Chapter 4 Bleed Black

".... Wake up! Wake up, you 3! Why are you all screaming?"

The three jolted awake, looking around in confusion. The voice had come from Mason's mother, who was standing over them. She sighed as she saw their eyes open.

"What sort of crazy slumber party did you 3 get up to that had you passed out on the floor? I made breakfast, so come eat before it gets cold." She said before leaving them.

The three looked at each other in utter shock. Had all that transpired been some sort of collective nightmare?

"Let's go eat first, we can talk about all this when we come back up," Nadia suggested.

Mason and Piper nodded and they all headed downstairs for breakfast. Mason's mother had prepared a feast for them, as expected of a world-class chef. They sat and ate in silence until Mason spoke up.

"Hey Mom, did you ever read that book Dad got me for my 10th birthday?"

"You mean that gigantic book of bullocks? Of course not. Even if I wanted to, it's not like it's written in English."

The three paused at that.

"What, what do you mean, Mrs. Collins?" Piper asked slowly.

"I mean, it's complete gibberish; I remember how upset Mason here was when we couldn't figure out what language it was, let alone translate it. Why do you think it's been sitting in our library all these years?"

The three remained silent and finished their breakfast. Mason's mom said she had to be somewhere and left them to their own devices. They rushed back upstairs to his room as soon as the front door shut.

The book lay on the table just as it had before, except now there was a key placed on top of it. They scanned the room for any signs of the creature that'd attacked them, but there were none. The window had no cracks and there wasn't a drop of blood on the floor.

Nadia carefully approached the book and picked up the key. It looked like a golden key that had grown rusty over the years. Piper walked over and pointed at the open page.

"Look, it's a different page and there's a drawing of this exact key here."

True to her words, there was an illustration of the key that Nadia held. Both looked towards Mason expectantly.

"What?"

"We haven't got all day, read what it says," Nadia replied.

"Why me? You do it!"

"It's your weird auto-translating book that no one else could read before now; it is your responsibility."

Mason groaned and stepped forward, and read out the footnote below the drawing.

The key of the guardians, an ancient relic which can be used to lock away a spirit. However, it is not the way to unleash one. To unleash a spirit, the following chant must be-'

Nadia covered his mouth with one hand and covered the rest of the footnote with the other.

"Do not finish that. We don't know what reciting some ancient poem could unleash. We've had enough fever dreams for one day."

Nadia tore out the rest of the footnote, folded it and placed it in her pocket. She noticed that Piper seemed to be looking out the window, lost in thought.

"Are you alright, Piper?"

"Mason, wasn't your mom supposed to be back on Monday? Yesterday was Friday, and if we were unconscious all through the night, then it's the weekend now."

"Maybe she finished up earlier than expected and came back." Nadia reasoned.

"No, that's not possible. This was a very high-scale event; she wasn't even sure she'd make it back by Monday. There's no way she'd have come back so early." Mason said.

All of a sudden, Nadia's phone began buzzing in her backpack. She pulled it out, it was Noelle calling.

"Hello, Noelle?"

"Hi, I don't know if you guys are done with your experiment, but I did call in sick for you three as you asked, so no worries about school today."

"What are you going on about? I never asked you to do any of that, and today is Saturday; we don't have school."

"Yes, you did. You sent me a very specific text saying so, as well as not to bother any of you the whole weekend and to call only after 10:30. I called at exactly that. Did your experiment work, by the way? Does it have to do with the shadow?"

Nadia's phone slipped from her hand and fell to the ground. They could all hear Noelle calling out to her, but she didn't respond. She picked up the phone and said she'd call her back.

"Mason, Piper, check the date and time on your phones."

Both did as she asked while she checked her messages. It was just as Noelle had said, there was a text telling her to call in sick for them and not to bother them all through the weekend.

But she'd never sent that text.

She looked up, and Mason and Piper shared a look of horror.

"How, how is this possible?"

"We couldn't have slept through the entire weekend, that doesn't make any sense, right? There has to be some sort of explanation."

The answer came in the form of a searing pain in Nadia's collarbone. She reached up to touch it and felt something wet; she retracted her hand and saw a thick black substance oozing through her shirt.

"You guys, I did not happen to bump into any inkpots on our way up, did I?" She asked.

When there was no response, she looked up. Mason was wheezing as the same black substance oozed from his neck, and Piper's jeans were soaked through with it in her left leg. She stepped closer to Mason and shakily raised a hand to wipe away the ooze; there were 4 laceration marks on his neck.

None of that was a dream, it was all real.