Clinging to Friendship

Chapter 19

Layne held his hand out to me which I took gratefully, and he yanked me up to my feet. Urp… I quickly took my hand out of his and covered my mouth with it, standing up like that just made me feel incredibly nauseous, I had no idea if I’d be able to help Layne out with this fight against the shadow monster if just standing up made me nauseous.

“Do you think you can fight?” he asked me quietly. I shook my head. I would definitely not be able to do anything to help him out in this fight. “Ok… If you can help Kian out of here, I’ll attempt to fend him off as we go.” I nodded and carefully walked over to Kian, Layne was throwing salt at the monster, keeping it far away from us. It growled angrily, stalking back and forth waiting to be able to come and kill us.

I knelt before Kian and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, using all of my strength to pull him up. He groaned and attempted to wiggle out of my grasp and I tapped him gently on the face as a punishment for him trying to fight against me. I took my first step and I almost fell over. Good god, he was much heavier then what I expected. I adjusted how I was holding him up, and I started trudging out of the classroom.

“There’s a door nearby that Poppy and I managed to get out of. It’s near where we had our argument…” he explained, trailing off. I grunted, acknowledging that I had heard him and headed to the other hallway. Layne followed behind me and Kian, throwing salt whenever the shadow monster would get too close to us. Whenever it would get hit by the salt, the monster would start to growl louder. I almost wanted to tell Layne to leave it alone for a little bit, I didn’t want to know what would happen if we made the thing too mad. Yet I didn’t tell him, we were so close, and I could see the doors when the footsteps stopped.

Layne grabbed my shoulder and pulled me to a stop. “Its’ gone. The monster is gone,” he whispered. I turned around so quickly I thought I was about to add a case of whiplash to my concussion. When I was able to focus on the dark hallway I noticed that he was right, the monster had disappeared.

“Did it finally leave us alone?” I asked hopeful, getting slightly excited. “Are we safe?” I almost wanted to jump up and down with glee, but my excitement and hope were short lived. Very short lived. When I turned back to the door, the monster was right there in front of me. It snatched the salt bag out of Layne’s hand and threw the bag somewhere behind it. It smiled menacingly, showing every single one of its five-inch-long teeth.

I actually screamed. How could I not scream? The thing was like a foot away from me. Layne grabbed the skillet that I had been holding onto and threw it at the thing in front of me. Though it disappeared just before the skillet could hit it, but it soon materialized after it had hit the ground. It stepped closer, closing the 2-foot gap between us.

Kian took that moment to groan in pain, and I’m pretty sure that the makeshift bandage I had made was starting to slip off, despite how tight I had attempted to make it. We had probably been walking too fast for how injured he was, and he looked so much paler… too pale than what was probably normal for a black man. Even though, I had tried so hard… We had tried so hard and now we were going to die.

“Poppy!” Layne screamed desperate for his sister to hear him. The monster chuckled, that eerie deep dolphin laugh echoing around us. I noticed then that I was shaking like a leaf, my teeth chattering as it was slowly becoming colder, almost freezing in temperature. I breathed out, noticing that I could see my breath. How had it become so cold? A freezing cold hand gripped my left shoulder and I jolted.

“J-Ji-Yeong? Look…” He whimpered in fear. I turned to look at what had grabbed my shoulder and saw a huge blue ghostly figure and right beside him, a more petite figure. The first figure was almost 6 ft tall, towering over me, but not as big as the shadowy creature in front of us. It let go of my shoulder and stepped in front of me and the monster. The smaller figure beside it followed in turn.

The tall one stared back at me and hidden in the ghostly glow, was a man’s face. He smiled calmly at the three of us, before turning back around again. His demeanor changing immediately, his body seemed to hunch in on itself, and his hands were clenched into fists so tight that his entire body seemed to shake. He ran straight for the monster and slammed himself into the thing, knocking the two of them to the ground.

The ghostly figure that had been beside him glided back over to us and that was when I saw that it was a woman. She rested her hand on both my and Layne’s arm and with that touch, I began to feel rested and much better than when this night started. She noticed Kian, who was now somehow on the floor… when did I put him down? She knelt down and pressed her hand onto Kian’s makeshift bandage. Grimacing, she left her hand there for a couple more seconds before standing back up.

The ghostly woman walked over to where the man and the monster fighting against each other. While the woman had been helping us, the man and the monster had been tearing each other apart. The man was ragged, the beautiful blue light that was a part of his body was falling to the ground. The monster was shaking, black blood dripping from its body. The ghostly woman cried out when she noticed her partner the way he was, which drew the man to notice her approaching and he pushed the monster away from him. The shadowy monster was now angrier than before, because of her interruption. It screeched, the sound earsplitting, making my ears feel like they were bleeding from the sound. Layne and I covered our ears, attempting to protect them from its screaming. Yet somehow, it seemed like it was growing louder, ever increasing. The monster growled and lowered itself to its four feet. It stormed toward her, its feet shaking the ground as it ran. She opened her arms to accept the shadowy creature and as soon as it hit her, a bright blue flash of light blinded us. The entire room flooded with that light and lasted for so long I thought that my vision would never return. But when it did, the man, woman, and the creature were gone.

“Layne! Kian! Ji-Yeong! Are you in there?” Her voice was the first thing we heard, then her footsteps pounded against the tile. She was running back, sprinting back so fast to get to us that she was almost tripping over her feet. As she got closer she started slowing down once she noticed that the creature was no longer around us. She kneeled down in front of us once she reached the three of us. “Where is it? What happened?”

I shrugged, I was still in shock over what happened just a moment ago. “I…I don’t know… I think that – that the couple had been killed by the monster showed up…”

She didn’t speak. Poppy looked like she was just as lost as we were. I have no idea where they went or what just happened but… for some reason, the school felt safe now.

“Let’s get out of here… I don’t want to risk being here anymore…” Layne spoke up this time. He helped Kian up from the floor and I joined him in helping carry him out. All three of us headed toward the open door, where red and blue lights were shining in the distance.