Rune Keepers

Fourteen

I jolted awake, sitting up right in my bed I held a hand to my heart and felt it pounding heavily in my chest. Long strands of hair were stuck to my forehead with sweat, I calmed myself looking around the room noting that I was safe.

The early morning sun was peeking through the gaps in my curtains, I glanced at the time. It was only 6:45am, I sighed knowing I wasn't going to fall back to sleep after that so I climbed out of bed and padded into my bathroom.
Hoping a cold shower would wash away the sweat covering my body and the feeling like that thing in my dream was still hovering over me.

I turned the shower on and stripped naked, looking at myself in the big rectangle mirror above the sink I turned and saw two scrapes on my shoulder.
I'd have to hide those from Frank and Eve until they healed, I didn't bother trying to look at the back of my head, so I just walked into the shower and braced myself for the cold water.

It was just a nightmare I told myself as I scrubbed my body, but it felt so real.
I couldn't remember the last time I'd had a nightmare, let alone a nightmare that stuck with me even after I had woken up. I used to have them often as a child and then one day they just stopped.

My body went rigid as I thought back to those nightmares, the soap I was holding dropped to the floor with a loud clatter.

Pieces of my memory began flashing before me and my heart began beating heavily once more.
The alleyway, there was no person Adrian was running from, no, I remembered.
I remembered seeing something huge, something three times the size of Adrian, maybe more. It was so dark but it couldn't have just been a shadow, because the more I thought about my nightmare the more it made sense.
I had seen it before, once. Whatever it was, I just couldn't remember where, but I had a feeling it caused my insomnia as a child. Was it in a dream all that long ago?

But Adrian, he had lied. He knew just as well as I did that there was-

I had to stop, I needed to stop thinking about it before I froze to death under the now lukewarm water and went mad trying to figure it all out.

He would give me answers the next time I saw him, I told myself and I wasn't going to let him lie his way through it.

Because before he ran after me, before I blacked out, he was walking right towards the black shadow at the end of the alleyway.
That I remembered.

***

When Monday morning came around, I walked through the school gates looking like a wounded puppy. My body was exhausted and I knew the bags under my eyes were very visible even after my attempt at covering them with light makeup.

Eve had spent the morning fussing over me, making my breakfast which I hardly ate and insisting that I stay home and rest, she thought I was sick.
I wished that was the case. Instead I had barely slept thanks to the never ending stream of nightmares and the more I had them, the more crazy I felt. What I was thinking sounded insane, anyone would think I had lost my mind if I told them and that just made it worse.

Neither Frank nor Eve showed any knowledge that I had not been in my bed on Saturday night, so I had nodded along when they assumed I was so tired because I'd been studying and working on my presentation at night.

It felt like a punch in the gut lying to their faces but it was the best I could do at that point. They wouldn't even believe me if I tried telling them what happened anyway.

I walked to my English lit class quietly, taking one step at a time and scanning every wall for him.
I had so many questions, I just didn't know if I could bring myself to ask them all. Would he think I am crazy too?

When I stepped into the classroom there were still students walking around, gossiping to their friends. Imogen was sitting on top of the desk Lisa was sitting at when I reached them.
Lisa's eyes widened when she saw me and Imogen noticed then followed her gaze, as soon as she spotted me, she jumped off the desk and closed the gap between us.

"Newbie!" her voice was perky, "how's the head? I haven't heard from you since the other night," she said.

"Sorry I lost my phone, I was hoping Jason might have found it and given it back yesterday if he did," I walked over to my desk and slumped my body into it.

"You do realise how miserable you look," Imogen smirked at me, trying to lighten my mood and I couldn't help but fall for her trap.
She was like a ball of energy that drew you to her.

"Trust me, I realise because it's probably as bad as I feel, now go sit down," I gently pushed her away from my desk. "You're too happy and it's making it hard to wallow in my miserableness."
She laughed and stepped behind me, leaning on my shoulders so she could whisper in my ear as our teacher started calling the class to order.

"I still need to get the full story from you at some point, I haven't been able to contact Jason either so I don't know what actually happened to you apart from the fact that you hit your head."
She stood up and let go of my shoulder to sit at her desk behind me, I turned around thinking about what she had said.

"Wait you haven't heard from Jase?"

She simply shook her head at the same moment the words "Miss Scott," echoed in my ears. My spine straightened at the sound of my name being called. "Is there something you would like to share with the class?
I turned to see not only our teacher glaring at me with small beady eyes, but also the entire classroom full of students.

"No," I gulped. "Sorry it won't happen again," I informed him and looked down at my empty desk. What if he went back to the alleyway to look for my phone and something happened to him, like I said it could. Oh gods if anything happened to Jason I couldn't live with myself.

I spent the next few hours forcing myself to stay awake and when I wasn't doing that, I was worrying about Jason.

***

Every muscle in my body relaxed itself when Imogen and I walked towards our usual table in the cafeteria and I saw Jason hidden behind a pair of black sunglasses, sitting with Joel and Lisa.

Joel was giving him an earful for wearing glasses inside when I sat down in between Lisa and Imogen with my lunch.
I was going to ask Jason how the rest of the night went and if he had managed to look for my phone, now that he was in front of me and I knew he was safe. But the table suddenly went quiet as the three of them looked behind me, above my head.

I turned around slow and saw Adrian, dressed in all black like usual, his white-blonde hair was a mess on the top of his head and he too looked like he hadn't slept either.
What annoyed me was how he managed to still look extremely bloody good. Dick.

"Can we talk?" he asked in a polite tone that surprised me, sending me into shock for half a second.

I looked back at the group, they were all watching him with eyes as wide as mine felt, apart from Jason who was aggressively stabbing his fries with a fork.

"Uh, sure," I got up from the table awkwardly, unsure of where this was leading.

"Let's go for a walk,'' he insisted, I nodded and followed cautiously.