Chapter 3

It had been about a week since Aliyah’s dream and since, Elijah wasn’t seen. Not on school. Not on the street. It was like he had disappeared. Which he probably did. Aliyah was still confused. It had to be a dream. It couldn’t have been anything else. Or could it.
Aliyah was doing surprisingly well in school. Maybe it was because Elijah was gone ore just because she had Claire and Melissa who loved to help her.
Melissa had given up on Ethan and was yet again single. Claire had started dating Noah and Aliyah was also still in the field.
It wasn’t a surprise to Melissa and Claire that at the end of the week, Aliyah was devastated. Almost every day, at least 3 guys came over to ask for Aliyah’s number. Any other girl would’ve loved the attention but not Aliyah. She hated it. She wasn’t sure why, but there was just too much going on in her head to think about some guy who liked her.
‘God damn. Don’t they get the point? I don’t want a boyfriend.’
Alijah laid on one of the park benches close to the pond.
‘Ali, be happy. You know now that guys like you. Then IF you ever want a boyfriend, you have loads to choose from. You know, I’m kind of jealous.’
Claire had spread out a picnic blanket and was busy shoving the cake back into the basket.
‘you have nothing to be jealous of. You’ve got Noah! The most popular boy in the school!’ Said Melissa.
Claire shrugged and took a second attempt at the cake which had been crushed from the first attempt.
‘Never mind. Anyways, Ali, did you “visit” Elijah?’ Asked Claire, ‘I think you did because I haven’t seen him all week.’
Aliyah bit her lip. She knew Claire wouldn’t easily drop the subject.
‘Yeah. I went there. It was a strange experience, though.’
‘OH, okay. At least he’s gone. That’s great, right?’
‘Yes, sure.’ But Aliyah was already somewhere else with her thought. Now that Claire brought up Elijah, Aliyah started thinking about him again. What had happened that he was gone?

Aliyah yet again stood before the ramshackle building. This time she went willingly. She really didn’t have a purpose so why did she go, that was even a question beyond her power to answer.
After she rang the doorbell twice, Aliyah was convinced Elijah was really gone. She turned around to walk off but got stopped by the screak coming from the opening of the door.
Aliyah turned around and expected to see Elijah looking straight through her but instead she just found the door open with no one behind it. Aliyah walked inside and immediately regretted that decision. The door slammed closed behind her, trapping her in the darkness of the room. Aliyah kind of remembered where the furniture had stood and tried to grope the table. But there was no table. Aliyah’s anxiety started to kick in. No table? She was sure it had been in the center of the room. Apparently, Elijah moved the furniture so the next best thing Aliyah searched for was the wall. She couldn’t see a dime in the pitch blackness of the room. In vain, she tried to look for a door but after groping the first wall, Aliyah already gave up. It was hopeless.
Aliyah dropped to the ground, too scared to even cry. Her mind was filled with paranoid thoughts. Was she ever going to get out of this mess?
Suddenly a small, blue light lit up before her. It was strange. It was like a blue, floating water balloon but now she could at least see a bit off the room.
The windows above her had been boarded up, keeping even the slightest ray of sun light out. This also explained that the first-time Aliyah had been her, a large, old-school lantern lit up the place.
Aliyah looked back at the blue light. There still wasn’t much to see. She stood up. As soon as she did that, the blue light became brighter. Now Aliyah could see the room completely. There was a large rug on the floor and in the corner, lay a bloody fur coat. There was only one chair in the room. Or what was left of it. It only had two legs and the backrest was missing. Instead it had two large sticks vertically attached. You couldn’t really call it a chair anymore.
There was also that large, old-school lantern from before and a box of matches beside it. Aliyah was a clever girl. Even under these mysterious conditions, she could think clear. Aliyah decided to light the lantern. It took her 5 matches before she finally got the wick to burn. It was probably of the nerves.
Aliyah picked up the lantern and walked over to the bloody, fur coat. Something had been moving in it. But when she came close, Aliyah quickly jumped back. The fur coat wasn’t really a coat. It had been a living creature. Breathing heavily caused by a bunch of injuries. The creature was a large, white wolf, which Aliyah recognized as the wolf Elijah supposedly turned into.
Aliyah quickly recovered from the shock when she noticed it was unconscious. Slowly but carefully, Aliyah walked back to the creature. There was a large cut across the ribs of the wolf and it seemed like he had lost a lot of blood. There were some small cuts near the neck but none of which were as severe as the one across his ribs.
Aliyah didn’t know what to do. The wound could easily get infected and if nothing happened with it, the animal would eventually die.
Aliyah looked around for an exit. Deep inside she knew it was Elijah who was now so severely injured. She had to get a doctor. But all her hope disappeared when she looked around the room. There was no exit to be found. No door and all the windows where boarded up. How was she going to get help?
Aliyah desperately ran to the windows and started hitting them. It hurt but she couldn’t let him die. She started crying. Where had she gotten herself into? Her hands started bleeding while she tried to pull out the planks that where hammered against the window frame. Aliyah gave up. She was stuck. She buried her face in her bloody hands. She cried for what seemed like an eternity until she had no more tears. She was going to starve to death together with the rotting body of a wolf.
Aliyah gave up completely. She had no more strength in her. Her body was exhausted and Aliyah could barely keep her eyes open. She laid down closed her eyes and surrendered to her body and fell asleep.

After about an hour Aliyah wake up to a wet feeling on her cheek. As she looked up she stared into a pair of different colored eyes. One blue and one dark brown. The eyes looked worried.
Aliyah got up and pet the large wolf on his head until she realized what was going on. She jumped up backing up. But Aliyah walked into the wall she had been sleeping against.
Aliyah tried to stay calm and think but she was so scared, her brain couldn’t process the events which were happening so fast. From the moment Aliyah had stood up to the moment she was standing against the wall felt like they happened in a fraction of a second.
She tried to grab something to defend herself but there was nothing to grab or hold onto except for the boards on the windows but as Aliyah had earlier discovered it was no use to try to take them down.
As Aliyah prepared for a brutal attack by the giant wolf who was slowly walking towards her, she closed her eyes but as she opened them, she found herself standing against her closet door in her very own bedroom.
This happened so fast Aliyah was convinced she was still in the room with the wolf, but as her mind finally put everything in order she realized she was once again dreaming. It was a weird feeling. But this time Aliyah remembered she had been laying in her bed before she went to Elijah. But still, it seemed so real yet so impossible. The things that happened were obviously something from another world but as Aliyah had been through them in her dream, they seemed to be as real as it could get.
As confused as she was, Aliyah decided it was yet another dream and nothing else.