"It's just a raccoon probably, relax." Clay realized how silent all of us got.

But the noises were kind of patterned. Didn't sound like an animal at all. But I'd lie if I said it sounded like a person.

"We're in Florida, it's a gator in the best case scenario, take it or leave it." Nick started whispering all of a sudden, as if he was too scared to talk out loud.

"Is the door locked?" I whispered too, ignoring Nick's joke.

"Did you lock it when you came from the garage?" Clay looked at Nick, who shook his head in disapproval.

Our next action was staring at Nick until he would get up and lock the door. But knowing how scary it would be for him to navigate in the darkness and get closer and closer to the sound source and farther away from us, we decided to go all together.

But as we stood up I realized that maybe using Clay's phone as a flashlight wouldn't be a bad idea, cause his house had a weird structure and questionably placed decorations, which meant we could easily trip and fall.

The whole process was scarier than I thought it would be. And I could tell I wasn't the only one who thought that, because Clay's hands were shaky when he was locking the door. However, once he was done, we felt much safer.

"Let's go to the bedroom?" I whispered, not feeling comfortable in the living room cause it was too close to the main door.

"Yeah. Patches, baby." Clay tapped his thighs, and the small fluff started walking towards him with a tiny meow.

He lifted her up even though she didn't like being held, and lead us all to the bedroom, still using the flashlight to navigate.

And once we were all in the bedroom, we decided to close and lock that door as well.

"Did you see the shadow? The frame?" Nick swallowed visibly.

"What frame?" Both me and Clay were confused on what he was referring to.

"Behind the living room curtain? I think I saw a person standing at the window."

I'd think he was joking or trying to play with us. Well, it's Nick, we all expect things like that from him. But the way he said it sounded extremely genuine. Almost to the point that it looked like he was more scared by his own words than me and Clay were.

And just as we were about to say something, we heard loud barking coming from outside. Patches panicked, pushing a few items down to the floor as she jumped on the bedside table and ran towards the bed.

But that wasn't the thing that bothered us the most. If anything, we'd be thankful if it was just a dog.

The scariest part about the barking was the shushing that followed it. I had no doubt there was a person, a person with a dog maybe, who was trying to keep quiet yet the dog ruined their plans.

"Did you hear that?" Clay whispered, trying to go towards the window but I stopped him.

"It's a werewolf!" Nick whisper-shouted. He was actually pretty serious with his words.

"What if it's George? Call him." I had a strong feeling about George lying about the time of his flight to surprise us. But I also had decent explanations about how that coudln't be the case at all.

"You think he can bark like that?" Nick proved once again that his thought process was a bit slow.

However, calling George is not a bad idea. In the worst case scenario he'll witness how we get murdered and atleast get justice for us.

What the fuck am I talking about..

I used Clay phone to call George, cause it was the only one left that wasn't dead yet. But because we'd been using it as a flashlight, the battery wasn't doing that great.

I also knew that calling him from Clay's number wasn't the best idea. He was gonna think an emergency happened cause we told him earlier that he should call me and Nick instead cause Clay's not allowed to use his phone.

But I could also be wrong for thinking that the call was gonna wake him up, cause knowing George, I knew that there was a chance that he decided to surprise us and came earlier.

However, all of my thoughts disappeared when I heard George's annoyed voice from the speaker.

"What?" His accent was strong on that one.

"Hey, where are you?" I was already starting to panic from the fact that he sounded sleepy, his surroundings were quiet, yet the rustling and footsteps from outside were still there.

"In my bed..?" I was scared from how annoyed George sounded, "Wait.. did I fucking oversleep again? Oh my fucking god, not again-"

Before George could check the time and understand what was going on, I calmed him down. And even though I put him on speaker, I was still the only one talking. Nick and Clay wanted to avoid getting blamed on.

"No, no you didn't. Uh, nevermind, we heard noises coming from outside and thought you came early." I explained, well aware that it didn't make that much sense to him.

"I never come early, don't worry."

I could hear the smugness in his voice. And Clay reacted to it earlier than I could.

"WHAT?"

And that was unnecessarily loud.

"Oh great, he hears me too apparently, thanks for warning earlier, Eliza." George complained in a joking manner, making Nick join the conversation.

"I can hear you too!" He sounded so excited, that I felt bad after hearing George's answer to it.

"Didn't ask."

I can't believe they started to fight through the phone again. I kept reminding them that the phone was low on battery and if it died, we'd be left with no connection whatsoever.

But it's hard to explain that to three people who share a single braincell. They ignored my warnings and ended the call only when it got down to 1 percent.

"Great. What are we gonna do now?" I raised my voice, frustrated cause we didn't even dare to check the time too many times, scared that the phone was gonna die.

"I don't know.. sleep maybe?" Clay shrugged.

And just as I was about to agree cause there was nothing else left to do, we saw the shadow Nick was talking about. But this time it we could see it from the bedroom window.