Hey-Day Capriccio

Kody finally got a solid grip on his phone.

"Ouch," a voice said from right in front of Amber. Kody frantically clicked on his phone's flashlight app and shined the bright light right on Amber - and the person that she had been reaching for.

The owner of the glowing red eyes was covering his face now. It had been scary when he had only seen the red eyes, but this boy didn't seem all that terrifying now that he was illuminated by Kody's phone. He looked like he could have been one of Kody's classmates with his gray denim jacket, jeans and sneakers.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses.

A moment later, he slipped them on - and removed the hands that were covering the front of his face. Kody expected to see those same glowing eyes, but all he saw was a pair of blue ones instead.

"I'm sorry for startling you," the boy apologized. "I thought I was the only one trapped in here."

As the boy uncovered his face, Secret's heart slowed down to its normal rate. Huh, he really was a normal boy.

But, she could have sworn that he had red eyes before.

"That's okay," she said, patting her cheeks to cool them down. "A lot of freaky things have happened, so we're all a little jumpy."

The boy's shoulders slumped as he let out a big sigh.

"I was afraid you would say that," he said.

Kody stared. "...What do you mean?"

"Well," the boy said, crossing his arms, "if we were lucky, this room would have been the strangest thing you encountered so far. But it looks like this school is more troublesome than I thought it was going to be."

"This is definitely not the strangest thing we ran into," said Susan once she finally managed to stop screaming or just generally being too scared to speak, "but what do you mean this school is more troublesome than you thought it would be. You knew this was gonna happen?"

Susan knew that was a question she really didn't need to know the answer to at the moment but unfortunately it was an answer that would hopefully help them get out of this horrible situation.

The boy rubbed the back of his neck.

"This is a textbook case of an infestation," he said, looking surprisingly sheepish and awkward.

"...An infestation of what?" Kody asked. He wasn't really sure he wanted to know the answer, but he also knew that they probably needed it if they wanted to survive this. Being ignorant never helped anyone in horror comics.

"A lot of things," the boy replied. He reached down into his pocket and pulled out a phone of his own. A moment later, he was shining his flashlight around the room in search of something. "It's really hard to tell until you're deep within it. I'd say there's some ghosts, at least, but there's also probably some demonic energy and dark magic here, too."

His flashlight finally caught on something.

There was a tall floor lamp in the center of the room. When Kody shown his flashlight on it, too, he wasn't able to see any wire attaching it to an outlet. He couldn't even figure out why it was in the room to begin with.

The boy turned on the light.

Darkness still clung to the very corners of the room, but the room seemed much more like a regular old classroom now; if Kody squinted, he thought he could recognize a desk he had sat at before.

The boy turned back to the group.

"I'm Noah, by the way," he offered. "Noah T. Kent."

"Honestly," grumbles Amber, "With all the weird stuff going on, I might actually believe the garbage that this kid is rambling about."

She sits back down on the floor and glares at "Noah T. Kent"

Noah sighed.

"It's not garbage," he said, "but I can see why you're making that comparison. I'm telling the truth."

It had been awhile since he had to deal with a situation like this. Usually he found infestations before they caught people like this. And when they did catch people, they were usually so terrified that they clung to his every word. He liked how this group seemed a little more courageous. It would probably make this go a lot smoother.

...Unless they argued with everything he said.

He shook the thought away. He had to stay optimistic! He'd handle this perfectly fine.

Secret leaned on the wall and hugged herself. An infestation? What kind of horror movie was this?

Noah seemed to be telling the truth though, but she had to find out more.

"How do you know so much about this?" she asked.

Then, maybe she could trust him.

Susan really didn't know how to react to that one. There was no question about her believing him. As ridiculous as that explanation was, it was the only thing that could actually explain all the craziness they had experienced in the past few minutes.

She didn't know whether she should start screaming at the possibility of demonic magic, or cry, or do both. It didn't seem like doing either of those thing would help however, considering she'd done enough of that during the day.

"Is there a way for us to get out alive?" she asked, hoping her voice wasn't as shaky as it currently sounded to her ears.

Kody took a deep breath.

The longer he had to accept Noah's explanation for what was going on, the more uneasy he felt. By the time that Susan asked if there was a way to get out alive, he was wondering the same exact question—and was doing his best to calm his nerves.

"I deal with things like this all the time," Noah said with a grin. Then he seemed to remember that this wasn't really something to be grinning about, so his smile became much more of a reassuring one. "There's always a way to get out of infestations like this. Usually it would just be walking through the exit, but I'm guessing that's not an option if you're all here right now. We'll have to go deeper into the infestation and destroy its root."

"...Its what?" Kody asked, finally finding his voice.

"Its root," Noah repeated. "It's the heart of an infestation. The infestation becomes more chaotic the closer you get to the root, but taking care of the root's the only way to really get rid of an infestation. I was already going to head to it, anyways, so you could all just come with me to it."