I stared eagerly at the Chess board, waiting for her to make a move. It was so silent that even I could hear the clock ticking away. I turned my eyes away from the board and looked outside into the darkness. Then I heard a piece move, and I shot my attention back to the board. “Check,” Reese proclaimed proudly. Now it was my turn to stare at the pieces and decide which one I should move. Eventually I came to either moving my Queen to take out her Horse and me be free of check, but loose my Queen, or move my King somewhere else, even though all the other places but one would lead me into check again. “Queen, King, Queen, King?” I recited in my head. “Queen, King-“ We both jumped in our seats as we heard the telephone ring. “Darn old telephone,” I muttered, then stretched my arm out to the pick up the phone. “Hello?” I asked. There was no reply. “Hello?” I asked again impatiently. We heard someone’s breathing, then the person on the other line whispered very slowly, “Run while you still can.” Then, a long beep filled the deadly silent room. We both stared at the phone for awhile, thinking of only what the person said. I broke the silence by saying, “It must’ve just been a prank call.” I turned my head to Reese as she shuddered, “Yeah, it must’ve just been a prank call.” I could tell that Reese was scared, so I told her, “Shall we finish the game,” then moved my King to the last safe spot it could go to. She took a glance at the board, made eye contact with her Queen, and in one swift move, she moved her Queen and shouted, “Check mate!” I smirked. “You’re getting better. Great game!” She glared, “You’re going easy on me! I asked you to go hard.” I shrugged, “I didn’t want to to be discouraged. Plus, you can get a few wins!” She huffed and put her hands on the table, leaning towards my face, telling me, “Go hard on me from now on!” I nodded, “Okay,” and started to set up the Chess board again. As I put the last piece into place, the telephone rang again, us jumping from loud noice breaking the peaceful silence. I picked up the phone. “Hello?” I asked impatiently. “Run while you can,” the man chillingly whispered. “Hello? Who is this? Hello? Hello?” I shouted into the phone, annoyed, as it beeped again. “I hate prank calls!” I shouted, but Reese thought otherwise. “Call him.” She whispered. “What?” I asked, looking at her like she was crazy. “Just, CALL HIM BACK!” She screamed. I nodded my head fast and dialed the phone number that he called from. As the phone rang, the room become eerie and strange. Finally he picked up, but he said nothing. “TALK!” I roared into the phone. “Run,” he whispered, then hung up. I hurriedly whispered, “I’m going to call him back and tell him that this stuff isn’t funny. Oh, he’s going to get it. I’m going to-“ Reese grabbed my hand and pulled it away from the phone. I struggled demanding for her to let me go. “I’m going to show him a piece of me. This isn’t funny! He needs to learn a lesson! Let me go! Stop it Reese!” She sighed and calmly said, “Sage, calm down. What if it is really a warning?” I stopped struggling. “What if it is not!” I challenged. She stared at me and eventually told me, “Let me call him, and I’ll do the talking this time.” She sat me in a chair and I watched as she dialed the number again. When he picked up, she asked him peacefully, “Sir, when will this happen?” All we heard was the mans breathing for awhile, then he muttered, “Soon. Be prepared.” He hung up again. Reese tried to call him again, but he wouldn’t pick up. I sighed and told her, “I’m going to watch the news,” then got up out of my chair, pushing it behind me, and made my way to the living room. When I pressed the on button, the news was the weather report. The man who was giving the weather report was pointing at our town. I leaned in and listened to him carefully. “It looks the Becrest is going to be hit with a bad storm soon. As you can see there are clouds swirling above their small town, and each day they get bigger, and bigger. This is unlike anything we’ve ever seen before, so everyone in-“ I turned off the TV and sunk down into the couch. “Maybe it really was a warning,” I thought. “So,” Reese said, and I jumped. “Sheesh!” I scowled. “Maybe he was really giving us a warning!” Reese exclaimed. I rolled my eyes. “It’s only a storm. Storms happen all the time.” Her smile turned into a sulk. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. Maybe it really was just a prank call,” she pouted, “I guess I just got excited because I wanted to be right about something for once.” My eyes went from assurance to sorrow. “I’m sorry, Reese’s Pieces, but it’s only a storm. There’s nothing wrong.” She nodded. “It’s only a storm and a guy prank calling us. That’s all.” We both looked away from each other, avoiding eye contact. Then we heard the phone ring. We rushed to the phone and talked into it. “Hello? Hello?” We both asked. “Hey kiddos!” A woman’s voice said, “Tell your mom that I am going to be back in town in five days, will you do that for me?” We knew who it was. It was Miss. Innes. “Alright, mom.” Reese sighed, then hung up the phone. “False alarm I guess,” I shrugged. We made our way to the brown kitchen, careful not to wake up my mom, for her bedroom was almost right beside the kitchen. I opened the fridge and got out two water bottles. I closed the fridge and gave one bottle to Reese. We opened the bottles, though I struggled to do so. As I took sips of water, I thought about the man. I realized that deep down inside I had a feeling that maybe it was a warning. When we both finished our water bottles, we went into my bedroom and we both collapsed onto my bed. I mumbled, “This has been a weird couple minutes.” Reese laughed, “Yeah, it really has.” Then we fell silent again. Just as we were about to drift off to sleep, the phone rang again. We jumped off the bed so fast that it was almost as fast as lighting. We ran to the hangout room, and answered the phone. “Hello?” Reese asked, wide eyed. Then the man told us four words, “Run for your life.”

