For Nevermore Season 1

hall. As she sat on the toilet, she thought how odd Tori looked, just standing there babbling in the dark at three in the morning. Noella had heard how sometimes sleepwalkers did weird things like that, and sometimes they’d even appear like they were wide awake.
    Noella’s dad told her that when she was six, he woke up one time to find her standing in the kitchen trying to use the bathroom, apparently sleepwalking. He managed to direct her to the bathroom where she finished her business. Then she flushed the toilet and went right back to bed. They both laughed the next morning, Noella so hard that milk flew from her nostrils, but there was something weird about it that scared Noella –that she could do something like that and have it leave not so much as a whisper of memory.
    Noella wondered if Tori had been sleepwalking, too. And if so, was it somehow tied to what she’d said earlier . . . that she’d been hearing and seeing voices in the house?
    After Noella peed, she washed her hands and opened the door, startled to see Randy standing in front of the door, staring at her. For a split second, she thought for sure he’d open his mouth and start babbling. If he did that, she would have freaked out hard enough to buy herself an express ticket to King’s Point Psychiatric.
    Oh God, he read the Facebook posts and is gonna ream me out right here and now.
    She stepped back, her heart in her throat.
    Randy continued to stare at her, as if he’d just woken, or he was trying to decide what he was going to say.
    “Your aunt is sick again, so I’ll be taking you to school,” he said. “Make sure you wake up earlier. I’d hate for you to go to school smelling like stink, and I’m not waking you.”
    “Okay,” Noella said, waiting for him to finish the sentence she could feel on his lips.
    Randy said nothing. He just turned from Noella, then went back to his and Josie’s room and closed the door softly behind him.
    Maybe he didn’t read the messages?
    Noella’s heart was racing. First the nightmare, then the weirdness with Tori, and now the close call with Randy. Too many scares for one night.
    Noella wasn’t sure how she would manage, but she had to get back to sleep.
    She went back to her room, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers over her head. She considered looking back across the street, but was too creeped out to crawl to the window.
    She began to shake her leg, trying to think of happy thoughts and relax.
    Instead, another thought surfaced. Maybe Randy did read the Facebook posts, and he’s waiting to get me alone in the car to ream me out tomorrow morning!
    Great . . . now I’ll never sleep!
    Noella turned toward the wall and prayed for peaceful sleep.

    * * * *

CHAPTER FOUR

    the next morning...

    Noella woke to the hollow sound of a car door slamming shut.
    She wasn’t sure what time she finally stopped tossing and turning and fell back into the full lull of silent sleep, but she felt as though she’d had no more than an hour of shut-eye. She heard the familiar sound of Randy peeling from their driveway, then glanced at the clock, afraid that she’d overslept and lost her ride to school.
    The clock was blinking 12:00 again.
    Another power outage?
    She grabbed her pills, popped one in her mouth, then swished it down with some water and opened her door. A yellow note was stuck to the white wood:

    “Had to go in early. Looks like you’re taking the bus.
    -Randy.”

    Noella sighed, her mind temporarily eased. Randy would give her the inevitable reaming, sure as heat was hot and water was wet, but at least she wouldn’t have to hear it before her bowl of Captain Crunch, or on her way to what was sure to be another miserable day at school.

    **

    Noella stepped from her porch and onto the sidewalk, then looked across the street, just as Jen was locking her front door and Tori was climbing into her side of the Honda Element. Tori yelled something Noella couldn’t hear, but it made Jen laugh. She was smiling wide as she walked to her car, catching Noella’s eye halfway there.
    Noella waved. She wanted to run across the street and ask Tori about her sleepwalking episode, if that’s what it was. She also felt a need to warn her about what she’d seen in the dream. But what seemed so ominous in the darkness of night seemed silly in the light of morning. This wasn’t some psychic dream where she saw the future. She saw the past, something she’d seen on the news, the reported death of the