1Luci flinches awake at the sudden squealing of brakes and cursing from the driver's seat. It had been a long drive from Cincinnati to Silent Hill, and she had slept for the majority of the ride. She didn't even want to come on this trip, but Oliver had begged her to the point where she just gave up. A 7 hour trip in a small mini van, with two guys who were dumb enough to forget food, was just the kind of Summer Vacation she was asking for. Looking over at him sleepily, she groans and sits up.
"Whussa matter?" Jesse groans from the backseat, sitting up to glare at Oliver.
"There was a dog in the road. I had to swerve to miss it," he mutters, gritting his teeth in aggravation. Luci adjusts herself in the seat, trying to get the numb feeling out of her hips.
"Are we there yet?" she asks, yawning in mid sentence.
"Yeah. We're here," Oliver sighs, pulling the van off into the trees, and out of sight.
A small white car pulls up alongside them, carrying three of Luci's other friends. Climbing out into the open air, Luci stretches and looks across the front of the van to the car. Terra climbs out of the driver's seat, pulling her long brown and blonde hair out of it's pony tail.
"How was the drive?" Luci asks, walking over to the car casually. Terra rolls her eyes and gives a smile.
"Well, lets just say that this had better be worth all the hype Jesse and Dana said it would be. Otherwise, fuck this, I'm going home and studying for next semester. I like having a 4.0 grade point average," she says with a laugh, then pops the trunk and pulls out her travel bag. The back passenger door swings open, and Dana slides out of the car with her small messenger bag, bending slightly to fix her mini skirt, and trying her best to look as sexy as possible while doing so.
"Hey, Dana! You look like you're ready for a hike," Oliver says with a cool undertone in his voice. Dana leers up at him, and stands up straight, puffing her chest out to assert her so called dominance.
"Ollie, Ollie, Ollie... Just because you can't rake in the boys like I can, doesn't mean you have to be a jealous bitch. Am I right?" Dana coos haughtily. Oliver rolls his eyes and marches to the back of the van to get his bag. Luci looks up at him as he reaches in the cooler and pulls out a bottle of water, wrenching the cap open as if he were strangling the life out of someone.
"Ollie, lets not argue with Dana on this trip, okay? I know she can be a bit of a skank sometimes, but she's Danny's friend. Lets just kind of... Get to know her, maybe?" she offers, her expression dripping with hope. Oliver sputters through a swallow of water and lets out a single "Ha!" And with it, he picks up his bag and walks over to Danny. Luci sighs in defeat, then lifts the cooler out of the van, and shuts the hatch door.
"Alright, everybody gather 'round! Lets get this party moving!" Danny hollers excitedly, rubbing his hands together with a big smile plastered across his face. Danny was always a bit of a douche, so to speak. He never dated the girls he slept with, and never slept with the girls he dated. He drank too much, worked out too much, and always tried coming on to any girl he could by flexing his large tanned muscles, or smoothing his jet black hair. Yet strangely enough, Luci was attracted to him. She thought he was funny at times, and had a good way of keeping things light-hearted.
Everyone groups around the hood of the car, and Danny spreads out a map of the area, pointing to the gold star put over a town.
"Okay, so we are currently half a mile away from Silent Hill as we speak. If anyone is calling chicken, you can hop in Terra's car and leave now," he says authoritatively, soliciting a scoff from Terra over his assumed dictation of using her car. No one speaks.
"Alright. So, we can't drive into the town. Obviously, that's why we parked here. It's blocked off. So, what we do is walk to the gate, snip the chains, and in we go. We leave at noon tomorrow, and it's nine o' clock now, so we have fifteen hours to get really hammered, explore a little, grab souvenirs, and get the hell out of here! Are we ready?" Everyone concurs in unison, hoisting their bags, and lifting their coolers.
"Kay, bitchin'! Now lets get going! I'm ready to get licky faced!" Dana shrills, smiling brightly. Oliver leans over to Luci and whispers, "More like hole-in-the-faced." Luci lets a small giggle escape her lips before clamping them shut, and swatting him for being rude. Oliver shrugs it off and smiles at her, then walks off after everyone else.
Luci double checks her bag and the pockets of her jeans and jacket, realizing she left her phone in the van.
"Guys, go on ahead! I gotta get my phone from the van!" she calls ahead, receiving affirmations and groans of annoyance. Sometimes she really wondered why she was as nice as she was. It's not like any of them, save for Terra and Oliver, did anything nice for her. They didn't even talk to her really. The occasional Facebook like here, or a comment there, but other than that, they might as well have been complete strangers. Luci further pondered this as she reached the van. The dark woods around the van made her skin crawl. She hated the dark, and she hated the woods too, so putting the two together just gave her the heebie jeebie's even worse.
Opening the drivers door, she slides in and grabs her phone out of the middle counsel, pushing the unlock button.
"Oh great. No service out here. How wonderful," she grumbles to herself, and climbs out of the van again, locking the door and shutting it tight. As she slides her phone into her pocket, she feels it start giving vibrations. Her initial reaction was to pull it back out and check her messages, but there weren't any there. Just texts from earlier in the day. Then she realized that the vibration pattern was different. When she received a notification, her phone gave off two strong vibrations, and that was it. But right now, her phone was vibrating, ever so slightly growing in urgency, and never pausing.
"Ugh... I just got you two weeks ago, and already you are screwing up on me. Typical, stupid technology," Luci sighs, and pulls the battery out, then slides it back in and restarts the phone. She begins to walk back to the road, eyes on the cell phone, waiting for it to load. The small breeze ruffles the leaves in the trees, creating a woeful kind of soothing. The kind of sound that seems like the calming before the storm.
The phone finally loads, and Luci unlocks it. Suddenly, her phone goes practically bonkers in her hands, vibrating as hard as it can, endlessly, as if it were screaming.
"What the hell?!" she exclaims, now completely irritated, and a little frightened. The breeze picks up again, the leaves making their natural applause. They almost drowned out the panting sound that Luci could hear in the distance. She spun around to inspect the road behind her, searching for the source of the faint noise. After a good five seconds of foolish curiosity, she huffs and slides her malfunctioning phone back into her jeans pocket. Spinning on her heel, she begins to make her way up the road, walking at the speed of a fast jog.
She never noticed the soft sound of clicking nails on pavement that followed her, covered by the whispering winds in the dark and impenetrable forest.