Peter Collins and the Secret Library - Chapter One: Part 1

For the beginning of Peter Collins and the Secret Library, please go to the Prologue.

Chapter 1

Behind the door (Part 1)

Twelve year old Peter Collins awoke to the sound of screams. His emerald eyes snapped open, his heart pounding and dark chocolate hair slick with sweat. He felt weak and dizzy, like he had the flu. When he craned his neck to see who was screaming, he felt the scar on his neck prickle. And then he knew. This wasn’t the flu. And the screams were coming from him.

Peter sat up in bed and pulled the covers closer around his shivering body. With trembling hands, he reached across the bed and clutched the faces of his smiling parents, frozen in a golden frame. He hugged it to his chest and, through blurred vision, imagined himself in a different place. A different room.

He felt his parents’ arms around him, their warmth seeping into his body, evaporate the sweat and pain from his face. He heard their soothing voices, comforting him, telling him it was just a dream and that he was safe with them. He saw his father’s dark brown hair, his mother’s green eyes, a mixture of his own features. Their faces smiled and he smiled back. For a moment, he was home.

And then it was gone.  

With a bump, he was back in the bed, in the room, in the house, in the town, seven hundred and sixty miles from his own. And his parents were dead.

Dead. His nightmare.  

The bright headlights of a truck.

The loud blast of a horn.

The skidding of tires as it tries to swerve.

The shattering glass.

His parents’ screams.

His screams.

Dead.

The tears fell before he could stop them. They ran down his face and down his neck. For a full minute he cried.

Stop it. he told himself.

But he didn’t. He couldn’t.

The chapter will be continued in Chapter 1: Part 2