In a normal looking house lived a normal looking family, but behind closed doors they were anything but normal.

The ‘happily’ married couple had two beautiful little girls, Hannah aged four, and Erin, aged six. The girls were happy at home and had been completely inseparable since the day Hannah was brought into the family.

The two little girls were fast asleep in their bedroom, dreaming peacefully while as far as they were concerned everything was good in the world, but they had no idea of the happenings in the kitchen below their bedroom.

“Don’t do this,” Their mother begged their father as he pinned her between his large frame and the kitchen counter “Think about the girls, George, they’re going to notice
sooner or later,”

“They’re not going to notice anything,” He chuckled darkly “They’re too young to notice anything outside of their own little bubble filled with dolls,”

“Please,” She whimpered as his grip on her wrist tightened to the point where something popped “Please stop this,”

“It’s my job,” He growled “I do what I have to do, and that is killing, but I will not kill my wife, I will kill a beast though,”

“I am not a beast, you have to believe me, please, you know me, and you married me and had children with me, think about this!” She raised her voice at the end and her voice echoed through the house a little, causing little Hannah to stir in her bed.

“Shut up,” George growled at his wife, landing her another blow to the left side of her face “The last thing we want is the girls getting in the way, right?” he smirked as she cradled her cheek as it started to burn.

The slightly raised voices made Hannah stir some more in her bed, but Erin was sound asleep, she was a heavy sleeper, it was so bad to the point where she slept through a tornado at three weeks old. Hannah was the light sleeper of the family and had been since she was a baby, so it didn’t take much to wake her up.

A crash sounded from downstairs and Hannah sat upright in bed suddenly, jolted completely awake by the crash. She looked across the room at her older sister to see that she was still fast asleep. The little girl debated for a minute whether or not to get out of bed because wandering around during the night when she should have been asleep had gotten her into trouble on more than one occasion but when she heard a cry she decided she wanted to check it out.

Quietly, she slipped out of bed and her little feet padded across the room and over to the door. She stretched for the handle and pulled the door open slightly so that she could slip out. Once out of the bedroom she walked down the small hall and across the landing. She left the lights off so as not to alert her parents that she was awake and opted to fumble her way down the stairs, feeling the wall and the banister with her tiny hands so that she wouldn’t fall down.

“Come on,” She heard her father growl “Show me the real you so I can put an end to all of this!”

“No!” Her mother whimpered as Hannah reached the bottom of the stairs and stood in the hallway “You’re losing your mind,”

Hannah stood in the hallway and looked down towards the kitchen at the back of the house, and when she saw her parents standing how they were, her mother with tears in her eyes and her father with his face bright red with anger. When she saw this, she darted into the entrance to the living room to hide, but peeked around the corner so that she could see what was happening between her parents.

Tears sprung to her eyes when her father threw her mother across the room and against the wall. As he pulled a kitchen knife from the block by the sink, Hannah started to get scared, seeing her father like this wasn’t something she should be seeing, especially when it looks like her mother’s life is at stake.

“I know how to take you down,” He told his wife “I could have you on the floor, spilling blood before you could scream for help,”

“Someone will catch you,” She seethed at her husband “You’ve never been all that good at covering up your tracks,”

Hannah watched as her father plunged the knife through his wife’s shoulder, pinning her to the wall with his weapon of choice.

“Show me!” He yelled.

“Mama!” Hannah cried out, dropping to the floor in the hallway, falling from the living room entrance and landing on her hands and knees.

Her whole body was radiating with pain, it started when she started to witness her father
abusing her mother just minutes before but now it was unbearable for her tiny body to handle, and she couldn’t stand any longer.

Her hands and feet felt like they were breaking, her back too, her mouth hurt like she was suddenly growing all of her adult teeth at once and she couldn’t stop herself from crying, it was all just too much for her.

George was conflicted between watching his little girl writing in pain on the floor, screaming and crying in pain as her back cracked at an unnatural angle, her body twisted and contorted in a way that no person should be, and finishing what he started with his wife.

He pulled the knife from her shoulder, ignoring her pleads for him to leave the little girl alone as he charged down the hall towards his daughter, knife at the ready, but he froze before he could plunge the knife into her body and take her out when she jumped to her feet suddenly and flashed him a pair of bright green eyes with pupils that were a weird shape.

“Oh I knew you were just like your mother,” He laughed, moving towards her again, but she moved too and latched herself onto his arm, tearing out a huge chunk of flesh from his forearm.

“Hannah, close your eyes!” Her mother yelled and Hannah did as she was told, but heard a roar and four pairs of feet rushing down the hall, something grabbed the back of her pyjamas and threw her into the living room and as soon as her head hit the wall, she blacked out.

