“Nora”, the weakened tone called out.
Nora looked to the ground and gasped; in the mix of blood was a claw, and not just any other claw, but that belonging to the creature they had just killed.
“It isn’t over, is it?” Naomi managed to ask.
Nora felt too scared to answer the question. She felt too terrified to tell her friend that their biggest nightmare was yet to come.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Nami spat out some more blood, while she curled on the couch as Nora tried to make sense of her last reading. She hurried to the kitchen to grab some towels for her friend, and a bowl of warm water, before settling into the seat next to her.
“You need to go”, Naomi managed to speak. “Leave this cursed place and go!”
Nora looked to the door, and then back at her wounded friend, but remained unsure of what to do. She had lost so much, and walking out on the last person alive which she could call family felt like a particularly tall order she didn’t want to go through.
“Please”, Nora begged. “Don’t die on me”.
Naomi snickered softly, but made no sound as she closed her eyes and felt her friend begin to help wipe off the blood stains from her mouth with clean towel.
“You’re all I’ve got left”, Nora sniffed as she gently squeezed the towel back into a bowl by her side.
Naomi smiled, sucking in ample breath, just before closing her eyes and sliding off into an unconscious state. Nora felt her neck for pulse and found a weak one, before gently slipping away from the girl’s reach in hopes she would be able to get some rest.
“The hospital”, she figured to herself, having forgotten they weren’t being bound by the monsters outside their house any longer.
She hurried to the door frame which bore no door, ad looked outside the house, to widened eyes and absolutely stiffened nerves. She scanned her eyes from east to west and then back again, wondering if she was indeed seeing things as they ought to be.
“This cannot be happening!” she frowned. “What more do you want?”
The earth around the house crawled with vermin slowly easing from underneath, while the skies slowly turned dark from the distance. Wild shrubs spread across the grounds and slowly extended towards the front door, but surprisingly, the oddity only seemed to be occurring around their house alone.
“It still doesn’t want us to leave”, Nora thought to herself as she realized the dilemma she was in.
She tightened her fists and turned around to look in the direction of her friend, but felt her heart stop beating momentarily, and her stomach sink at the sight of an empty couch; Naomi was nowhere to be found.
“Naomi?” Nora called out, wondering where he weak friend could have gone to without making a sound.
Asides a large goo of blood at the foot of the couch, nothing else indicated where the lady might have headed, while the room fell awfully silent as well.
“Naomi!” Nora called out in cautious voice, as her breath heightened and her eyes widened in worry.
She raced up the stairs and towards the bedroom in search for her friend, hoping she had gone into the room in search for better resting place, but the absence only caused her heart to rage with discomfort, and her knees to wobble too.
“Where are you?” she whispered to herself in distress.
No sooner had she asked the question, did she hear a loud growl rage around the room, followed by heavy breathing and the unmistakable cry from her friend, Naomi.
“Naomi!” Nora yelled, turned around without further ado, and heading down the stairs.
Her feet moved quickly, and her arms swung wildly by her side as she hurried down the stairs and stopped for a moment to listen for her friend once again. She turned to the couch as the wind hurrying through the front door blew the stack of tarot cards on the table into the air, causing them to fly in her direction, and a select few to fall at her feet.
Nora slowly crouched to pick the one directly before her feet up and flipped it over. The card left her chills, and caused her to gasp as she slowly held it away from her face in hopes she wasn’t seeing the right thing.
“No”, she gasped.
She picked up the next two cards closest to her and flipped them over as well, as the oddity they bore on their faces struck her and caused her to further back away.
“This isn’t right”, she thought to herself.
Forgetting about Naomi for the moment, she began hurrying around the room to pick up the other cards as well. They all bore the same image on them, causing her to wonder if they weren’t the same cards she had read earlier. The image was clear as day and the intent behind what the card wanted wasn’t hard to decipher, since it bore two feminine figures fighting.
“You cannot be so evil to want this!” she yelled at the cards and hoped the elderlies could hear her from whatever realms they were in. “Isn’t it bad enough that you’ve taken my entire family!?”
She fumed as she picked up every single card, before walking over to the fire place she had lit to give them some warmth. Taking another look at the cards with her heart pounding in her mouth wildly, Nora closed her eyes and tossed the deck into the fire.
“I don’t have any friends to bring you back”, she thought to herself.
Watching the fire graze the cards to the ground satisfyingly, she turned around with a loud sigh, before the eerie since reminded her of her friend still missing within the house.
“Naomi”, she whispered, feeling frightened and worried at the same time.
“Hello Nora”, the subtle, yet nerve chilling response called out to her from behind.
Nora felt stiffness in her neck, and her breath seemed to
