prance around searching right now. Plus he's probably already dead." Immediately after she finished her sentence, a loud gunshot echoed through the halls with a high pitched scream following it. Alisha started crying harder, falling to the floor in sobs. Cargo pants girl looked at her and yelled, "Stop being pathetic and get your ass up. There's no time for whining otherwise you'll end up dead. Let's get a move on." She urged everyone to head toward the exit. Once they were  all up, she pulled out a gun and started leading them toward the exit, her gun aimed, ready to fire at any given moment. Quietly Harmony asked, "What's your name anyways?!" She smirked and replied, "The names Court. Now get your arses moving because I can sense that the killer isn't far and I for one don't want to test him."