by Chrystina Trulove-Reyes

Created on: March 20, 2010   Last Updated: December 06, 2011

It was a bad time for a party. Everyone knew it, but still they came. Maybe they were seeking the comfort of a large group. Others probably hoped they would forget the nightmare that held Ridgemont’s collective breath.

There were numerous people, but they were all clustered together in the main rooms as if avoiding the cold. Contrary to how the party-goers acted and the winter weather outside, the house was oppressive. Music thrummed through the house, forcing people to shout to be heard, and the glass in the windows to rattle in time with the bass. The air was stale, touched with perfume and alcoholic breath.

From the moment I entered the house with Emily, I felt like I was being watched. When I moved from room to room, I knew I was being followed. I would look, but no one would stand out. My skin felt as though it would crawl right from my muscles. The feeling was so demanding I could not seem to stop scratching my hands, arms, legs, or anything else that would not look appropriate. Though I kept moving, I still felt the icy pin-pricks of nerves.

I stopped moving to lean against a wall in the living room. The living room had once been beautifully decorated. Like the other rooms in the house, it quickly became a casualty of the party. Empty plastic cups, paper napkins, paper plates, and beer bottles littered every flat, and even some not-so-flat, surfaces. The obviously expensive furniture piled against one wall to make room for dancing. No one was dancing, though. Instead, people had shuffled into smaller groups amidst the larger gathering. It was hard to tell where one group ended and another began.

My spot on the wall also gave me a good position to hear most of the shouted conversations going on around me.

“I still can’t believe it.” A man stated, holding his beer bottle with white knuckles.

“How many is it now?” A woman asked, not bothering to hide the fact that she was shaking.

“There were twelve; all of them vanished after dark.” Someone across the room shouted in response.

A moment of silence followed the statement and I watched as most of the people in the room glanced out the huge picture window. Darkness had fallen almost an hour earlier, drenching the world outside the window in shades of gray. I looked at it myself, a knee-jerk reaction.

When I first arrived, the window showed a nicely manicured garden at the front of the house, along with several cars. One car caught my attention at the time, a bright

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