The four of us remained sitting down in the range for what felt like forever, in complete silence. It was beautiful. Everything was so calm and quiet. If I did get back home, I would never experience that sense of calm again.
It was like its own little world, away from all the problems. Nothing but the range and some grass. And the Journal. The thought of the creepy old Journal soured my thoughts. I caught my face tensing into an unnatural display of anger and quickly corrected it to a neutral.
“How long have we been here?” Ava broke the sweet silence.
I squinted one eye and closed the other to look up at the sky.
“The sun hasn’t moved,” Tyler reached the conclusion before I did.
Ava frowned deeply. “I wonder what’s going on back on their end?”
I imagined that my family hadn’t realized I was missing yet. Only a few hours had passed, right? But I guess if we got stuck here overnight then they’d really start worrying. Somehow, the thought of returning home to the chaos I knew would arise made me feel exhausted.
I leaned back on my hands and sighed.
Jake picked up the journal. “We should wish for something.”
“Like what?” Tyler asked. I could tell from the way his nose scrunched he didn’t like the idea one bit.
“I don’t know. But think, we could have anything we ever wanted,” Jake said,
Tyler rolled his eyes. “Whenever we wish for something, we get a memory from Colin with that thing in it. I doubt he has memories of everything we could ever want.”
Jake groaned. “Piece of shit,” he chucked the journal down to the ground.
“What if it has limited wishes?” Ava said. “Like Aladdin.”
Tyler nodded and then sat silent in thought for a moment. “It wants to show us what it can do, and we have a pretty good idea, now right?”
“It can throw us into memories and give us food,” Jake shrugged. “That’s cool and all but like,” he trailed off and shrugged.
“Sort of pointless,” Tyler finished the thought. “Maybe it’s trying to show us some deeper purpose and we’re just not thinking right.”
“Or maybe it’s all a trick and we’re never getting out,” I said.
They turned to glare at me, and I promptly shut the fuck up.
“So,” Ava said, and picked up the journal. “We have to keep wishing for stuff so it will show us more memories?”
Tyler nodded.
Ava smiled. “You know what I really want right now?”
“What?”
“My vape.”
Ava’s wish caused a lone brick wall to appear in front of us. A very specific brick wall. There was a poster taped to it depicting a black bobcat encircling a big letter B. The Benjamin Bobcat. This was our school!
Leaning up against the wall was an older kid, maybe a senior in high school. He had really tan sin for a white dude living in North Carolina. He casually lit his cigarette and looked up in our direction.
“Ay, you want one?” He asked.
I looked around to see who he was talking to.
“Hell no! I don’t want that bullshit!” My stomach clenched as another teenage boy appeared. Colin, of course. He looked paler than he had in the last memory. And his hair was a mess, his clothes were a mess, and his eyes were crazy.
“My bad,” the other guy raised his hands in mock surrender. “Well then what’s up?”
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Colin looked him up and down before slowly saying, “I see you’ve been talking to Abigail.”
The other guy grinned. “Oh yeah. Abigail, she’s a peach. My name’s Pete by the way.”
“I know.”
“Cool.” It seemed obvious to me that the tan guy, Pete, had been expecting for Colin to introduce himself in turn, but it looked like Colin was too far gone to get the social cue.
“She loves me you know,” Colin blurted.
Pete raised his eyebrows. “And your name is?”
“None of your business.”
“All right tough guy,” Pete pushed off the wall. “I’ve never heard Abby mention you so uh- she loves you in your imagination, I’m guessing. You know it’s okay to have your little fantasies or whatever but leave us regular people out of it.” He threw his cig on the ground and stomped it out. “Way to ruin a good smoke, buddy.”
Colin ran at him and slammed him to the wall with surprising force. “Don’t mess with her anymore. You understand?”
Pete just smiled in his face but before he could retaliate, Abigail stepped into the memory.
“Colin? What are you doing?”
“You know this guy?” Pete glared at Colin.
“Used to.”
Colin let go of Pete and plastered on a fake smile, which didn’t come close to touching his eyes.
“Get out of here Colin,” Abigail said. Her voice was small but unwavering.
“Abi-”
“NO! SHUT UP!” Abigail shouted. “I never want to see you again.”
“You heard her man!”
Colin looked from Abigail to Pete and back. Then he pointed at Pete. “I’m gonna kill you.”
I was desensitized to death threats. You can’t go a day without hearing someone threaten to kill someone else. Some people at Benjamin High went pretty in detail about how they’d do it too. But it was all jokes. No one took it seriously and no one cared. But the way Colin had just said that, mixed with his sickly looks made the threat believable. 100%.
Colin turned on his heel and disappeared. Pete adjusted his clothes before he and the wall behind him disappeared as well.
“That was our school,” Ava murmured in disbelief.
“Well yeah,” Jake shrugged. “Not too big of a coincidence considering all this happened in our town. The range specifically.”
“I guess that’s the closest thing he had to a vape in his memory.” Tyler gestured to a cigarette on the ground, the only evidence of the memory we’d just witnessed.
“That is so disgusting.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Their conversation faded into background noise as I focused on Abigail, or Colin’s memory of her anyway. She was still standing there, facing away from us.
“Shouldn’t she have disappeared by now?” I asked.
The others fell silent around me.
“Yeah,” Ava trailed off, adopting my whispery tone.
Abigail turned toward us. The hair on the back of my neck prickled.
“You think she sees us?” I whispered, barely moving me facial muscles.
“She’s not really there,” Tyler said.
But it did seem like Abigail was looking at us. At me in particular. This was the second time where it had felt like these memory characters were aware of me.
Abigail and I had an awkward face off. Then she fell to her knees and cried out.
“What the-” Jake exhaled behind me.
I rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
“Hannah, she’s not real,” Tyler said, annoyed.
But she was. We were making eye contact. She grabbed my legs, and I could feel it.
I dropped down to kneel beside her in the tall grass.
“He’s going to kill you!” She whisper-hissed.
“Huh?”
She let go of me and clutched at her face. “Not again. Oh please, not again!”
“What are you talking about?” I could feel my heart beating out my chest.
“Listen,” Abigail said. “Do you want to stay here?”
I licked my lips. “Heck no.”
Abigail turned towards the others. “What about y’all. Do you want to go home?”
Jake and Ava looked shocked at being addressed by her but managed to say that yes, they did want to get the fuck out of here.
Tyler didn’t respond.
“Tyler?” I shouted.
“Yeah. I do!”
Abigail turned back to me. “Someone’s lying.”
“What?”
“I’ve only got so much time left! Listen, someone here wants to stay, or you wouldn’t be here at all. To get out of here you all have to genuinely wish on the Journal to get out of here, and someone on Earth has to wish you back as well. Understand?”
I nodded as my brain raced to process the information. Someone in our group wanted to stay here? Who could it be?
Abigail was still talking. “I think the journal is trying to take one of you as its new host. Once Colin figures that out, he’ll turn bloodthirsty. He’ll kill each and every one of you, just like he killed Peter.”
My mouth gaped open.
“A B I G A I L!” Colin’s voice boomed from everywhere. I looked around wildly but didn’t see him.
Abigial was breathing faster and faster. “You’ve got to kill him before he kills you. Wish for- wish f-f-for a weapon-”
Her voice cut out. She clutched at my hands and disappeared.
