Ashes and Ghosts (Major Spoilers for Little Hope)

Chapter Ten

As the group entered through the backyard, Angela seemed to stop, her eyes squinting into the fog. "You guys see that?!" She called out, looking back at them. As Beverly moved forward with the rest of the group, she could make out the sillouette of the little girl they'd been chasing after this whole time, followed by the others noticing the girl's presence.

As the child had seen them coming, she started to run off. "Stay on your toes, anything could happen." John warned his students as they started cautiously approaching the child. Beverly had been incredibly nervous, since the little girl's presence always seemed to be followed by some intense situations.

Then the fog began to roll in again, Beverly able to hear some more screaming, and before she knew it everyone except Taylor had disappeared into the fog entirely. The occurance had been proceeded by a creature's screeching, causing Beverly to start expecting another attack any second now. "Shit, it's back to finish me off!" She insisted, moving closer to Taylor, not wanting to be separated from anyone else. The teen presumed everyone else was stuck in a flashback, so that just left her and Taylor to fend the creature off.

"Here, take this to defend yourself with." Taylor asserted, taking out the knife they'd taken from the museum earlier on and handing it to her classmate. Beverly thought about declining to take it, but decided that she'd fair better if she was armed and took it anyway. She had to admit, she felt a little bit safer holding onto the knife.

The screech sounded out again, this time sounding even closer than it did before. And then, suddenly without warning, the creature hunting Beverly showed itself, grabbing her and tackling her to the ground. At first she tried kicking it away, but it only crawled back on top of her again, with tighter clutches. "Beverly!" Taylor yelled, also in a panic, grabbing a tree branch and smacking it into the creature's face, which made the thing let go of Beverly and stumble backwards a bit.

This gave the teen time to prepare the knife for an attack. This time when the creature went back in for the grab, Beverly stabbed the weapon into the thing's hand, stopping it from getting hold of her.

However, a rock came flying at the demon's face out of the blue, though it hadn't been Taylor that had thrown it, since she was busy attempting to haul Beverly to her feet before the creature could scramble on top of her again. When the girls looked over in the direction the rock had come from, they found the bus driver rushing over to them, much to their surprise.

"Are you two alright?" The man asked, coming to help Taylor get Beverly to her feet. Though the teen had been in shock from the sudden attack, and the appearance of the bus driver. "Yeah, we're ok, more or less." Beverly answered after a moment. "Thank you for the help." She thanked him, a brief expression of relief on her face. The creature even seemed to stop coming at them, the fog starting to clear, revealing the four that had been experiencing the flashback.

The trio rushed over to the rest of the group once they were properly back in the present. "What happened? Tell us." Taylor probed, fishing for information on what they'd just seen, looking between her classmates. John had been the next one to speak up out of the group. "We don't have a lot of time." Had been his response, before he looked at the bus driver, a little surprised to see him there. "I see you two found our bus driver?" The professor asked, his gaze shifting over to Taylor and Beverly. "Not quite, while you guys were in that flashback, Beverly got attacked again. He helped us fight the creature off." Taylor explained.

Though Angela had been fixated on what John had just said before he'd mentioned the bus driver. "Time for what?" The older woman inquired, looking at the professor with an expression of slight confusion on her face. Beverly assumed he'd meant that there hadn't been a lot of time before there would be another attack, which brought her to the conclusion that they'd possibly just witnessed the execution of John's double.