When The Monsters Roam: Part 8

Chapter 5, Part 1: Flickers

Evelynn shifted to peer around the fort. The air felt thicker, almost, with a red sheen on it all like those colored glasses she used to play with as a kid. Except now seeing the world like this felt strangely unsettling. Her stomach turned like a washing machine, over and over, as she got up. Alex was no longer next to her. Jack was gone from the corner. In fact, everyone else was completely gone.

She blinked, quite a few times, trying to tell if she was dreaming or hallucinating something again. All the flashlights shone red now, just like earlier. It was like their world had frozen, not flickering back like before.

Evelynn pushed herself up, knees scraping the tiles, sending a shiver up her back. She was realizing with a start that the room had gotten freezing. As if they were back in winter and not spring, around the temperature of snow days.

“Guys?” She calls out, biting her lip as no one answers, starting to move her fingers against each other for them to do something, anything.

As the moments drag on, she resorts to walking around alone. If it was truly dangerous here, if the monster had gotten her, she needed to prepare, right? It seemed logical to her.

Evelynn took deep breaths to concentrate as she crouched near the opening of the fort, grabbing her bat from the weapons laid out there. The thick, nicely weighted wood felt nice, but strange in her hand. Maybe she should have let one of the boys take this one, since they played baseball, but it had seemed the easiest to use.

The dagger scared her a little, but she pockets it in her pajama pants, the soft fluff not soothing her rapidly beating heart.

Evelynn debated leaving. It was stupid to wait like a sitting duck, especially since if the monster got her, it must know exactly where she would be, but she wonders if it was a smart monster. Would it think she’d leave, so it can chase and kill her around the school? But in the end, she found it was better just not to sit and wait for her death to arrive. She didn’t believe she could fight it, whatever it truly was.

Her freezing hand gently brushed back the blanket they had put in the door area, scanning the surroundings for danger. Evelynn could tell she was shaking where she stood. But who could blame her? When nothing seemed too threatening, she slipped out of the fort. 

It felt terrifying all out in the open, so she didn’t waste time jogging as light as she could out of the cafeteria, the creepy red moonlight filtering through the windows in the thickened air, the immense room now daunting and unfamiliar.

The far-reaching hallways weren’t much more comforting than the cafeteria, making her speed up in her travels. The red lights faltered as she made it to a turn and the staircase. Evelynn paused, momentarily looking over her shoulder. The shadows seemed to stretch slightly, making the washing machine stomach return.

Evelynn didn’t stick around when the reddened lights faltered again, grabbing the railing of the stairwell for a sharp turn, bolting up them. There was a loud crash, mimicking the rise and crash of her own inner-beating heart. She glanced around for only mere seconds, but saw something that almost froze her in place. The horror would have rooted her there if it hadn’t given her the exact boost of adrenaline required to propel herself higher up the steps.

Behind her, loud noises of bangs, crashes, stomps, and crackles rose as the shadows continued to solidify together into an elongated humanoid creature, heading straight toward her with wide, empty eye sockets that would be burned into her vision forever.