The Seventh Hour

It was an average Monday morning in the Library of Eastcliff High School when it started. My name is Lucas Patterson, and I am a freshman here at Eastcliff High School with average grades and baseball skills. I have three best friends: Jimmy, Tom, and Jordan that are all freshmen just like me. We were all sitting in the library and we looked around.  Jordan suddenly got up out of his chair across from me and walked toward the bulletin board on the wall. We all then followed him to find an advertisement for this scary theatre performance on the 30^th, the night before Halloween. 

"This sounds pretty good," Jordan said. 

"Yeah, I guess," Tom chimed in. 

"We should totally go see it," I said. We all agreed that it was a good idea and we had nothing better to do, since we had the Monday and Tuesday off that week anyway. We went about our average day thinking about what it would be like. All it said on the advertisement was that it would be the fright of your life. 

The next morning, I woke to a bright pink sun shining clearly through the glass window in my room, which comforted me because of my loud alarm blaring in my right ear. I hit the snooze button on my alarm and fell back asleep for ten minutes. Once again, my alarm was blaring in my right ear telling me to get up. I finally listened and got up out of my comfortable bed, changed into my clothes for the day and went downstairs for breakfast. 

My mother saw me coming down the stairs and said to me, "You're up later than usual" from her usual seat at the kitchen table. 

"Yeah, I know," I said. "I snoozed my alarm," I admitted. 

"That's fine," she said in response. 

"Where's dad?" I asked. 

"Taking a shower," she responded 

I put a bagel in the toaster and sat down next to mom. She was finishing up a sudoku puzzle she started yesterday. Puzzle 116 was the name of the puzzle she was doing. The sudoku book had about 250 puzzles in it so she was a little more than half done. I got my bagel from the toaster, ate it, packed my things for school, said bye to mom, and headed out the door to wait for the bus. 

The bus soon arrived and I took a seat next to Jimmy. 

"How's your morning so far?" I asked Jimmy. 

"Pretty good, I guess," He replied. 

We rode the rest of the bus ride chatting about what we thought the show would be about, the one we were waiting so patiently for. We arrived at school to find Tom and Jordan talking quietly about the performance, just like me and Jimmy had on the bus. Jimmy lives 4 houses down from me in our neighborhood, while Tom and Jordan live about half way across town in the same neighborhood. Again, we went about our day, growing impatient, and awaiting the performance. 

For the rest of the week we came up with about every possibility of what the show could be about. 

It was now Monday morning and we planned to all come to my house to meet up before the show. Jimmy arrived first because he lives so close. After Jimmy came in, Tom arrived in the neighborhood. We could see his family’s car out the window. About five minutes after Tom got to my house, Jordan, who always seemed to be late, got to my house. We had made a list last week about all the possibilities of what the performance could be and the names of who came up with them, so we could bet on who had the best ideas.

It was finally time to leave for the performance we had all been waiting for. My mom was super nice when we told her about the show, so she agreed that it would be a good time and that we should go.

We arrived at the address on the flyer. It was on the edge of the creepy part of town but we thought that it would add to the scariness.

We went inside of the building to find flickering lights and some weird type of slime on the ground. We were so excited and creeped out that we just kept walking.

“Is anyone here?” Jordan yelled.

“Maybe we should go,” Jimmy said

“Nah man this is great,” I said

I then received a weird text message that said “Why are you here?????” I didn’t know what to do, so I showed my friends the message; they were very creeped out. All of a sudden, my phone just shut off. I don’t even know how it happened but it did. We walked in silence around the flickering theatre. After walking one full time around the center seating section we decided to try the back room.

“I really think we should go,” Jimmy said once again.

“Come on,” I pleaded. “Let’s just look around a little.”

            We went into the back room to find this gigantic realistic spider tearing apart a man’s body and eating it all in one big gulp. I thought it was a costume so I stood still and let it move a little. Then I realized that it wasn’t a costume; it was actually real. I started running out of the theatre. I swiftly whipped my phone out of my pocket to find that it was still off, so I told my friends to call my mom. I gave them her number and they put it in their phones and called her to pick us up soon. We hid in the alley next to the theatre from the raging spider. It burst out of the side door of the theatre, right next to us, and we ran as fast as we could to get away from the creature. We quickly moved around the corner farther away from the theatre just as my mom picked up on Tom’s phone. He handed the phone to me.

“We finished early, so can you pick us up a soon as possible?” I whispered into the phone.

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she replied

“Thank you so much,” I whispered once again.

It took mom 13 painstaking minutes to get to us, and we had that monster to deal with. It was almost as if the monster could sense us because we knew it was getting closer and closer.

“Any ideas?” Jordan whispered to the group.

“Maybe we should hide until your mom gets here,” Tom suggested.

“I knew we never should have come here,” Jordan said. He was rocking back and forth. We told him that we didn’t have a choice now and our only chance was to hide.

We hid for those long 13 minutes in the building next door. It was a small diner but we just needed to wait. We saw mom out the window so we ran to the car as fast as we could.

We brought my friends back to their houses and then I went home myself. We all thought we were safe so we decided not to tell our parents about the incident.

A few years ago, I set up a camera in my room and I thought now would be a good time to turn it on. So, I turned it on and went to sleep.

When I woke up I stopped the camera and took it down. I watched the tape again and again, until I finally saw something peering in my window. It was the giant spider!

To Be Continued!

By: Peter McAuliffe