Morning came and we lunged out of bed, panting. We looked at each other and chuckled, “We were only having a dream.” I checked the clock. It said 8:37AM. We made our way to the kitchen where we made some cereal. “What a weird dream,” Reese mumbled, chewing on her breakfast. “You know what’s weird,” I chewed, “why were we having the same dream?” We both stopped chewing, thinking maybe it was in real life. “Maybe it was some weird thing that happens sometimes to friends?” Reese suggested. I thought about this and agreed. “Maybe.” We put our dirty bowls into the sink, rinsing them out. We went to the hangout room, and we saw the Chess set out, all put together. “We put it back together in our dream,” Reese remembered. I stuttered, “M-m-maybe someone put it together last night?” Reese stared at the Chess set. “Maybe.” Then we turned our eyes to the phone. “Was the telephone red in our dream?” Reese asked me. “Yes, it was,” I answered. We both inspected the phone for awhile, looking for things that looked different or the same from the dream. Everything turned out being the same from the dream. “I guess we really know this telephone well,” I added, my face pale. “I guess so,” Reese shuddered. Then she looked down at the phone log. She started at it for awhile, trying to think of the phone number in the dream. Reese then decided that she couldn’t remember the phone number, so she tapped me on the shoulder. “Sage?” She asked me. “Yeah?” I replied. “Was that the number of the man who was calling us in the dream?” She pointed. “I-I don’t know,” I admitted, “let me get a closer look.” As I stared at it I started visualizing numbers from the dream to real life, and then I got the phone number from the dream. “Well?” Reese asked. “Is it the phone number from the dream?” I looked straight into her eyes. “Reese,” I told her, “it’s is.” Then the phone rang and we turned slowly to look at the phone number. It was the man.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

I reached my shaking hand to the telephone. My eyes were almost popping out from shock and my face was paler then it has ever been before. Reese was behind me, petrified. My hands were inches away from the telephone, it almost pulling my hand to it. As I grabbed the cold phone, my hands were almost as hard as stone. I forced out the words, “H-hello,” and waiting for a reply. It was a longer wait than usual, and longer silence, the more creepy the house became. It felt like I had been holding the chilling phone for an eternity before the man finally talked. “You are not dreaming. You are not going crazy. You are in danger, so I beg of you, please run.” He said those words slowly, and every word he said, the more I froze. Like usual, he hung up after saying those words, leaving us in complete, and utter, terror. “Reese,” I said, turning towards her, “let’s call the others and see if this is happening to them!” Her face became a bit brighter as she nodded her head. I took out my phone and started to dial our friends. The first person I dialed was Tess Lopez, one of our best friends. The phone ringed for awhile, but she finally picked up. “Hello?” Tess asked. “Tess! Hey! We just need to ask you one important question,” We informed her. “Sure, whatever you want,” She told us, wearily. “Okay, has some strange and weak-sounding man been calling you and warning you to run from something dangerous?” Reese questioned her, gasping for air after. “Let me think,” She answered skeptically, “no, and what kind of question is that?” We hung up before we could even think about answering her. After that, we called Parker Frine, another friend of ours. He told us no, that he hadn’t been called by a weak man. After that we called Wade Bennet, Layla Brooks, Kevin Turner, and even the sisters Carmen and Olivia Clark. All of them said no. Why us?” Reese whimpered after calling all of our friends, “Why only us?” That same thought had been floating through my head too. Then it clicked. “Reese, maybe it’s us because we are the chosen ones!” I explained. Reese turned to me, then out of nowhere burst out a laugh. Yes, a LAUGH. “Sage, out of all the things you’ve said, that’s most nonsensical one yet! We’re only kids, and how in the world are we supposed to be chosen ones if we can’t even get straight A’s at math” My face turned from ghost white to hot pink. “Well, I’m SORRY for putting some ideas out there. At least to me it made sense!” I blurted. “Plus, what’s math have to do with this?” “There’s no need to get mad, Sage. I was only teasing you,” Reese softly told me. “So, you believe me?” I exclaimed hopefully. “Well, if I’m telling the absolute truth,” Reese quietly told me, “no, I don’t.” My face turned redder. “Well, if you were right about the warning-“ “We still can’t prove that,” Reese interrupted. “Maybe mine’s right too!” I continued. There was a pause. “Why should I believe you, if you didn’t believe me?” Sage questioned. I thought about what she said. “You’re right,” I peeped, “you shouldn’t believe me! I didn’t believe you, and look what happened, you were right! So, don’t believe me, please!” Reese sucked in her lips, “I’m ending this conversation, now,” then walked out of the room. “Reese, wait!” I shouted, darting out of the room. “Do you believe me or not?”

Time passed as we sat in our backyard, staring at the reddish storm. It swirled around, like a hurricane, then covered the beautiful blue sky with an ugly, red color. We sat, our heads touching the soft, green grass, observing the strange sky. “If it was a storm, why is it not raining or something,” Reese asked. “Maybe the storm is still developing!” I pointed out. “Maybe,” Reese agreed. Another stillness filled the air. I watched as the the red clouds spread more and more across the sky, thinking of nothing, just staring. Reese did the same, only looking at the clouds, almost as if we both couldn’t look away, almost as if it was taking over my body. “SAGE!” Reese yelled. I jumped up, snapping out of whatever trance I was in. “What?” I moaned. “Sage, I think we need to start warning people. This storm is strange.” I huffed, “Yeah, obviously, it’s strange.” “Well, let’s start warning people!” Sage pronounced, and started to get up form the ground. “Wait!” I told her. “Reese, look, I think people know. It’s... okay.” She glared at me. “I’m still going!” Then she walked to the gate, opening it. “REESE! COME BACK! DON’T!” I screamed, but it was too late. A loud roar filled the sky, along with an ear-piercing scream.