daylight's dying, run, baby, run, baby, run

Brooklyn had seen lots of scary things but she'd never been as scared as she was right now. 

Joey had been her friend and he'd tricked her and lied to her and she didn't know why. The man in the van had stuck a needle in her arm and it still hurt and itched and it had made her fall asleep for a long time and when she woke up her head had hurt so bad. She'd been in a cold and dirty basement and she'd heard people arguing upstairs. 

There was a yucky old table downstairs and an even yuckier bed that had spider webs under it, but she hid there anyway. It was really cold and she was getting hungry. She'd tried to be brave and find a way out by pushing the table against the wall and climbing up to the tiny widows that were way up there but she couldn't reach, and then she'd fallen down and cut her knee and it hurt. 

Eventually she'd just fallen asleep. 

When she woke up again, she heard more voices.

Different voices than before. They weren't mad, they were just talking. One was a lady, who sounded nice, like a teacher. The other was deeper but not mean sounding, just stern--also kind of like a teacher, or maybe a principal. 

Like before she crept up to the door so she could hear what they were saying, being careful to avoid the third step from the top because it creaked. She wasn't doing very good at being brave, like a Gryffindor, but she was being smart, like a Ravenclaw. 

She mostly heard mutterings at first, like they were a few rooms away, and only caught a sentence here and there--You're sure this is the place from the video?...the camera would've been in that corner...look at the dust over here--disturbed recently?--and she bit her lower lip trying to decide if they were nice people who might help her or just more of the bad people from before. Maybe she should hide again, maybe--

The top step creaked beneath her foot as she backed away from the door.

With a sharp gasp, Brooklyn hurried down the stairs, only slightly hobbled by her injured knee, and flung herself under the bed, as a flashlight beam turned in the direction of the basement door. 

On the other side of which, at the end of the hallway, Alex Reagan had felt her stomach attempt to leap up into her chest and had flung her hand out to grab Richard Strand's arm--looking, for a moment, like one of those reaction images snapped in haunted houses. Not only had she distinctly heard a creak, and what sounded like a frightened gasp, but there had been movement under the shadows of the door.