Shadows Of Deception

 Ryo's Perspective 

– April 17, 2013, 8:12 AM

Kaylie and I stood frozen on the oval, the weight of our confusion and fear pressing down on us. The school was wrong—everything about it was wrong. Lucy's lifeless body. The vanishing people. The flickering lights. The unnatural silence.

I glanced at my sister, her face pale, her breathing uneven.

"We need to get out of here," I repeated, but the words felt hollow. Where could we even go? The front gates? Would they even open?

Kaylie's amber eyes locked onto mine, her usual sharpness clouded with something I rarely saw in her—uncertainty.

Then, the loudspeaker crackled to life.

"Students of Grey View Secondary, please remain in your classrooms," a distorted voice droned. "This is a routine safety protocol. Do not leave your assigned areas."

The voice was warped, synthetic—like someone had stitched together a hundred different tones into a single, broken sentence.

Kaylie grabbed my arm. "That's not a teacher."

"I know," I muttered, my skin crawling.

A gust of wind tore through the oval, cold and sudden. The trees groaned. The sky dimmed slightly, as though a thick sheet of clouds had rolled in, but when I looked up, the sky was clear.

Something was here. Watching.

Then—movement.

At the edge of the oval, near the trees, a figure stood completely still. Not a teacher. Not a student. Too tall. Too thin.

Too wrong.

I couldn't see its face—just a dark, elongated shape. My chest tightened.

"Kaylie..."

"I see it," she whispered.

And then it moved.

Not like a person—there was no shift in weight, no natural motion. One second it was far away. The next, it was closer. Too close.

Kaylie grabbed my wrist and yanked. "Run!"

We took off, sprinting across the oval, our footsteps pounding against the grass. I didn't look back. I couldn't. I just focused on Kaylie's grip and the burning in my legs.

The school building loomed ahead. The glass doors leading into the main hallway were still open. If we could just—

Kaylie skidded to a stop. I barely avoided crashing into her.

"What—"

"Look," she gasped.

My stomach dropped.

The entrance we had been running toward was gone. The school was still there—but the doors, the windows, every possible way inside had vanished. In its place was a solid, unbroken wall.

"What the hell?" I breathed.

Kaylie turned sharply, her gaze scanning the area. "We need another way out."

I nodded, forcing down the rising panic. "The back fence. If we get to the sports field, we can—"

A sound cut through the air. A scraping, dragging sound.

I turned my head slowly.

The figure was standing at the edge of the oval again.

And then, from the other direction, another shape emerged.