Chapter 5

It was a beautiful day outside, as it had been since the day we arrived, I found that strange at first but Alicia had informed me that the entire school grounds were created by Principal Rose to accommodate each and every one of us in the sense that Principal Rose had used her own powers to personalise the grounds for us, everything that I could see and the weather I could feel could only be seen and felt by me. It was everything I preferred. The basic structure of the building and the grounds was the same to everyone, but the feel of the air around us and the beauty of it all in the form of plant life and Decoration were magnified by our own individual preferences, which explained a lot, Parker had told me that what she could see were mostly aloes and cacti and other desert type succulents, there was also a lake with swans and geese, and the air was cool and salty, which was really more her thing, I hated the ocean and the sand and personally, I found Succulents to be such boring and bland plants. Parker and I were so different in so many ways, but for some reason we had always been the very best of friends, maybe our differences were exactly what drew us together, like some magnetic force field. We had probably walked about two miles from the boarding house when something caught my eye, "What's that?" I asked, "What's what? Where?" Parker said, squinting around the grounds trying to decipher what exactly I was referring to. "Over there, just above the hill." I pointed my index finger toward what I was looking at. It seemed like a crack, almost as though a section of sky had just split right open. "I can't see anything, Mila there's nothing there." Parker said. "That's weird" I thought out loud, we couldn't both see what I was looking at, which meant it wasn't a part of the original structure." I pondered over it for a few more minutes but eventually came to the conclusion that it wasn't anything worth following up on and decided to think nothing more of it. "Never mind I said to Parker, It must have just been my imagination." We continued along on our way back toward the boarding house, the sun was starting to set and we needed to go in for dinner, although after all the excitement and exploring throughout the day I decided I would rather just call it a night and head straight back to my room, I thought it would be nice to have some time to myself and gather my thoughts, so that is exactly what I did after saying goodnight to Parker.

I got to my room and thought I would just relax on my lounger couch and read my book for an hour or so before I had a shower and climbed into bed. I had been completely engrossed by a book that I had started reading back home, it was called 'The Host' by Stephenie Meyer and I had been dying to get back to reading it, but with everything that had been going on in the past 2 months since I had arrived here, I have always just been way too exhausted to even consider opening a book... I must have nodded off to sleep because even though I had read less than two chapters I found myself waking up on my lounger, everything was pitch black and there wasn't a sound to be heard in the corridors, I glanced over at my bedside clock which was flickering 2.15am in big red neon lights. Damn! I thought to myself, that didn't go according to plan at all. Just then my bedroom burst into light, big ghostly images flashing all around me like a strobe light, the sound of crying and voices pleading for help ringing in my ears, I couldn't make out the images at first they were all going by so fast, they seemed distorted, but then through the voices I heard a familiar voice, Megan's voice, (Megan had been a very close friend of mine when we were younger, but her and her parents had sadly passed away around 3 years ago in a tragic car accident) "Mila, Mila help us, please Mila, we need you, we all do, please find us, please listen to us, Mila where are you?" the voice sounded so sad and lonely, so scared and so desperate for me to find where it was coming from, "Megan is that you? Where are you, I can't see you anywhere? Megan is it you?" I kept calling for her, even though I knew that by no means could it possibly be her, she was gone, I had been at her funeral and I had mourned and grieved over her death along with her remaining family and friends. "Mila it's me, you need to help us, we need you to help us, you are the answer, you are the only answer, and our only hope, only you can help us." My head was spinning, was I having a nightmare? How was it possible that I was talking to Megan, why did she need my help, and why on earth was she saying that I was the answer, that I was the only one who could help them? And who was 'Them'? I could feel my mind spinning further and further out of my reach and then there was nothing but silence and darkness.