While all of this was going on, Erin had woken up and watched from the landing up the stairs, as everything between her family had unfolded. The only difference between Erin and her little sister was that she was old enough to know that it wasn’t a dream, Hannah was too young to know that it wasn’t, and she believed everything she was told the next morning.
~~~~
Hannah
We’ve been living in Huntington for a week and a half, and the last two nights have been the only two nights where Erin and I finally got a good sleep. Ever since the first night, I’ve been getting out of bed and sleepwalking through the house and my walking around wakes my sister and she has to get me back to bed, sometimes it can be painful for both of us if she doesn’t catch me before I start ‘freaking out’ as she puts it.

In the mornings, I ask Erin if it was the same script the night before and she always confirms my suspicions. I’ve been having the same dream every night, and apparently it is vivid enough for my body to act out the dream as I’m dreaming it. The first time I had the dream I was a little girl, and it had felt so real but when Erin and our parents told me that I had been found sleep walking and having a bad dream and they had put me back to bed I didn’t think anything of it.
People have bad dreams.

There hasn’t been bad dreams or sleepwalking for two nights, so I bounced out of bed this morning, showered and dressed in record time and had breakfast cooking by the time Erin made her way down the stairs.

“Morning,” She yawned, pouring herself a cup of coffee.

“Morning,” I smiled over my shoulder at her “How did you sleep?” I asked.

“Better,” She chuckled “Now that I don’t have my baby sister wandering around in her sleep,”

“Yeah,” I nodded “Seems like it’s calmed down finally,”

“I told you it would,” She grunted, sitting herself down in one of the chairs at the table.

“You’re always right,” I laughed “Breakfast?”

“Please,” She moaned, inhaling deeply “What are you doing today?” She asked.

“I’m going out to look for a job, can’t have you being the only one bringing money into this house,”

“Good idea,” She said “Plus it’ll get you out of the house so that you can leave me to do some work,”

“Exactly, you’ll just complain if I bother you all day when I get bored, and I will,”
~~~~
After breakfast, Erin washed the dishes and I packed my bag for the day, made sure I had my folder of resumes to hand into businesses, grabbed my keys and headed out for the day.

An hour and a half after I took off, I was running low on resumes and I’d been in almost every store, bar and café, but the last place I was going to try before chilling out for the day, was a little diner called Ruth’s.

The diner was a sweet little place, plenty of customers eating and drinking at the tables and some were up at the counter, the kitchen was through the back and there was a little serving window along the wall from the swinging double doors separating the kitchen from the rest of the diner. I walked up to the counter and sat myself on one of the stools and placed my bag on the stool beside me. I looked around me and saw a pretty blonde girl – about my age – taking a young man’s order at one of the tables and shamelessly flirting with him, and an older, curvier woman lifting the hatch on the counter and making her way towards me. They seemed to be the only people working out here, but I could hear someone working away in the kitchen.

“Hey there, darlin’,” The older woman greeted me with a warm smile “What can I get for you?” She asked.

“I’ll take a…” I trailed off, looking at the menu above her head and the deserts on display on the counter “I’ll just take a coffee and a piece of that pie,” I smiled politely.

“Coming right up,” She smiled, turning around to pour the coffee for me, once she gave it to me she put a slice of pie on a plate and slid it in front of me with a fork “You’re new in town,” She stated “Can’t say I’ve ever seen you around here before,”

“I moved in a little over a week ago with my older sister,” I told her.

“Well, it’s nice to meet you honey, I’m Ruth,”

“Hannah,” I smiled, reaching my hand out to shake her hand, she shook mine enthusiastically
“So, you’re Ruth, the owner of this place?”

“That’s me,” She grinned.

“You wouldn’t happen to be looking for a member of staff would you?” I asked.

Ruth opened her mouth to say something, but she was cut off abruptly by a guy sticking his head through the serving window and pointed a long finger right at me.

“No,” He said bluntly “We don’t need more staff, we’re fine with the people we have here,”

“Rhyan!” Ruth scolded, shooting him a warning glare before turning back to me “You’ll have to
excuse my son,”

“Nice to meet you,” I laughed, smiling at ‘Ryan’ despite the fact that he was being rude.

He looked pretty normal to me, dark shaggy brown hair and big blue eyes, pouty lips and some stubble.

