Alex has suffered a terrible injury," Matt revealed, waving desperately towards a cab as Alex's car was nowhere to be found. We got into a cab that stopped and rushed to Lord James' Hospital where he was admitted.
Fortunately, we reached the hospital within half an hour thanks to the clear roads and zoomed inside the ward where Alex was kept. Judy sat weeping beside his bed holding his hand, as he lay unconscious with an oxygen mask on his face and a thick bloody bandage wrapped around his head which seemed to have nearly cracked open.
She saw us and dashed forwards to hug me tightly. No words of consolation came out of my mouth and could only caress her hair to try and calm her down. At that moment, a hefty doctor sporting a French beard and wearing a stethoscope entered the ward followed by a young nurse.
"Could you all kindly wait outside, the patient needs to rest? We'll inform you when he regains consciousness," the doctor entreated, and we moved outside, with Judy still holding onto me like a child.
"Judy could explain what exactly happened," demanded Matt, with a slight tone of harshness but turned soft as I gave him the look, while still patting Judy whose tears refused to cease.
"How did this happen, Judy?" I asked her reposefully, placing my arm around her shoulder as we seated her on the bench outside the ward.
"Humph, we, we were happily ice skating, holding our hands and then chasing each other, when suddenly, a faceless man in a black hoody skating from the opposite direction crashed into him with a gut-wrenching pang, and Alex went flying backward and smashed his head against the ice," she sobbed, and I gave her a handkerchief to blow her nose.
"Bloody scoundrel that hooded guy! I didn't even stay back to help and just disappeared. Some good souls helped me carry him to our car and I raced him here," she finished, sending jolts of electricity across my spine. Was it possible? I thought, my body radiating with terror. Could it be that demon or creature or whatever it was, that had been haunting me continuously, to have scathed Alex?
First me, and now my friend, was this creature going to hunt us all down? Profuse sweat oozed through my hair and flowed across my cheeks and neck, despite the freezing weather outside, as my blood curdled with utmost apprehension.
Alex's parents rushed to the hospital at around midnight, both anxious and distressed at the same time. The three of us fearfully expected an exchange of words with them but to our relief, it was quite the opposite, as both were extremely understanding and admitted that accidents like these do occur sometimes and no one has control over anything.
Matt and Judy both stayed the night at the hospital along with his parents, while I had to rush home due to my strict and overly possessive parents no matter how I wanted to stay back with them. I could not sleep the entire night, Judy's words about the hooded man who injured Alex still kept ringing in my ears, and fear bubbled like acid in my stomach.
Peace had been thoroughly extinguished from my life. While being awake, I had to be on my toes and be alert for any mishap that could occur or of the appearance of that fiendish hooded creature, and when my eyes closed at night, I experienced that irksome nightmare time and again. In addition to all that, Judy's supposed scream which I heard in Madam Maxima's tent lead me to raise more questions on my sanity.
Alex was discharged the next day, his head heavily bandaged and having received nearly ten stitches.
"How are you feeling Alex?" I asked as we sat in the school cafeteria three days later. His parents had insisted he take a week's leave from school, however, no matter how adventurous or happy-go-lucky he portrayed himself to be, he didn't wish to miss out on any lectures, especially since it was our final year.
"Way better Ellie, thanks," he replied with a genuinely reassuring grin. "The only regret I have is, coz of me our New Year's Eve got spoiled,"
"Will you shut your mouth!" scolded Judy and Matt together, as they both slapped him gently on his shoulder simultaneously.
"Do you recall the incident, Alex?" I inquired, hoping to receive more details about the guy who injured him.
"Not much to be honest, all I remember is chasing Judy in the ice rink and I looked sideways for a second and got dashed, after that it all went blank.
"Was that all?"
"Yeah, that's pretty much it, I looked sideways, heard Judy shriek and clashed with someone," he added, and a sudden surge of relief broke across my face, lightening my heart. So Judy did scream, and it was not my hallucination, I thought, sipping my cold coffee.
But, that still didn't explain how I was able to hear it booming in my ears when Madam Maxima's tent was situated nearly half a mile away from the ice rink. The period bell screeched and we zoomed back to our respective classes, my mind still pondering over the plausibility of that incident.
The rest of the day passed ordinarily exuberant as well as relieving, as I returned to the hustle and bustle of school and felt born ready to shift my focus back to academics which had gotten substantially neglected as a result of the dreadful events of the last few weeks.
The last hour was Psychology for Judy and me, which was predominantly my favorite subject, while Judy loathed it and thus, was pretty terrible at it. Miss Clarissa, who along with being an erudite professor of the subject, was also quite an amiable and fortunately lenient teacher who genuinely cared about the students and their grasp on the subject.
"Good morning everyone!" Miss Clarissa greeted zestfully, with a dynamic beam that radiated the face of every student and they all chimed back with an equally vibrant 'good morning'. She was a woman brimming with youth and exceptionally elegant beauty, which led the pretty blondies in our class to go highly insecure and caused the handsome hunks to go crushing on her.
She stood there facing us, her sparkling hazel eyes piercing each pupil in class like an x-ray. "So everyone, I heartily hope that you have had an excellent vacation, and relished every moment of Christmas and New Year.
Now, since we have just returned I'm pretty sure that a great many of you are still in the festive mood. So do you want me to proceed with the new topic, or do you wish for a free hour? Such was the charisma of Miss Clarissa that the entire class agreed upon the latter and with a genuinely enthusiastic will to learn.
At the class' unanimous demand, Miss Clarissa gave a beam of approval and moved towards the whiteboard, and wrote the words 'Schizophrenia' in bold letters with a black marker.
"Now, can anyone among you tell me what Schizophrenia is?" she demanded, leaning against the board with her hands folded. All eyes spun around and landed on me and I smiled slyly. I loved Psychology true, but this was an absolute Chinese word for me, but the damage had been done as Miss Clarissa's eyes landed on me and my name was called.
I stood up most reluctantly, smiling sheepishly. I was honestly the top student in Psychology and seriously didn't wish to let my image down in the eyes of Miss Clarissa even for a second.
I was on the verge of embarrassing myself terribly when an extraordinarily weird phenomenon occurred. As I glanced sideways for a second or so, my eyes fell on Rachel Dawson, another highly intellectual girl from my class who was staring at Miss Clarissa with an agitated expression on her face, and my brain buzzed heavily as though it was a radio, and the definition of the word echoed loudly in my mind through Rachel's silky voice...