Chapter 2: Five years later
Everything’s gone bad again; I was tidying up Libby’s room when I found these weird metal discs. She’s seven years old, so I was a bit creeped out to find something so weird in her room. When I went to ask her about the disc, I couldn’t find her downstairs. I went and looked in my room and she was there, but she didn’t look like Libby. It was scary; she was sitting on the floor, her hair streaked again, touching the big door in my room. Yes, that’s what I said, the big door. It was back. It hadn’t been in my room that morning, but as I stood in the open doorway, I swathe faint outlines of it. It wasn’t yet solid, but chances were that it would be soon enough.
Then I looked down to my darling sister, and screamed as I saw her touching the nearly-there handle.
“LIBBY! GET AWAY!” My hands were shaking violently, I was terrified. Libby’s head snapped towards me, and she looked completely different, like she did when she was ill five years ago, only ten times worse. As she took in my angry appearance, her lip began to tremble and her eyes widened. I thought she was about to start crying when she opened her mouth. Only two syllables came out.
“Help me,” she said faintly, before falling to the ground. Once she had fallen, a thousand different features seemed to show on her face, she had black hair one second, red hair the next. Her nose changed from a button, to a snout to a point. What was happening to my little sister?
“MUM!” I shouted, my voice breaking slightly. It couldn’t be happening again, the man had said it wouldn’t happen again, but here she was. I had believed we were fine, normal even. And was it wrong for me to think that? After five years, couldn’t I hope for normality? I attempted to pry the discs from my sister’s hands, but she held onto it tight. I didn’t even know how she had gotten it into her hands, hadn’t I had it a moment ago? Now that I looked closely, they looked more like a medallions than discs, with little carvings covering them. Why was my mother not coming?
“Mum! Come quickly, something’s wrong with Libby!” I shouted. Almost immediately I heard the rapid succession of thump-thump-thump’s up the stairs. I turned and saw my mother and father standing in my room, mouths open, wearing masks of indescribable horror. My mother let out a strangled cry and fell to the floor, crying, and my father began pacing. What was wrong with them? Why weren’t they doing anything?
“W-w-what should I do? Mum? Dad? Help me!” I sobbed. Seeing them react this badly was making me feel worse, but I had to do something, I had to make my little sister better! I may not have seen how bad she was the last time she was ill, but I was only twelve. But I was older now, more responsible. Libby and I had become close over the years, despite our unusually large age difference.
“I can’t deal with this right now, it’s just, oh my gosh, I can’t!” my mother cried. Over the years, my mother’s nerves had become increasingly worse. She got scared at the slightest thing, something like this was sure to set her off.
“I-I know mum, but, we really have to do something, quickly!” I said, trying extremely hard to keep my voice even. But my mother didn’t say anything. “Dad?” I asked. One of them had to do something, they were the parents, and they were the mature ones! My dad looked up for the first time since he had seen my sister, looked at her again, looked at me, nodded once and walked out. Moments later, I heard the front door close and the car engine start. This was not how I wanted it to be dealed with.
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Just hours later I was sitting on a plane with Libby, who had eventually woken up again, but had not stayed conscious for long as I saw her now, fast asleep. I sighed, mulling over the day’s events, following her falling unconscious.
