Kenneth Manor (Haunted)

Chapter Eleven

Call it fate, destiny, or God (or whatever you believe in). Somehow, I never fell in that fire. I was about three inches from the fire, and my ankle was hurting. My head banged against the forest floor. After the pounding in my head subsided, I looked to my left, and I saw Quinn, who was still pale and tired looking, but otherwise relieved that I was okay.

“Quinn?...” I started incredulously.

“I couldn’t let you die,” he said. “You’re my little sister.”

“No!!!” Amy exclaimed. “How did you escape?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Ask one of the creepy ghosts.”

Amy turned menacingly to one of her ghost guards. What most likely happened was that she couldn’t wait to let me go because the rest of her army released the hands of everyone else, therefore, no longer draining them.

Xavier immediately leaped to action. He had taken a pocket knife and cut himself free of his bonds. He then freed Charlie and everyone else in a matter of seconds. Amy was watching all of this stunned. Xavier and Charlie both yelled to all of us, who were now free from the rope bounding us to the trees, to run for it.

I could see the sun peeking out of the horizon to my left. I supposed that we were out in the wilderness for a long time because it was before noon when Trevor and I met with Xavier and Charlie. However, it was still considerably dark outside, and I couldn’t see where I was going. I tripped on branches and stones, my face getting scratched from low branches of trees. I felt like a blind man walking (or, running, in this case) toward an edge of a cliff.

“You can’t hide from me,” Amy’s voice echoed through the trees. “I will find you.”

I couldn’t tell how long we were running. It could have been ten minutes or fifteen, or twenty, or even an hour, but I ran the fastest and longest I could in my life, and I’m not sure I could have replicated that for my PE class.

It was approximately dawn when we approached the road. There were no cars speeding across it so when we reached the edge of the forest, we ran to the other side. By that time, Amy and her army reached the edge of the forest as well, but the sunlight shined upon them, and, with Amy looking at us in a rueful way, they exploded into ash.

We returned to the manor, sporting cuts and bruises on our faces. My mom treated everyone with her first-aid kit, and I sat down next to Quinn.

“Thank you so much, Quinn,” I said. “You were really brave.”

“There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you guys. I couldn’t let you be the hero,” he smiled. “Besides, I like having a little sister even if she annoys me at times.”

We both smiled at each other and hugged.

I walked over to Trevor and asked him if he was okay. He just nodded and wouldn’t look at me. We were silent for a while, and I was afraid he was still mad at me for what I had said at the park yesterday so I told him, “I’m sorry-”

At the same time he said. “I’m not mad-”

“Oh,” we said at the same time.

“I never meant what I said back there,” I said gently. “I was just so angry at mainly everyone and everything that I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. I never meant to say that I never wanted to meet you.”

“It’s fine,” he said. “I’m not mad. It’s kinda hard to be when your new best friend almost died, and you had to be chased through a forest with an army of angry ghosts chasing you. We’re good?”

“Yeah,” I smiled and hugged him.

I looked to where Adam was sleeping on the couch. With everything that happened in the past 24 hours, I forgot that he was even there. A bandage was on his cheek, and the possibility of what could have happened to all of us was too much and a tear rolled down my face.

Xavier and Charlie were in the kitchen having tea silently. I think the both of them were still trying to process what happened last night, and how we barely escaped with our lives. My parents were at the base of the stairs; my mother’s head was resting on my father’s shoulder. I walked over to them and we embraced, both silently thankful that we were all alive. After a while, my mother started crying and so did I. I think my dad was crying too, but when I asked him about it later, he denied it.

After hugging my parents, I was wondering who was that person watching the house from the woods.