“Sure,” He scowled at me, waving me off “Mom, we don’t need to hire anyone else, we’re fine just the three of us,”

“He’s lying,” Ruth told me sincerely “I was about to put our ‘Staff Wanted’ sign in the window when you came in and Riley over there,” She pointed to the flirty blonde “Isn’t going to be much help, so I had to come over and serve you,”

“Well…” I trailed off, reaching into my bag and pulling out another resume “I’d be happy to help you, to work here despite the hatred already growing towards me,”

“Well, our other waitress, my niece, bailed on us when she got herself into a bit of a… sticky situation and ran off with her new man, we’ve been short staffed ever since,”

“Mom’s just going to ask you a few questions,” ‘Riley’ said, making her way behind the counter and handing an order through to Misha “You gotta have the answers right before you join our family business,”

Suddenly, I felt out of place, like I was intruding for even trying to get myself a job in a diner run by a family.

“How many walkers have you killed?” Ruth asked.

I caught on quickly to the reference and did my best acting, using my most serious face.

“I can’t count that high,” I answered.

“How many people have you killed?” Riley asked.

“… One,” I answered after a moment.

“Why?” Ryan asked from through the back.

“Because… she asked me to,”
~~~~
Jimmy
I was at Brian’s house and the two of us were hanging around, doing nothing, and we had no plans for the day with the rest of the guys, so we were doing what we used to do all those years ago when we were growing up. Drinking and talking about music.

“I think the girls liked the show the other night,” I said, thinking back to the gig we played that
Zack and Brian invited Hannah and Erin to.

“I think so, too.” He nodded, taking a swig of his beer “Seems like they’re into our type of music,”

“Did you see them?” I asked with a laugh, almost in disbelief “Of course they’re into our shit,”

“Yeah…” He mumbled “I saw… them,”

“Dude,” I gasped, a shit eating grin spreading across my face “You’re totally into Hannah, the younger one, aren’t you?”

“No,” He said all to quickly “Of course not, you know I don’t do girls, I don’t do commitment,”

“I didn’t say anything about commitment,” I defended, holding my hands up “But you are interested in her, right?”

“A little,” He shrugged “She caught my eye and peaked my interest but you know how I get, I can’t do anything about it,”

“It’s a good thing you have me as your best friend,” I chuckled, smirking at him “I’m going to turn you from a hopeless romantic to a man who can make that girl weak at the knees just by
looking at her,”

Before he could say anything in protest, the front door opened and closed a moment later and was followed by footsteps sounding through Brian’s house and into the living room where we were sitting, it was Matt.

“Hey,” He breathed, standing in front of us “What are you guys doing?” He asked.

“This is it,” Brian laughed, holding his arms out to the side, gesturing around the room “Why?”

“Zack’s gone AWOL, so I’m just going to have to talk to you,” He pointed right at Brian “Until he comes back, he must be really hungry,”

“Fuck,” I groaned, running my hands over my face “If he loses his shit and leaves a trail behind him like before, I’ll rip his head off with my own two hands,”

“He won’t fuck up,” Matt said immediately “I have him well warned from before,”

“So what do you want Matt?” Brian snapped.

“You know why I’m here,” Matt growled “I didn’t get into it with you the first night those girls moved into the house, but I have to now since I’ve been stalking around them, listening in on
their conversations and they seem a little too infatuated with you and Zack for it to be safe for them, or for us, so you’re going to have to throw her off,”

“What do you mean?” Brian asked.

“I mean Hannah likes you, Brian.” He snapped “She might not know it yet but I can feel it whenever she thinks about you, whenever she talks about you, she shows it too much, but I don’t think she has realised it yet and you have to make sure that she never does,”

“I don’t know how to do that,” He sighed.

“He’s absolutely hopeless when it comes to women, Matt, you know that,” I said.

“I know, but he’s going to have to be mean, cruel and completely… heartless,” Matt ran a hand over his buzzed hair “Like I said, Brian, you know better than anyone that you’re not in any position to casually date someone, the two of you aren’t as controlled as the rest of us and the last thing we need is media attention in Huntington, because you know what usually happens when someone turns up dead with two puncture wounds in her neck and every drop of blood drained from her body,”

“Hunters,” Brian answered simply “Hunters come whenever they catch wind of something that might be weird, and yes, we have managed to evade them for decades, but we haven’t fucked up in a long time,”

“Zack did though,” I reminded him “And the two of you are very similar when it comes to what you’ll eat,”

“I’ve heard enough,” Brian snapped, jumping to his feet “You can see yourselves out,”

With that, he left the house.
~~~~
Brian
I couldn’t believe Matt.

He was stalking around the girls, finding out things about them behind mine and Zack’s back. By the sounds of it they hadn’t noticed him at all, but that meant that he was creeping around and possibly in the night while they slept, but I wasn’t about to ask him any questions and have him tear my head from my shoulders.

