Chapter 3: Midnight Noise

JADE:

While I was still slumped in bed at my dorm room, I heard a loud thud. It came from the door.

“Ah, what,” I exclaimed in surprise. I stood as fast as I could, which made my head feel fuzzy. I was still trying to decipher what the noise could have been when I heard another loud thud. This time, it was closer to my room.

I felt a bit nervous. What the hell was that?

Despite the darkness, I squinted my eyes, trying to search into my room. Was I imagining it when I saw that my door was ajar?

“Oh my,” I uttered nervously. I stood halfway from my bed to the doorway, and I was able to confirm my hunch. Indeed, my door was open a bit!

My eyes immediately searched for the shoes I was gifted that day. I had put them at the entrance hall near my other slippers. Rats, they were gone!

‘A burglar was here,’ I thought, feeling horrified, ‘or maybe werewolves?...’

No, that couldn’t be… I have distanced myself from their kind a long time ago… That’s highly impossible…

I stood completely, thinking of what to do. Maybe the neighbors could help me. I should try to ask around.

I opened the door to look around for someone. The creaking sound as I opened it was enough to make me jump out of my wits.

I peered into the darkness. The cold wind blew against my face. I saw nothing and no one else.

I was about to go out and ask around the other rooms when I saw something curious.

There, by the hallway, were my red shoes. All around it were some dusty footprints. Based on what I was seeing, it looked as if the shoes had been used for walking a few feet away in the soulless hallway.

“Huh,” I whispered as I tread away from my doorway. It was such a puzzling sight.

I looked around from left to right, peering, scanning, nervously looking at someone or anyone who might be looking at me, but all I see is the endless expanse of a cold and empty hallway.

‘I should probably get the shoes, right,’ I thought to myself, but I still stood frozen, barely able to leave the door frame. My mind knew what it must do, but my body was as stiff as frozen meat.

‘Ah, come on, Jade. Why are you chickening out on this?’ There was nothing perfectly wrong with getting my shoes in the middle of a deserted place like that, right?

Before I changed my mind, I took two steps with my bare feet forward towards my prized shoes.

Three more steps and I would be able to reach it. Gosh, when did it grow colder?

By the time I bent down to reach for the shoes, I saw my own breath misting. That’s weird. Did the temperature suddenly turn into a negative number in just a few seconds?

Before I could even recover from the dropping temperature, I began to sense an entity looking silently from the back. I can feel it getting closer and closer.

Just like before, my body froze on the spot. I knew I should grab my shoes and just run, but my body was not responding to the screams in my head.

My heart began to pound faster. The entity – it was getting nearer. I shivered more and more!

‘Oh, gosh, what could that be,’ I thought desperately.

My head says I should turn around and face whatever’s behind me, but I just can’t.

Just when I thought my heart couldn’t handle the suspense any longer, I heard it. It was a faint sound at first, which grew more and more sinister and louder by the second.

“Help me…”

“Help me… Please…”

“Help me…”

They were a succession of pleas, which overlapped as they were uttered, but I swear all the voices sounded identical, like it was the voice of just one person being played over and over at the same time!

That was when I got really scared out of my wits. I didn’t know what I was doing. I remembered the voices from my past, haunting and taunting me, and I heard my own voice uttering the same words, asking for help…

“Help me… Please help me, Kix!”

It was too much! I started to sweat profusely. I was nearly crying. The next thing I knew, I was crouching to the floor next to the red shoes that I was supposed to pick up.

‘No! No! This isn’t true,’ my head screamed internally. ‘This is just my imagination,’ I said, deluding myself as the voice still continued to moan.

Was I simply hallucinating, like I did in the past?...

‘I must get out of here,’ I told myself.

I stretched my hand towards the shoes. My fingers had wrapped themselves successfully at the heels.

As I did this, I heard the creak of an old, wooden door. I saw the entrance right next to me open up slowly.

I was about to scream when suddenly, a pair of eyes met mine from the room that just opened.

It took a few moments before I could react to what and who I saw, and by the time my eyes had brightened up in recognition, the man before me started to speak.

“Um… Jade? Jade Sy,” he said in a tentative tone. When I failed to answer, he repeated himself. “You’re Jade Sy, a junior student from Literature class under Ms. Rolando, right?” He broke into a full smile. “What are you doing here?”

Even in that dark hallway, his warm smile and tender brown eyes were enough to brighten it. He ran a hand into his perfect jet-black hair. “Why are you in the hallway at this hour?”

My heart galloped again, but this time in a good way. I straightened my knees and fixed my hair before I answered. “Oh, umm, Liam… Hi.”

I was thinking of something witty to say, but I miserably failed. I wanted to slap my own face at that moment.

This was Liam Cruz. The Liam Cruz – a fellow junior student and my classmate, and not to mention the boy that I extremely liked since day one that I met him.

Of all places, why was I meeting him here and in this state? I could only imagine how pathetic I looked crouching down like that in front of him.

“Hi, Jade. Nice to see you. I didn’t know you were from here,” he said. His perfect dark hair was in place even at this time. Gosh, how can he be so flawless even at night time?

His brows furrowed when I failed to immediately speak again. “Why are you up at this hour? Is there something wrong?”