For Nevermore Season 1

chairs were all destroyed. So she stood and closed her eyes, trying to ignore the crumbling world pressing in around her.
    The thing about hallucinations, or at least the ones she had, was that they weren’t like the movies where someone would realize they were hallucinating and then boom, they’d stop, and reality would show itself again.
    It was much harder than that for Noella. She likened it to trying to wake up, but being under a powerful sedative. Or perhaps, a more accurate description would be like trying to force yourself to fall asleep. The harder you tried, the harder it was.
    Finding her way back to the real world required intense concentration, while shutting out her growing fear.
    She listened for something that would tether her to the real world, the sound of a classmate, or Mr. Mahr, or even the sound of the school’s air conditioning, anything she could mentally grab to pull herself back.
    But the world around her was quiet, save for the creaking of the dilapidated structure sounding like it might collapse on her at any minute.
    She strained to listen above the groans of the building. And that’s when she heard the faint sound of whispers. She tried to tune in the whispering, turn it up in her head, and follow it back to reality. She struggled to make out words, or identify the voice. She needed to get a handle on who it was or what they were saying, or she’d be unable to follow it back to reality.
    The whispers grew louder, indecipherable, but made up of many voices, all seeming to speak in another language.
    She focused until they coalesced into one voice.
    “I’ve found you,” the sinister voice whispered.
    Noella’s eyes shot open and she saw that she was no longer alone.
    Crawling through the wreckage of the classroom, surfacing from the shadows of the rubble, and into the beams of sunshine, were two of the creatures .
    The creatures that had haunted her dreams and waking nightmares for years, were back after a year’s absence.
    The nude, emaciated monsters looked like something out of old photos she’d seen of concentration camp corpses, sunken features, bones pushing sharp through pale skin. Like ghosts of humans, but these things weren’t human, at least fully formed humans. For one, they had no genitals. And instead of eyes, their eyelids had been sewn shut with dark cord. And then there were their claws, long jagged crags of fingernails curling like commas at their fingertips.
    The worst thing about these things, though, was their mouths. The skin had been peeled away, exposing bone and sharp, rotting teeth that looked ready to tear into flesh.
    The two monsters shuffled through the room, inching their way toward Noella, raising their noses as if trying to pick up her scent. They sniffed like dogs, in quick bursts, as they drew closer, arms fumbling blindly in the darkness searching for her.
    Noella whimpered loudly and stumbled back, her foot getting tangled in debris. She slipped and fell back, landing hard on her ass.
    A razored talon wrapped around Noella’s arm, and its bony finger dug into her flesh. The thing whispered, dozens of voices impossibly coming from its mouth, none of them making sense.
    “Nooooo!” she screamed, breaking free and crawling back on all fours as they rushed at her. Though the rational part of her brain told her that none of this was real, the rest of her body was convinced that if these things killed her in her dream, she’d die in the real world.
    Must get away.
    The monster closest to her, swung its clawed hand at her face, coming within inches of slicing her. She screamed and pushed herself back and something hard slammed into her back.
    She turned and looked up, suddenly blinded by light as the decrepit room around her vanished and was replaced by her classroom and classmates.
    She was on the floor, her back up against Evan Harrison’s chair, with every eye in the classroom glued to her.
    “Oh God,” she said, swallowing her ridicule as laughter erupted.
    Mr. Mahr rushed to her side and helped her up.
    “Are you okay?”
    Becca and Vicky, who sat in the row behind her, were staring at her as if she’d stripped nude and ran through the classroom starting fires.
    Noella wanted to melt into the floor. Hide in the closet, climb in the sewer, anything. She hadn’t lost herself like that since the incident . She looked around in a panic, making sure she hadn’t hurt anyone.
    Everything seemed normal, except for herself, of