The Sleepwalker Chapter 4

Chapter 4

We walk to Tyler’s house because it's the closest. We see some people in their kitchens but when they see us they quickly close their curtains. We get to Tyler’s house. The windows are dark and and the curtains in the upstairs bedrooms are closed like the people inside are still asleep. Tyler goes up to the door and stops. He turns around.

“You guys wanna come in?” he asks

“Ok” I say.

We walk in and stand awkwardly in the front hall. He motions for us to come into the kitchen. We follow silently and I lean against the counter.

“I’m gonna go see if my parents are awake. The lounge is that way,” He points to a doorway, “and there are snacks in the cupboard”  he twists around to point to an open door that seems to lead to a huge pantry.

He walks through the door we just came from and disappears up the grand staircase. I walk to the pantry and open the door fully. Huge was an understatement. It's about as big as my bedroom at home! I walk around and spot some chocolate. I quickly sneak a piece and plop it in my mouth. It's delicious and I savour the taste on my tongue. It has been so long since I’ve had chocolate I’ve almost forgotten the taste. I carry on my search for food and grab an apple. I go back out to the kitchen, munching as I walk. I keep walking through the kitchen to the lounge.

Penelope has made herself at home and is sprawled out on one of the ginormous leather couches. Justin is looking a bit uncomfortable and is a bit rigid in the back but looks like he's enjoying the comfort of the recliner he is in. I walk over to the other recliner and sit in it just as there is a strangled cry from upstairs.

I sprint.

I reach the landing and race up to the first floor, following the sound of the cry. I head toward a door and open it. It's empty. I try the next one. Also empty. I go to the door across the hall.

Bingo.

Tyler is sitting on the floor. I look around.

His parents are lying in a blood bath. Their throats are slit from ear to ear and they have cavities in their chests. Their faces are set in silent screams and their eyes are open. Well they would be if their eyes weren't dangling on their cheeks.  

  

The Sleepwalker Chapter 3

Chapter 3

In the morning I wake up and almost have a panic attack. I forgot where I was for a moment. I stumble over the others to get to the door. I head towards the toilets and don’t see the blood until I almost slip on it. I look down and see a small puddle of it. Then I see a trail of drips.  Then I see a smear on the wall

I follow the drips and smears until it comes to a door. It’s the door to the bathroom. I hesitantly open the door, scared to see what’s inside. There is only a giant puddle of blood. I can’t see anyone inside. I search the stalls but don’t find anyone so I go back to the photography room. The trail of blood goes into the room. I go in and walk until the blood disappears. Until I’m standing over Maddy. Her face is deadly pale and her lips have got a blueish tint. Her blanket has dark red stain on it as well. I instantly know that it is her blood on the toilet floor and in the hall. I feel a bit sick and the food in my stomach starts to come up. I swallow it back down and cringe at the taste of the bile. I check her pulse even though I know that it's useless. She's gone.

I wake Tyler up and together we take Maddy’s body out of the room, He doesn’t ask questions but sees the blood on the floor of the hall. We put Maddy’s body in a room a couple of doors down from ours until we decide what to do with it, and go back to the others.

Penelope has woken up and is looking at the blood questionably, when she hears us she looks up.

“What is that?” She asks pointing to the stain,

“Ummm…” I look at Tyler for support in the conversation but he's  quickly found something to do.

“Where’s Maddy?” Penelope says. I think she's got a heap of questions ready to load on me about this so I say,

“I’ll explain later, when Justin wakes up.”

When he does wake up Penelope nags at me like a little kid would if his mum had said he could have chocolate soon. Really annoyingly. The boys turn their heads to look at me and Justin says

“Yeah, where is she”

How am I going to explain this?

So I start from when I woke up needing to go to the toilet. I tell them everything and when I get to the part where I wake up Tyler, he starts adding in some details that I forget.

Penelope is quiet throughout the story but her facial expressions vary from horrified to disgusted to sad. When me and Tyler finish, Justin asks how Maddy got back from the toilets.

“I don’t know.” I say, “I think she might have dragged herself against the wall”

“Mmm…” Justin’s face is set deep in thought, “yeah, maybe”

He leaves to look at the hallway walls and the conversation dies. I go to to the class next

door to look out the window. It's drizzling outside now and there are giant puddles on the path. I look at my watch. School must be out today because it's 9.30 and nobody is here.

I walk back to the photography room.

Someone has gone to get ‘breakfast’ from the cafeteria and they are all digging in.

I don’t feel like eating after what I saw this morning so I turn down Penelope's’ offer of cold casserole and go for a walk. I end up in the library. It looks so peaceful in here. I wander and look at the books and find a couple that I like, and go back out to the hallway I go through the book detectors. I haven’t checked the books out so the power must be out.

But there’s the emergency generator?  

Why isn't that on? I leave the library and go back to the photography room.

I walk in and find Penelope, Tyler and Justin lounging on the tables. There is stuff

everywhere.

