2

Friday, 7:46 pm

The three sat at their normal table in the far corner in front of a window at their favorite pizza place in town.

They had all silently agreed that they were going to the let whole creepy phone call thing drop for a month at least or until they could think back on it and not get the absolute shit scared out of them.

With that in mind, the only thing they could think of was the call therefore they sat in silence for a while until Sage finally decided she couldn't stand the quiet anymore.

At first, it was all dry, empty conversations that you expect strangers to have and not life long friends. Questions were answered with only one word and with no heart or meaning was put behind any of the questions.

"Someone needs to talk about something," she said, snapping her friends out of their own dazes. "And not just stupid things that we don't actually care about."

"How did you guys do on the math test from Tuesday?" Maddox asked even though he didn't really care, he just agreed that the silence needs to be filled.

"I didn't have to take it." Lily chimed in but her friends could tell she wasn't actually engaged in the topic.

The hair on the back of Lily's neck stood up as her heartbeat quickened on its own while she peeked out the window and into the dark street in front of her. Lily didn't even know what she needed to be afraid of but at this very moment fear coursed through her veins.

Every since they left her house she felt like something was watching her constantly. Every now and then she would catch something tall and pitch blackout of the corner of her eye but when she went to see what it was, nothing was there.

Outside the window, there was nothing on the empty street. It had begun to rain a bit that was it. A single streetlight shone proudly, fighting off the dark for as long as it could before the darkness finally won and plunged the world into a sea of black ink.

'That's what it was,' Lily thought to herself, trying to keep herself from having a panic attack. 'Just the rain blowing everywhere.'

"I failed," Sage said simply even though she made a B on it. She always had a thing for exaggerating how she did on tests no matter how important they were.

"I passed, barely," Maddox said, trying to ignore the humming in his head. Normally humming in Maddox's head was nothing out of the ordinary, but this time he wasn't the one humming.

It was an identical sound to the humming that was on the creepy answering machine but it was humming a different tune now. It was a melody he didn't know, which is weird since he, like Lily, knew pretty much every song that ever existed. They often tried to see who knew more songs but neither of them every really won; they both just gave up before a winner was ever decided.

Sometimes the pitch would go up or down and for a split second, he thought he knew what song was about to play but it never went the way he thought it was going to.

After a while, he figured out that it was humming the same song over and over. For some reason, the song sounds familiar. Like if he had just one word of the chores he would be able to name it yet the name danced on the tip of his tongue.

"So," Sage asked after a few minutes of nothing but dead air. "What movie are we going to watch when we get back to the house?" This had Lily perking up, instantly forgetting all about the eerie feeling of being watched.

"How about a horror movie?" She suggested with an evil smirk. Sage frowned at her. Knowing she was only kidding because Lily was never really a fan of anything of horrorish, Sage was still not impressed and glared at her friend.

Without a second thought, Sage picked up an evil glare of her own as she picked up a small piece of bread that had been left uneaten, and threw it at her best friend.

Lily only smiled and laughed as she leaned in closer to Maddox to keep the bread from hitting her, almost knocking both of them off the bench.

The three laughed loudly, disturbing a few other people in the slightly busy restaurant, but they didn't care. For a split second the past few hours hadn't happened and they were just three best friends that were hanging out like they did every Friday night.

Sage laughed as she watched Lily hit Maddox on the shoulder when he tried to put a straw paper into her drink, but that smile disappeared almost instantly when a bright ball of light flew across the window and out of sight.

Something about it made her want to follow it but she knew it probably wasn't in her best interest considering everything that had happened so far tonight.

The rational part of her mind wanted to blame it on a car or motorcycle driving down the street, or a raindrop that was blown sideways and caught the light just right. Yet the fear-fueled part said it had something to do with the stupid 'game' Lily had dragged the three of them into against their will.

Still, Sage didn't want to ruin the moment. The other two were finally having fun like nothing ever happened and that's what they all needed after a day like this.

So Sage put on a fake smile and acting as if nothing was wrong and played along with them but in the back of her mind, the call still played, over and over again.