Once and Forever

Prologue

My name is Claire Angela Glor.

When I was eight and a half years old, I witnessed my parents being murdered. Up in my room, I heard them screaming. I rushed to the stairs and saw my mother laying on the coffee table underneath the bogeyman, who had a steak knife in his hand. My dad was already dead, stabbed in his chest and laying a few feet away on the floor. He must have been killed during his attempts to save us.

My mother turned her head in my direction and saw me starring at them, covering my mouth to remind me not to scream. When she spotted me on the stairs she mouthed, "I'm sorry" and released a tear, just before this dread slit up her throat. I observed my mother, gasping for air, fighting to stay alive, but I new she was dying. It felt like hours, but when I realized they couldn't be saved, I fled back to my room and hid in my closet.

The stairs creaked and I knew he was coming to get me. He slowly opened the door to my room and entered. I shivered and cried silently with my eyes closed. Absolutely terrified I knew I was next.

His heavy steps got louder, striding towards me, coming towards my hiding place. He stood in front of the hatch, scaring me. He had found me. He ripped the closet doors open and I looked into the eyes of my biggest nightmare. My parents' murderer was covered with their blood, still holding the dripping murder weapon in his hand.

He laughed with an evil deep and shallow voice. Then he turned around and left me. I crouched back together and tried to sleep, maybe everything would be okay when I wake up, maybe it was just a nightmare and I just need to wake up. But it wasn't! The next morning I called 101. Child services took me to an orphanage close to Edinburgh, which was far away from home.

The killer, who I now called the bogeyman, because my mother had always told me, that he'd get me if I'd misbehaved, had also attacked two more families and left their children as orphans behind. They arrived in the same orphanage in Edinburgh, Scotland and from that moment on through destiny we were linked together.

First they didn't put us in the same room, but having these nightmares all the time, we had to be together and support each other, because we knew what we had experienced, how we felt seeing our parents die. We could help each other to survive in this world, that has changed so drastically from one moment to the next. But we had good times as well; living together we became like sisters and shared the most intimate secrets among us. Sometimes we only had to look at each other and we knew what the other one was thinking or what was bothering her. Even holidays and Christmas were spent together, preparing special moments for each other's birthdays and supporting us for good and for bad days.

As the police never found the bogeyman, we were still scared to know, that he was still out there and had seen us personally. We had this constant fear of him turning up suddenly and killing us the way he did it with our dearest families.

We wanted to find him and decided to try it on the spiritual way. We wanted to ask our parents to help and to support us; giving us some indications or leads to catch him. So we decided nine years later to do a spiritual session in a barn close to the orphanage. We were nearly eighteen and would be out of this hellhole soon. We went out on a full moon and crossed the field to get to the neglected shed. Nobody would have thought, that anything bad could happen.

Like in the films we were sitting in a circle, holding hands and had candles lit around us with an old wooden ghost board in front of us. We tried to contact the spirits, but it didn't work. We sat there for a quarter on an hour or so, but nothing happened. We already started to doubt the board, when suddenly everything started to wreck down on us. The lights started to flicker and the wind blew the doors open and shut. We crouched together, holding and protecting each other. The ghost board hovered up and the pointer spelled the word "DEATH". The wooden board exploded in thousand pieces, which landed around us in a perfect circle.

The wind tilted the candles and set the barn on fire. The straw inflamed immediately and made it worse. The beams started to crack and soon the roof was going to fall in on our heads. We all jumped up and tried to run to the door, only to find out we couldn't leave the circle that was built around us. The roof was collapsing and beams started to fall in all directions. Our exit through the door was in vain. A burning beam was blocking our escape. We had to get out of this circle, so i crouched down and broke the circle. Finally we set our foot out of the circle and thank God there was a window, where we could climb out and escape. I lifted one after the other out of the small and narrow frame, saving their lives while I knew I was stuck. I couldn't get out like they did; the window was too high up.

The beams started to collapse on me and it hit me. I fell on the floor. The timber blocked my exit and I was trapped in the burning barn. I felt the oxygen running out and the smoke was closing my throat, which made it even harder to breathe. I lay on the floor gasping for air, like my mother did when I last saw her. I faintly heard the crackle and the hissing of the burning wood around me. I closed my eyes and accepted my destiny; I was going to die in here and there is nothing anyone could do. I felt myself slowly drifting away, going limp and falling into an infinite sleep.

I cast up my eyes and stare around me. I don't feel the heat anymore - I don't feel anything anymore. I squint my eyes to see better, and suddenly I see me, lying at the other end of the room under some beams, not breathing.

And that's how I died.