The Living VS The Dead: Chapter 2
By: Sandy Riedel

“Stephanie…” Lisa said, almost weak-sounding. “You don’t need to save me. Save yourself. We may both die if we try going inside.”

I shook my head. “You’re not going to convince me to not try to save you, Lisa. We will figure out a way to get in there. You just have to trust me.”

CAUTION:REFERENCES TO CHILD ABUSE

CHAPTER 76
The ride up was as dismal, the walk across the tram tracks and up to the grey bulk of the courtroom serving to depress me further.

The Living VS. The Dead: Chapter 1
By: Sandy Riedel

I grabbed Lisa’s hand and pulled her into the mansion, gasping for air, and slammed the door behind us. I looked back at her; a mixture of pool water and sweat dripped down her face. She was shivering and I wasn’t sure if it was from being cold or from being scared.

“What’s going on out there, Steph?!” she demanded, holding back tears. “What were those things?!”

*This is a fanfic set loosely in the Whateley Academy series. That series is great. I'll edit this to add the real disclaimer that's supposed to be here when my internet is faster. This is going to move slowly and there is cursing. You have been warned.*

Chapter 1: The more you ask, the more I say
I woke up to darkness. It was Saturday. Through the night I'd felt as though there was something going wrong but I couldn't place it, quite. My head felt funny, like it had expanded. The soft glow of my computer's monitor could still be seen over my immobile feet from my vantage point at the head of the bed. It was a Saturday. I was sleeping in: it was around ten o'clock, though I normally woke up much later, closer to 12 or 1. I wish I remembered more ... it's really a blur what happened next. I have a tendency to block out my emotions. There was a knock at the door. I was crying and I couldn't understand why. The knock was soft and quailing. Through my sobs I couldn't hear the other person crying, but I knew they were, somehow. They entered the door. It was my aunt Lily, who lived four states away and was the most caring and least rational person I knew in my family, simultaneously. She believed in Wicca, though my own blasphemous atheist thoughts were tolerated nicely. Dabbing at her eyes she seemed almost like she couldn't talk, and choked before letting go with a single sentence:
"Rick and Gloria are dead."