Hannah liked me?

Had he really said that Hannah was feeling something towards me but she hadn’t quite realised it yet? Probably because the time we had already spent together was pretty awkward and I found myself trying to avoid her at times because I started to worry that I was freaking her out.
Shit. Why couldn’t I be like the rest of the guys, be normal and talk to women like a freaking man instead of some kid in high school trying to speak to the prettiest girl in class.

I left Jimmy and Matt in my house and decided to take a walk down to the beach, I’d get myself away from everyone from an hour and wander the quieter part of the beach where I could just be alone for a while. All of a sudden our lives were going from quiet and peaceful to a whole mess of events and all because these two girls had moved into an old house that was only one year away from demolition, it had been abandoned for so long.

Who knew what mess they were going to bring with them.

Maybe he was right, maybe I did need to keep myself away from her, make sure she didn’t want to have anything to do with me.

I was walking by one of the best diners in all of Huntington Beach, ‘Ruth’s Diner’ and debated going in for a second but decided that I wasn’t hungry, but as I walked by the door, someone come rushing out of the door and all I saw before being knocked to the ground was a flash of
light green.

“Oh shit,” Someone cursed as the two of us toppled to the ground, I landed on my back and a smaller, thinner person landed on top of me.

“Sorry,” I apologized immediately as they pushed themselves off of me, I looked up and realised who I’d just literally run into “Hannah?”

“Brian,” She smiled, finally getting to her feet and holding out a hand to help me up “I’m really
sorry, that was all my fault, I wasn’t watching where I was going,”

“No, no,” I smiled at her, taking her hand and letting her help me up “It was me, I should have been paying more attention,”

“Alright,” She chuckled “So maybe it was a little fault on both of our parts, but maybe we can make it up to each other?” She offered.

“What did you have in mind?” I asked without thinking, mentally cursing myself a moment later when I felt myself blush at her unnoticed – by her – advances.

“Coffee?” She asked, pointing back to the diner she had just come out of “I got myself a job in there,”

“Congratulations,” I beamed at her “I’d love some coffee,”

“Come on then,”

What am I doing?
~~~~
Hannah
Coffee with Brian was cut short when he got a call from Zack and he rushed off, throwing some cash on the table and apologizing frantically as he rushed away, it almost looked like some sort of emergency.

“At least he paid for the coffee,” Riley smirked, coming to clear the table.

“Yeah,” I sighed, frowning, confused as to why I felt saddened that he had rushed off.

“Go off and enjoy the rest of your day,” She ordered “You have your first day of work tomorrow,”

“Alright,” I chuckled “I’ll see you in the morning,”

“Bye!”
~~~~
I spent the rest of the day wandering around Huntington, I text Erin to ask her how work was going, but by the time she got back in touch with me I was heading home with some takeout and she told me that she was going out for a while, that she had some things to pick up for work.

I got home and it was dark out, but it was still warm out.

I grabbed a can of soda from the fridge and headed up to my bedroom. I sat at my computer and logged myself in, opened up Tumblr and YouTube and got to work doing the random shit that I normally do on the computer.

I was eating and listening to music while scrolling through the pictures on my computer, laughing and smiling at the majority of them because they were of Erin and me over the years. I frowned when I came to one where I had a cast on my wrist, and I suddenly remembered back to when I’d fractured my wrist in three places. I’d fallen down the stairs while trying to go downstairs for a drink in the middle of the night, I was twelve and Erin was too scared to wake
Dad when she found me crying at the bottom of the stairs, so she sat me up on the handlebars of her bike and rode to the hospital at two in the morning.

I skipped to the next picture, it was taken by Erin, the picture was of the two of us and she was holding the camera, pointing at our smiling faces, but in the smallest of gaps between our faces, there was something in the background that caught my eye, I’d never seen it before.

I zoomed into the picture, moved things around and altered the resolution and the brightness and gasped when suddenly everything was clear and I could see what it was that was behind us. A face. It wasn’t just any face, it was the face of our mother.

I exhaled slowly, and I realised that I could see my breath and a shiver tore through my body, goose bumps rising on my skin at the sudden drop in temperature. I knew that I wouldn’t be able to see anything, so I turned on the webcam on my computer and stared at the screen when a new window popped up and I could see myself and everything behind me in my room.

“Are you here?” I asked, watching the screen.

Suddenly, I could see her behind me, a warm smile on her face as she approached me and placed a hand on my shoulder, although I saw her doing it, when I felt her I jumped a little, but shot her a sheepish grin.

“Hey Mama,” I whispered.

“Hi baby,”

Notes