Chapter 5
The Thirteen-Chapter Diary
What to do? Suzy stared at the place where the thirteen-hour visitor had stood, before crumpling to the floor with hot tears sliding down her cheeks and a despairing scream escaping her lips. She howled, her head in her icy hands. Never had she felt so fearful - not even when a drunken man broke into her old home demanding money for drugs, a smashed beer bottle clutched in his shaking hands.
The most frightening thing was that it was real when it shouldn't have been. She had read books about fantasy and magic, she had seen films on horror and science-fiction, and she had enjoyed them as much as the next person. She mused and marvelled over mysterious happenings of people claiming to see ghosts or getting strange presences, but it wasn't as if...
...It wasn't as if any of it was real. That was the bliss of it, enduring edgy feelings and pumping fear yet still feeling safe.
Suzy felt far from safe now, feeling as though a thousand horrifying spirits were all coming to haunt her. What could she do? She couldn't tell her parents, they would never believe her, especially as she herself didn't quite believe it. How do you even explain that there are thirteen hours in a day in the cottage and that at the thirteenth hour a strange, eerie boy appears?
A thought then flew over Suzy, chilling her to her very marrow. That thought was that there really wasn't anything she could do.
She just had to wait and see.
Wiping streams of tears from her bleary eyes, she hoisted herself to her feet and began lumbering through the dark, underground passages. The naked light bulbs began to flicker and blink, submerging the underground in darkness one second and then blindingly bright light the next. Suzy hardly cared - her fear of the dark was a mere pinprick compared with the immense dagger fear of the cottage, the boy and, strangest of all, the thirteen-hour clock.
Suddenly the whole underground was plunged into darkness as the light bulbs lost all power, and the sheer surprise of it caused Suzy to flinch and trip. She fell against the stairs, slamming hard against the ridges and banging her chin against a stone step. She felt something crunch inside her jaw and let out a yelp of pain so high-pitched that it was inhuman.
That high yelp unsettled something, somewhere, because then came an intense rumble emitting from all around. A scrabbling rasp of tiny, hook-like claws followed, like nails against slate. Suzy's stomach knotted. Whatever was coming she knew now couldn't be good. She could hear the beat of wings on the air, and she tried to scrabble up the stone steps on her stiff legs, but it was impossible. She was so tired, she wanted to sleep...
But then...
CRACK.
The air was alive with frantic bats, swooping round and batting their leathery wings in a rhythmic beat. Squabbling screeches mingled with Suzy's shrieking screams. Sharp claws slit her cheeks and wings hit her face, one bat even tangled in her hair. She felt as though toothless creatures were biting her in the dark, and no matter how fiercely Suzy told herself they were bats, other creatures slid into her mind; sleek black snakes with feathery wings; werewolves staring at her with a piercing gaze; dragons spouting cold flames. Nothing could surprise her now...
A bat darted at her face, swiping claws at her cheek and drawing blood - it was then she realised...
The bats weren't bats at all.
Fear surged through her, and it seemed to spark some life. Suzy leapt up on her twisted legs, her bashed chin throbbing and her body aching with tiredness. She heaved herself up the steps, the would-be bats still beating at her body. She felt painful tingles penetrate her all over and her skin was oddly moist. Suzy, using the last of her restricted energy, pushed forwards and wrenched open the door to the main cottage.
She fell through - literally landing flat on her face. She squealed with pain as she slammed against the wooden floor, and sitting up she realised why. Suzy looked down warily, and tipped backwards at the ghastly sight that met her eyes.
She was bleeding all over; a puddle of her own blood rapidly forming on the floor. She had tears in her clothes and tears in her skin to match, for those hideous, makeshift bats had slit holes in her silky pyjamas and had ripped away the skin. Suzy shook all over, slapping the holes in her flesh ineffectively, trying to stopper the bleeding. She bit her fingers and fell to the floor, bathing in her own blood. It was alarming feeling watching it slowly but surely expand. She wanted someone to speak to her, she couldn't stand it if the last thing she heard was her own scream...
"Well, what do you expect from air piranhas?" said a the hollow voice she now knew so well.
Air piranhas?
Suzy gathered her available breath and let it out on the highest, loudest and sharpest scream that had ever escaped hers, or anyone's, lips. She knew it was her only chance - she needed someone to know she was there.
