Afterlife - Stephanie Hudson Page 0,13

to move, with my hands clamped around my mouth so as not to scream. Then it came five seconds after the light, the loudest bang and crack of thunder I had ever heard. I put this down to the location, as it must have echoed off the mountains because it seemed to go on for what seemed like minutes. I remembered something vague from my childhood, about for each second after the lightning strikes, that the waiting for thunder represents a mile. So therefore the storm was five miles away. This was somewhat comforting.

It wasn’t that I was scared of storms normally but being in an unfamiliar house in the middle of what seemed like nowhere didn’t appeal to me. In fact storms kind of fascinated me. The power of them was so immense. I used to like to think of them being created in anger by the almighty Zeus, forged by his own hand to be sent to the underworld, ruled by his brother Hades. This was to be a warning of his impending wrath towards his treacherous brother living in the pits of Hell.

I nearly ran into the kitchen and turned on the light before the next angry blast of light could erupt. I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge as I noticed that a heavy downpour of rain had now added to the night’s stormy weather and left quickly, trying to glide up the stairs without making any noise. I took two steps at a time. Amazingly I only stumbled once and considering the steep uneven steps to the attic that were consumed by darkness, I thought that I did pretty well not breaking something.

Once inside the comfort of my own room and seeing the warm glow of my bed lamp I felt as if I could finally breathe. I got my cold body into bed just in time before the next eruption. The explosion of light and noise indicated to me that the storm was now right above us. And Zeus was most definitely very angry tonight! This was by far the worst storm I had ever heard. It seemed to last forever. I didn’t know whether it had finished or not by the time I finally fell asleep but when I awoke suddenly to the strangest sound, I didn’t know if it was thanks to any noise the storm produced. Wide eyed and breathing heavy I lay waiting for the sound again.

It sounded like something was trying to scratch their way out of my window. Half in between sleep and consciousness, I tried to make sense of the noise, coming up with explanations in my mind as to what could be the cause of this irritating noise. My mind led me to a more familiar sound that our family cat used to make when she jumped up to my window ledge. Puddy, our big grey pet cat used to scratch at the frame to get my attention, so I would open the window for her to come into my room, in the hopes that I would share my bed with her.

This thought quickly had me sat in an upright position, frozen, staring out into the darkness. The noise hadn’t been something trying to get out but more importantly, something was trying to get in!

I sat waiting for the noise again hoping to God that it had only been part of my dreamy state and that I had imagined the whole thing. But then I heard it again and nearly jumped out of my skin. The clawing had become more erratic sounding, more frantic to enter my room and get to me.

My heart raced, it felt as if it would burst through my chest like the thing in the Alien movie. I still couldn’t see what it was and knew that if I put my lamp on it wouldn’t help, the only thing left for me to do was to get out of bed and walk over to my window to get a better look. The problem was I wasn’t sure that I wanted a better look.

It was getting louder now and I did think about waking up Libby and Frank but then what if it had been nothing or was gone by the time I got back to the room. They would think I had finally lost it. And I feared the nut house more than anything else. Well almost anything.

I decided that I had been through worst things and that I would