IX | Primary School Ghost Hauntings (3)

'Tch. I escaped many schemes those fourth-grade brats made before. If not because of that thing I wanna check, hell would freeze over for me to fall against that petty scheme.' Lauriel thought disdainfully, but her face did not give any of her thoughts away, staying as stoic as it could for a seven-year old.

"By the way, Jacque. You can go home first this afternoon, I'm going to play with that white lotus."

Jacqueline gave her a look but didn't comment about it, completely understanding what her friend wants to do.

"Just make sure you do it cleanly." the brunette reminded lightly after a few minutes, making Lauriel laugh as if she heard a joke.

"Oh, Jacque. It's not like I'm killing someone."

"Oh yeah? As far as I know, 'kill' has a different definition in your vocabulary!"

"What's this? You did not get tongue-tied saying 'vocabulary'? How neat!"

-bang-

"Shut up!" Jacqueline hit Lauriel's shoulder, the latter laughing merrily as she started to run away from her friend.

"Come back here!"

---

Afternoon classes ended in a flash, making a certain group of troublemakers excited and anxious at the same time.

Lauriel, nonchalantly arranging her things in the bag, smelled the strong emotions coming from a girl standing by the door, not-so discreetly glaring at her while waiting for her lackies. She's purposefully moving slow to wait for Cathy's move so she doesn't have to put up an act.

But to her disappointment, she already finished packing up her things and was already at the back door but they merely left the classroom. She tilted her head in thought, contemplating if they backed out of their plan or it changed.

"Impossible." Lauriel thought then started walking. As she was absent-minded, she bumped into someone. She muttered an apology and looked up only to see a familiar set of brown eyes which looked like Alice's (her classmate).

Ah. Cathy is pretty smart.

Lauriel recognized the girl she bumped into as Alice's older sister, Alicia. The girl smiled at her saying, "Mr. Ango is looking for you in the computer lab. Follow me."

The ravenette was stumped. What is this? She has no choice but to comply? What the hell.

Feeling helpless, Lauriel has no choice but to follow the girl, already screaming the flaws and lapses of their "pretty little plan". What can she do though, she wants to play a little to ease her boredom.

Regrets, regrets. There's no medicine for regrets.

Alicia lead her into the (signature) storage room at the back of the school where students rarely pass by. It is also some kind of a short cut towards the computer labs, but it is almost deserted because of the fact that there is a student that was raped and killed in this very storage room. And it was rumored that her ghost stayed in order to have her revenge by kidnapping those students that passes by the storage room.

In short, your classic horror story.

While following Alicia, Lauriel noticed the former's shoulders tensing up as they neared the storage room, as if afraid of the ghost. Lauriel did not mind this thing, and let the girl leave when she made some excuse.

'That's it? No making sure that I was trapped in the storage room?' Lauriel thought exasperatedly, sighing in her heart as she walked on, planning to enter the storage room. But as she neared the door, pain suddenly erupted from her nape into the back of her head, making her vision go black and hazy.

'So this was their plan, huh.'

As she was about to collapse, Lauriel saw a pair of black shoes in front of her. Thinking that it was Cathy, she mustered some of her strength to gaze at the cause of her pain.

What she saw was a bloodied girl wearing the old uniform of their school before she blacked out.

---

Pain made Lauriel jolt awake as her consciousness started to come back to her mind. She tried to sit up despite the pain in her head and back, discovering several bruises on her arm and legs.

Lauriel deduced that they played with her unconscious body for a bit before locking her up on the storage room. She looked around and discovered that it's already dark—meaning, she's unconscious for about three or so hours, while lying down the cold wooden floor.

-creak-

In the corner of her eyes, Lauriel saw a shadow move but she chose to ignore it, deciding that if the girl wants to appear before her, she will do so.

The girl did not disappoint Lauriel and after a few minutes, the bloodied girl launched herself towards the ravenette.

"KIIIIIIILL!!"

Lauriel kneeled with one knee and then pushed herself up in time to dodge the ghost's attack, landing a meter and a half away from her original spot. Since the storage house is a bit small, Lauriel's movements were limited, but she paid it no heed and continued to dodge the ghost girl.

The ghost seemed to be a ticking time bomb every attack she missed, continuously lunging at Lauriel in circles, making herself look like a fool. And that irked the ghost to no ends.

"AAAAAARRRGGGGHHHH!!" a terrifying scream left the ghost's throat in anger. Her once bloodied but normal looking features turning grey as holes started to appear in the dead skin, while puss, black blood and maggots started appearing as well. Her face shrunk and became wrinkled, rotten flesh and her cheekbones becoming visible with her stretched face.

"Would you look at that. I pissed her, great." Lauriel muttered nonchalantly, standing a few feet away from the ghost—vengeful spirit—as she snapped her fingers.

As if a switch triggered, a light ray started to trace the places where Lauriel her feet touched while dodging, finally drawing a pentagram with the vengeful spirit in the middle.

This is the thing she wanted to do when she decided to play with Cathy's schemes.

At her first day at school, she and Jacqueline sensed the presence of a strong vengeful spirit somewhere in the school premises. But they ignored it since it has nothing to do with them, it doesn't harm them, and the risk of their identities being busted if they touched the issue is high.

But it's a different matter when the ghost attempted to kidnap her little brother, Auren, who was in kindergarten in the same school, just before the summer break started. And the stubborn pipsqueak kept it to himself all this time. If not only she caught him having nightmares when they were at the beach resort, would she gain awareness of the incident.