Tears mingled with her leaking blood, which suddenly felt very inviting. She couldn't think straight, and all she wanted to do was curl up and sleep. She ran her fingers through the thick red liquid and attempted to cover herself with it - it felt so warm amongst the biting coldness. Biting - like the air piranhas. Suzy felt sick, but willed her long-ago food to stay in her stomach. She clenched her stomach, which was so painful as she stretched the leaking cuts located around her navel. She opened her eyes a fraction, and the last thing Suzy saw through her bleary pupils was her mother crouched over her, her hand in her greasy, bloody hair. An overpowering feeling shook Suzy, and that feeling was a feeling of realisation.
She loved her parents so much.
***
Suzy felt hazy, like a lost dog blundering through mist. However, though groggy and weak, there was a feeling of realism about her. She was alive.
"I...I d-didn't die, then..." Suzy murmured.
A laugh emitted from above her.
"Die? What are you talking about? You're right as rain," said the source of the laugh - her mother. Warmth spread through Suzy's achy body, but a puzzlement still lingered in her brain.
"I...I'm not," Suzy muttered. "Bats, only they weren't bats, they were...oh, what did he s-say...?"
"What are you on about?" her mother remarked fondly. "Don't know what you did, but you weren't going to die."
"Yes I was," Suzy insisted, forcing her eyes open and seeing that she was in fact in her room, though it didn't look like anyone's room. "I was bleeding lots."
She simply sounded like a two-year-old with a paper cut.
"Nonsense, you were just scratched," her father chuckled, though looking uncertain.
"Scratched!" Suzy snapped, getting angry. "I was cut to pieces!"
Suzy's parents eyed her suspiciously.
"I think you ought to get some sleep, darling - you're a bit drowsy. Have a nap," her mother suggested.
"Come down for lunch whenever you feel like it," her father said, nodding
Suzy didn't respond to either comment, she was too busy gaping at her body. Bandages were wound around her legs and arms and plasters were stuck on so many parts of her flesh that she felt there were more of them than skin. Her chin ached at the slightest movement and she couldn't so much as twitch her limbs without a flicker of agony slipping up her spine. How could her parents say she'd just been scratched?
Something was wrong.
What an understatement - everything was wrong! Air piranhas and thirteen o'clock visitors, whispering voices and parents being utterly calm about their daughter's near-death experience, nothing had ever been more wrong and dreamlike in her life. She'd have pinched herself if it didn't hurt so much to even adjust her fingers.
Then Suzy became aware of something, even though she hadn't a clue why. It was as though someone had put her life on pause, implanted a thought and let her resume with this new fact. She, enduring an immense pain, leant over the side of her stiff bed and peered under it, hoping to simply see a layer of thick dust and perhaps a gangly spider. At the sight she nearly recoiled, for what she had suddenly felt was actually there.
A diary.
She reached out with her plastered and bandaged hand, gripped the leathery corner of the diary and pulled it into the daylight. She sank back onto the bed, holding the diary gingerly as though it were dripping with something revolting. It certainly didn't look pretty - a waxy black book with a fake leather cover. Mud and water were flecked onto it, still gooey and wet. Suzy peeled back the greasy cover, revealing an equally greasy lined page that was speckled with what looked like coffee. A ring where a hot mug had stood on it circled the title; chapter 1.
And after that was a diary entry, written in faded ink in a slanting style. Suzy traced the words with her finger, mouthing them softly. I didn't want to move, I'd been happy with the way things were. I'm going to grow up an invalid in this creepy cottage, and I'll still be playing a stupid old DS when everyone else has virtual, 3D
It was the diary of someone who had lived in the very cottage Suzy now did, and, incidentally, had felt similar to how she had.
She flicked through the book, puzzled to why it would have chapters when it was a diary. She read the headings, chapter one, two, three, four - all the way up to chapter thirteen. Suzy bit her dry lip; she couldn't help noticing a pattern here...
She snapped the diary shut with a muffled thunk and peered around the cover for any sign of whom it belonged to. She flipped it over, and then she saw it. Down in the leathery corner was a sentence cut into the cover, which had filled with golden paint. Suzy squinted at it, for it was almost illegible...
This diary is the property of Cole Gauze.
___________________________________________________________________________________________________
Hehe, this is an OK chapter. I didn't like it that much, though it picked up once she'd got out of the cellar. I hope it's alright, and you know the drill - point out any mistakes even though there shouldn't be many...yeah, you get the point.
Now, I'm not entirely sure how long this book is going to be - I'm still a bit shaky about the end, teetering this way and that with it, but I've got the outlined idea. Still, I'll think there's quite a lot to go yet. Who is Cole, I wonder? I bet you'll figure it out right...now.
Cheers, chapter six'll be posted soon.
