They stared at each other for a long time. Niether of them knew how long. Niether of them were aware of the torrential downpour around them. Brittany could not move, dared not. There were fresh graves around, and the rain would make the ground even softer. The last thing she wanted was to come face to face with some gross dead guy. But would she prefer that to staring at this girl's eyes?
Brittany could not tell what color the little girl's eyes were, they were changing, glowing all different colors. At times, they seemed to match her bright red dress. At other times, they would blend into the darknes surrounding them. But the consistant glowing off-white light inside of them was what scared Brittany so much. She didn't know who this little girl was but it was the first time she had seen anyone else in the cemetary.
As the ocean of air engulfed them, Britt could still not feel her sweatshirt or jeans clinging to her skin, nor the small lake that had built up inside her shoes. She was frozen.
That's when the girl moved.
Brittany saw the red dress disappear into the doorway of the small building to the right of her, just a few yards away. She knew this was stupid, but she followed anyway. Curiosity had overcome fear.
She entered the room from te same door as the little girl, for that seemed to be the only door, but saw no one. In fact, few things were in this room at all; two thrones sat in the middle of the large wall to the left, a stand for a torch between them. A wide, intricately-designed rug covered the floor in the center of the room. A four-foot high vase sat in the far corner of the right wall. Nothing else occupied her sight, except for dust and mold. She swore under her breath.
" Where can a seven-year-old girl hide?" she asked herself. Then, answering her own question, she said, "The vase!"
Brittany slowly and carefully walked over to the round, maroon-striped, clay vase in the corner, watching behind her to insure no surprise attack. It was only now that she realized the difference between the cold waterfall outside and the dry dust inside. Her wet clothes irritated her skin.
As she slowly approached the vase, a cold draft crawled up her spine. She grabbed the id, closed her eyes, swallowed her built-up saliva, took a deep breath and lifted the lid springing two feet in that single jump. However, nothing attacked her or even came out of it. Brittany cautiously looked in. A dusty old parachute lay at the bottom of the clay pot. She reached in and picked it up, out of the vase, unprepared for its weight. She set it back down on the floor, continuing to glance back at the thrones and the door, searching for that girl.
"Now, what would a parachute be doing in a tomb?" she asked out loud to no one.
Britt carried the parachute over to the thrones and set it on the seat of the throne on the right. She looked around, checking behind the thrones, but saw nothing.
"Where could that girl hide in here? Not under the rug."
Brittany turned around and screamed in surprise at the blonde girl in the red dress standing in the doorway. Her eyes were glowing again. Brittany's eyes were caught again. She was frozen again.
That's when the girl moved.
Not toward Brittany, but to the far end of the tomb. The young girl reached in the vase and pulled out a charcoal grey snowshoe hare, an animal that was not in this region, nor anywhere close. Where had it come from? It was not there when Brittany had looked before. The frozen teen could not understand what it was about the hare that frightened her. But she took a step back, anyway.
The girl stopped five feet away from her, the hare still held out in front. The hare twitched its nose, then its ears and finally opened its eyes wide, blazing like two coal furnaces in its head. Brittany screamed and stumbled backward onto the parachute. She heard a metallic "clink" from underneath her, and felt a sharp poke like a knife in her bottom. She jumped back up immediately.
Upon quick examination of the throne she had just sat in, Brittany discovered the spikes that had erupted through the seat, through the parachute, which had saved her life. She turned back to the girl still holding the demon in her outstretched hands.
'A booby trap.' The thought flashed in her mind. 'The other throne might be a trap, too.'
Brittany turned to run out the door, but saw the demon hare open its canyon jaws and leap at her. Brittany instinctively jumped away, falling into the other throne. A flash of the spikes went through her mind and she tensed. She felt no spikes, however. Only warmth, then extreme heat, then nothing.
The little girl in the red dress watched the female teenager's skin melt and her flesh disintegrate down to her skeleton. Then the bones evaporated into dust and spread throughout the room, as hers had done years before. She smiled. She was finally free.
Brittany stood at one end of the cemetary behind a grave stone, watching the teenage boy through multi-colored eyes, thinking, 'Please, follow me . . . I'm sorry, I really am sorry, but I need to be free from this Hell!'