I grab my bag and start stuffing my P.E. uniform into it.

“I think we should go into town now.” I say “You know, to go home to our families”

“Yeah,” Tyler adds “We should go, it's like 2 o’clock and all we’ve done is sit on our butts”

Justin and Penelope say ok and they get their stuff together. We go to the front doors and look out. It has stopped drizzling but it is still grey and gloomy. We walk out the front gates and onto the street.

It looks like zombieland.

The Sleepwalker Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Me and my friends duck under the table. We’ve never had a lockdown before so this is serious stuff. Everyone is whispering from under the tables and the teachers are frantically trying to keep us quiet. That’s not hard for me, I’ve never been much of a talker, but it’s hard for other people. Like Bethany Whyte. She’s the school gossip queen. At the moment she’s bawling her eyes out. Not surprising, while she may the school gossip queen she is also quite soft on the inside.

Unlike english, the lockdown seemed to only take 5 minutes. Which is sad as I wouldn’t have minded not going to science. Finally the teachers come out from their hiding spots and tell us that it is safe to go back to our classrooms.

The rest of the day goes by really fast. I just want to go home to mum to see if she's alright. When the bell rings for the end of the day, everyone rushes for the doors, only to be stopped by security guards. Apparently we aren't allowed outside until our parents come and pick us up.

I'm at school with a couple of other kids. There's about 5 of us in total waiting for our parents to come come. The police have gone and so have the teachers. We were going to wait for the rain to stop but it doesn't look like it's stopping anytime soon. We decide to go to the office and turn on the heaters. There is an old log burner in there as well, just in case the power goes out.         

When we get there, we dump our bags on the floor or the desk and sit in the waiting chairs. We sit there in silence for a while. Someone gets up and starts pacing, stopping every once in awhile to look out the window. It's around 5 P.M. and it's already getting dark.  Suddenly their breath hitches and I look up. The person is Penelope, she’s part of Bethany’s group.  I scan the rest of the room. I hadn’t really paid any attention to the rest of the kids. There is Tyler, he’s the quarterback of the football team and doesn’t do that well in the academic side of school, Justin is on the mathletes team and Maddy, I don’t actually know much about her. But she’s really shy. I look back at Penelope. Her face has gone white under her fake tan and she’s shaking her head. I go over to see what's wrong and peek out the window.

There is a man walking towards us. The car headlights are on and he is covered in blood. He has an axe, also covered in blood. He is around forty years old and has a bruise over his right eye. He is coming right towards the window and raising his axe. I stumble backwards and grab the back of Penelope’s shirt to pull her back too. Then l run. So does Penelope. I grab my bag off the desk and bolt to the door. I look back and see the others copying suit, but looking confused.

I open the door and run down the hall. I head towards the photo room because there are no windows. I can hear the rest of the group behind me. I reach the room and open the door. I go and sit on one of the tables while the rest of us come in demanding an explanation. Penelope has got some of her colour back and is sitting on the teacher’s chair with her head in her hands. Tyler comes over to me to ask what was out there because Penelope, it seems, has gone into shock and isn’t talking to anyone.

“There was this dude.” I say

“Yeah? Why is that scary?”

“Because,” I reply. “The dude was covered in blood, had  bruise on his eye and was holding an axe that was also covered in blood.”

“Oh”

He went over to the other side of the room to try to comfort Penelope, who was now sobbing.

We decided to stay the night so Maddy and I went to the sick bay to grab blankets out of the cupboard. We also got some food from the cafeteria for dinner. We were silent the whole time. When we got back, Penelope had tipped over and stacked some desks to make a changing room or something like that and had changed into her ‘night clothes’ which turned out to be her P.E. uniform.

We put the blankets and food on a desk and turned around. It seemed like the other two had made their own little bedrooms too. Later that night we ate leftovers from lunch that day. Then we went to sleep.

The Sleepwalker Chapter 1

Chapter 1

It's freezing. I'm sitting in class and it's raining outside. Great. Mums not gonna pick me up and nobody can be stuffed to ask if I want a ride home.

   “Olivia! Are you listening?” Ugh. Mr Cooper. He’s my english teacher and he is sooooo grumpy!

“Yeah” I answer tiredly

He goes back to whatever rubbish he was explaining about before and the rest of the class goes back to almost falling asleep. After what seemed like forever the bell goes and everyone hurries out the door still waking up from their afternoon nap. I walk to the cafeteria and sit down at the usual table and wait for my friends to come, which will be ages because pretty much everyone has decided to buy lunch today. I don’t buy my lunch, there’s no point even asking for it ‘cause mum will just say no. So I wait for my friends while they wait for food. Then they finally come and we talk about stuff like, school, home, the weekend, and what we’ll be doing in the holidays. Suddenly the bell goes. What!? Lunch isn’t over for another 10 minutes! Then teachers start running in telling us to get under tables and hide while they close the curtains.

I get it now.

It’s a lock down.